Prisoner of Fate (10 page)

‘It’s not cheap if you’re poor!’ yelled a man.

‘And that’s why they break into our shops and homes!’ cried the first speaker indignantly.

‘But they don’t blow your homes up,’ the mercantile speaker retorted. ‘Which is the lesser of the evils here?’

An uproar of argument broke out across the chamber, the chairman shouting ineffectually for order. Hawkeye watched the meeting degenerate into its inevitable petty squabbles, the outcome of most Council assemblies, but he took note of the euphoria debate. The Seers had already approached him, seeking to control the euphoria market, and now he suspected he understood why they were so interested in the drug.

T
he stench in the lower reaches of the Bog Pit permeated everything—stale urine, shit, vomit, blood. Foul odours were nothing new to him, but here they made his skin crawl. He pushed through the bedraggled, unwashed crowd who were pressing against the bars, begging the gaolers for food and water, and elbowed between two stick-like beings to get into the dark open space at the rear of the cell. Someone yowled above the raucous din and the crowd surged in retreat, forcing him to move further back until he pressed against the damp, rough stone rear wall. Yellow torchlight flickered at the bars, throwing grotesque shadows of the silhouetted crowd across the cell. ‘Get back and stay back you filthy bastards!’ a guard bellowed. ‘Your slop’s on its way. Have some manners you greedy pigs!’ A whip cracked and a victim yelped. The light receded.

‘First time here?’

He flinched and squinted into the darkness to his right. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded, tensing for a fight.

‘Just an old man,’ the scratchy voice replied. ‘Don’t mind me.’

He squinted at the shadow, but even though he was used to working in dark places the old man was
nothing more than a hunched mass close to the cell floor. ‘No. I’ve been in before,’ he finally answered. ‘Who are you?’

The old man cleared his throat and spat. ‘I have different names,’ he said. ‘I was called Sunlight when I was free.’

He sensed a hand being proffered by the old man in the dark. Taking it, surprised by the cool, skeletal grip, he replied, ‘Chase.’

‘What did you do, son?’

The crowd at the bars was dispersing. The torchlight diminished. Figures stumbled towards the rear wall and slumped on the cobbled floor, staying clear of the shallow sewer channel running through the cell. Chase squatted closer to the old man and said, ‘They say I stole a loaf of bread.’

The old man chuckled. ‘They always say you stole a loaf of bread. What did you really do?’

‘I stole a loaf of bread.’

‘Oh,’ Sunlight sighed. ‘Times are getting harsh when a man ends up in this part of the Bog Pit for stealing a loaf of bread.’

‘Perhaps it was because I stole it from the king’s pantry,’ Chase explained.

The old man was momentarily silent, before he asked, ‘Did you say you got
inside
the palace?’

‘I get in all the time,’ Chase told him. ‘It’s easy when you know how.’ Again, the old man sighed and was silent. ‘What’s that about?’ Chase asked.

‘Bragging is not an art,’ the old man murmured.

‘I’m not bragging,’ Chase retorted. ‘It’s what I do.’

‘Ah,’ the old man breathed, nodding. ‘So how do you get inside the palace?’

Chase chuckled and shook his head cheekily. ‘Now that would be telling you a secret that I’m not willing to share.’

‘Is that why you’ve been in here before?’

‘Not exactly in here. In the Lockup section. I was drunk in the gutter that time. They chucked me in there because I didn’t even know my name. When I was sober enough they let me back out.’

‘This is a lot worse than the Lockup, son,’ Sunlight informed him. ‘There’s no way out. You end up down here in the bowels, you either die, or in special cases they publicly mutilate you and leave you to fend for yourself. What’s your fate?’

‘Guess I’m a special case. They told me they’ll cut off my right arm to show everyone that you can’t steal from the palace.’

‘You’ll bleed to death.’

‘Nah,’ said Chase dismissively. ‘They’ll do it with a hot axe. It’ll seal most of it.’

‘You’ve seen it done?’

Chase scratched his left ear and checked who was listening to them, but the shadows of nearby men seemed intent on their own miseries. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen it. There’s a beggar named Cartwheel who had his arm taken two years ago. He’s managing. My friend had his hand done the same way.’

‘You sound like it doesn’t bother you.’

‘That’s because it won’t happen,’ said Chase confidently. ‘I’ll be long gone before they get to try that on me.’

Sunlight coughed and shuffled against the earth. ‘No one’s ever escaped from the Bog Pit.’

‘I’m not no one.’

A sliver of yellow light angled across the distant tunnel that led into the Bog Pit cell, and the inmates stirred. ‘Bloody food!’ a man yelled, and the cell erupted as everyone rushed to the gates. Torches borne by three guards accompanying three more guards carrying large wooden buckets lit the seething mob of
filthy, starving prisoners. Scuffles and fights broke out as men jostled to the front.

‘You better get in there if you want something to eat,’ Sunlight advised.

‘What about you?’ Chase asked, as he watched the guards prod the crowd with blunted spears.

‘I’m too weak. I’ll feel for scraps when the others are done.’

Chase crossed the small space, jumped the sewer, and pushed through the crowd, edging towards the front, ignoring the protests and elbows and kicks of those he nudged aside. The guards were dipping big ladles into their buckets and pouring the contents into the outstretched cupped hands of the luckier ones at the front. ‘When you’ve got your portion, get back!’ bellowed a guard with a sharply scarred face, and he followed his warning with a swift and brutal smack of his blunt spear across the wrists of a hapless prisoner. ‘You’ve already had yours, you thieving piece of shit!’

Chase cupped his hands through the bars, pressing his fingers tightly together. After a ladle of the thick, lukewarm stew was poured into his hands, he forced a path back through the crowd, spilling precious drops because of the frustrated shoving from others. He stomped through the sewer and knelt in the dark beside the shadow of Sunlight. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I got you some.’ Sunlight’s long, thin fingers searched Chase’s hands, dipped into the meal and withdrew. ‘Go on. Take it,’ Chase urged. ‘I’ll go back for some more.’

Sunlight cupped his hands beneath Chase’s hands and Chase emptied the contents into them. When he heard the old man eating greedily, he rose and plunged back into the desperate crowd, ducked a poor attempt by someone to king-hit him, and pressed against the bars again. ‘Hey!’ a prisoner yelled beside him as the
guard scooped a ladleful of slop into his cupped hands. ‘He’s already had some! He’s already had some!’ The scar-faced guard looked up at Chase and a spear shaft whistled through the air on a downswing, but Chase had already pulled his hands back to safety. He shouldered out of the milling bodies without looking back.

Squatting beside Sunlight, he swallowed the foul-tasting slop and licked the remains from his hands quickly. ‘They don’t spare the luxuries in here,’ he muttered as he finished.

‘Sometimes it’s healthier not to eat what’s offered,’ Sunlight replied. He coughed and added, ‘Thank you for your kindness.’

Chase watched the guards stop issuing the slop and begin viciously beating pleading hands foolhardy enough to keep reaching through the bars. They collected their buckets and withdrew, throwing the cell back into darkness. ‘Do you get any light in here during the day?’ Chase asked, as the prisoners returned to their places, some satisfied to have eaten, some complaining that they’d missed out.

‘A little,’ Sunlight replied. ‘There are vents in the roof. They open them when the sun rises and they close them when the sun is setting.’

‘How often do they bring food?’

‘Once a day.’

‘Water?’

‘There’s a trough further around to your left. That’s what we have to drink. They sometimes bring fresh water, but only the strongest get some of it.’

Chase stood and edged along the wall in the dark, stumbling over legs, getting cursed, avoiding clusters of shadowy figures, until he reached the trough. He couldn’t see the water, but when he dipped his hand into it he broke a crusty surface and slime enveloped his
fingers. He lifted his hand to his nose, sniffed, and gagged. Dejected, he crept back to Sunlight and slumped on the ground against the wall. ‘Don’t get too depressed by it. If they’re making a public spectacle of you, lad, you won’t have to wait too long in here,’ Sunlight whispered.

Chase grinned, and asked, ‘So, why are you in here?’

‘Wrong place at the wrong time in history.’

‘Political prisoner?’

‘Not really.’

‘A secret, right?’

‘No. Just something long forgotten.’

‘How long have you been in here then?’

‘Probably seventeen years,’ the old man replied. ‘But I’m not exactly sure.’

From street talk Chase knew that most prisoners survived a year or two in the Bog Pit. Some particularly tough characters were rumoured to have lasted three years. There was a city legend that one man, a former soldier of the old Shessian kingdom, had been in the Bog Pit since the end of the war, more than thirty years, but no one believed that story. Surviving longer than three years was miraculous. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ the old man replied and burst into a wracking coughing fit.

Chase bunched his knees up in his arms and wondered how tough and wily a man would have to be to survive for a long time in a place like this, where the air and water was rotten like the company, and the food even worse. He knew he could never do it. He doubted the old man’s story. No one could survive for that long in this place. There had to be some way out.

‘You.’ Chase sat up, blinking. His left ribs ached as if someone had kicked him. Four ragged figures towered
over him in the dull daylight drifting in from an open vent high overhead. ‘There’s rules in this place, mate,’ said a central figure whose features were indistinguishable against the backlight. ‘Rules about surviving. You break the rules, you get punished.’

‘Like you don’t go getting extra food,’ said a whining voice.

Feigning drowsiness by rubbing his face and eyes, Chase replied, ‘I didn’t get extra food. I gave it to this old man.’ A man swung a foot and Sunlight grunted and curled up into a tighter ball. Chase pushed to his feet angrily. ‘Leave the old man alone.’

‘The stupid old bugger’s dying,’ said the central figure. Standing, Chase saw that the man’s face was thin and buried in a long straggly beard. ‘You don’t waste food on no one who can’t get it themselves. It’s a simple rule.’

‘And you need to learn it, mate,’ snarled the man who’d kicked Sunlight.

Chase measured the four men. They were weak from the foul prison conditions, but they were obviously street-wise and confident of their ability to fight. He’d met too many like them in the streets and he always made a point of avoiding them. He might stand a chance to land some solid blows if a fight started, but they’d outnumber him and the odds in the end would leave him with a nasty beating. ‘What other rules do I need to know?’ he asked.

The bearded leader, taller than his companions, leaned forward, until Chase could smell the man’s rancid breath. ‘You’re a smart one,’ he rasped. ‘You learn quick and you might survive in here. Tell him the rules, Boots.’

The man who’d kicked Sunlight said, ‘You don’t ask names. You don’t ask reasons. You don’t waste food. You don’t get cocky. If Boss wants something, you get it
for him. If Boss says “Do it”, you do it. Got that?’ Chase nodded, maintaining an innocent expression, while watching the men warily for further aggressive moves.

‘Good,’ said the man named Boss. ‘And now that you know the rules you’ll understand if you get beat up for breaking any of them. Got that?’ Chase nodded. ‘Excellent,’ said Boss. He nodded to his companions and then to Chase he said, ‘And you’ll answer to Bilby, mate, because you’ve got a long poky nose, I reckon. Got that, Bilby?’

‘Yes, Boss,’ Chase replied.

Boss laughed, and the other three laughed. ‘Quick learner, Bilby,’ he remarked. He turned, peremptorily dismissing Chase, and led his entourage towards the bars.

Chase squatted beside Sunlight and put a hand on the old man’s side. ‘Are you all right?’

Sunlight flinched and coughed. ‘I’m fine, son,’ he wheezed. ‘They gone?’

‘Yes.’ Sunlight rolled onto his back and sat up gingerly, coughing. He spat to his right and wiped his mouth with his bony arm. ‘Sorry I didn’t stop him kicking you,’ Chase apologised. At the same moment he noticed the white film across the old man’s eyes and realised for the first time that the old man was blind.

‘No harm, son. No damage done. Used to it,’ said Sunlight, and a sly grin appeared in the midst of the old man’s dirty grey beard. ‘I long ago learned to curl up and stay still when people like them hit or kick me. They get discouraged by a target that doesn’t want to fight back.’ He coughed and struggled to rise, so Chase offered an arm. ‘I need a piss,’ Sunlight muttered, and he tottered towards the sewer channel to relieve himself. Remembering his own need, Chase joined him. Fresh urine steamed in the channel and
the pungent aroma teased their noses. ‘Don’t care what any man says,’ said Sunlight, whimsically, ‘but a man’s still free as long as he can enjoy a morning piss.’

Chase laughed, and said, ‘You didn’t tell me last night that you can’t see.’

‘You didn’t ask,’ Sunlight replied. ‘And in the dark we’re all blind.’ He finished his toilet and turned. ‘Do you mind leading an old man to the water trough?’ he inquired.

‘A pleasure,’ Chase responded. He took Sunlight’s arm and walked him towards the trough, conscious that their movement was watched by others who looked up despondently from where they sat or leaned against the wall. At the trough, Sunlight pushed aside the green surface scum and scooped a handful of water into his mouth.

‘How can anyone drink this stuff?’ Chase asked.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ Sunlight replied, straightening up. ‘Let me get you some.’

‘I can help myself,’ Chase replied.

‘I know,’ said Sunlight, ‘but let me get it for you.’ Chase reluctantly watched the old man scoop aside a handful of algae, dip in his hands and lift the water towards him. ‘Try it.’

Chase bent forward and sipped at the offering. The moisture soothed his parched throat. He drank again. When he was finished, he asked, ‘How come it tastes so clean?’

‘I know where to scoop,’ Sunlight replied. ‘It’s why I’ve been able to survive. Most of the new prisoners either dehydrate for fear of drinking this scum or they end up with the running shits because they do drink and get infected.’