Others in the shacks around them stood aside or turned their backs when he and Ilona walked by. In an earlier era, in a time of prosperity, the scowls would have been alien. An aberration in a gracious society. But here, everyone scowled. Whether the target was Ilona or a defence against a depraved world was hard to tell. But the occasional slur of Siwash or a projectile of spittle wasn’t. Darius rigged up a set of trip wires and traps that would alert them if someone broke into their shack while they were sleeping. But each night was fitful, each sound snapping them to wakefulness.
One day, Darius returned after a search for food to find a body a short distance from their shack, his throat slit. Ilona said nothing, but Darius noticed that the other occupants of the encampment made sure to keep their distance, avoiding coming close to them.
Darius might have feared the police. Surely someone would report a dead body. But even though he was new to the West Coast, he knew that nobody dealt with the Peaks—at least not voluntarily.
The Peaks travelled in groups of three or four, their rovers snarling through the grimy streets while bystanders melted into the alleyways and shadows to emerge once the rover had moved on. The Peaks had no friends here, but it seemed they also had no enemies or at least none that could challenge them. Darius wondered where the resistance was. Andrew had often spoken of his brother, Roald, and his hatred for the Peaks. But where was he? Darius had asked around, but nobody had answered him—at least not with anything useful. He could understand if the resistance was suspicious of him. The villagers in his town were suspicious of those in neighbouring towns, but at least the neighbours were visible.
He also had to find some way to make money. The cash they had taken from the Peaks was running low, but he had no idea what he could offer. He started filtering through piles of junk. Most of it was useless, anything of value salvaged by those who had gotten there before he had.
Then, buried under one of the mounds of trash, he found a whetstone. Its concave surface spoke of years of use, but it had many more years left. He sat on a box outside his shack and honed his knives to an edge that would slice a green leaf in half. He noticed a couple of men watching him, sidling toward him, their eyes on the stone and his knives.
He’d had almost no conversations with anyone but Ilona since they arrived, but this seemed like a place to start. He picked up a loose scrap of paper and slit it in half. The men took a step backward. “What’s wrong? You never see a sharp knife before?”
One of them said, “Never seen one that sharp. How’d you do that?”
These men wanted sharp knives. This could pay. “You got a knife?”
“Yeah.” The man’s knife was pitted, its blade stained with rust. “Can you fix this?”
“For a price.”
“How much?”
Darius was stumped. How much to sharpen a knife? He said, “What’s it worth to you?”
“A coupla bucks.”
“I’ll sharpen and clean it for five.”
“Three.”
Darius shrugged. “Can’t be that important to you. Five.”
“Okay. Five. But it better be good.”
“Come back in an hour.”
“I’m staying here.”
“Fine. As long as you’re here, I’m not working on it. I have my secrets.”
The man frowned. “It better be good.” He and his buddy walked away.
That was the start of Darius’s business. He became known as the knife sharpener. People brought their blunted, pockmarked, stained knives and took them away honed and sharp, cleaned and polished. Within a month, he was known throughout the neighbourhood, and when people began opening up to him, he started to ask about the resistance. About a man named Roald.
THEY CAME FOR him at night. Three men pushed into the shack, their faces grim, their bodies taut, knives at the ready. They grabbed Darius and Ilona and pinned them to the ground. One of the men said, “Call out and you’re dead.”
The man held a knife at Darius’s throat. “You’ve been asking about Roald. What for?”
Darius said, “I want to meet him. To join him.”
“Course you do. You ain’t the first snitch who tried to trap him. You won’t be the last.”
“I’m not trying to trap him. I knew his brother. I came here to work with him.”
“His brother? He never said nothing about a brother.”
“Well, that should be easy to solve. Let me ask him.”
“No chance of that.”
“Look, you didn’t come here to kill us. Otherwise either you or I would be dead. I’m guessing you’ve been sent to figure out why we’re asking about Roald and whether we could be useful to you. We can. Let me talk to him.”
A fourth man stepped into the room and gestured to the others. They stood back, letting Darius and Ilona climb to their feet. The man said, “What is this brother’s name and what is your connection to him?” The man was slight, his face bore the lines of someone in his sixties, but his eyes shone with the clarity of a younger man. His voice was soft, cultured, his words clear.
Darius said, “He was Andrew. His wife was Olive. They had a child, Sarah. They were my friends. They’d planned I’d marry Sarah.”
The man frowned. “Why are you waving your hands around like that?”
“A habit. When I’m nervous.”
“Settle down. You’re making me nervous. How do you know Andrew? And if you were going to marry Sarah, why are you running around with this Siwash?”
Darius signed the man’s words, watching Ilona tense. “You’re Roald, aren’t you?”
The man’s face tightened. “I asked how you knew Andrew.”
“You didn’t hear? About Andrew and his family?”
“Hear what? What about him?”
Darius took a deep breath. He told about the Peak attack and the devastated town. The man slumped into a chair. His face turned pale. His cheeks tightened. His eyes threatened to water. “I am Roald. I haven’t heard from Andrew for almost a year. How was he, before—”
“He was the only person I knew who thought the future could get better. I always came away from him and Olive feeling some hope. You haven’t heard from him in a year?”
“No. The mail isn’t reliable, nor is it confidential. I haven’t seen him for over ten years.” He slumped into a chair. “You’re right about his attitude. He’s always had some optimistic notion about the situation improving. In a way I’m glad that never changed. I was more realistic, or maybe more defeatist. I remember bouncing Sarah on my knee. I figured she’d break hearts.”
He stood up. “Why did you come here? Why not stay and build a place free of Peaks?”
“Do you have to ask? It was my attack on the Peaks that led to their rampage. If it wasn’t for me, Andrew and Olive and Sarah would be alive. I’m here because the only thing I know how to do, the only thing I want to do, is attack Peaks. If I can do it with the resistance here, great. If not, I’ll find another way.”
Roald nodded. “You we can use. But not the Siwash.”
Darius signed, “Now.” Ilona spun, grabbed the knife from one of the men, twisted his arm behind his back, and pressed the knife against his throat, a trickle of blood oozing down his neck. When a second man started toward her, Darius said, “Step back or she’ll kill him. And she’ll kill you. As for the other two of you, I can take care of that.”
He turned toward Roald. “You can use us, but we’re together. You take both of us or neither.” He gestured toward Ilona. “She doesn’t like being called a Siwash, and she’d love to remove his head. Give her an excuse.”
Roald stepped back and raised his hands, palms up. “Okay, back off. We won’t harm you.” The other two men eased back. Roald said, “But tell me, when you were waving your hands around, were you using sign language?”