"And I'm going with you," Cal put in quickly.
"You're both absolutely sure about this?" Imago asked, looking hard at Will. "It's like hell down there. You'd be better off Topsoil; at least you'd know the lay of the land."
Will shook his head. "My dad is all I have left."
"Well, if that's what you want." Imago's voice was low and somber.
"There's nothing for us Topsoil, not now," Will replied with a glance at his brother.
"Okeydokey, it'd decided, then," Imago said, checking his watch. "Now try to get some shut-eye. You're going to need all your strength."
But none of them could sleep, and Imago and Cal ended up talking about Tam. Imago was regaling the younger boy with stories of his uncle's exploits, even chuckling at times, and Cal couldn't help but join in with him. Imago was clearly drawing comfort from reminiscing about the stunts he, Tam, and his sister had pulled in their youth, when they had run rings around the Styx.
"Tam and Sarah were as bad as each other, I can tell you. Pair of wildcats." Imago smiled sadly.
"Tell Will about the cane toads," Cal said, egging him on.
"Oh dear God, yes…" Imago laughed, recalling the incident. "It was your mother's idea, you know. We caught a barrel load of the things over in the Rookeries — the sickos there raise them in their basements." Imago raised his eyebrows. "Sarah and Tam took the toads to a church and let them out just before the service got underway. You should have seen it… a hundred of the slimy little beggars hopping all over the place… people jumping and shrieking, and you could hardly hear the preacher for all the croaking… burup, burup, burup." The rotund man rocked with silent laughter, then his brow furrowed and he was unable to continue.
With all the talk about his real mother, Will had been trying his hardest to listen, but he was too tired and preoccupied. The seriousness of his situation was still foremost in his mind, and his thoughts were heavy with apprehension about what he'd just committed himself to. A journey into the unknown. Was he really up to it? Was he doing the right thing, for himself and his brother?
He broke from his introspection as he heard Cal suddenly interrupt Imago, who had just started on another tale. "Do you think Tam might have made it?" Cal asked. "You know… escaped?"
Imago looked away from him quickly and began drawing absently in the dust with his finger, clearly at a loss for words. And in the silence that ensued, intense sorrow flooded Cal 's face again.
"I can't believe he's gone. He was everything to me."
"He fought them all his life," Imago said, his voice distant and strained. "He was no saint, that's for sure, but he gave us something — hope — and that made it bearable for us." He paused, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond Cal 's head. "With the Crawfly dead there'll be purges… and a crackdown the likes of which hasn't been seen for years." He picked up a cave pearl and examined it. "But I wouldn't go back to the Colony even if I could. I suppose we're all homeless now," Imago said as he flicked the pearl into the air with his thumb and, with absolute precision, it fell into the dead center of the well.
37
"Please!" Chester whimpered inside the clammy hood, which stuck to his face and neck with his cold sweat. After they had dragged him from his cell and down the corridor to the front of the police station, they had pushed something over his head and bound his wrists. Then they'd left him standing there, enveloped in stifling darkness, with muffled sounds coming from all around.
"Please!" Chester shouted in sheer desperation.
"Shut up, will you!" snapped a gruff voice just inches behind his ear.
"What's happening?" Chester begged.
"You're going on a little journey, my son, a little journey," said the same voice.
"But I haven't done anything! Please!"
He heard boots grinding on a stone floor as he was pushed from behind. He stumbled and fell to his knees, unable to rise up again with his hands tied behind his back.
"Get up!"
He was hauled to his feet and stood swaying, his legs like jelly. He'd known that this moment was looming, that his days were numbered, but he'd had no way of finding out what it would be like when it did come. Nobody would speak to him in the Hold, not that he made much of an effort to ask them, so petrified was he of provoking any further retribution from the Second Officer and his fellow wardens.
So Chester had lived as a condemned man who could only guess at the form of his eventual demise. He'd clung on to every precious second he had left, trying not to let them go, and dying a little inside as one after another they slipped away. Now the only thing he could find solace from was the knowledge that he had a train journey before him — so at least he had some time left. But then what? What were the Deeps like? What would happen to him there?
"Move it!"
He shambled forward a few paces, unsure of his footing and unable to see a thing. He bumped into something hard, and the sound around him seemed to change. Echoes. Shouts, but from a distance, from a larger space.
Suddenly, there came the clamor of many voices.
Oh, no!
He knew without a shred of doubt exactly where he was — he was outside the police station. And what he was hearing was the baying of a large crowd. If he'd been frightened before, it was worse now. A crowd. The jeering and catcalls grew louder, and he felt himself being lifted under each arm and hoisted along. He was on the main street; he could feel the irregular surface of the cobbles when his feet were allowed to touch the ground.
"I haven't done anything! I want to go home!"
He was panting hard, struggling with his own saliva and tears, it sucked into his mouth with every inhalation.
"Help me! Someone!" His voice was so anguished and distorted that it was almost unrecognizable to him.
Still the crazed shouts came from all around.
"TOPSOIL FILTH!"
"STRING 'IM UP!"
One repeated shout with many voices took form. It went over and over again.
"FILTH! FILTH! FILTH!"
They were shouting at him — so many people were shouting at him! His stomach churned with the stark realization. He couldn't see them, and that made it worse. He was so terrified he thought he was going to be sick.
"FILTH! FILTH! FILTH!"
"Please… please stop… help me! Please… please help me… please." He was hyperventilating and crying at the same time — he couldn't help it.
"FILTH! FILTH! FILTH!"
I'm going to die! I'm going to die! I'm going to die!
The single thought pulsed through his head, a counterpoint to the repeated chant of the crowd. They were so close to him now — close enough that he could smell their collective stench and the foul reek of their collective hatred.
"FILTH! FILTH! FILTH!"
HE felt as if he were in the bottom of a well, with a vortex of noises and shouts and vicious laughter swirling around him. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to do something. He had to escape!
In blind terror he tried to break free, struggling and twisting his body, convulsing against his captors. But the huge hands only gripped him even more savagely, and the rabble's cries and laughter reached fever pitch at this new spectacle. Exhausted and realizing it was futile, he moaned, "No… no… no… no…"
A sickly, intimate voice came to him from so close that he felt the speaker's lips brush his ear. "C'mon now, Chester, pull yourself together! You don't want to disappoint all these good ladies and gentlemen, do you?" Chester realized it was the Second Officer. He must have been relishing every second of this.