Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Read Free Page B

the night’s accounts were closed before
punishing those who had done something stupid, or had refused to go
out into the night to bring him the Dragoons. The moans and screams
of pain that rose from the lower deck every night were a torture
even for those who had been good. Surely they were a warning. Not
pissing off the man was essential for survival between those
rotting walls.
    “ The
prayers!” the voice of Mama admonished.
    Dagger turned. Right next to the door, locked up in a sacred
shrine and surrounded by black and red candles, Ktisis watched him
gnashing his wood fangs, roughly carved in his eternal sneer. He
knelt down and prayed. He prayed Ktisis to
help him just once more, only once. But the g od did not answer. He just kept on
staring at him, grinning.
    Dagger opened the door and
found himself absorbed in a magnetic gaze, the stifling gaze of
eyes dark as night; sitting behind the desk, old Mama was waiting
for him. His presence filled the whole room. It was like the
notebooks where he used to write everything, the trunks in which he
was the only one who could get his hands into and the dusty, rusty
weapons around him were appendages of his body. He was that room. He didn’t
just live there. Everything in it reflected his own personality,
especially the trapdoor in front of the desk. The lament of the
Spider closed below rose even more desperately, hearing his
footsteps. Dagger had been down there only once, but not to be
punished. Mama never did punish him, not even when he did something
really stupid. He got down there pushed by curiosity, one of the
many times the old man was drunk to the bone. He did not find
anything special in that great, dark and cold space. There was
definitely nothing scary. It was just a cold and dark hold, with a
filthy mattress lying on the ground. He could not imagine what the
old man did to his fellows down there. None of them had ever wanted
to talk about it, as if they were ashamed. But every time he
summoned one of his Spiders, the old Mama made him stand upon the
trap door, painted in black with splashes of red paint, from which
came the need to never make him angry, not in there. Dagger stepped
forward, prisoner of his eyes, until his bare feet stood on the
rough painted surface of the trapdoor.
The old man looked at him in silence, his
eternal grin on his face. “Tell me.” He began. “Did you get the
three Dragoons even tonight?”
One by one, Dagger dropped the three golden
coins on the desk.
    “ Three?”
Dagger nodded.
    “ Admirable!” Mama replied,
staring into his eyes. “And you’re still helping your sister,
aren’t you?”
The boy nodded again.
Mama smiled lovingly. “I know,” he replied.
“I can understand that, I’m not so cruel. I myself had a sister
once, a sweet sister with blond and long curls. I avenged her, you
know? Oh yes. My father looked into my eyes as I killed him. He
knows that it was me who killed him, and why. They say revenge is
never complete if your victim does not know that it was you who
killed him and why. Yes, because my sister is dead. Oh, I already
told you, but that’s another story.” He looked at the desk’s
surface with lost eyes, softly uttering obscene words, barely
understandable, among which suddenly emerged, “Now, is there
anything else that I should know?”
Dagger shook his head. He left out the
small detail of not having killed the client who had seen his face,
that night. Sure that somehow Mama would still come to know. It was
a terrible certainty, as night that follows the day, but if he had
known that morning, his life would have ended there, so he had
everything to gain. If nothing else, a few hours of sleep.
    “ Three Dragoon,” Mama
repeated, fiddling with a cigar between his fingers. “You’re the
only one that still manages to bring them to me, except of course
your sister, but that’s another story. You must have been at the
tavern of the gypsy. Yes, that place would remain open late even