“What do you want?” Green had bawled.
“I-I-” stammered Boy. “I’ve been sent to-”
“Ah!” said Green. “He sent you, did he? Too scared to come himself! Perhaps I should just give you what I was going to give him!”
Boy nodded, and next thing he knew he was balancing on the ends of his toes.
“He sent you?”
“U-hurrrr,” squeaked Boy.
“What?” shouted Green, letting Boy drop a little onto his feet.
Green scowled and shook Boy briskly. He put him down again. “Tell him to come himself. I only deal with him. Now get lost!”
Boy fell to his knees, choking. Hearing the tinny notes of the music box again, he looked up to find Green spinning the handle, laughing to himself, captivated by the simple tune.
Boy caught only a glimpse before it was hidden in Green’s massive hand, but it was strange and beautiful.
Boy sat in the dirt of the floor and rubbed his sore neck.
Green lurched to his feet and sloped away across the room, pushing past people as he went. He staggered through the door to the latrine.
Boy picked himself up, and followed Green. He couldn’t go back to Valerian empty-handed.
As he stepped through the door there was a flash of light and a noise like a cork popping. Then everywhere was shrouded in purple smoke.
He heard a thump and then the sound of feet clambering against the wooden wall of the crap-house.
The smoke cleared and through the darkness Boy saw a shape at his feet. He knelt down and put his hand out.
It was Green, and he was dead. Boy could tell that immediately from the peculiar angle of his neck.
Boy was about to run when he saw something glinting in Green’s fist. His old magpie habits from his days on the street tugged at him. He prized the huge fingers open and there, unharmed, was the music box.
He grabbed it and stuck it in his pocket. Then he heard the door to the Trumpet open behind him.
He jumped to his feet and sped away up the side alley.
“Hey!” shouted a voice behind him. “Hey!”
“The Phantom!” cried the voice as Boy disappeared. “The Phantom has got Green!”
As he ran it occurred to him that it was true. Green must have been struck by the Phantom, just as Boy was following him. It was a lucky escape. Any sooner and he might be dead too. Boy sped on, trying to ignore the fact that he had not got the information Valerian was after, and that now the source of that information was dead.
Boy ran madly, until finally he turned a corner and ran slap into someone else. Together they flew into the mud of the street. Boy looked at the runner sprawled across him.
“Boy!” Willow screamed. She was in a state, gabbling, “I saw-in his box…”
A shadowy figure suddenly rose up in front of them.
“In a hurry?” it asked.
They looked up. From his black cape, and extravagant red-plumed hat, they knew who the man was. His was the garb of a City Watchman.
Boy had spent much of his homeless years, the years before Valerian, trying to avoid the City Watchmen. In his opinion they spent far too much of their time trying to capture hungry boys who had stolen food, and not enough stopping people killing each other in tavern brawls.
But Willow cried, “I’m so glad to see you!”
“Yes,” said the Watchman sarcastically, “I’m sure you are. Now, would you like to tell me whose blood that is?”
Boy looked at Willow and saw blood in her hair and across her shoulders. Then he noticed the Watchman was staring at him.
Boy looked at his leg. He was covered in blood too.
Things were getting messy.
“I think you’d better come with me, don’t you?”
Before either of them could answer he grabbed them both by the necks and dragged them away down the street.
Some way behind, a tall figure followed, slipping in and out of the darknesses of the street.
13
Dawn had risen on the morning of December 27, its pale light stealing into the cell where Willow and Boy lay. The room was about six feet square, with solid stone walls and a single window with no glass but a closely spaced grid of iron bars instead. This let the cold in and stopped the prisoners from getting out, which was just what the Watchmen wanted. Cold prisoners were less trouble. They often died of exposure before anybody had to decide what to do with them, which saved a lot of trouble all round.
Willow and Boy lay on some sparse and dirty straw, trying to keep away from a man who lay snoring next to one of the walls. He was huge. Once or twice he had rolled over and they had shivered on seeing his scarred face. Fortunately he had so far shown no sign of waking up.
“Why don’t they hurry up and let us out?” Willow asked again.
“We’ve got to get out,” said Boy again.
The window was high up, but when she stood on Boy’s shoulders Willow was able to peer out across the City below. “I think it’s going to snow today.” For some reason it reminded her of when she was small, just a little child, when she hadn’t had to work to survive. On a day like that there had been a lovely, thick fall of snow, and she had played in it, carefree.
The sunrise was casting a pinkish light across the whole City. Mile after murderous mile of it stretched away as far as she could see. From high in the dungeon inside the Citadel of the City Watchmen the sprawl of buildings was laid out before her like a carpet. Even this early in the morning the City hummed and bustled with the noise of tradesmen up before the sun. In the gentle pink light, and from this height, the City looked almost beautiful to Willow. Almost. In recent years she had spent too long ducking and weaving her way through its narrow lanes and dark alleys to ever think of the place as beautiful. From where she teetered on Boy’s back she could see a very long way. Could she even see the edge of the City, or was she just imagining it? Remembering it, maybe. A trip to the country when she was a little girl, with her parents. She was imagining it. She’d been too little when her parents had died to remember them.
“Have you ever been out of the City?” she asked Boy.
“Are you going to get down?”
“Oh, sorry, yes.”
She slithered off his back and landed nimbly beside him.
“Thank you,” he said. “Well?”
“I think it’s going to snow.”
“The window, Willow?” he said.
“Oh, there’s no way we’re going anywhere. The bars are solid and besides, there’s a drop that’d squash you flat. We’re stuck.”
Boy slid back down into the straw.
“Then I’m as good as dead.”
“Korp is dead,” said Willow, and shivered again.
They were both silent.
“I don’t even know your name,” said Willow after a while.
“Yes you do,” said Boy.
“What? Boy? That’s just what he calls you, isn’t it?”
Boy said nothing.
“That’s your real name? Boy? That’s not a name. You must have a real one.”
Boy looked at her.
“That’s my only name. Before Valerian found me no one called me anything at all.”
Willow stared at Boy.
“So where did you come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No,” said Boy, beginning to wish he’d been arrested on his own.
“How can you not know? Where did you live before Valerian found you?”
“In the City.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Always?”
“Yes,” said Boy. “Is that so strange?”
“No,” admitted Willow, “but I know my name and I know I was born in the City, though I can’t remember where.”
“And so do I,” said Boy angrily. “My name’s Boy and I was born in the City too! All right?”