No Cage for a Crow

Four - Doctor Peach

I followed the gaggle of boys down the alley. Or rather, pressed between two of them who helped me to hobble along, I was conveyed down the alley with increasing unease. There was one Wrong Boy to either side of me, one before, and two behind, and while their leader had suggested a chance to dry myself and recover, I was not entirely sure that I would be allowed to decline their hospitality, should I change my mind. They were a gang, living by their wits and by the points of their knives, and for all they were against the Hellhounds, I had no real reason to believe they might be on the side of the angels.

I stole a glance at the one on my right, the leader. When I was not hunched over with cold and fatigue, he might have been only about an inch taller than me. In that moment, though I felt like he towered. He certainly thought me smaller than I actually was. Perhaps that could become an advantage, though I could scarcely see how. Weak and shivering and barely able to stand on my own, perhaps I could surprise him with my height.

The thought nearly made me laugh. Nearly.

I must have made some sort of noise, because the Wrong Boy turned his head and blinked at me. His eyes were china-blue, and the fringe of lashes around them was yellow, like lemon crème. Not blond or gold, but yellow.

'You say something?'

I shook my head. 'No, I... I was just wondering why, when they were so ready to kill me, you're... not.' I stopped, not wanting to present any novel ideas.

He shook his head at my stupidity and went back to looking straight ahead. 'Wouldn't put food in our bellies,' he said. ' 'Less you're thinking we might eat ye. Which, s'pose I might if you was already cooked up, but, honest, there ain't much meat on ye.'

Perhaps he was joking, and perhaps not. The uncertainty was not reassuring.

I did not ask why they did not strip the clothes from my back and run; on the chance that had not yet occurred to them, I did not want to bring it up.

Neither did I ask why they did not think to ransom me. Perhaps they were not as clever as the Hellhounds. Perhaps they were far cleverer, had already given thought to the entire scenario, identified the problems, and rejected the possibility. Or perhaps they had given it thought and rejected it on moral grounds, as unlikely as that seemed. There was no doubt in my mind that this raggedy lot had no choice but to steal if they wanted to eat, but perhaps they drew the line at stealing people. I might almost have been ashamed of my suspicions. Their circumstances made my inferiors, as far as society was concerned, but circumstances were artifice, no more substantial than the drifting clouds. Circumstances could not be held up as a measure of human worth, a fact brought home to me by the sudden, dramatic change in my own. The poor were poor by circumstance, not by nature or design, and so I could not doubt their morals based on circumstance alone. And yet...

And yet, I could not say for certain what I would have done in their position, gnawed by hunger and presented with a short, if dubious, route to a full belly.

A problem.

My best guesses relied on my own understanding, what I myself would do in any given situation, and I could not understand these people. I was hungry, but they had grown up hungry, like as not. I was cold, but they were warm only when July sun warmed London's blackened stone. The life I had learned was different from theirs, and no amount of imagining could bridge that gap. I could not anticipate them.

The cobbles seemed to slide sideways beneath me, and I tumbled into the Wrong Boy on my left. He caught my arm and propped me upright, and as though over a great distance, I thought I heard someone say: