Joseph D'Lacey - Meat

‘If I let you go, Magnus is going to ask you the exact same questions I’m asking and for the exact same reasons. He’s going to do to your family what he wants to do whether he’s satisfied with what you tell him or not. You can’t save them or yourself just by getting out of this room.’

‘No, but I can at least try. And they’ll know that when it mattered most, I didn’t abandon them. For God’s sake, show some mercy.’

‘Tell me where Collins and his followers are hiding and I’ll let you go.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Then your family is lost. I’m sorry.’

Shanti let his head drop into his hands in misery and desperation. He was out of options. When he looked up his face was wet, his eyes red.

‘He’s in the Derelict Quarter—’

‘Tell me something I don’t know, Shanti, or I’ll kill your daughters myself.’

‘Let me finish. It’s a long way in. Maybe a couple of miles. Beyond the blocks the ground slopes down, away from the town. At the bottom of that slope, somewhere near the centre of it, there’s an opening. It leads down into tunnels. That’s where they are. I couldn’t see where they took me. All I know is it’s deep – three levels down.’

The Grand Bishop seemed shocked to hear it. Not because they were there. To Shanti it seemed he was shocked that there were places in Abyrne he knew nothing about, realms where he had no authority.

‘How many of them are there?’

Shanti completed his betrayal.

‘Twenty-five, maybe thirty at most. Some women among them.’

The Grand Bishop laughed.

‘Thirty? John Collins thinks he can take control of Abyrne with thirty starveling cave-dwellers? I can’t wait for the Parsons to shut him down.’ He nodded to his two companions. ‘Take your best out there and finish this for me right now. Bring Collins back to me alive.’

‘What about this one?’

‘We’re going to let him go to Magnus. He can’t do any harm now. By the time Magnus gets the information out of him this nonsense with Collins will be over. We’ll show the town what happens to blasphemers. I think it’s time we put the Welfare back in charge of the Chosen and make their sacrifice to us a thing of Divinity once again.’

The two Parsons left.

The Grand Bishop looked into Shanti’s eyes.

‘If you live through this – whether you save the lives of your family or not – I’m going to find out the truth about you, Richard Shanti. For better or for worse. You are one individual I will not allow to run to the Derelict Quarter to live out their days in exile. I will find you no matter where you go.’ He looked back out of the window, perhaps finding nothing in the clouds. ‘Get going. Make your sacrifice. But be ready for me when you’re done.’

Without the pack to drag him down, Shanti sprinted.

He flew.

The Parsons were a hundred in number. They fanned out across the broken landscape of the Derelict Quarter like monks wearing robes of blood. Soon the hems of their raiment were grey with the dust of destruction. From every right hand hung a polished femur, each one engraved with a passage from the Book of Giving. They made ideal clubs; lightweight but strong and slightly flexible. The broadened end where the knee joint would once have been, acted as a natural haft that prevented the bone slipping out of the wielder’s hand. The hip end of the bone was part club, part blunt hook. The Parsons used them to trip, to block and to bludgeon and these Parsons were the best the Welfare possessed.

They walked warily, eyes flicking, heads scanning from side to side. The Derelict Quarter was a place the Parsons hated and feared. Here Abyrne ended and became a no man’s land where fugitives went to eke out their days in starved deprivation. What was safe and pious and lawful became wild and unpredictable. The Derelict Quarter was wrong. They all felt its malignancy to their core.

From time to time one of them would stumble on the jagged, unforgiving rubble. The sudden sound would make them all stop and spin towards the noise. Nervous guts rumbled. Damp palms left smudges on red velvet.

Parson James Jessup was the youngest and arguably the strongest of all of them. Beside his fear he felt a deep instinct to deal out pain and punishment to the Godless ones they’d been sent to find. Only Collins needed to return alive. The rest they could do what they wanted with. His excitement brought the taste of iron into his mouth and he savoured it. This was God’s iron that ran in his blood, in his very saliva. It would be his strength and with it he would cast the Godless down forever.

He walked near the front of the group so that, when the ambush came, he was one of the last to be aware of it. When he turned, his Parson brothers were already falling like the red leaves of autumn. Among them moved what appeared to be the shadows of slender men and women. They were dressed in rags; the sleeves and trouser legs tattered by the shard-like corners and projections that lay all around.

Parsons turned and hefted their femur-clubs in timeworn arcs: diagonally down, hooked from right to left and back, sweeping uppercuts. None of the blows landed. Cassocks billowed as the Parsons collapsed to the wounding ground.

They stopped him before he reached the front door. Men in long coats ran out from both sides of the driveway to tackle him. There was no need, he was giving himself to them. He made no attempt to resist.

‘I’m Richard Shanti,’ he said. ‘Magnus wants to see me.’

Inside the mansion, one man holding each of his arms as they marched him, Shanti’s breathing quickly returned to normal. Only his heart didn’t completely settle into its usually slow rhythm but not because he wasn’t fit. He’d come for his daughters.

The men took him upstairs to the study but it was empty. They waited.

Somewhere else in the house there was crying. He recognised the voices.

No, no, no.

‘Where the hell is Magnus?’ he shouted into the face of the man to his left.

The man smiled.

‘Busy.’

‘I need to see him. He needs to see me. Now.’

‘When he’s finished, he’ll come. Maybe.’

What the hell was he going to do? The beast was with his girls. What had he already done?

‘Listen. You tell him I know where John Collins is. Tell him I know where Prophet John and his people are hiding.’

‘You can tell him yourself when he’s ready.’

‘No. You have to tell him now. Believe me, this is something he wants to know. He won’t want to be kept waiting a moment too long.’

‘Like I said, you can tell him yourself.’

‘Fine.’ Shanti filled his lungs and began to shout. ‘Magnus! MAGNUS! I know where Collins is. I can lead you to him right now.’

The grip on his arms tightened.

‘Pipe down, Shanti.’

He screamed louder.

‘MAGNUS! DO YOU HEAR ME? I KNOW WHERE HE IS. I’LL TAKE YOU THERE.’

The two men slammed Shanti back against the wall. A picture dropped to the floor shattering glass onto the floorboards and rug. Shanti felt the tip of a blade pierce the skin of his throat. He swallowed and the blade sank a little deeper.

‘Now you shut up Mr. Ice Pick or I’m going to cut you a new smile.’

No choice.

There were heavy footsteps in the hallway and the study door burst open.

‘What the fuck is going on in here?’ Magnus wore only his dressing gown, still wrapping it around himself, his sexual arousal obvious beneath it. He took in the scene. ‘Who smashed this picture?’

The guards looked at each other.

‘It’s this one, Mr. Magnus. He’s been misbehaving.’

‘Who allowed him to do that, I wonder?’

Neither guard replied.

‘Did I hear you correctly, Shanti? Did you say you could take us to Collins’s hideout?’