Day Boy by Trent Jamieson Read Free Book Online Page B

away. Just those damn eyes.
    ‘You frequent that place?’ I can’t even tell if he’s speaking, or if those eyes are
asking.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘In fact you have been there since, have you not?’
    ‘This is not an interrogation,’ Dain says, and I can hear the anger in his voice.
‘We are not here to question the boy.’
    ‘Why not?’ Egan’s gaze slides to Dain, and my heart starts beating again. ‘ They will
question the boy; the Council of Teeth will be much more demanding. All motives and
possibilities will be explored, they are the kings of snares and winding avenues,
and one does not rule with threadbare truths. They will grind it down then build
it back up. Boy, why would you seek out such a place? What does a boy do all alone?’
    Twitcher sniggers. Dougie winks at me, from behind Sobel, and Grove turns away. Even
the Parson twins got big stupid smiles across their faces.
    ‘I was not!’
    ‘So you say.’ I don’t need those eyes directed at me to feel my cheeks burn. How
can such a sweet voice speak so sour? ‘But you are of age. Your time is nearly upon
you, such concerns are the concerns of boys. You seek solitude, the release of crude
urges. Perfectly normal isn’t it? Is that what you were doing?’
    ‘I was not!’ And I stare back at Egan long as I can, there’s a heat to my gaze, and
I feel it returned, a flash and the false light of after, and Egan almost turns his
head, as though he’s forgotten who’s the Master. But he hasn’t, and I’m the first
to break that stare. And I realise that he was just baiting the hook.
    Egan raises his hand, all calming, almost gentle. ‘I was mocking you. You’re a Day
Boy, you should recognise it. Mockery is a tool, is it not? So this Hunter came upon
you while you were alone?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘By the reeds he waited, unseen by you.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Egan nods. ‘I could smell his fear there, and the drink he had taken to blunt it.
That was the night after, and it was still strong.’
    ‘He were drunk, that’s for sure.’
    ‘And yet you could not evade him? Didn’t even notice until he was upon you?’
    ‘Drunk and persistent,’ I say.
    ‘My boy’s skills are not on trial here,’ Dain says.
    ‘Of course not,’ Egan says. ‘Nothing is on trial here. We are just talking. Enjoying
the cut and thrust of conversation. Surely Professor you are familiar with sophistry.
Deception can lead to truth, can it not?’
    Dain’s jaw juts, his hands press hard against the tabletop, wood groans, but he nods
his head.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then I shall continue, shall I? If that is all right with you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Egan looks to me. ‘So he caught you, and then…?’
    ‘Said he was going to take me away, to his boat. He was taking me as an apprentice,
or something like.’
    ‘Which is not unheard of. The Hunters are unruly, their ways peculiar. His boat?
Did you see this boat? Either of you.’
    ‘It had been cut loose,’ Dain says. ‘And not by me.’
    ‘I don’t think he meant what he said. I think he meant to kill me.’
    ‘Would that he were still alive,’ Egan says. ‘Oh, then we might have a surer hold
of his motives.’
    ‘I spoke to him,’ Dain says.
    ‘Did he seek to kill your boy?’
    ‘He was…muddled. I don’t—’
    Egan rises to his full height. Rises up with all that easy grace. ‘You don’t know?
Could I submit that he wasn’t a Hunter but rather a different sort of predator? The
sort that enjoys the death of boys. And that he was drunk, and his muddlement was
the muddlement of liquor and desires. Did you drink of him?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did you eat?’
    ‘I was enraged.’
    ‘Could such rage have muddled you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Always the scholar. The most rigorous and thoughtful of us all. Except we know that
not to be true. We need not even look to your boy to see that. Here, in this mess,
is all the evidence we need of your shortcomings. The Hunter is dead. We have no
truth, only familiar mysteries. Small-town mysteries.