tattoo doesn’t mean shit . . . most of the time.”
Caliph looked up and saw David pat his stomach. His eyes were red where they weren’t black. They gushed an unremitting effusion of sticky tears.
“Show it to me.”
David lifted his shirt. An ugly little curlicue of ink flared above his navel, utterly nigrescent in the poor lamplight. Caliph had not been told about this.
“What does it mean?”
“Mean? Caph. What it means is that I’m branded. I was branded when I was twelve. How could I possibly have made a choice like that when I was twelve? How could I have known then that it would come to this? I’m a sleeper. Expendable as toilet paper. One use and pull the chain! I don’t even know enough information to keep from being tortured.”
“Who did it to you?”
David’s voice filled with hope. “I don’t know his name. Some guy, tall, pale face, really messed-up teeth. Crazy as a shithouse rat. I think he broke my ribs, Caph.”
“I mean the tattoo. Who gave it to you?”
David slumped against the bars, crestfallen.
“Cabal of Wights. Only I’m not them anymore. They cut me loose like a sturgeon on a three-pound line.”
“Who are they? Some cult? Why in Emolus’ name would you join—?”
“Yeah, some cult! Some bad-ass, sacrifice you to the oyster-god cult! I don’t even know where they’re at. I’m the fringe on the lunatic fringe! We’re dry-bottom boys. They don’t tell us shit. I went for eight years not hearing a word, Caph. I swear. Then I meet a man in the street. I could tell right away he was one of the mucks. He was following me around King’s Road by the bistros. Tall, thin. Showed me his tattoo and said I was activated. But all he said to do was make sure the sewer grates in the east garden of Isca Castle were unlocked by noon on the twenty-fourth of Lüme. I swear. I swear I didn’t think that people were going to get hurt.”
“Then you didn’t think,” snapped Caliph. “And you’re a bigger fool than I thought. I took you in! I gave you money, a job, a place to live!”
“I was twelve—”
“Fuck twelve! How old were you when you unlocked the grates?”
“They would have killed me!”
Caliph was shouting. “And I couldn’t have protected you? Inside the castle? You provided them their only way in!
“Forty-two dead! You! You killed them! And now I’m supposed to what? Bail you out? Throw clemency in the face of my judges, the jury, the families of the forty-two soldiers we buried middle of this week?”
David rested his forehead on the bars. He chuckled softly.
“Do you remember our freshman year? When we bunked with Roric Feldman?”
Caliph nodded.
“Roric used to say the damnedest things,” whispered David. “He used to say to us, ‘Boys, if you fuck a sheep, what’s done is done, you have to shear your kids.’ I guess I fucked a sheep, Caph.”
Caliph’s heart went limp and cold. He stood to go.
“Caph, wait. I know . . . I know you.” He bit back on more tears. “I know you can’t . . . save me. But don’t leave me here. I’ll do anything not to spend my last hours down here.”
Caliph sighed. When he looked at David, trembling, emaciated, holding his butchered hand, he wanted to shout at the guards, call them over with the key, tell them bathetically to let his friend go free. He believed David’s words were true, that he hadn’t thought about the consequences of unlocking the grates.
Still, the fact remained that after it was done, after it was over, David Thacker had not come bawling like a baby and thrown himself on Caliph’s mercy. No. He had relocked the gates to cover his ass. He had hidden the truth. He had lied.
“You’ve told Mr. Vhortghast all you know?”
“Yes.” David’s eyes shone pleadingly.
“Then I guess we’re done here.”
“Don’t leave me. Please . . .”
“Guards!” Caliph shouted.
“Please, Caph.”
The soldiers from Gate One came trotting.
David’s other hand reached out through the bars, catching Caliph’s fingers. The touch was warm and soft. A writer’s hand. Unused to heavy labor. “Please, Caph.”
Caliph didn’t look back.
The guards led him away.
As he recounted his experience Sena shivered. Cameron looked away across the black twist of city far below.
What have I become? Caliph thought. He knew that it was a question like David’s unspoken question that neither Sena nor Cameron could answer.
Four days later Caliph went to visit Sigmund Dulgensen.
Sigmund was appalled by David Thacker’s end, but