To Best the Boys(28)
I already know the man’s deceased. I also know he’s possibly contagious from illness. I just wish I had my gloves. Squatting low enough to see the corpse better, I carefully place my right hand on his leg to feel his muscles. They’re cool. Then, as I peer over the rest of his body, a blossom of unease unfurls in my stomach.
He’s not just dead—he’s freshly dead. And like the tree oil guy in the undertaker’s and the people Sam and Will described, the man’s lips are speckled with a couple of blood clots.
“He used to come to the wharf to beg fish,” Lute says. “I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.” Lute surveys the ground, then points out drag marks leading from the body to somewhere beyond the fog. “Question is—which of tonight’s rioters did it?”
“None of them.” I force down the lump in my throat. “I think sickness took him.” I rise and step away from the body. “And I think someone set him here because they didn’t know what else to do.”
Lute looks at me. I don’t tell him I know this because of the blood around the mouth, or the way the body’s muscles felt atrophied beneath my touch—and he doesn’t ask. He just nods. “I’ll carry him to your da’s lab for you.”
“Not without gloves.” I look at the fog and then at the Upper hilltop ahead where the party lights from the estates shine faint. “And by the time we get back, something else will have taken him.”
As if in confirmation, the smell of sulfur trickles through the gloom.
I purse my lips and peer at Lute, and his eyes communicate the same thing—we need to go. But instead he says, “Hold on,” and disappears for thirty seconds into the fog in the direction we just walked from. When he returns he’s carrying a dirty, half-shredded blanket he gently lays over the dead man’s chest and face. “Saw it snagged on a post back there. Probably one of the rioter’s, but still—” He straightens and without looking at me says, “Everyone should be allowed a bit of dignity. I’ll let the constable know about him on my way back.”
I blink and stare at him—at this person who isn’t scared to be around death and dead bodies and ghouls. And who doesn’t flinch even at honoring the dead.
I wait for him to look up and nod that he’s ready, and then, without a word, I turn and we continue up the alley toward my house.
His strides are twice as long as mine and soon we’re far away from the body, and I’m hurrying my pace to match the boy with tempestuous grey eyes and a gradually preoccupied tension. Even as I can still hear the crowds below chanting protests and declaring every pox in existence upon the parliament members and their families.
The alley turns into a lane and a few people jog by, but their lantern-lit faces are filled with just as much fear as rage. “Do you think they’ll go after the parliament men in the Upper district?” I ask.
Lute glances over, then shakes his head. “They’ll likely destroy a few of the port businesses and then go to bed. Especially when they realize the predators are out. They’re only doing it because they feel trapped and need to be heard, but they won’t go so far as to ruin the equinox festival. They’ll wait until it’s over to show any real resistance—although parliament would’ve been wise to delay the ruling until after, just in case.”
“And what about you? What are you going to do about it?”
“The restrictions?” His mouth flinches as he keeps his attention on the cobblestone street ahead. “From the paper I saw, it’s pretty severe. I don’t know that anyone can provide for their families on what they’re allowing.”
He won’t be able to provide for his family? I stare at him. “Are your mum and brother okay?”
His eyes indicate surprise. “They don’t know about it yet,” he says softly, and keeps walking.
“The truth is,” he adds after a moment, “Ben’s taken a few steps back after a bad ankle sprain last month. Most sleeved clothing’s been bothering his skin, which means he and Mum are stuck at home much of the time.”
I wince for him. For all three of them. His brother was born with a mind that works different than most—he’s like a five-year-old in a fourteen-year-old body. But it means he has a lot of sensitivities that require their mum’s full-time care.
“I’ll ask my da to come around and check on him.”
Lute’s reply is so gentle it barely registers before it dissolves into the night. “Thanks.”
When we reach the house, he doesn’t come up the broken stone walk. Just stops and waits with his hands tucked in his pockets and his disconcerting gaze on everything but my face as I stand seven inches away in the mist so milky that the noises and lights and everything outside of us falls away. And for a moment the world is made up of only him and me, and our breath and pregnant silence. He keeps his hands in his pockets and his interest on his shoes, as if they’ve suddenly become very absorbing.
I slide off his jacket and offer it back. He takes it without a word. Then nods. “Good night, Miss Tellur.” And turns back to the road for the long walk home.
“Lute.”
He stops six feet from me. Glances back with those ocean-deep eyes. And calmly waits while I sort through my words.
And suddenly I’m aware I’m standing here in a torn dress and shaky skin in front of a fisher boy who is nothing like Vincent or Germaine or any of them, and everything like the sea, with his wild disheveled hair and torrid grey gaze in a not-wholly-unattractive face. “You’ll be okay tonight—in the mist?”