The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology Page 8

  ‘I think,’ Biane said, ‘that I should start shifting that stuff down to ground level.’ She pointed to the shelves that reached all the way up to the corrugated tin ceiling, and were crammed full of more boxes and crates, plastic-wrapped furniture and dusty suitcases. ‘The height doesn’t bother me, and we’re just getting in each other’s way here.’

  Garvey squinted up into the shadows. A series of clear roof panels showed pale against the darkness, but did little to illuminate the upper reaches of the warehouse. He shrugged.

  ‘Fine. We’ve cleared enough space down below. You,’ he said to Lyriam, ‘you’ve got the hang of this now? How to mark them for pickup?’

  Lyriam nodded. It was childishly simple. Garvey dug into his capacious coat, which he had not removed despite the hard work they had been doing and the limitations it imposed on his movement, and handed Lyriam another fat fluorescent marker like the one he’d been using. He grimaced as the younger man’s fingers came close to his own. Lyriam was careful not to touch him.

  ‘Use this. Mark and move to the front for pickup. I’ll work with Dirk to shift them outside. Transport should be here soon for another load.’

  The work became a steady, backbreaking rhythm of lifting, checking, marking, moving; trying to make inroads into the items already stacked on the warehouse floor as well as keeping pace with Biane, clambering up and down a vertiginous ladder, dangling some massive item one-handed as she descended far enough to drop it safely to ground. Every now and then she dropped down herself and silently helped him shove the accumulating piles forward for Dirk and Garvey, as if in unspoken agreement that they would rather work together back here, without a break, than have any more interaction with the two norms than was absolutely necessary. They heard one transport arrive, load up and leave, and then another; heard when the men broke for lunch, without any suggestion that they should do the same. Lyriam thought of his twenty credits. He caught Biane’s eye and her grim expression, and imagined she too was holding fire for the sake of her forty.

  Dirk came back in as he was manhandling another stack of cracked plastic chairs into place. The norm aimed for a spot right next to Lyriam, apparently ignoring him as he loaded up the hand truck, although it would have been easier for them both if he had selected somewhere else along the growing rampart of items marked for removal. Hostility flowed off him in waves.

  Lyriam tensed, wondering if a blow was finally coming, or if Dirk would continue to content himself with more minor aggressions. He could see the man’s eyes tracking him, even as Dirk grunted and struggled with his own work. Lyriam moved aside, just as Dirk turned deliberately into the space where he’d been standing. The contact was not as forceful as the bigger man must have intended, but it was still enough to send the boy stumbling backwards into a jumbled and precarious pile of crates topped by coils of wire and various odd-shaped, sharp-edged objects. Clouds of dust billowed up. He heard a sliding sound, put his hands up instinctively, and caught a large brown box as it tumbled off the top. A faint cascade of notes came from it as it hit his hands, a shimmer of sound unlike anything he had heard before.

  He scrambled up and swung around, box held in front of him for defence, and saw Dirk retreating towards the front of the warehouse pushing the loaded trolley. Outside, another transport was pulling up. Lyriam let his breath go in a soft sigh. That would keep them busy for close to half an hour.

  The box in his hands was not like any of the others he had encountered in the warehouse. He carried it over to one of the weak shafts of sunlight and set it carefully down. It was a case, vaguely rectangular but rounded at the corners and deeper at one end than the other. It had shoulder straps and was made of a material he could not identify: a mottled brown canvas-like fabric with a texture not unlike his own skin. Was this leather? He ran his fingers along it, feeling it out, unsure which of the recycling categories it belonged to, but most of all wondering what had made the beautiful sound. He came to a pair of brass clasps, pressed down on them, and eased the hinged lid up and back.

  It took a moment for his eyes, unused to such things, to make sense of what he saw. The instrument gleamed against a bed that was shaped precisely to its contours and lined with a soft, tawny, lustrous padding. The thing itself was made of carved and polished wood, its flat surface punctured by a pair of cavities opening into a curved belly. It was something like an elongated, covered bowl: broad at the base, sweeping into a narrower waist and flowing up to a slender neck. A gentle arc swept across from this to anchor a long, elegant, fretted shaft that ran along one side of the bowl. Strings lined the entire surface, lying in parallel, fastened top and bottom by brass studs that held them a finger’s-width off the surface of the wood, shaped for turning and tightening.

  A small plaque on the inner lid of the case, dim with the patina of age, read:

  Gibson Ltd | Professional Musical Instruments

  GUITHARP #SO12

  London | Birmingham | Manchester

  A couple of the strings were broken, and several others hung slack. He reached out and touched the ones that remained taut, both wondering and somehow already knowing what would happen. A shiver of sound floated up, setting his spine tingling. He was suddenly desperate to do it again, to take the thing out and tighten and refasten the strings, to play and experiment. He could see, as clearly as if he had seen or done it before, how you were meant to hold the thing, how your hands should rest and press and strum. He could see his own hands on it, and knew they would fit and stretch and reach. He knew they would be right.

  So many strings, he thought. This was a norm instrument. How did they play that many strings?

  Almost without meaning it, his hand swept across them again. Music washed into the air: a cascade of notes shimmering up into the dusty gloom of the warehouse. He did it again, delighted into forgetting where he was, or what harm could come of it. Indeed, he had half lifted the guitharp out, fingers moving now to pluck and learn what sound that would make, when a soft throat-clearing behind him and a loud crash from the loading bay out front brought him back to himself. He dropped the instrument hastily back into its bed, damping the sound with his hand and looking guiltily around.

  Biane came up to stand beside him, gazing down into the case. ‘That’s just about the prettiest thing I think I’ve heard,’ she said quietly. ‘Or seen. You looked at it like you’d found a friend.’

  He swallowed. She was contemplating the hand he had placed to still the vibrating strings. She placed her own hand in the case next to his, flat against the richly polished wood. It was as powerful as the rest of her, covered in a network of small scars, the thumb and four fingers heavy and blunt. Beside it Lyriam’s was slender and pale, the fingers long and delicate, tapering down to tips on which the nails were so small and transparent as to barely be visible. But this was not the feature of his hands that attracted attention.

  There were six of those fingers, lying alongside a long, recurved thumb as elegant as the blade of a scimitar. He flexed them, a ripple of movement like breeze over grass, and felt the answering hum of the strings beneath his palm.

  ‘That looks like such a simple mutation,’ Biane said. ‘I bet it isn’t.’

  He sighed. ‘They’re not simple to live with, that’s for sure.’ He raised his hand from the strings, turning it as he curled and straightened the fingers in sequence, frowning. ‘I guess I must have been for specialist assembly work or something. Maybe in a factory it wouldn’t have mattered, the norms would’ve expected it. But out here . . .’ he trailed off.

  ‘Every time you scratch your nose, you get in trouble?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ He dropped his hand back to rest on the edge of the case, and looked at her. ‘You?’

  She laughed shortly. ‘I’m built for trouble, and people know it. That’s why those two fuckers are being more or less polite.’ She looked bac
k at his hands, and at the strange instrument resting against the worn velvet. ‘I bet you could learn to play this thing, Lyriam. You should keep it.’

  ‘They’d never let me. It’s probably worth a lot.’

  ‘You think they care? Those two wouldn’t know a thing of value if it slapped them in the face.’

  ‘They still wouldn’t let me have it.’

  ‘That’s only a problem if you ask.’ She looked towards the front of the warehouse, the gaping door. ‘I came down because I saw the way Dirk was moving when he came in. He might be distracted for now, but the fact is things aren’t likely to go the way you hope today.’

  Lyriam felt the cold fist in his gut again, as he had when he crossed the park that morning; when Garvey had slammed his steel against the gate; when he recognised the malevolence in Dirk’s eyes.

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’

  Out front, it sounded as though the loading was nearly done. Biane kept her eyes trained towards the entrance as she spoke.

  ‘I heard about this place from a friend of mine who came here a few days ago. Worked his arse off just like we’re doing. When the day was done he went to get paid.’ She paused, face twisting into something ugly, and scary. ‘They laughed at him. Said they weren’t paying no stinking gems, that as far as they were concerned he was free labour.’

  ‘What? But— wasn’t he—?’

  ‘He’s a Biomin mining model, just like me. Keep your voice down. Let’s get this put away before they come back.’ He looked at her in shock as she briskly closed the lid on the guitharp and snapped the clasps shut. ‘My friend is not a man to tolerate insults, or cheats, but that’s not all they were after. Garvey used a stunner on him. He wasn’t expecting that, he hadn’t seen it. It was hidden inside that coat. Probably still is, since the bastard won’t take it off. There were three of them here that day, and once he was down they beat the crap out of him. Dumped him and left him for dead, and if he wasn’t one of us he would have been.’

  ‘But—’ Lyriam’s head was swimming, and his stomach was tight with fear. He found himself listening intently for the two men at the front of the warehouse, out where he and Biane would have to pass in order to leave this place. They were still shooting the breeze with the transport driver.

  ‘I don’t understand. If you knew that then why . . .’ He trailed off.

  Biane nodded grimly. ‘I don’t take shit like that lightly either. So my advice to you, my young friend, is to put this aside. Somewhere you can grab it in a hurry. It looks as though it suits you, and it’s all you’re likely to get out of today’s activities.’

  Lyriam swallowed. ‘How am I supposed to leave here with it? Especially if I’m trying not to be beaten up?’

  ‘I’m going to be keeping them too busy to stop you. But you’ll have to move fast, and we’re not going to have time for any more conversation. So get ready.’ She nodded towards the side wall of the warehouse. ‘Where you stashed your coat is good. Far enough back to be out of Dirk’s eye line, close enough to reach quickly. There’s another door out of here, a small one at the back. It’s closed, but I’ve already broken the lock. If you have to use it, grab your stuff and follow the line of shelves until you get to where it’s blocked, turn right, then the first left and you’re out. Don’t linger if you go that way. This place isn’t safe.’

  ‘You said that already.’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes bore into him. ‘I’m saying that now. It’s not safe. Get your arse ready to run.’

  *

  There are two of us, Lyriam kept thinking. Me and Biane. Dirk and Garvey. Two against two. With her friend it was three against one, but now they’re two against two. They must have thought about that. Even though I’m not much of a threat, they must have realised she more than makes up the difference. They’re not going to try anything, two against two. Not when one of us is her.

  He thought this until he peered out from the deepening shadows inside the warehouse, out to where dusk was settling swiftly over the towering piles of forgotten treasures awaiting tomorrow’s transports. A figure he did not recognise had joined Garvey, and was poking interestedly at one of the piles with a long, wicked-looking stick.

  Dirk strolled into sight alongside another stranger, similarly rangy and rough-clad. Their shoulders were loose, their gait purposeful. They too stopped next to Garvey, who stood with fists in pockets, gazing towards the black maw of the warehouse. Lyriam saw the flash of his grin in the dim light from a streetlamp, flickering dully in the gloom.

  He felt Biane come up behind, and glanced round to alert her to the gathering out in the yard. From the look on her face he could tell there was no need, though if she was afraid she did not show it. She gazed thoughtfully out into the evening as she slipped something small and studded, like a credit or memtab, into the pocket of her quilted jacket. The jacket looked smaller to him somehow, as if she had grown thinner during the day, or it had lost some of its padding.

  He turned to look again, and saw a fifth man slip through the open gate from the street and join the others. Cold sweat broke out on Lyriam’s back and he clenched his seven-fingered hands into useless fists. Five against two. At least. He glanced again at Biane, and found her smiling gently.

  ‘All set,’ she murmured to herself, sounding remarkably satisfied. He must have looked incredulous, because she focused on him, frowning a little, and opened her mouth as though to explain.

  Behind him, Garvey’s voice, shouting. ‘Hey, you two in there! Day’s over. Time to collect your earnings.’

  Rough laughter and mutters of anticipation, like hungry diners before a meal.

  ‘The back door’s looking like the best bet,’ Biane said softly. ‘Not yet, though. Stay behind me, at least ten paces. They’ll just think you’re scared.’ She took in his expression, and her mouth quirked in sympathy. ‘When I give the word, run back in here, grab your stuff and keep going. Once you’re outside, get up against the fence and circle round to the front, fast as you can. Stay out of sight and stay away from the building. As soon as you can make it through the gate, go. Get out of here.’

  He found his voice. It was shaking. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. And don’t wait, or try to help.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Come out, come out,’ shouted Garvey. ‘What’re you waitin’ for?’

  *

  Biane strolled clear of the warehouse’s shadow as though she hadn’t a care in the world and paused for a moment, relaxed and easy, surveying the assembled men.

  ‘Been waiting for everybody to get here,’ she said evenly. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out.’

  She resumed her steady walk. The men now looked uneasily from her to Garvey. Behind, still hidden by the darkness inside the warehouse, Lyriam took a deep, deep breath and told himself he had to follow.

  ‘You ready for this much company?’ Garvey asked, but the jeer sounded less certain than before.

  ‘I figured you’d call in reinforcements, Garvey. They here to help you tally up our pay?’ She tilted her head to the side and back, towards the warehouse. Though she did not look round, the signal was unmistakable.

  Lyriam stepped slowly onto the concrete apron and walked forward, trying to imitate her nonchalant pose. He was certain that he fooled no one. Dirk hissed, rubbing his hands together, his eagerness plain to see. But the other men shifted, glancing at him, then back at her, then over at Garvey; and he understood that his role now was to be a distraction, to give the men something else to keep track off besides Biane. They were, at the moment, two moving targets.

  She had almost reached them, and was speaking again. ‘Well, Garvey? Where’s our wages? Forty credits for me and twenty for the boy. Though if you ask me he’s worth twice that.’

  Lyriam quickened his pace, moving diago
nally so that he could keep them all in sight. The maw of the warehouse gaped behind him.

  ‘I didn’t ask you,’ Garvey growled, as one of the strangers called out, ‘What’s that make you worth then, gem bitch?’

  ‘Also twice,’ she said, ‘but that’s not the deal we made. Come on Garvey. Time to pay up.’

  He bared his teeth again and he stepped forward to within touching distance. ‘I got your payment right here.’

  His hand came out of the pocket, clenched around the shaft of a stunner. Lyriam remembered them hanging from the belts of the guards at crèche, and occasionally used on some of the tougher, rowdier kids. The mere presence of the weapons had generally been threat enough. Garvey swung it at Biane.

  Had she not known it was coming, Lyriam thought things would have gone as badly for her as they had for her unknown friend. As it was, she dodged neither back nor sideways, but dove under Garvey’s lunging attack. With no impact to arrest it, the momentum sent him stumbling forward and down onto his knees. She was up faster than Lyriam could track, but he caught the violet glow of her hair in the gloom, disappearing behind one of the piles of debris. By the time Garvey staggered to his feet and the cursing men whipped round, she was out of sight. Lyriam could see, from where he stood, that she had not run for the open gate.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Dirk shrieked. He and the others were casting about, looking for her. The dusk and towering piles of scrap worked against them now, hiding their prey.

  ‘I knew that bitch knew something,’ Garvey panted. ‘Where the fuck is she? Where’s the fucking boy?’

  ‘Right here, Garvey,’ Lyriam shouted, and they spun towards the sound of his voice. Behind them he could see a shadow topped by a faint violet gleam moving rapidly up a stack of old electrical appliances, scaling a summit of ancient refrigerators and washing machines. Had he stopped to think about it, he would have guessed his courage came from having sight of her. ‘This your idea of a fair deal?’