Of the orphans adopted that year, two were already dead. The others knew nothing about the Shanti family. Nor did they know anything about other orphans who might not have been accounted for. Those surviving were as ignorant and uninterested in her questions as the worst townsfolk could be. She reflected that perhaps orphans shouldn’t be adopted, losing status instead to be taken out to the plant. It would keep the numbers of worthless townsfolk to a minimum. Abyrne already overflowed with the ignorant. Ignorant of their religion; ignorant of their protectors, the Welfare; ignorant of everything it took to keep the town going.
Turning up nothing but dead ends, she made a final trip to the office of records. Whittaker and Rawlins rose from their seats whenever they saw her now and glasses of milk came without her needing to ask.
She was having a good few days. The trembling in her body had eased off and the pain in her stomach had also receded. She put it down to the Grand Bishop’s kind request for veal in her dutiful rations. She now ate it every day, usually at breakfast, and found it much easier to keep down.
There was a trail worn through the dust where she had passed up and down the centre of the archives to reach the shelves of boxes. Having bid Whittaker and Rawlins a more cheery good afternoon than was normal for her, she went straight to the original record box that she’d first checked and took it down again. In it she found the details of the dead boy, Richard Shanti, killed by his own umbilicus as he was born. She then found, on looking more carefully, that Richard Shanti had an older brother named Reginald Arnold Shanti. This brother had been stillborn. The Shanti line had not been destined to continue, no matter how noble a name it had been when the town was first created out of the ash of the wasteland.
Two tragic pregnancies. Two dead boys. Dead on their first day in the world.
What would that do to a mother? What would it do to a father who wanted his line to extend and flourish? Surely they would have to admit to themselves that their lineage was finished. Once they’d accepted that, what would they do? Taking orphaned children would benefit the children by making them townsfolk and saving them from the plant or from a life as fugitives in The Derelict Quarter, but it would do nothing for the bloodline.
So what did it mean that two boys were dead? Was there another man out there in the town with a noble name who was not what he believed he was?
She went to check the records of the parents again to see what more she could discover.
Bruno sprinted into the study, knocking the door open with a violent shove as he passed through. The door connected with the inner wall and the handle gouged plaster from the wall.
‘Stay back,’ shouted Magnus.
Bruno noticed his boss was careful not to take his gaze from Collins’s face. The eye contact between them had become compulsory. A glance away at the wrong moment and either man might take advantage.
‘Me and Mr. Godhungry here are about to get a little better acquainted,’ continued Magnus. ‘I don’t want any interruptions.’
Bruno looked at Collins’s bloody nose and mouth, saw again how starved he looked and remembered how easy it had been to bring him in. He noticed the shining piece of human ivory in his boss’s right hand and relaxed a little. The no-brainer was legend in the town, a weapon feared by everyone.
The noise of the toppled chair and sprawling body had been loud downstairs. Bruno had thought for one panicked moment it might have been Magnus who had been overpowered. Now he realised how stupid that was, how needlessly paranoid. Magnus only needed a curtain of men around him to stop knives and rocks and spears. Magnus didn’t need any kind of bodyguard when it was man-to-man like this. He had the physique of a heavyweight boxer and speed utterly at odds with his bulky gut and chest. He’d seen Magnus take dozens of men over the years. This fight with Prophet John would be meat and drink to him. If they got too close for blows to be struck, Magnus’s sheer weight and power dwarfed Collins. The thin man had no chance.
He’d called in an extra shift of enforcers to check out the grounds of the mansion. There was no trace of any accomplices out there, no ambush of starving townsfolk, no heretical raiding party. The mansion was entirely secure. Collins was a man alone in the very worst situation. Magnus would bludgeon him with great skill and care, leaving him intact for an execution that promised to be the bloodiest the town had ever seen.
He compared them now; the pale wraith of a man – by his own admission an abstainer from meat and under-fed for months – with his crazy-sounding words and blasphemies, and his only strength coming from the intensity of his eyes. He was crouched, almost cowering. He faced a giant, the man Bruno had worked and killed for ever since he was a teenager brought in off the streets. Magnus looked bigger than the largest bull, his shoulders and chest always pressing out from his suits, as though he might burst his tailoring. And Magnus was a full man; full of rage, full of hunger and passion, full of the lifeblood and flesh of every man that had crossed him since he took his place as Abyrne’s Meat Baron.
He put Bruno in mind of some kind of ogre made human. His rust-coloured hair, thinning but still long, hung far beyond his collar. His beard was so full you could only guess at the shape of his mouth beneath it and the whiskers spread so far up his face they speckled his cheek bones. His shoulders were two arcs of muscle and his hands were as large as shovels. Hunger must have made Collins rotten in the brain. Only a total nutter would go looking for a fight with a man like Magnus.
‘That means, depart, Bruno.’
Bruno was reluctant to leave them alone. It wasn’t for fear of his boss’s welfare; he merely wanted to see this mismatch play out to its inevitable consequence. He wanted to see Collins beaten and humiliated before they gave him to Cleaver to dissect at leisure. It would be a slaughter no one would ever forget.
Bruno backed out of the room and kept the image of the two fighters in his mind. On one side, the ruddy bear of a man that ran the town of Abyrne. On the other, the whippet-bodied ascetic, soon to perish.
It was a shame he had to miss it.
Twelve
Magnus knew there was no perfect moment now that he’d taken first blood. It was time to use his muscle.
He leapt forward, aiming to catch Collins with an outstretched arm, depending on which way he dived. Collins didn’t move. Magnus had time to grin to himself as he put out both arms to engulf his opponent in a full body tackle. Collins would be crushed by it. At the last possible instant, Collins sidestepped and he flew right past. The lunge became a dive and Magnus crashed to the floor. The rug of woven hair did little to cushion the impact. And Collins, the sneaky little bastard, was now behind him.
He squat-thrusted himself upright like a drill sergeant showing his men how it was done. Before Collins could make another move Magnus was facing him, no advantage lost. Right-handed, he swung the no-brainer at Collins’s jaw hoping to knock him out in one swipe. Again he believed he was going to connect and again, when it seemed too late to be possible, Collins moved a few inches outside the arc. Magnus, unable to stop the momentum of his bone-cosh, followed through clumsily, once more leaving a flank open to Collins for dangerous moments. He spun back using the circular movement to try for the other side of Collins’s face with a backhand strike. Collins shifted his head and the blow missed. He seemed to melt in the face of each onslaught. Magnus didn’t like the calm look on his hollowed face.
‘I thought you wanted a bloody fight. Now you’re the shrinking violet. What’s it to be, Collins?’