Tenth Man by Tamara Sheehan	Table of Contents Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 appeared in issue 209.
Chapter 7

Saul stared down at the darkness. The pit was so deep that the flashlight beam could not illuminate the bottom.

A rich, wet, rotting smell was curling up from the mouth of the hole. The warmth, after the shocking cold of his plunge, was a welcome shift. Somewhere he could hear the booming echo of water, the distant roar of cars overhead. He ran his hands along the circumference of the hole. I could probably fit through, he thought.

A voice came from the darkness below. “Who’s there?”

The sound startled him. He shone the flashlight down again, but the beam revealed nothing back more darkness. He stretched out his consciousness, aware suddenly of how tired he was, aware of the pull of his familiar, dozing on his couch. He touched a familiar mind.

Well, a least I’m in the right place. He squatted, edged his legs over the lip and plunged down.

It was a surprisingly short drop to the bottom, the bricks were dull and dark with slime, and the sound of his feet on the brickwork echoed down and back. He flicked on the flashlight and swung the beam around.

Almost at his feet, a camping cot was propped beside a grimy back pack. A ceramic mug and a few scraps of food were littered around it. This level was habitable, almost dry. The sewers rushing distant and unseen filled up the cavern with strange, sourceless noise. The brick arched up and around him, shrouded with mould and cobwebs, the tunnel stretched out too distant for the light to penetrate.

Something moved. The sound echoed up and vanished. Saul stiffened; he swung the torch toward the noise. There, where the tunnel became unplumbable and black, was a heap of rags moving toward him.

He stared, not a heap of rags, but a man so shrouded in coats and hoodies and tattered nylon blankets that he seemed buried beneath it all. Long, greasy hair curled out from under the hood. In his dirty fingers he held a bag of chips up to his chest. The plastic crinkled as nervous fingers flexed on the bag.

The man started forward, half belligerent, half cowering. “What do you want?”

“Are you... I think I might be looking for you.” Saul lowered the beam of light and raise his empty hand.

“I won’t go back.” His voice echoed back form the walls. “You think you’re the first one he’s sent? You’re not. Leave me alone. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Saul’s heart quickened. He glanced back up at the drain, too high to reach.

“They sent you. I’m not going back.” The man was shivering despite the mounds of clothes. “I won’t go back!”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Saul told him softly. He felt for the paper in his pocket and held it up. The blue biro glittered in the yellow light. “I’m looking for a ring and I think you might have it. Do you?

The man under the coats shook silently for a moment. “Ring?”

“Yes. Do you have it?”

“What have you got to eat?”

The question startled him. He hesitated, then slid the backpack from his shoulder and set it down. There was an few energy bars floated near the top of his sack, under it the map glimmered in its plastic wrapping; a crunched cello package of soda crackers nicked from a restaurant, and gum, squashed into putty, near the bottom.

He held up the energy bar. “How’s this?”

The man drew in a quick breath. “Give it to me.” He gestured with one hand, clinging to the wall with the other.

“First answer me. Do you have the ring?”

“My ring.” The hood nodded. The man was hunched against the wall, his hand outstretched. “You promised.”

Saul let the package go, watched the coats whirl as the man turned, crouched. The coats settling around him like a nest.

Saul felt a prickle of embarrassment. What am I doing shaking down a homeless guy for a rich man’s ring? He tried to think of something to say. “What’s in the chip bag?”

“’S water.” He ripped the wrapping from the bar.

He was tearing the bar with his teeth, chewing fast, gulping in air as he did. He’s starving. Saul realized. He felt another pang of guilt and reached into the bag and pulled out the crunched soda crackers, sneering at himself.

“Hey, you want these?”

“What do I got to do?”

“Trade you for the ring.”

“Forget it.” He licked the residue of the bar from his fingers, licked out the wrapper.

“God.” Saul hissed, disgusted by himself. “Just take them, all right? Take them.”

The man under the coats hesitated, fingers flexing in mid-air. “Serious?”

“Yeah.”

He snatched them and tore open the wrapper. For the first time, Saul saw his face. He had a long, pointed nose and long blond hair that clung in a greasy mass to his face. His eyes were large and blue, his skin anemic, covered in scabs.

“How long have you been down here?” Saul asked, watching him lick crumbs from his hands. He saw the ring on his hand like a scar.

“Since I was a kid.” He raised the chip bag to his lips and drank from the awkward flask.

“When was the last time you were on the surface?”

The mass of coats rose and fell in a shrug.

“What’s your name?”

The other man looked at him for a long time, as if trying to guess why Saul would ask such a question. “What’s yours?”

“Saul. Saul Hornsby.”

He swallowed. “Toven.” His voice was quiet, suddenly drained.

The name rang familiar somehow. “Nice to meet you, Toven.” Saul said it in a school teacher voice.

Toven’s chest rose and fell in a series of sharp breaths. “You can’t have it!” His voice shot from wall to wall, rang down the brickwork corridor.

Saul held out his hands, scrambled backward. “Look, I don’t want to upset you.”

But Toven hadn’t fled, he hadn’t even moved. He was still sitting against the wall, as if in a nest of coats and wrappers. Even though his face had disappeared under the hood again, Saul felt his eyes.

“I’m in a bit of trouble if I go back without the ring. Look, maybe we can make a deal or something?”

Toven’s hands came out of the sleeves, bracing himself against the floor. His nose appeared from under the hood. “Audel hasn’t told you, has he?”

Saul stiffened.

“How do you know he sent me?”

Toven chuckled. “You don’t know,” he said, his eyes focused somewhere in the shadows above them, “you don’t know because, no, he didn’t tell you. It was my mother’s. I played with it when she kept it in her box, she promised me I could have it. She promised. It was my grandpa’s and when I turned eighteen she gave it to me. To me.” He gasped in a breath that sounded like a sob. “She gave it to me. It’s mine. I could have ruined him. I could have taken everything from him but I didn’t. I just took what was mine.”

Silence stretched out between them.

“It’s all I’ve got left.” The coats shook.

Saul realized Toven was crying. Fat, oily tears were carving paths through the grime on his face, skirting around the scabs. “I only took what was mine.” He backed against the wall, cowering and belligerent all at once. “I’ll kill you if you try to take it.” His voice echoed down the tunnel and fell to distortion. “I could kill you and no one would know.”

Saul knew he ought to feel fear and couldn’t summon it. Instead he was silent, watching the sobbing, shaking wreck prostrate before him. He had never seen a man who looked less capable of violence.

“I wouldn’t steal it.” He said in a gentle tone. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I just want to know something.”

“What? What do you want to know?”

He set the flashlight down so that the beam arched over them, trailing over the wet brickwork, casting a faint light on everything. Then he reached out with his consciousness, touched the other man’s mind as gently as he could.

“I just want to see...”

Find the past.

Toven’s mind was a causeway in a sea of images. He knew what it was to be hunted. He touched the memory of terror, a glimpse of shocking familiarity, of terror. Caught, hissing, spitting, a rain of blows on his face, his arms.

Toven pulled back, swatted at the air before him as if a fly was there. “Stop it.”

But Saul reached out again. A city that was not Veruca. Streets golden with lamplight. Being dragged toward a car. A narrow-faced man dragging another who kicks and shouts like a spoiled, obstinate child. Cobblestones and torn-up knees. Audel. A reaction and a familiarity that Saul could not understand. Hate and blood and an instant of such terrible shame that Saul recoiled from it.

“Stop that!” Toven sprang forward, shoved him. His weight sent Saul slipping over the slick brickwork. The his hands went to his head in fists, as if to pound out the images that Saul had dredged. Slumped into the shadows, cringing and curling, he pounded on his head with his fists, rocking and moaning rhythmically.

Saul stared, pity and revulsion fighting. Sounds came out of the shadows, mumbling, the wet sounds of tears. Unable to stop himself, Saul spoke. “Why did Audel hunt you down?”

Toven’s attitude changed. He lunged forward, caught Saul’s wrists, wrenched Saul toward him. “I thought I was cracking at last, but I’m not. It’s not me, it’s you. You’re a wizard. You went inside my head.”

Momentarily stunned, Saul shook his head. “How can you tell?”

“I just know.” His sour breath assailed Saul’s nose. He could feel fear transmuting into the baser material of violence, it radiated from Toven. “Don’t do that again. Don’t ever do that again.”

Saul’s heart beat fast in his chest. The blood made his ears ring. Fear was building again. “Toven-”

“You’ve got no right to what’s in my head.”

“Toven, you’re frightening me.”

The grip on his arms suddenly loosened. Blood rushed into his hands and made Saul’s finger tips tingle. He flexed his hands, watched as Toven stepped back into shadow, suddenly abashed. He hugged the wall, fingers of one hand splayed. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s all right.” Saul answered, sliding back a step.

“But why you? He hates wizards.” He peered at Saul from under his hood. “Why did he send you?”

Saul was quiet.

Toven suddenly laughed. “See how it is?” He crowed. “Now you get it. No one likes to talk about themselves.”

Saul smiled. “All right. Audel knows something that could get me arrested.”

Toven came forward in a burst of speed, stopped, stared at Saul’s face with a strange expression. Suddenly he was grinning, showing two rows of straight, brown teeth in the watery light, his blue eyes were impossibly large. He crouched, looking upward at him. He whispered, “Hey, I know you. I’ve met you before. Up on the surface.”

Before Saul could voice his bewilderment, He spoke again. He drew out the words like a magician revealing a dove in his hand. “You’re Nick Solomon.”

Proceed to chapter 8...

Copyright © 2006 by Tamara Sheehan