Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
In a world where all must fail
Heaven’s justice will prevail
He spent weeks and then months learning a new kind of life. He grew tough and wary, first questioning what he had known from the innocent village of Barrel Arbor, then forgetting it entirely. He was never lost because it made no difference where he was. One street was the same as another.
Chasing a new idea, just trying to survive, he found four suitably round stones. He stood on a corner and practiced his juggling, one rock after another in a smooth clockwork arc. With a pang, he thought of Francesca there watching him, teaching him, but then he drove all thought of her from his head and concentrated on nothing.
People stopped to watch him, curious. (Poseidon City must not host many carnivals, he decided.) With an audience, he juggled at the best of his ability, saw some of the faces nodding, and he smiled back at them. When he finished, and caught the juggling stones with grace, he bowed. He set the stones at his feet, whisked off his porkpie hat, and passed it around, hoping for a few coins. Most of the people just looked at him; several walked away, as if called to pressing business. Finally, he received two copper coins—grudgingly given—from a pair of old men, who walked away without a word to him.
He started juggling again, maintaining his smile, remembering how the carnies performed. Sweat trickled down his forehead, but he put on the best possible show. Another small crowd gathered to watch him, but they kept to the opposite side of the street, well beyond the reach of his extended hat.
Pressing the coppers in his fist, so no one could pick his pocket, Owen walked down the street, looking at the shops until he came upon a bakery. The smell of bread and pastries intoxicated him, sharpening the knot of hunger. The baker was a jowly man whose ruddy complexion showed through an unintentional dusting of flour. While Owen looked at the loaves of bread, the rolls, the tarts, the baker watched him with suspicion. He was very different from Mr. Oliveira, the baker in Barrel Arbor.
Extending the two copper coins, Owen asked, “I’d like to buy some bread, please. What can you sell me?”
The baker frowned at the copper coins as if they were unclean, but he took them anyway. “That’ll buy you a stale roll, and you’re lucky for it.” The man fished around behind the counter and produced a hard lump of bread, probably several days old; at least it wasn’t moldy.
“Thank you.” Owen took the bread without arguing and stood in the street outside the bakery, and he started wolfing it down. He forced himself to slow down, to savor every bite.
In an alley across the street, he glimpsed a rangy tow-headed young man about his age. He had strikingly blue eyes and a hungry look that was calculating rather than desperate. Owen ate the rest of his bread, afraid that if he didn’t it would be stolen from him.
The baker started sweeping inside his shop, stirring up a cloud of flour and powdered sugar rather than dirt and dust. The man grumbled to himself.
Owen licked his fingers, getting the last crumbs from the dry bread. He glanced across the street, but the blond-haired boy had vanished into the alley. So Owen screwed up his courage and stepped back into the bakery. The man frowned at him again—it seemed to be his natural expression—in response to Owen’s smile. “I can sweep for you, if you like.”
Though the baker hesitated, Owen stepped forward and relieved him of his broom. He applied himself with great energy to sweeping the floor, while the baker stared at him and reluctantly nodded. “Mind you do a good job.”
“Yes, sir.”
Owen swept, and the smells of the bakery made him dizzy. Though he had eaten the stale bread, it did little—nothing, actually—to dampen his hunger; it merely made him realize how very little he’d eaten in a long time. And there was so much bounty here.
“And do the walk in front, too,” the baker said as soon as Owen had finished sweeping the shop floor. So Owen did. He worked up a sweat, but he was satisfied with the job he had done. He came back inside, and the baker extended his hand. “Give me back my broom.” Owen returned it and waited, but the baker shooed him away. “Now out of my shop before you scare any customers.”
Owen’s heart fell. “But I was hoping . . . could you spare another roll? Or maybe one of those pastries?”
The baker looked offended. “No. Those are for sale.”
“But I just did the sweeping! I helped you—“
“I never promised you payment. If you’re fool enough to do work for free, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.”
Owen was as confused as he was indignant. No one in Barrel Arbor would ever be so ungrateful, and none of the carnies would have treated him so badly. When he’d pitched in with the dockworkers in Crown City, they had happily let him eat whatever fruit he liked. “But that’s not fair!”
The baker let out a sharp-edged chuckle. “If you think I’ll pay you just because you make me laugh, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Owen could not believe his ears. He had already endured a great deal, had been cheated repeatedly and robbed more than once. The baker had to have known that Owen expected payment. Why else would he have told Owen to sweep the front walk? If the man had taken his work with no intention of paying, then he had “robbed” Owen as surely as any other thief had. Anger simmered deep in Owen’s empty stomach. He didn’t like the way people lived here in Poseidon, or the rules by which they played. This was a barbaric society, just like the one he’d read about in the book the strange pedlar had given him before the rainshower.
As if wiping excrement from his shoe, the baker dismissed Owen and went back behind the counter. He chortled again, louder this time.
In a flash of poor judgment, Owen grabbed one of the pies on the bakery counter and pelted from the shop. His vision had focused down to a pinprick, and he ran down the street, clutching his stolen pie.
The baker burst out of the door of his shop, yelling, “Thief!” The word sounded wrong. The man was talking about him, and Owen had never been a thief, never even considered stealing. Nevertheless, he kept running, dodged into an alley, crossed to another street, and finally found a dark, quiet overhang, where he caught his breath, let his heart stop thudding. Then—even though he felt sick for having stolen—he ate his pie, a mixture of tart berries, all of which had large crunchy seeds, and very little sweetening. Nevertheless, to Owen, it was delicious, and when he finished devouring it, he looked up to see the tow-headed young man watching him.
Owen sprang to his feet. His hands and face were sticky. The other young man laughed. “I hoped to get here before you finished it all. Next time you’ll have to share.”
“Next time?” There wasn’t going to be a next time. “I earned this!”
“Oh, I’m sure the baker would agree,” he said facetiously and rolled his eyes. “It was a good act, though. I liked it.” The young man hunkered down next to Owen, who flicked his glance from side to side. “I’m Guerrero. What’s your name?”
“Owen. Owen Hardy from Barrel Arbor—in Albion. I was the assistant apple-orchard—”
“I asked your name, not your life story.”
Owen clamped his lips together.
The two young men spent the rest of the afternoon together, but Guerrero told nothing of his own story. “Where do you live?” Owen finally asked.
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“The day of the week . . . who’s home and who isn’t. Who has something they’re not using.” Guerrero did not ask Owen to stay with him, nor did Owen ask permission, but he had no friends and it felt as if he’d been a long time without companionship.
As night closed like a stranglehold on the city, Guerrero took him to a set of dark homes on the outskirts of the city. “This is where you live?” Owen asked.
“Tonight. These people have a lake cottage. I’ve been watching them for weeks, and they often leave for days at a time.” He jimmied open a window in the back. “See? Not even locked.”
“But we can’t just—”
Guerrero looked at him with his piercing blue eyes. “I can. And you’re welcome to join me . . . or not, as you prefer. Look around you—the owners have so much they won’t even miss it, so long as we cover our tracks. Don’t you want somewhere to sleep that’s warm and safe, a place to clean yourself up? A decent meal big enough for you to feel full?”
Owen’s eyes stung, and he realized tears had sprung to them. “Yes, more than I can say.” He had been brought up to believe that each person would get what he deserved, and the devil could take the rest. For his own survival, whether or not he deserved it, Owen had to take what he could, for himself.
Guerrero knew exactly where to look. The two feasted on stored food in the larder, careful to take apples, carrots, and potatoes only from the back barrels, and to rearrange the pantry shelves afterward so nothing was obviously missing. “See how much they have?” Guerrero said. “It’s not really stealing if they can do without it.”
“But it’s not ours,” Owen said.
The other young man shrugged. “Who’s to say they deserved it? And why do they deserve it more than we do?”
Owen hung his head. “It’s still stealing. They earned it or bought it.” Before the incident in the bakery, he had never stolen in his life, and the thought of what he’d done nauseated him . . . but it made sense that this was a crime that hurt no one.
Guerrero watched him closely. “You got a better way to survive?”
“No . . . not yet.”
Despite having a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in, Owen spent a restless night, and even after eating his fill of good food, his stomach knotted and roiled. They crept away at sunrise, just in case the owners came home early. “I try not to leave any trace,” Guerrero said. “Good places like this, I can stop by three, maybe four times before they get wise.”
Back on the streets, Guerrero knew many useful places around Poseidon. Owen followed him like a puppy, or an apprentice, though uneasy that this young man was so casual about breaking rules whenever they proved inconvenient. On the other hand, Owen was afraid and lonely, and he decided that even a bad option was better than no option.
With distorted nostalgia, he told Guerrero about Barrel Arbor, despite the other young man’s plain lack of interest. Finally, Guerrero said, “You’re a strange one, Owen Hardy. How can you be here, and how can you have done and seen all the things you say, and still be such a babe?”
Owen didn’t know what he meant. “It’s who I am. Don’t you see the good in people?”
“Not usually. But then I don’t bother to look.”
Guerrero made a habit of stealing fruit from grocers, sausages from butchers, bread from bakeries or cafes. Maybe out of some misplaced sense of honor, or just concern about Owen’s ineptitude, the tow-headed young man sheltered him from stealing. “You won’t be any good at it,” he said. “I’ll let you help out in other ways.”
Over the days, then weeks, and possibly months—Owen didn’t keep track; he had neither pocketwatch nor calendar, and no reason to distinguish one day from another—he got to know his companion, as much as possible. Even so, Guerrero never talked about his mother or father, never mentioned his past, and—oddest of all—never even mentioned his dreams.
They spent most nights in the streets, occasionally venturing into an unoccupied house. Once they awakened a dog that came at them; Owen couldn’t see the beast, but judging by the magnitude of its barks and growls, it must have been ferociously large.
One night, a man lurched down the alley where Owen and Guerrero had taken refuge behind a tavern; the man collapsed on the ground in a stupor that smelled of ale. As he snored, Guerrero moved forward furtively, nudged the man and rolled him over, but the drunkard merely grunted and continued sleeping. Guerrero noticed a small purse hanging at his waist and snatched it, breaking the string. As he hurried out of the alley, he grabbed Owen’s arm. “Come on!”
Owen tugged his arm free. “You just robbed that man!”
“I didn’t hurt him.” He pulled open the purse, proudly plucked out four coins. The two used the money to get their first decent meal in some time.
From that point on, Guerrero changed his tactics. Though Owen complained about it, Guerrero waited outside taverns long after midnight, in order to follow deeply intoxicated men. Even if the drunks were still conscious, they couldn’t run swiftly or in a straight enough line to catch the two young men after they had grabbed the money.
Owen had tried everything else he could think of to survive, had offered to help, struggled to work. He had found no friends, no welcoming arms, no smiles. He longed for his days with Magnusson’s Carnival Extravaganza or with his father in the Tick Tock Tavern; he could not forget about Francesca, even though she had hurt him.
Guerrero was all he had.
Late one night, they followed a man who tottered and limped out of a tavern, singing a song about the Seven Cities of Gold at the top of his lungs. The man was big and shaggy, with dirty clothes and a thick jacket despite the heat. Guerrero grinned. “Oh, Cabeza de Vaca! He is a familiar face among the Poseidon City taverns. His name means head of a cow!” Cabeza de Vaca did indeed have thick, blocky features and (seemingly) a thick, blocky skull.
In a hushed, husky voice, Guerrero continued, “Oh, he has quite a reputation! Cabeza de Vaca wanders the wilderness for months on end, seeking treasure. I don’t think he’s ever found it, but whenever he comes back into the city, he tells people his tales so that they buy him drinks. He says he’s gotten close to the Seven Cities of Gold again and again.” The young man changed his voice to a falsetto, flapping his hands in the air as if he were overheating with excitement. “‘I could see them! The golden walls in the distance . . . I could see them, but I could never reach them.’” Guerrero snorted. “He stays in the city until people stop buying him drinks, and then wanders back out to the wilderness to do it all over again.”
Owen and Guerrero followed the shaggy man around the corner. Cabeza de Vaca kept swaying, favoring his left leg. He began singing another verse, but forgot the words and repeated the first one instead.
After giving Owen a signal, Guerrero dashed forward like a shadow and Owen approached from the other side to block the man, who reeled around. Guerrero grabbed the drunkard’s jacket, fumbled in his pocket and around his waist until he found the purse. He yanked it—but the purse was attached with a thin wire instead of a breakable string.
Cabeza de Vaca bellowed in angry surprise even louder than he had been bellowing out his tune. Owen dashed in to distract him so Guerrero could get away. The shaggy man swung a fist the size of a mutton roast, catching Owen’s head with a glancing blow that knocked his porkpie hat askew. De Vaca was not quite as drunk as Owen and Guerrero had thought—he merely lurched and weaved because of an injured leg.
Responding to the shouts, other men boiled out of the tavern and headed down the alley to the rescue. Cabeza de Vaca grabbed Owen’s arm and locked a manacle of fingers around it. Owen tried to escape, but the drunk hooked his fingers into the fabric of his sleeve and refused to let go.
De Vaca’s angry friends saw what was happening and charged ahead, howling as if they had found a new sport.
Guerrero took one look at the men rushing toward them, let go of de Vaca’s wired purse, and bolted. He didn’t spare even a momentary glance for his friend. Owen looked after him, wide-eyed, and then was knocked to the ground.
When the other men fell upon him, they didn’t ask questions, just started punching. “Guerrero!” He heard no answer, saw no rescue. “Help!”
Owen fought back, swinging his fists, as Golson had taught him. But this was no practice sparring; through training and desperation, he managed to bloody a few noses, but there were too many opponents for him.
He broke away, bolting for the main street, and reached the mouth of the alley before his attackers caught him and knocked him to the ground again. They began kicking him and cursing.
A man walked by in the well-lit street. He had a broad chest, dark brown skin, and a bald pate that gleamed in the red-coal streetlights. He stopped to regard the altercation. Self-righteous in dispensing their justice, the roughs didn’t mind having an audience, but as Owen fought to defend himself, he looked up and met the stranger’s eyes, desperate and pleading.
It was the man from the Underworld Bookshop—the one the manager had called Commodore.
The man hesitated, not wanting to get involved; he took one footstep in the other direction, but thought better of it. He turned back. “There now, he’s had enough,” he said.
“He’s had enough when we say he’s had enough!”
The Commodore took out a formidable nightstick. “If you don’t decide he’s had enough, then there’ll be a lot more pummeling in the next few minutes.”
Owen groaned, bleeding in the alley. He curled up, his breath hitching. His attackers scoffed at the pathetic sight, but the bald stranger and his cudgel were enough to make them realize they had entertained themselves enough. They rounded up Cabeza de Vaca, who was still indignant and cursing. Together, the group tottered off; before they had vanished down the street, they began singing together, off key, about the Seven Cities of Gold.
Owen’s rescuer looked down at him, considering the young man in silence. He seemed both disappointed and curious. “Now you’ll have a chance to convince me that I haven’t made a mistake.”