The Piecener

Once, when very young on Dartford Span at Midsummer, she left her sister watching a gaudy Trickster show, and slipped through the crowds and the merchant stalls and came to the bridge rail and looked down to the wide grey river beneath. There was peace in that great height and she felt for a time that she looked upon the world as did the Dead—at peace now, despite that there were so very many of them crowded above the world of the living. And something of that peace stayed with her, even after her angry sister pulled her hard away from the rail and scolded her back into the stalls of the fair and sulked on all the long journey back to the city.

This year’s Midsummer was long past now, and the child slipping from her sister on the Span had turned by the years into a young woman, though Pardua remembered well the grey river on that bright morning as the early sun came warm to her shoulders and she looked down again from a height. The sickness eased inside her as she studied the lines of the symbols in the grey parking far below. She would not be sick again today. She read the numbers between the lines on the far side of the parking to pass time as the nausea subsided. Near to the building the big white numbers were all covered up with years of Moon Gang rubbish thrown from the roof, despite Badney and whoever came before Badney and whoever came before him, forever telling not to. The old world worked by symbols, Olin said, and that was easy to believe because the Dead had put symbols on everything. On all the walls and the floors and on every piece of loot there were symbols. She smiled as she remembered Olin showing her the triangle with stick figures. The symbols on the triangle looked like a father and his child walking one behind the other. She didn’t know what it meant in the old world but she knew what it meant to Olin and loved him for it: Olin with his strong hands and the curls in his hair; Olin of the River Family; Olin who was forbidden to her without a gang dowry; Olin who she loved. He showed her the back of the triangle where there were more symbols. Olin told her that they said ‘This sign has no scrap value.’ She laughed at that. It showed that the Dead had not always known everything. Triangles were a shilling a dozen at Bishop Stortford market and metal triangles were twice that.

She turned away from the height but the peace stayed with her. Went from kneeling, leaning over the parapet, to sitting on the rooftop with her back to it. She breathed deeply, enjoying the blue of sky and the warmth of the sun on her face and on the asphalt—placed a hand on her belly, still flat beneath the thick sweater she had traded for wire with the weavers at the fair that summer. Flat today and flat tomorrow, but not flat for much longer Theresa told her. Theresa who knew, knew before she did, only Theresa of all the Moon Gang, wise old Theresa older than the city it seemed, as old as the Dead.

‘Before the pieceworkers come back from the fields it will be plain for all to see that there are two of you.’ And she spoke comfort to Pardua but mostly she spoke truth and that made Pardua frightened, but she knew after that what it was that she must do.

She stood and walked to the blue butts where the rainwater stood, splashed and washed her face, swilled her mouth, smoothed her braided hair. Today it was of all the days. Today she would tell Badney and the Moon Gang and today Olin would tell Gethen and the River Gang and then all would know and fate would take them where it would. There was no money between them to buy her from the Moon Gang or, and she loved him more for even thinking it, to buy Olin from the River Gang. It would be for Crookshank to decide their lot. Task them to one gang or the other, or banish them from the clan entirely. She did not fear her fate now except if Olin were taken from her.

She looked out across the tumbledown city, raising her hand against the great sun that made the wild wasting look somehow clean and new. Away to the west she saw smoke fingers pointing to the cooking fires at the hospital, the clan house where Crookshank entertained the gang leaders at breakfast now, as every morning, showing who was boss and doling out shopping lists and territories.

In her mind she asked the Dead to make Crookshank move the River Gang’s territory on. All days since the full moon they had been working in the White Tower, the tower that had been worked and left husked who knew how many years ago. Left for a reason was what Olin said to her, each day thinking it worse and worse, spending his time making warding signs and shoring up walls and staircases where the concrete blistered and split.

‘It’s bad in there. There’s a parking underneath, full of tacsis all burned and banged and the walls are all black and broken.’

Badney told the Moon Gang never to go into a building where you could see the wires in the walls. Not the weavable rope wires or the brightly coloured braiding wires but the fat wire – thicker than fingers — that held everything together, the rusted wire that poked from the top of the fallen buildings, that only the Dead of the old world had known how to bend as they would. But Gethen made the River Gang go to the White Tower where the wet wires glistened in the crumbling walls like bones, because Crookshank told him to and Crookshank paid him to.

In the evening, on the day before the day before this one they had lain on the still-warm asphalt of the book building looking into the blue-black sky and Olin told her what he knew.

‘Crookshank wants boxes of tricks. It’s the only thing left in the White Tower, but there’s lots of them.’

She would have laughed – it seemed so funny. But it was not funny because the White Tower was dangerous and in her mind – in the night – the Dead came to her and whispered of a life without Olin, a life alone and she was afraid.

Boxes of tricks were toys for children. They were full of the greenboard which you could cut and polish up to make beads for necklaces and little bits of coloured wire and lots of other things that were good for braiding into your hair or making broaches. The box itself was strong and made of metal, but not all that useful because it had holes in and no lid to open. They were worth something, but surely not worth going into the White Tower for, when there were whole streets of towers and arcades that no gang had been inside since the Chaos between the Dyings and probably not even then.

‘Somebody wants them. As many as we can find, Gethen is getting two pounds a score so who knows what Crookshank is taking.’

She had held tightly to him then, on the cooling roof of the book house, because she could and because she thought that if she could only keep hold of him he need not go back into the White Tower again.

‘Hoy, hoy, Moon Gang look lively!’ Badney’s voice echoing up the metal stairs brought her into the now and she dropped fast down the stairs and into the gang hall.

Moon Gang forming up in the wide open space of the gang hall, facing the big wall where the first Moon Gangers had drawn a map of the city and the river and all of the territories and the areas that had burned and burned again, using those fat steelos that could write on anything and would never come off – the map ever since then, updated with the buildings worked and the buildings closed and the territory lines changed, drawn a hundred or a thousand times since the clean wall was first marked.

‘Not Burned and Once Burned today boys and girls so make the most of it!’ said Badney, pleased with himself and fat on Crookshank’s breakfast.

‘Railtown and all points west to the triple road.’

Good territory, lots of loot and easy work to get it. Badney not pleased with the quiet response from the sleepy Moon Gang bangs his great chest and bawls from his fat beard, ‘Who looks after you hey? Gethen’s taking the River Gang back into Parkside today!’ Jeering and cheering, Parkside filled in all black on the map because it is Once Burned, Twice Burned, Who-knows-how-many-times Burned and standing in the middle of it, the White Tower.

‘Make hay while the sun shines ladies and gentlemen, Mr Crookshank wants steelos as always, wire, glass, hand tools, no more light bubbles for the time, paper if its wrapped, especially big paper,’ he shows the length of the big paper just to make sure they know, ‘all skellys to be reported back to me and also any boxes of tricks.’ Laughter, then not laughter.

‘Boxes of tricks. Report to me,’ says Badney as quietly as he ever says anything, great dark eyes scanning the room, all the gang assembled there but the pieceners standing to the front, both young enough and old enough to go out into the crazy maze of the old city and pick it apart piece by tiny piece making new life from the old death.

‘Alright!’ bawls Badney after the silence, ‘Be careful out there.’

So they go – arranging themselves into the teams that work the best. Pardua finds Rula, who is still sleepy in the morning. Rula is not the greatest piecener in the city but she is good company and works safely. They tumble down the long stairs hefting their bags and their belts and their tools and some with gloves and some with hats, whooping and cat-calling in the echoing stairwell for they are young and have a purpose and the sun is shining. Josten one flight up on the twisting stairs has his eye on Pardua, as all summer and calls down to her, leering. Pardua laughing, for she knows she is strong and young, the best piecener in the gang and that she loves only Olin who is a dozen of whatever Josten is and more, the one-fingered warding sign is all that is needed to silence him and they spill then from the gang house laughing and eager for the day.

And it is a good day. Rula and Pardua working the long arcade, clamber through crawl spaces and under a fallen roof of glazing to force shutters with a crowing bar, then cut the hasp of a lock long rusted and find a room untouched by the Chaos, just as it must have been on the first day of the Great Dying – full of things that are clean and square in a way that only the Dead knew how: all kinds of paper, heavy and different colours; and tubes and pots of colours like bright messengers from the old world; and steelos and pencils in flat tins and little boxes; and the sticky paper tape; and colours in cans that mist in the air and symbols everywhere and signs. It is too much to carry and so Rula leaves the store place and calls for Lamb who is their runner – too-young-for-piecener but learning. He comes quickly and with an eager face – Pardua and Rula can’t help but laugh – Lamb’s head is shorn close because of fleas and his ears stick out. He scowls but then they show him the store place and he is excited and runs to fetch Badney and retrievers – the too-old-for-pieceners who are still young enough to fetch and carry. Pardua takes a fat black steelo and draws the Moon Gang sign and then her sign and then Rula’s sign on the door of the store place. Their find, their loot – their share is one shilling in three of what Crookshank pays.

As the sun passes its height they climb to the roof of the low arcade with heavy bags of loot, hungry and happy and sit dangling hobnails above the symbol scarred street calling down to those of the Moon Gang more luckless than they and jeering at a harassed ratrunner as he scampers through their patch with a message for one of the other city clans and eating the fat pies that only Theresa knows how to make and enjoying the sun.

She sees it happen long before she hears it.

Sees the end of it before she hears the start.

Gazing out across the city tops she sees the White Tower, and watches as it falls into itself and dust rises like smoke from a smothered bonfire. And she drops the pie to the street and stands to see better as the far off rumble comes to her, long and low, telling of the end of the white tower.

She knows then. Knows before the River Gang runners come seeking help, before the clan rats have the news, before the noise has finished rolling all across the great banged and burned and beautiful city, she knows that he is dead.

Later when she stands, and the Moon Gang stands and the River Gang stands and all of the gangs of the whole clan stand watching the registrer of the dead making warding signs over the smoking rubble heap – watching because they cannot dig to find the lost, because they have only their hands and cannot use the sleeping machines of the Dead – then, she finds herself thinking of the night on the warm roof of the book house when they looked for satters, when it was still summer and the sky only just grown dark. And she knows now that that was the night, of all the nights when they lay there together. She could always see them first, before Olin did. He told her how, long ago, the Dead had made some of the stars move so that they could always tell where they were. And she asked him how that could be and he didn’t know and told her that maybe the only people that knew that sort of thing now were the Oxford scholars, and then they planned a life together and fell to dreaming.

And later still when they had come away at last and the tears ended for a time and the rest of the gang slept curled together like a wounded dog pack and dreaming troubled dreams, she climbed to the roof of the book house again, feeling his hands curl around hers once more and she lay down and wondered at the mysterious satter light that once guided the Dead on earth and hoped that Olin looked down from a height beyond the satters and had found a peace there. Then she lay still for a long time, until in her mind she heard the Dead telling her that life was more, always more, than death and that no amount of deaths or Dyings would ever take life away from the good earth.

And she felt something stirring inside her and she placed his hand on her belly so that he could feel it too.