up the other side of the west wall? Can you handle them?’
‘People stare at my scars, so I’ll be the diversion,’ Red said. He was burned down the left side of his body and found it hard to close his left eye.
‘We could have a fight,’ Clump said. ‘I’ll attack you then Smash and Grab can sneak in round the back.’
‘Why can’t we fight?’ Smash and Grab asked, both saying the same thing at the same time.
‘Because I can’t run, can I?’ Clump said. His twisted right foot slowed him up. ‘You two can get in and out faster than us. As soon as we see you leave, we’ll kiss and make up.’
‘Yeah, kiss my scars,’ Red said, and got a laugh.
‘But I . . .’ Flea said.
‘Right, that’s it,’ Big said. ‘Get moving.’
‘It’s not going to work!’ Flea shouted at their backs. ‘All the other gangs will be at the Temple, especially today. But if we head for the Black Valley Bridge we might have a chance!’
No one turned. No one listened. Muttering angrily, he set off behind them.
Flea hadn’t been a member of the Temple Boys for that long. The autumn before, he had seen them at work and thought he would try to join them.
He was at a loose end. He’d been a runner for a smalltime gangster called Mosh the Dosh, but quit when he overheard Mosh was planning to sell him to a grain merchant from the coast. He’d tried to get in with an Upper City gang, but a dozen other street children with exactly the same idea had chased him off. He couldn’t return to grave robbing and had already run away from the stink of a glue factory, where his job had been to tend the fires under the massive cauldrons of bone, skin and slaughterhouse offcuts. But going solo was too dangerous. Only that morning he’d seen a beggar lying in the gutter with his throat cut, stripped of his all clothes. Passers-by stepped over him, round him, ignored him as if he didn’t exist.
So he’d been watching the world go by in the Upper City when he’d spotted two red-headed boys, twins, loitering by the entrance to a yard not far from him. It looked as if they were trying to hide at the same as watching the street, but they stood out like a pair of sore thumbs. It was obvious they were waiting for someone to rob.
A merchant came out of the inn with a swirl of flowing robes. He stroked his oiled beard and put a scented handkerchief to his bulbous nose, as if the smell of the street was just too, too much for him. The twins stiffened like dogs spotting a rat. Flea thought they made pretty rubbish thieves.
Then a boy on crutches, who had been leaning against the wall, swung himself across the road and tapped the merchant on his arm.
The merchant looked down impatiently, listened, then glanced across at the scowling twins. Understanding dawned on his face. He patted the boy on the head, reached into a pocket and handed him a coin. But as he made off down the street his hand strayed to his hip, where he patted a small bulge.
Flea smiled and waited. Two purses, he thought. One for loose change, one rather more promising – and the merchant had just given away where it was. The twins made a great show of scowling at the merchant as he set off down the street. What he did not spot was another boy walking towards him, who seemed to trip and cannon into him before running off.
The merchant shouted at the boy’s retreating back, walked on and then patted the place where his fat little purse had been. It was gone. He fumbled his robes, looked at the ground and stared accusingly towards the twins. They hadn’t moved. He looked down the street, but even if he had been able to spot the small boy, it wouldn’t have made any difference: Flea’s expert gaze had seen him pass the purse to a one-eyed boy, who in turn had handed it on to a boy with a twitch. It was the perfect set-up.
The merchant yelled, ‘Stop thief !’ But who to stop? The stream of people in the street flowed on, sweeping away the twins and all the other gang members.
‘Misdirection’ was the longest word Flea knew. It was the art of making someone look so hard at one thing that they missed what was going on under their nose. He had just seen it in action.
Flea had a few tricks of his own. He followed the twins all the way back to the den and had been hanging around with the Temple Boys ever since.
But that was then. Now Flea and the gang were close to the Temple, picking their way through the dark alley over the rubbish that had accumulated in the past few days.
At the end of the alley they could see Temple Square bathed in sunlight: a big, clean space, watched over by the Temple Police who in turn were watched over by Imperial Roman soldiers. That was the system – if the Temple Police ever lost their grip and a riot started, for example, then the Romans would step in and start killing. The soldiers didn’t care. They were as hard as stone and as obedient as well-trained dogs.
But before the gang could split up and get to their tasks, the alleyway was blocked by a hulking figure with a broken nose and greasy hair plastered forwards on to a bulging forehead.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘A bunch of rejects heading for the Temple?’
The thick leather straps around each wrist marked him out as one of the Butcher Boys, a gang from the Lower City who hung out near the slaughterhouses. Normally they didn’t come this close to the Temple, but the rich holiday pickings had lured them up the hill.
‘We’ve got a right.’ Big tried to square up to him. ‘We belong up here. We’re the Temple Boys. We work the Temple.’
‘You’re pathetic losers,’ the Butcher Boy spat back. ‘You’ve got no rights unless I say so. Now get lost.’
‘Who’s going to make us?’
Flea admired Big for trying. On the other hand, he knew things would only end badly if they carried on like this. Big would fight, then the others would join in, then the rest of the Butcher Boys would get involved and the Temple Boys would be badly beaten. He felt an all too familiar hot swirl of fear in his guts. Someone had to do something.
‘Wait!’ he shouted as loudly as he could. He wished his voice did not sound quite so thin, but it had done the trick. The thug looked down at him.
‘You talking to me?’
‘Yeah, you. Wait,’ Flea repeated. ‘We don’t even want to hang out at the steps. We’re going somewhere better.’
‘Piss off.’
‘But that’s just what we want to do,’ Flea said. ‘We don’t want trouble. We just want to get on.’
The Butcher Boy looked at Flea, then away, then at Flea again. Then he smiled.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where?’
‘The Black Valley Bridge,’ Flea told him. ‘There’s a magician coming to town. He can make pigs fly and dead men dance. He’ll snap his fingers and the Temple’ll turn to mud, then he’ll snap them again and it’ll turn back to stone.’
‘Believe that, do you?’ The Butcher Boy looked over his shoulder and called out to a minion who was watching his back, ‘De lickle Temple Boys believe in magic!’ He turned to Big. ‘Suckers. Get on out of it. But if I see you anywhere near the Temple, you’re dead.’
Flushed and furious, Big pushed Flea out of the way and led the Temple Boys across the square.
As soon as they were out of sight of the other gang, Big grabbed Flea and pinned him against the wall.
‘What