The Tattooed Tribes Read Free Page B

Worked for it,” Ian replied.
    “ Doing what?”
    “ This and that.”
    “ Care to elaborate?”
    “ Nothing dishonest,” Ian said. “Mainly
supplying some of the restaurants with wild food, mushrooms,
greens, you know the sort of thing.”
    “ Poison anyone?” Jon asked.
    “ No!” Ian said indignantly. “I told you;
I’ve been camping and living in the woods since I was a small kid.
At least, I have when they let me.”
    He slowly
finished his fourth sandwich; then looked at Jon.
    “ Is it enough?” he asked. “I’ll find the
rest, I promise. I really, really want to be a TLO.”
    A vision of
Stacey Wainwright rose in Jon’s mind, controlled, sleek and
rich.
    “ No,” he said. “It’s not
enough.”
    “ I’ll get the rest,” Ian said. “If you
could just give me a few more weeks ...”
    “ I can’t,” Jon replied. “I have to decide
in the next couple of days. If I agreed to take you ... and it’s
a big if ... is there no way your
parents could help you?”
    “ That bastard!” Ian snarled. “I hate
him.”
    It was a
juvenile reaction and Jon at last took a long, careful look at his
guest. The gauntness had fooled him, so had the height, but as he
studied the face it occurred to him it had probably never seen a
razor. He also began to wonder exactly why Ian had been living
rough; it seemed an unnecessary gesture.
    “ How old are you?”
    A wary
expression appeared. “I told you before.”
    “ Remind me.”
    “ Nearly eighteen.”
    “ How nearly?”
    There was the
grin again, the one that bothered Jon.
    “ A couple of years.”
    “ You’re not even sixteen!” Jon
exclaimed.
    “ I am sixteen, but I’ve not been for long,”
Ian admitted.
    For a second
Jon was going to show him the door, but it crossed his mind any lad
who could keep himself by supplying wild food might possibly be an
ideal TLO.
    “ Did you make all that money by supplying
restaurants?”
    “ Yes,” Ian replied quickly.
    Too
quickly.
    He fidgeted in
the silence that followed.
    “ Okay,” he said. “I did blag a few meals
along the way and I did a bit of dealing.”
    “ Blagged?”
    “ Ordered, ate, but couldn’t pay,” Ian
admitted. “But I always offered to work it off.”
    “ How did that play?”
    “ Okay, most of the time. I got roughed up
once or twice.”
    Jon could see
the faint shadow of an old black eye.
    “ And the dealing?”
    “ Just a few bits here and
there.”
    “ What?”
    “ Nothing much.”
    Jon gave him a
stern look and Ian’s eyes fell before it, but he would not be
drawn.
    “ Do your parents know where you are?” Jon
asked, trying a change of tack.
    “ No, and they don’t care.”
    “ I’m calling them,” Jon said and rose to
his feet. “What’s your father’s name?” He began looking for
numbers.
    “ No! You can’t call them.”
    “ I think you’ll find I can.”
    “ You can’t, because you won’t find them
under Davis,” Ian said.
    Jon turned
back to him.
    “ My name isn’t Ian Davis. It’s Lucien
Devlin.”
    “ Out!” Jon made to take him by the arm and
haul him towards the door.
    “ Please no!” Lucien begged. “I didn’t want
to lie to you, but they don’t understand. I can’t go back; they’ll
send me to my grandparents. I can’t leave this world, it’s my home
and I love it.”
    Youth and the
weeks of hardship and raw emotion got the better of him. He turned
his head away trying to control himself, but the shaking of his
shoulders and the odd body wracking shudder gave the game away.
    Jon watched
him for a short while; then gave one heaving shoulder a comforting
squeeze.
    “ Okay, son,” he said. “Let’s see if we can
sort this mess out.”
    Once he was
calm Lucien began to speak of his restlessness and dissatisfaction
with Settlement life, and a little about his on-going clashes with
authority figures both at home and school.
    “ All I’ve ever wanted to be is a TLO, but
my father kept telling me I’d grow out of it, and I never