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The man turned. ‘Bellam-what-’

‘Master Murillio, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the fucker. And when his parents show up, well, he’ll spill it all out. Go on, Master, you don’t need to worry about anything happening back here.’Advertisement

The man-Murillio-was silent for a time, seeming to study the rangy boy who stood, arms folded, leaning against the doorway’s frame.

And then he set Snell down and stepped back. ‘I won’t forget this, Bellam.’

‘It’ll be fine, Master. I won’t beat the bones out of him, much as I’d like to, and much as he obviously deserves it. No, he’s going to sit and play with his little sisters-soon as they come round-’

‘A splash of water should do it.’

‘After a splash, then. And not only is Snell going to play with them, but he’s going to make a point of losing every game, every argument. If they want him to stand on his head while picking his arsehole, why, that’s what Snell will do. Right, Snell?’

Snell had met older boys just like this one. They had calm eyes but that was just to fix you good when you weren’t expecting.nothing. He was more frightened of this Bellam than he’d been of Murillio. ‘You hurt me and I’ll get my friends after you,’ he hissed. ‘My street friends-’

‘And when they hear the name Bellam Nom they’ll cut you loose faster than you can blink.’

Murillio had found a clay bowl into which he now poured some water.

‘Master,’ said Bellam, ‘I can do that. You got what you needed from him-at least a trail, a place to start.’

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‘Very well. Until tonight then, Bellam, and thank you.’

After he’d left, Bellam shut the door and advanced on Snell, who once more cringed against the back wall.

‘You said-’

‘We do that, don’t we, when it comes to grown-ups.’

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘No grown-ups anywhere close, Snell-what do you like to do when they’re not around? Oh, yes, that’s right. You like to torment everyone smaller than you. That sounds a fun game. I think I’ll play, and look, you’re smaller than me. Now, what torment shall we do first?’

In leaving them for the time being, all grim concern regarding anything unduly cruel can be thankfully dispensed with. Bellam Nom, being cleverer than most, knew that true terror belonged not to what did occur, but to what might occur. He was content to encourage Snell’s own imagination into the myriad possibilities, which was a delicate and precise form of torture. Especially useful in that it left no bruises.

Bullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures. The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domainwhere propriety and vengeance become confused, almost indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the bully’s soul remains unchanged.

It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved down the throat.

If only it could.

Moths were flattened against the walls of the narrow passageway, waiting for something, probably night. As it was a little used route to and from the Vidikas estate, frequented twice a day at specific times by deliveries to the kitchen, Chal-lice had taken to using it with all the furtive grace of the insouciant adulteress that she had become. The last thing she expected was to almost run into her husband there in the shadows midway through.

Even more disconcerting, it was clear that he had been awaiting her. One hand holding his duelling gloves as if about to slap them across her cheek, yet there was an odd smile on his face. ‘Darling,’ he said.

She halted before him, momentarily struck dumb. It was one thing to play out the game at breakfast, a table between them cluttered with all the false icons of a perfect and perfectly normal marriage. Their language then was such a smooth navigation round all those deadly shoals that it seemed the present was but a template of the future, of years and years of this; not a single wound stung to life, no tragic floundering on the jagged shallows, sailors drowning in the foam.

He stood before her now, tall with a thousand sharp edges, entirely blocking her path, his eyes glittering like wrecker fires on a promontory. ‘So pleased I found you,’ he said. ‘I must head out to the mining camp-no doubt you can hear the carriage being readied behind you.’

Casual words, yet she was startled, like a bird; flash of fluttering, panicked wings in the gloom as she half turned to register the snort of horses and the rustle of traces from the forecourt behind her. ‘Oh,’ she managed, then faced him once more. Her heart’s rapid beat began slowing down. pqdm.com