originalsam_backup | Trace, Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (Reply)

FOUR

Colin wondered how much Joseph thought about his time with them, in the year that had passed since the day he burned the egg. He wondered if Joseph thought about it at all, outside of the few times he'd been back to their home since he'd found his own place, gotten his feet under him, found a way to scratch out a mostly-legal living for himself. Maybe not. Joseph partitioned his life pretty thoroughly, and perhaps it was easier not to think about it.

They still lived in the little house in Brooklyn, with its well-kept yard and intentional interior decorating. Colin, who'd been drifting his entire adult life, usually just tacked up drawings and hauled in second-hand furniture wherever he went; he'd never really lived anywhere he'd made attractive on purpose, but he admired the mental stability of people who could. Joseph and Analise kept a pretty house, and he moved carefully inside of it.

When they arrived, Analise wasn't home yet. Colin followed Joseph inside and sat in his customary place at the breakfast table in the kitchen, watching as Joseph took his cleaning kit from the pantry shelf. He pulled his sidearm from its holster and popped the chambered bullet, passing it to Colin as he sat down. While Joseph cleaned his gun, Colin found the stash of origami paper he'd left at the house and folded the bullet up inside a little balloon, setting it on the windowsill. There was one there for each night he'd stayed with them, discounting that first month -- not very many since, in all, but they were good protection.

In prison, he'd had a line of paper balloons strung over the door to his cell; he didn't like the bullets that he put in them for Joseph and Lise, but he couldn't deny that bullets were powerful too. This house would not be violated -- or if it was, the perpetrator would be punished severely. He had learned more than just paper-folding from Marlow the curse-maker.

Joseph never asked him about the bullets. Colin wasn't sure Joseph knew that he was giving them to him.

"Honey?" Lise called, over the bang of the front door, and both Joseph and Colin looked up.

"In here," Joseph called, rising to put his gun away in the lock box. He met her at the kitchen door, kissed her hello, took her briefcase from her hand and let her help him off with his shoulder-holster.

"Hello, my dear," she said, when she saw Colin behind Joseph, waiting for his kiss. She stood on tip-toe and brushed her lips against his cheek. "Joseph says you're being difficult."

"I'm never difficult," Colin answered, and Joseph snorted in the background. "I'm challenging."

"Hm, well, challenge yourself into making dinner," she commanded, easing herself into his chair and kicking her high heels off with a sigh. Colin went to the fridge and rummaged around in it before raiding the pantry as well, setting out food for prep and taking down a couple of knives from the rack near the sink. He thought about cutting himself with one of them; nothing serious, just enough to bleed into the chopping board or onto the counter, binding him closely to this so-ordinary house with its row of bullet charms in the window. A promise: My blood is here, and I will come back for it. If he was going back to Railburg, he wanted a link to their home, to somewhere sheltered and uncomplicated.

But faith was a greater sort of working, and he tried to trust that he would be safe without relying on tricks to make it so. It was one of Joseph's lessons: there are no shortcuts on this side of the law.

Analise poured out wine for dinner, once the food was cooking. It was a little dangerous, Colin always thought, for Joseph to drink wine; it made the shade rise. Lise loved to watch it, could stare at her husband's eyes forever, but she was safer than Colin was. Joseph didn't understand his own power, and sometimes it made him uneasy, and that could make him dangerous. Colin just trusted to Joseph's self-control and Lise's protection.

"What?" Joseph asked, as Colin watched him sip the wine, eyes flicking to his lips.

"Nothing," Colin said, turning back to his plate. He reached for the salad, serving himself while Lise took the lid off the stew. "I can't be contemplative?"

"You just got invited to go back to prison. Contemplative wouldn't be my first reaction," Joseph said.

"So that's the new undercover job? Dress up in prison?" Lise asked, smiling at her husband as she sat down to eat. "Orange won't flatter you, honey."

"I'd be posing as a g -- as a Corrections Officer," Joseph said. "I hear I get a shiny badge and everything."

"I'd be his bait," Colin added, as Lise laughed.

"I wouldn't call it bait," Joseph said thoughtfully. "All you'd have to do is listen."

"You sound like you're trying to convince him," Lise said.

"Colin hasn't said yes yet," Joseph replied. "Have you, Colin?"

"No, not yet," Colin agreed mildly, ignoring Joseph's pointed look. "Listening, huh? What exactly am I listening to?"

"Don't be disingenuous. I know prisoners know things," Joseph replied. "I watch your back -- "

" -- I don't need watching -- "

" -- and we figure out how to crack this thing. You do need me watching your back. Some of the guys in Railburg are there now because you helped me put them there. It's not a stroll in the park, Colin."

"Eh, whatever," Colin waved his fork dismissively. "They won't mess with me anymore. Nobody ever messed with me," he added.

"Messed with you?" Lise asked, eyebrows drawing together. He could see her recalling every prison film she'd ever seen.

"Like I said," he reassured her, "nobody messed with me."

"Nobody at all." Joseph seemed skeptical, and a little worried. Lise rubbed Colin's arm.

Colin gave them both an amused look. "I got the mojo."

"I haven't heard a yes from you, yet," Joseph said. Colin chewed on a slice of tomato, thoughtfully.

"What happens if I say no?" he asked.

"We send someone else in."

"Another informant?"

"No, probably a cop," Joseph told him. Colin gave him a suspicious look. "Sorry. I don't give the orders. Not those orders, anyway."

Colin inhaled. "I don't smell like cop, and I know the way the prison works. I have a rep."

"Trying to convince yourself?" Lise asked. Colin cast a sidelong look at Joseph, who seemed expectant. He carefully didn't look at his eyes.

"Henrik still on Death Row?" he asked.

"He's in the middle of his mandatory appeals," Joseph said. "Nother couple of years, he might not be a problem anymore."

"As a former inmate of the correctional system," he said, frowning down at his food, "I'm not all that crazy about capital punishment."

Joseph shrugged. "Don't kill anyone."

Colin rolled his eyes. "It's not that simple, and you know it. Murder is personal, it's variable. Capital punishment is systemic, it comes from a position of power -- "

"Okay, no, you know what we're not fighting about tonight?" Joseph interrupted. "The death penalty. I didn't vote for it, I don't like it either, but it's there. " He took a breath, his tone gentling slightly. "This isn't about Henrik. He's upstate. And you know it's not about the death penalty. This is about whether you're willing to do this."

Colin shook himself mentally, nodding. "It sounds like a decent gig."

"Colin," Joseph said firmly. "Answer yes or no."

"Yes," Colin sighed, dragging the affirmative out.

"Was that so hard?"

"What am I, five?" Colin asked.

"You tell me," Joseph retorted. Colin settled down, not liking the sharpness in his tone. Lise cleared her throat and gave her husband a significant look.

Colin used to have a woman like Analise, on the outside. Well, perhaps not like Analise; his Grace had been tall and slick with a criminal grin, but back then he'd liked her smile. The point was he'd had someone who loved him like that, someone he could have wordless conversations with the way Joseph and Lise could. Men talked about that kind of thing in prison, having someone on the outside, a good woman, and when they did, he'd talked about Grace. Even after she stopped visiting.

But then he was out, and he didn't talk about Grace anymore. Except when he had to -- except when he'd needed to find out what happened to her. Since then, there'd been no reason, and no desire.

Joseph gave Colin a guilty look, though he couldn't know what Colin was thinking. He probably just thought he'd been too pushy for Lise's liking.

"It'll take a day or two to get everything set up," Joseph said. "Wrap up any jobs you're working on."

"Not a problem," Colin replied. "When do we go in?"

"How soon can you be ready?" Joseph asked, his tone a little less commanding now.

"Three days, I think."

"Then we go in Monday. Works for me," Joseph said. "Get you suited up Sunday night, keep you overnight at the precinct, ship you out Monday morning."

"Sunday night in jail. Sounds like a blues song," Colin said. "Okay, I'm in."

"I'll file the paperwork tomorrow."

"So," Lise said, turning to Joseph, visibly changing the subject, "Hon, have you got a ball game this weekend?"

"I might see if there's a pick-up game at the park," Joseph answered, around a mouthful of food. "Why, do you need the car?"

Colin fell silent as they discussed domestic arrangements -- the laundry, the car, the next-door neighbors who wanted to get one last grill party in before the warm weather faded completely. He even let Joseph get away with talking pro sports for a few minutes before he distracted them both with news of a recent exhibit at the Met, and a story about the fuss he'd caused when his sketching distracted a class of kids on a field trip. Joseph's tension slowly drained away; Lise leaned back and gave Colin a catlike smile that told him she knew what he was doing.

The more he talked, the more Joseph watched him. He looked like he was waiting, searching for something; in any other man, Colin would have said he seemed untethered, but Joseph was a fixed unmoving point, and if he wanted a thing he pulled it in to him. Even Colin. When he'd finally chased Colin down and arrested him, there had been a sense of the inexorable as Joseph handcuffed his wrists. When he'd brought him home, three years later, Colin had felt like a drowning man washing up against an unyielding rock.

But Joseph could yield, in surprising ways.

When his eyes flicked down to Colin's mouth, and then over in a silent question to Analise, Colin let his story trail off. Joseph tapped his finger against his mostly-empty wineglass, and seemed to come to a decision -- though probably the decision had been made much earlier, when he'd touched Colin at the diner. Perhaps it had been inevitable. Maybe Joseph even liked it that way.

Colin watched him run his finger around the rim of the glass, then dip it in the remains of the wine. He offered it to Colin, almost casually, a droplet running down his knuckles towards his hand. Colin leaned forward and bit it, too gentle to bruise the skin, scraping the dampness off with his teeth as he eased back.

"When we go in, you won't understand what you see," Colin said softly, licking his lips. He didn't want to frighten them, but Joseph had to know.

"Try me," Joseph answered, eyes on Colin's, even if his pupils were a little more dilated than they should be.

"You'll see what I mean," Colin insisted. They didn't understand, couldn't, and their faces said so -- but they were still good people. Never mind that Joseph had been the one to put him in prison; when he got out, Joseph had also taken him into his home. They weren't like him, but they weren't ordinary, either.

He helped them clear the plates away, corking the remains of the wine for some other dinner when he wouldn't be here, and then let Lise take his hand and pull him out of the kitchen. He followed her down the hallway, back into the bedroom where she was leading, but Joseph strayed away from them to check the locks on the house: the front door, back door, the windows, and the row of charms on the kitchen windowsill. He never failed to check any of them.

Colin stood in the bedroom doorway, halfway between Lise inside and Joseph outside, hesitating.

"Scared?" Lise asked, smiling.

"Of you? No," Colin answered, taking a step inside. "Just -- savoring the moment."

"Not like you," she said, wrapping an arm around his waist. Usually Joseph was the one to begin things; he liked to be in control, but Joseph seemed to be taking his time checking the locks. Colin let her draw him close, put an arm around her shoulders to hold her there just because he could. This was too rare to spend on decorum. And, really, too good to wait for Joseph to catch up to them.

"Your rules of hospitality," he said, catching her lip in his teeth for a second before releasing it and kissing it. "I've always liked them."

"We had to find some way to keep you here," she answered, amused, running her hands up under his shirt. "You would have been just passing through, otherwise. Joseph couldn't have allowed that."

"Oh, you wanted me here, hm?" he asked, laughing. She pulled back and looked at him, brushing dark hair off his forehead.

"He caught you. You were his responsibility," she said. "When he brought you here, after – what we did, what we do, it keeps you right."

True enough. Even with steady shelter over his head, and Joseph's shade watching him when he so much as thought of slipping back into the man he'd been, he might not have stayed. Hadn't planned on it.

"In Railburg, they say I have a lover," he said, undoing the button on her so-professional slacks. "They say it's a cop -- I don't know how they know, but I've heard that they do."

"Old friends?" she asked, stepping out of the slacks, pulling her shirt over her head.

"I get a little news," he answered, pressing his lips to her jaw, fingers threading in her long hair.

"Will that get you in trouble?" she asked, pushing him back for a moment. He looked down at her, cupping her face.

"They can't touch me," he said.

"So why tell me?"

He smiled and kissed her, felt her unbuckling his belt. "They might know about Joseph. They don't know about you. You're a secret," he whispered, pulling her onto the bed. "You're my safe secret."

"Oh, whisper sweet nothings," she drawled. He laughed.

"Men talk about having a good woman on the outside," he said. "Let me tie myself to you."

She raised an eyebrow, but after a second she smiled.

"Not literally," she said.

"As literal as counts," he answered, pulling her up until she knelt, sliding behind her. He undid the clasp of her bra and ran a hand around her ribcage as he pulled it off. "You and him, you tied me down to this little life."

"You didn't exactly struggle," she answered, leaning into his touch.

"I knew the stakes. If you hadn't -- "

"Shh, sweetie," she murmured, reaching a hand back behind her, to twist in his hair.

"I know," he answered. "I can't get free now. But Railburg...it cuts you off." He slid his hand lower, coaxing a moan out of her. "I need..."

She groaned again, fingers tightening in his hair, and Colin looked up over her shoulder to see Joseph in the doorway, watching.

"What have I told you about starting without me?" Joseph asked. He was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, tie loose -- a broad-shouldered shadow, the hallway's backlight burnishing his hair gold, hooding his eyes.

Colin chuckled; Lise writhed against his hands. "I'm really terrible at following directions."

"I noticed," Joseph said, but he came forward and leaned over his wife's bowed head to kiss Colin, then sat down and tipped her chin up, kissing her too. Colin's fingers twitched; Lise moaned into Joseph's mouth. Joseph kept kissing her even when Colin lifted her up a little to slide inside her; kissed her through her orgasm, and helped Colin ease her down onto the bed.

When he looked back at Colin, his eyes were black. Sometimes Colin wanted to steal Joseph's soul, not out of spite but just so he could hold it close and see what it was.

He settled for falling backwards under Joseph's hands, taking Joseph's weight as they kissed. He'd learned this in prison, too -- learned how men fit together, voluntary or otherwise -- but he didn't like to think about that when he was with Joseph.

This was enough. More than he'd hoped for after Railburg; more than he'd anticipated since, knowing at least two people in the world cared enough about him to let him inside. It would see him through prison, and it would tie him to them strongly enough to bring him back out again. It would have to.

***

Colin knew that Lise always felt better if he stayed the whole night, so she could wake up and see he was still there. Colin thought perhaps it was proprietary; Joseph knew Colin belonged to them, but Lise liked evidence.

Still, if he was going to be ready by Sunday night, he had business to attend to. He rose before either of them were awake, Joseph mumbling in his sleep and rolling over into the warm spot Colin had vacated, pulling Lise against him. Colin smiled as he dressed, left them a note folded into a paper crane, and took himself off to his errands. He had an important visit to make.

FIVE

"The Darkman is a white policeman all in black -- his uniform is black, even his badge be black metal like iron, and he ain't got no eyes, just big black holes. He rides up and down on his black horse, clip-clop, clip-clop. If he sees your face you're done for."

When Colin found him, Natell was sitting on a large plastic storage tub in a supply room at the back of the shelter, surrounded by other children -- anywhere from infants in their siblings' arms up through kids almost old enough to have lost interest in fairy tales. Most of the younger ones who could understand Natell's narration gasped in awe or fear at his words.

"You want to know how he can see when he ain't got no eyes?" Natell continued, drumming his heels against the bin. There was a wave of nods. Colin, leaning in the darkened doorway, watched with interest. "He sees through the horse's eyes. The horse see you, he sees you. You got to beware the Darkman."

Natell was eleven or thereabouts, at least by Colin's estimation, though sometimes it was hard to tell. He always looked faintly underfed, cheekbones standing out sharply against the clear, light brown skin of his face. It made him seem even younger than he was -- but he had quick, intelligent eyes, and he commanded the attention of children much older than him.

It had taken Colin some time to find him; he hadn't even known who he was looking for at first, when he left Railburg. Eventually he'd heard Natell's name, whispered through the sprawling network of the homeless, leading him to one of the city's assorted shelters.

He hadn't expected a child, but then the world was full of unexpected things.

Natell was still too young to have stopped believing the stories passed from child to child in the shelters, but he was old enough to be the official storyteller. Some of the other kids were older than him, but only barely; past a certain age, kids seemed to start forgetting the stories, or scorning them at least. They were an intricate mythology all their own, a secret language found only among the children, and Natell spoke it fluently.

Still, he was getting older, and he'd start to forget soon. Colin had seen it happen to others. Hell, so had Natell.

"Darkman's Satan!" a child piped up, and Natell looked scornful.

"Those liars at the church mission tell you that?" he asked. "Satan's afraid of the Darkman."

"Why?" the boy pressed.

"Darkman's older than Satan, duh," Natell said. "Besides, people can pray against Satan. Can't say no prayer against the Darkman. If he's coming you better hide."

"How do you know when the Darkman's coming, Natell?" Colin asked, and the children all started at the adult voice in their midst -- they were somewhere they weren't supposed to be, telling stories adults weren't supposed to hear, and they knew it. A couple of them looked uneasily at Natell to see what he'd do.

"Don't you listen?" Natell asked, derisive, and Colin saw some of the children relax. "You hear him comin'. Clip-clop, clip-clop. That's why when you hear the black horse with the Darkman on it you gotta get out of sight before he slits your throat and eats you. Or you say Guye's secret name and he come down and protect you from the Darkman. But if you're a girl that doesn't work."

"What do you do if you're a girl?" Colin asked. Several of the girls exchanged looks.

"They don't tell me that," Natell said.

"What's Guye's secret name, then?"

"Nobody know," Natell admitted, shaking his head.

"Then what's the point in saying that if you know, it'll protect you?"

Natell screwed up his face in annoyance. "Man, fuck you, this ain't even your business."

"My mistake," Colin said, holding up his hands innocently. "You got a minute?"

Natell gave a loose twist of his shoulders in his too-big shirt, a half-hearted shrug, and waved at the children surrounding him. "Go on, go on. I got business to conduct."

It was near lunchtime, by Colin's design; he rested a hand on Natell's shoulder and guided him out of the shelter. A few kids, older than Natell, cast pitying looks his way; they had cynical opinions of Colin's motivations. Admittedly a white man walking a young black boy out of the shelter looked suspicious, but none of them were about to try and stop him. The shelter's administrators never even noticed him. It didn't bother him much; his intentions were pure. Natell was a keeper of important lore, and Colin had questions both general and personal to ask.

"You want a hot dog?" Colin asked. Natell nodded, leading him unerringly to the nearest food cart. He bought a hot dog for Natell and a giant pretzel for himself and they found a quiet corner to eat in, sitting on the sidewalk as the world passed by. There was a woman standing across the street, like she was waiting for the light to change, watching them – but when traffic stopped, she didn't move.

"So?" Natell prompted. "What you want to know?"

Colin looked at him, his serious businesslike face, and laughed. "Maybe I just want to see you eat a decent meal you didn't get from a school cafeteria."

"Aw, come on," Natell said. "You ain't saving anyone. You need something?"

Colin chewed thoughtfully. "Was Guye out last night?"

Natell nodded. "And the Darkman too," he said, around a mouthful of food. "Pretty big fight. You see it?"

"No, I was busy. Who won?"

"Darkman did," Natell said. "That's why I was tellin' everyone about him. Something weird's going on."

"How?" Colin asked. Natell looked dubious. The boy didn't trust easily, and Guye and the Darkman were children's stories. Grownups weren't supposed to know about them. Even if Colin could see what they saw, he wasn't necessarily on their side.

"You ever seen the Darkman?" Natell asked, instead of answering him. Colin shook his head. "I seen him twice. He ain't never seen me. You ever seen Guye?"

"Only from a distance."

"How?"

Colin shrugged. "When I got out of prison, I saw things I wasn't supposed to. I can't explain it."

That seemed to reassure Natell, if not convince him. "Prove you saw him."

Colin gave him a sober look. "He's tall with dark skin, and he wears night camo, not desert camo like his soldiers do. His heart glows through his uniform, so he's easy to spot, and holy light comes off his head."

"Not holy light," Natell corrected. "It's just light."

"My mistake," Colin told him. "So, do I pass?"

"Yeah, okay," Natell agreed, seemingly satisfied. He looked almost eager to talk about it, like he didn't have many confidantes.

"What's going on? What's weird?" Colin asked.

"It's like...everyone be clearing out," Natell explained. "Guye's soldiers, they used to talk to us. Don't see them no more. But the Darkman's cops, they ain't come around either. It's like they say it was after 9/11," he added. "Whole city emptied out and it was just the Darkman. They had to dig Guye out of Ground Zero, you hear that?"

"How'd you hear?" Colin asked. "You can't be old enough to remember."

"My brother told me, back 'fore he stopped believing," Natell shrugged again. "Fore he died. Someone told him. Story gets around."

"What happens if the Darkman wins?" Colin asked.

"Ain't never gonna happen," Natell said. "That's the point."

"What's the point?"

"It's just how it is. It's how it's supposed to be. If Guye wins, so what? If the Darkman wins, who's he got to fight?"

"Pretty big concepts for a kid like you," Colin said, offering him a piece of his pretzel.

"Fuck you," Natell snapped.

"No offense meant," Colin said.

"Yeah? I'm offended anyway."

Colin grinned at him. Natell took the pretzel piece he offered, but he still looked like he wanted to pick a fight. "You come all the way down here to ask me about Guye? What do you care?"

"No, I was just curious," Colin said. Natell shoved the last of the hot dog into his mouth, licking his fingers. "Listen, you can't tell anyone this, okay?"

Natell rolled his eyes. "What'd you do?"

"I'm going back to Railburg for a little while."

"What the hell, man?" Natell demanded, outraged.

"Look, it's not a big deal. Couple of weeks, at most. That's why you can't tell. I'm working for the po."

"Course you are." Natell rolled his eyes.

"Hey, it pays the rent. And I have..." Colin shrugged, trying to find words for it without resorting to duty. "There's something I have to do inside. So listen, you got anything you want me to tell Laney? You know anyone else in Railburg?"

Laney was Natell's cousin, twenty years old and freshly convicted for car theft. Natell hadn't been to see him since he went in a few months before, didn't have the money for the trip. Colin hadn't known Laney that well, but he knew Natell missed him.

"Yeah, tell Laney he's a motherfucker," Natell said, clearly amused. Colin gave him a small disapproving scowl. "Whatever, tell him I say hi. Tell him Darkman winning right now."

"He still care about Darkman?" Colin asked.

"Laney? He might. He's strange." Natell glanced up at Colin, who towered over him even sitting down. "Ask him if he got anything to tell me."

"I can do that," Colin nodded. Natell chewed on his lip.

"You watch out for yourself," he warned Colin.

"I always do," Colin answered. He glanced across the street at the corner, where the woman had been standing, watching them; she wasn't there now, at least.

SIX

That evening, Colin stood in the doorway to his bathroom, looking in, thinking hard about Railburg.

For three years he'd lived in a room about the size of this bathroom. Granted, it was a big bathroom, but it always made him uneasy. It smelled like the prison had, wet concrete and bleach. He could move, he supposed, but he suspected it wasn't the bathroom's fault. And anyway he liked his place: it was cheap, because it was falling apart, but the other tenants were quiet and the ceilings were high. It had its own little balcony he could go out on, which doubled as a handy escape platform in case he needed to run for it. Wouldn't be the first time.

He stepped away from the bathroom, settling on the battered sofa, a rescue someone down the block had thrown out. He tipped his head back, propping his legs on the cheap coffee table.

Colin had been wary of prison when he'd been sent there the first time. The first week inside had only confirmed his fears. He'd tired quickly of the routine of prison life, and been angry that Joseph had thrown him in there, and scared of his fellow inmates. He'd tried to disappear, for the most part, but it didn't completely work. After the first time he had to fight someone off, he decided he needed either power or protection, and he could only get one of those fast enough to matter.

He laughed a little to himself, wondering if Rifkin was still king of the yard. If he was, Colin's job would be easier. Rifkin had liked him ever since the day he walked up behind him, picked the cigarettes out of his shirtsleeve without Rifkin noticing, and then sat down across the table from him and admitted what he'd done. Bravery born of desperation, but it had worked.

"I think these are yours," he'd said, holding out a handful of Camels. Rifkin's hand went to his sleeve and found it empty. "I picked them when you weren't looking."

"Are you trying to get your ass kicked?" asked the king of the yard.

"No," Colin had said with a smile, rolling one single Parliament out of the handful of Camels. Rifkin eyed him curiously; Colin already knew he preferred Parliaments, but they were expensive, harder to get. And he hadn't had any when Colin had picked his sleeve. Simple sleight-of-hand with a pack Grace had brought him on her first visit, but it was impressive nonetheless.

"You must be suicidal," Rifkin said.

"Just demonstrating what I can do for you," Colin told him, rolling a second Parliament out. He offered it to Rifkin, who took it; he put the other between his own lips. "I'm a thief. I know how to smuggle, I know how to sweet talk and bribe. I can get you whatever you want, if you give me enough time. I could do a lot for a man, if I had his protection."

Rifkin had lit the cigarette. He'd puffed thoughtfully on it, then smiled. "That a fact, Suicide?" he asked.

"Try me," Colin said with a grin. Rifkin leaned back and studied him, ever a cautious judge.

"Why you here?" he asked.

"Stole something I shouldn't have," Colin said calmly.

"No, Suicide, why you here?" Rifkin asked. "This a level three state prison, did you kill someone while you stole it?"

"I'm kind of a flight risk," Colin told him.

"You don't belong here."

"No," Colin agreed. "But I'm stuck here now."

"You been with anyone?" Rifkin asked. Colin frowned. "You anyone's punk? I'm not gonna fight someone for your ass."

Colin drummed his fingers on the table. "I'm trying to avoid that," he said slowly. "How about we make a deal: you don't fuck me and I'll do what you want."

"And if I don't agree?"

Colin held up the small blade he'd plucked out of the other sleeve of Rifkin's shirt. "Imagine how hard someone like me can make life for someone like you."

Rifkin was huge, both physically and metaphorically, and he had a lot of power. But he also knew the measure of things, which was what appealed to Colin to start with. He knew Colin was too valuable a commodity to waste on sex. When his smile turned from nasty to pleased, Colin knew he was in. He'd never regretted it, either -- with Rifkin's backing he could do a lot, both for the king of the yard and for himself.

He hoped Rifkin was still there, because that would mean immediate protection, no need to establish himself with the fresh meat. Not that it would be such an effort, really. Suicide Byrne's reputation should be reasonably solid. He did good work; he was reliable. Word had got around, and could again if necessary. And he could always bribe Marlow to curse anyone who was being difficult.

He stood up and went to the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboards for dinner. In some ways, he was looking forward to going back. He wasn't crawling the walls at the idea, anyway, and really in the end he had no choice.

He put a pot on to boil and leaned on the counter next to the stove, thinking.

There were two drawings tacked over his stove, wrinkling from steam and heat, spattered from an experiment in fried chicken that had gone a little out of his control. He'd taken the sketches away from prison with him because they weren't safe there; here, they were as safe as anything could be, and were slowly being faded into nothingness by the activity of everyday life.

After all, it wasn't strictly true what they said, that he could draw things that would come to life. Prison wasn't about that kind of power. But he had seen an egret flying over the prison one day and done the barest, vaguest outline of it in pencil on a piece of scrounged paper, later that night.

The next morning, it had moved.

Every so often, even now, it changed position. He'd been offered a lot of commodity for it in prison -- cigarettes he didn't smoke, food he wasn't interested in, protection he didn't need, sex he felt deeply ambiguous about. It hadn't been alive, or even close to alive, but it was a near enough thing. Prisoners treasured life, in a peculiar and brutal way.

The water was boiling. He tossed in a handful of pasta and watched steam rise up against the paper.

It was true that he once stole a soul. When he heard what the new guy McCall was in for, he'd held a conference with the others like him in the prison: Marlow, who could curse men; Gutierrez, who talked to God (and was answered); Noel the ex-Aryan, who took away pain. They agreed that this was a special case and Gutierrez said God would choose the executioner. Marlow and Colin flipped for it and it came up heads for Colin.

Two days later, Colin asked McCall to sit for a sketch and nobody told McCall what a really bad idea that was. While he was drawing, Colin stole his soul.

It was a tattery, oily little thing, and he folded it up inside a red, red paper heart and burned it. McCall's eyes went dull and he moved like a sleepwalker, and he died two weeks later. McCall's face looked down on him now from the second drawing taped up over the stove, but Colin felt not the least bit sorry. God or Gutierrez picked him for it, which meant it was a duty, merely an act committed through him. And, like the egret, the drawing had been too dangerous to leave behind.

Very few of the guys in his block had ever messed with Colin once Rifkin took him under his wing. After he stole McCall's soul, nobody messed with him. Colin didn't crow about it; the power was only good as long as you didn't brag.

He took the cooked pasta off the stove and poured off the water, sprinkling olive oil over the noodles and shaking out some garlic and pepper over that. When he was younger he'd gone to Italy to study art and eaten fresh pasta with oil and garlic and nothing else, and he'd felt like he could live on the stuff. But this was cheap grocery-store spice, and anyway you couldn't get that kind of garlic in America even if you tried. He suspected it was something to do with the soil. Or maybe it was just that he knew it wasn't the same.

He should brush up on his languages. The Italians in prison, far-removed from Italy herself, still mostly spoke her dialects, which had surprised him at first. They weren't a bad bunch as long as you kept out of their business and didn't snitch. He preferred not to tattle; after all, if someone was sinning in prison, there were ways to handle it internally.

Except for Henrik, he supposed. He'd used the system to send Henrik to Death Row. But Henrik had been a special case, and the Aryans had no class, anyway.

The oil was a little bitter, but the meal filled him up. He stared out the window over his balcony as he ate, watching the clouds drift over the city. There were flickers of movement in the distance occasionally; too far away to tell if it was simply the city going about its business, or if Guye was out again tonight.

He poured himself a glass of wine and went to the easel in the corner of the room, placed to catch sunlight during the day. There was a half-finished charcoal sketch on the top sheet of paper: a series of iron bars, a faceless figure behind them. A far cry from his former specialty, which had involved a lot more treasury seals, but Colin had always sketched for pleasure. At least this drawing would probably not come to life.

Still, he tore it off and crumpled it up, shoving it far down in the trash. He stood in front of the blank paper beneath for a long time, waiting for inspiration to strike, but he ended up looking past it, out the window. As if he thought peace of mind might blow in on the breeze.

Well, you never knew.

***

Colin slept fitfully that evening, drifting in and out of consciousness with little control over when or what he dreamed. He kept being dragged back to the last days before prison -- to the day Joseph had put handcuffs on him and finally made them stick. The chase, the trial -- and then, he dreamed about Railburg.

They didn't have Solitary at Railburg. They had Seg -- Segregation -- which was different in name only, another new term for an old torment. Seg was right in the middle of the big panopticon of Railburg, where the cellblocks with their contained yards met like wheel spokes at the central axis. The dining hall was also in the hub, directly above Seg, serving each meal in two shifts for the A through C blocks, who were level three security, and one more shift for the D and E blocks, who were level two. Colin preferred level three, in some ways; the level two boys slept in dorms, and Colin liked having his own cell.

He'd been around for almost six months before he was sent to Seg for the first time (the only time) and he'd thought he was doing pretty well up until then. It wasn't an easy life, by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a routine. In the mornings he ran errands and carried messages for Rifkin, and in the afternoons he freelanced or sat and bullshitted and played cards with a couple of the guys on his block. As an acknowledged cheat he was forced to play croupier, but that had its own advantages.

In the dream he was dealing cards again, like he had been; it was spring, his first spring at Railburg, and he was feeling pretty good about having survived the winter. Each season was a landmark in a way he was only beginning to understand. Before, when it got cold, he'd just...gone somewhere warm. Not an option anymore.

There was some fight, some disagreement, maybe about the cards or maybe just nearby, Colin could never remember. Even in the dream, he couldn't recall how it had started or why he'd jumped in, just that he had. He'd caught a swift crack across the bridge of his nose and then bloodied his own knuckles in someone else's face, because he wasn't a fighter but he had enough muscle to make it count.

In reality, there'd been guards there eventually -- the whistle of a baton and a bruise across his ribcage that lasted far longer than his stay in Seg. Here, in his own subconscious, they were pulled apart much more quickly. Colin was tugged backwards, off-balance, and when he landed he was in a dark four-walled cell. There was a camera behind a cage in the corner and a hatch in the steel door for food.

He'd spent about a day making faces at the camera, for want of anything else to do. He'd spent another few days thinking up ways to escape Seg, but you couldn't get out of Seg unless you had an exit strategy for the prison and a pretty good plan for life as a fugitive.

In dream-time he skipped ahead of all that, forward to sometime in the second week when the smell of cooking combined with the bland, spongy, nutritionally balanced "loaf" he got twice a day in Seg instead of real food were both beginning to drive him crazy. He'd started jittering for a pencil and paper, something to draw with; some kind of stimulation inside the bare walls. He felt like he was sinking into his own head, as everything got quieter and more distant and gray.

He'd long since stopped being able to see where the walls met. Half the time if he tried to move he'd stumble into one without realizing it. It had been pressing on him for a long time, the tight regulation and iron rules of prison, the unimaginative unchangingness of it, but here in this little room with nothing, with nobody --

He woke from the dream in a cold sweat, tense and breathing hard, very still for a moment before he lifted his hands and tangled them in his hair, closing his eyes. He owed his strength to Seg, he knew that. The mojo had come to him in Seg because he'd needed it so desperately. But he'd made very sure for the rest of his term in prison never to get sent there again. He'd have gone insane.

He thought he had, when he'd come out and found he could do things he shouldn't be able to do, see things other people couldn't see. He'd always been able to disappear, but now he could walk through prison bars; he'd always been able to read people, but he hadn't seen their future in their eyes before. Only the faint, half-ignored knowledge that this had happened to other men kept him from believing he'd gone mad -- that and Gutierrez, who had approached him on the yard and brought him into the fold, murmuring that God had told him to find Colin.

He didn't dare close his eyes, didn't dare finish out the dream. Instead he lay awake until dawn, drowsing, waiting for some kind of light before succumbing to sleep again.

***

Sunday he desperately wanted to sleep the day through, but he had a job to wrap up; he had lunch with the woman who'd had him trailing her husband, and told her as far as he could see the husband was taking dance lessons to impress her. She looked pleased. He felt a little bad about that, but he reminded himself that this was a woman who ran half the coke smuggling in New York, and she wouldn't think twice about killing her husband and him if she found out he'd been lying. He hoped the husband wasn't stupid enough to keep stepping out.

Sunday afternoon he presented himself at the precinct, where Joseph showed him into his office and handed him a thick sheaf of paperwork: an arrest for breaking and entering with a loaded firearm, a ten-year sentence, and an order for his admission to Railburg State Correctional Facility. There was a woman sitting in Joseph's office chair, but Joseph didn't see her, and Colin had learned to ignore her.

"Always makes me feel like I'm living in 1984," he said to Joseph as he handed him his keys and wallet. Joseph cocked his head curiously. "Not the year, the book. You know. 'Re-education'. 'Correction'. Euphemisms for what we really mean, because everyone likes to pretend it works better than it does."

"Correctional Facility is still more accurate than saying Penitentiary," Joseph pointed out, opening a drawer in his desk and tucking Colin's keys and wallet inside.

"Not really. I don't think so, anyway. You think I got any correction when you put me in Railburg?"

Joseph's eyes darkened. He looked up from where he was fiddling with the drawer. "You committed crimes, Colin."

"Yeah, I know," Colin said, studying the paperwork. He heard Joseph turn the key in the cheap desk-drawer lock, securing his last symbols of freedom inside. "There were a lot more of us being penitent than there were being corrected, that's all. Well, penitent we got caught."

"I know it was hard," Joseph said, which itself must have been difficult for him to say. Colin set the paperwork aside and offered his wrists again, and Joseph instead put a prison uniform in his arms.

"Sure you're ready for this?" he asked, as Colin stood up and pulled his shirt off. Joseph was in a suit, jacket off, holster dark against his white shirt; Colin tried to picture him in a prison guard's uniform. The image wouldn't come.

"Are you?" Colin asked, honestly curious. "I've been a prisoner before. Done your homework for guard duty?"

"I know my way around a prison," Joseph said. Colin took off his shoes and socks, undoing his belt.

"As a guest, maybe," he said.

Joseph smiled. "I've been reading handbooks."

"Well, I hope that helps," Colin replied, taking off his pants, tugging his underwear down. He held up the cheap government-issue underwear the prisoners got, letting a little annoyance cross his face. "I hate this shit. You wonder why we're all belligerent in prison? It's the underwear."

"Hazard pay," Joseph reminded him. Colin stepped into the underwear, then the orange uniform pants and the soft canvas shoes.

"Aren't you nervous?" he asked, turning back to his street clothes, folding them meticulously.

"Why?" Joseph said. "Nothing to be done about it if I am, not until I get there. You worried about someone shanking me, Byrne?"

Colin gave him a gentle smile, the orange prison smock in one hand. "If you get outed, the guys running this thing will take you to the locker room and beat the shit out of you. Prisoners aren't the only violent ones."

Joseph returned a sharp look, no smile at all. "That ever happen to you?"

"It could have," Colin said, which wasn't precisely an answer and Joseph knew it. He continued before Joseph could reply. "You enforce the law. When you put people away you send them somewhere the laws are different. Just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut."

"Giving orders now?" Joseph asked, coming around the desk to lean against it.

"I know more than you," Colin pointed out. He kept the smile in place until he'd pulled the smock over his head. "At least, about this."

"I remember," Joseph said. Colin leaned forward, just a little, until Joseph crooked an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in, holding him against his chest. "You don't think I can keep you safe, but I will. I won't let anything happen."

"Big talk," Colin said into the side of his neck. Joseph rumbled a laugh.

"Besides, Analise would kill me," he said, releasing him with a smile. "Anyway, come on. I need to lock you up."

"Game time," Colin murmured, and let himself be led to a holding cell and locked inside. It wasn't long past dinner, but he curled up on the bunk under the thin blanket and fell asleep quickly. If he dreamed this time, he didn't remember it.

Continue to Chapters 7, 8, and 9