"Ah no."
He hears himself say it. For one second the bonds at his throat loosen. And he is bitterly sick.
Another kick. A raking almost harmless kick, but it tears across the skin of his chest. Across Kerewin's bruise island. Something breaks.
He feels the air stir, Joe slip after the kick.
Crush. And the dead weight doubles his pain.
The world tilts more, and helpless he begins to slide, downwards, underground, into the box. Turning pinioned. Sound. A scream.
Suffocating. Deep dark.
It is almost night.
That morning he watched the sun come up, head on his arms, his arms on the window sill. That morning Joe was in a bitchy mood, saying, "Don't go round to the Tower."
That morning, Mr Drew leant across his desk, frowning, and handed him the envelope. "You'd better take that home to your father, Simon."
He didn't go back to school after the lunch break.
He went round to Binny Daniels, hoping for money, however he can get it.
From the gateway he could see the old man was dead.
The flies were humming a strong lively song. They were impatient when he came through them, skidding onto him, face and eyes and hair, as though they thought he was more of the feast.
Binny Daniels had slipped and fallen. He'd done that often enough.
This time, he'd fallen on top of his half g of sherry. It broke apart under him, bits tinkling down the path. But a long freak shard had daggered in, into the old man's groin. He had bled a lot. Great clots and puddles of blood have spilled on the concrete. The flies seethe merrily over them, jostling and shoving and wanting room for more.
Binny Daniels had tried to hold his artery's pulse to a stop. But his fingers are narrow and fleshless and they ache with arthritis, and the remaining strength ebbs out so fast. He still clutched at the hole though, the glass blade's tip sticking obscenely out. Diamond bright in the afternoon sun.
He'd been sick, and the odd fly had buzzed eagerly up and landed on the halfdigested pulp, and he'd been sick again.
He went round to the Tower anyway.
Kerewin said,
"You better not come here any more. Your father won't be dead keen on it."
She'd asked, "Where's my knife? The special one?"
She didn't believe he hadn't got it. Wise Kerewin. He'd taken it before the holiday.
The knife is Kerewin's talisman, her athelme. Made from German steel, superbly tempered. The bone handle is riveted with three steel pins, and near the pommel is a brass-lined hole. A thong of rawhide
can be twisted through the hole and looped over the knife handle. The thong is attached to the sheath. The knife can't fall out.
"I know I haven't lost it," Kerewin said.
There is no guard on the knife. A dimly golden crosspiece separated the curve of bone from the curving blade.
He can see each detail clearly. In the flaring lights, it is all he can see.
The sheath is made of leather, oiled to a deep russet red. A rim of shagreen capped the sheath above the rivet that completed the stitching. A second thong, which could be tied round the thigh, hung in a plait from a steel-lined hole at the end of the sheath. A long time ago, Kerewin had engraved runes on the leather, filling the gouges with white enamel, and they are still there.
When he first picked up knife and sheath, he had traced the runes and she had said,
"They're letters, but not our kind. They're called runes, cen, os, and hagall. My initials. They also have other meanings. It is a strange and providential chance that what they stand for and my initials, are the same thing."
There are more runes carved into the bone handle. An inscription, said Kerewin.
"Indeed, a dedication," she had added thoughtfully.
These runes are worn down to unreadable fineness.
It is mysterious, but he must remember it all. He is in the mystery, and needs to remember.
It is a small heavy knife, comfortable to hold, and excellently balanced.
It is good for throwing — she had sent it thunking into the wood under the window to show him how.
It is good for gutting, skinning, slicing, chopping, ripping, and killing.
A knife with an edge keen enough for whittling, rugged enough to hack through bone. Kerewin asked, "So where is it?"
She got very angry when he continued to deny he had it.
"I know where all my gear is, at all times. I know what's gone missing from here, and a lot has, boyo. From paperclips to cowries and a helluva stack of smokes somewhere between. I don't give a damn about them but I want my knife back. Get it, and I forget about all the other stuff, okay?"
What knife?
It is a peculiar feeling, sick to the stomach, with the dead Binny Daniels floating in and out of view, flies humming over him in a black racing cloud, a peculiar feeling trying to be angry. To pretend to be angry. It is necessary to be angry. He threw a punch at her, a neat punch sent overhand into the triangle between the wings of her ribs.
He had forgotten how fast she could move.
It was a hard hit to get back, in the centre of his chest. He buckled to the floor and Binny Daniels went flying into a thousand separate pieces, each loaded with a cargo of wildly buzzing flies.
When he got to his feet, she was standing just as she had finished the blow, eyes wide, one hand still balled in a fist.
He staggered over, a hand on the numbness, the other fisted, and went to hit her again. She slid easily to one side yelling "Simon." High and echoy and shocked. "Simon!"
He tried twice more, and each time she ducked.
So he'd turned fast as possible and before she guessed what he was going to do, kicked in the belly of her amber guitar, lying there by the window.
The room became deathly still.
Huge pale blisters rose and spread under the varnish. The wood was smashed but the strings hung free, still humming in the air.
Binny Daniels and the flies zoom back together.
Kerewin said, "Get out."
Her voice trembled.
Her hands trembled.
He can. see them still. Trembling to get hold of any part of him that can feel a hurt, and wreak vengeance on him.
She puts them behind her back.
"Get out."
He stayed as long as he could, but the shaking that envelopes her is frightening.
Besides, Binny Daniels and his retinue of flies has practically come into the Tower now. He left.
There was a group of men in Binny Daniel's garden, talking in low guarded voices.
They've put a blanket over the twisted old body. "Jesus," says one, "get that kid away from here." The flies are everywhere, in high hungry clouds.
It was nearly dark.
There was nobody in the street.
Just the long line of shop windows, their glass faces bright with the metalling of the dying sun.
He started on the left side, doing one at a time, and he had nearly finished them all, up the street and back down the other side, when the hand closed on his shoulder, and the other hand wrenched the brick from his fists.
It was Constable Morrison.
He said,
"You've done it, Gillayley. This time you've really done it. Christ, what a mess."
Holding both his bleeding hands together in one hand. Saying under his breath, looking down, eyes in the shadow of his helmet rim, "Christ, what a mess."
It didn't sound like he meant all the smashed windows, or the glass all over the street.
The constables stayed talking to Joe for a long time.
Joe held the top of his arm, tightly. After a while, he couldn't think of anything else except the bite of the fingers, and he lost the thread of the conversation.
The police said,
"He's too young to prosecute, Joe, but it's about time something got done."