Chapter Eight

Cat knew very well why Kilter wanted to leave the lamps unlit. But what had he been about, staring into the mirror when she came up behind him? Surely he must have been forced long ago to accept the way he looked.

She tried again to imagine how it might feel to go through life with such a countenance, one that looked half melted away. Her heart clenched in sympathy.

Yet here in the soft gloom of the sitting room, he didn’t look so different from other men. The faint light from the windows threw half his face into shadow—only the lopsided haircut looked terribly strange.

She wondered why he didn’t shave the left side of his head. Some act of defiance, perhaps. He had very nice hair, thick and glossy.

“Talk to me,” she begged, not caring for the unfairness of the request. She had no right to ask him to amuse her. But desperation made her reach out to him in helpless appeal. “Tell me about yourself. How did you come to this position, guarding other men’s prisoners?”

“Are you his prisoner, then?”

“Please, I don’t want to talk about me. I need a distraction.” Because if her mind kept chasing itself like a rat in a maze, she feared she would self-destruct.

“So that’s what I am. A distraction.” Irony colored his voice.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be patronizing.”

“You’re not. I guess it’s easy to be curious about someone like me.”

“Do you mind?” A foolish question, but it was out before she could catch it back. Of course he minded. Who wouldn’t?

He took a moment before replying. The dim light trickled over him when he tipped his head. “No point in minding, is there? Where would it get me?”

The same might be said about Cat’s position here in Boyd’s hands. What good would it do to rail and weep? She would still have to obey him, and answer his sexual demands when the moment came.

She said softly, “I admire your ability to be so philosophical about it.”

“It didn’t come easy. Sometimes there are no choices.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. Who would have thought they could be so much alike, this man from the streets of a strange city and she, cast out into the world?

“You’ll be wondering how I got like this. It’s the first thing anyone wants to know.”

“Is it?”

“Some people just come right out and ask. Some don’t, but you can see the question in their eyes. Some scream it, taunt me with it.”

“How many look past it to the man within?”

He gave a sudden laugh as if startled. “Very few.”

Yet as Cat could sense sitting there with him in the dark, much lay within this man: strength, intelligence, and kindness. Pain too, and perhaps sensitivity he sought to hide. She didn’t know how or why she could tell so much about him; she just could.

“Do you mind talking about what happened to you, how you…”

“Got like this?” Again he hesitated, so long this time she didn’t believe him when he at last said, “No, I don’t mind. It was an accident. After my mother died”—his voice faltered once more—“I went to work. That’s not to say I didn’t work at various jobs before that. What child in this city doesn’t work? But Ma was earning up till then, so I didn’t have to support myself alone. After, I learned what it is to work, to labor till you can’t put one foot in front of the other and you ache to the bone.”

“What sort of work did you do?”

“I got a place installing boiler units for a man called Gorman. I was skinny enough back then to fit into small places, which was an advantage to him. We are not talking grand jobs, here. Gorman was small time, did work in the homes of people who could barely afford heat. Everything was low grade and low dollar, including the fitting that blew out at me when we were running a test on a new install one day in January. Not an uncommon story; it happens every day. But since I was crammed in a closet with the unit at the time, checking the seams, I had no place much to go when it blew. No time, either. When one of those things goes at full boil, it’s instantaneous.”

“I see.”

“Gorman didn’t get me out of the space right away, either. He had a big belly on him and couldn’t squeeze in to fetch me. I wound up crawling out myself, but I don’t remember that, or a whole lot that came right after.”

“You must have been taken to hospital.”

“Not then. Children who work for the likes of Gorman heal on their own or not at all. He dragged me back to the dorm where he kept those of us without proper homes, and I lay for days till another of the boys, Benny, brought a doc. By then it was too late to do much for me. Likely not much could have been done anyway.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

Nearly the same age she, Cat, had been when Everett Kraus came into her life.

“What happened after you healed?”

He laughed again, a harsh sound. “After? Well, Gorman didn’t have any more use for me, and he tossed me out on what remained of my ear as soon as I could stand. I hung around the waterfront, freezing and hoping for handouts or odd jobs, but handouts were few. I finally got taken on by a man named Cox, to look after his dogs.”

Kilter faltered for the first time, and Cat sensed darkness arising in him. At last he took up the tale once more. “He kept his dogs shut away, see, and me with them, so it didn’t matter how ugly I was. I found out real quick the dogs never saw daylight unless they went into the pit.”

“Pit?”

“Fighting.” Kilter drew a breath that expanded his chest. “Of all the terrible things I’d seen by then, I’d never imagined anything as awful as that. I was meant to feed them, clean up after them, and doctor their wounds. I knew how it felt to carry such ugly wounds. And they were vicious creatures, but they accepted me as one of them.”

He paused again and resumed on a seemingly different subject. “Do you know they’re talking of banning dog fighting in this city? Wealthy men are building steam-powered metal dogs they put up against one another for vast amounts of money, so I’ve heard. But it still happens in back alleys, just what Cox did.”

“It seems a lot of creatures and people are still slaves.”

“You said that before.”

“It’s how I feel,” Cat admitted.

“Then why stay with him?”

“I have reasons. There are always reasons. How long did you stay with Cox?”

“Too long. At first I had nowhere else to go. Then it became so I didn’t want to leave unless I could take at least some of the dogs with me. The first time I tried, Cox caught me and beat me within an inch of my life. I realized then I couldn’t do it on my own but needed help. But who’ll help a kid who’s nothing but a monster?”

Not a monster at all, Cat thought. She sensed a bedrock of beauty and decency inside this man. And sitting with him in the dim light she truly could almost forget his appearance.

“So what did you do?”

“Well, a short time after that, I met Tate Murphy.”

“Your boss?”

“The same. He and some of his pals came across me cornered by a crowd of thugs one evening down on the waterfront. It happened a lot back then, before I got big enough to defend myself properly. My life turned that night, right enough. He chased the thugs away, gave me his hand and a meal, the first proper meal I’d had in weeks. I told him about Cox and what he was doing, putting his dogs in the pit. He told me he’d look into it. I didn’t believe it, of course. How could a boy not so much older than me take on somebody like Cox? But only a week or so later Cox’s place got raided by the police, the dogs were seized, and I was out of a job.”

“Just as well,” Cat murmured. “The man was a brute, and that was no place for you.”

“Still, a belly with some food in it beats starvation. For you see, though the dogs got taken into care, I didn’t.”

Cat clutched at the arms of her chair. Her heart went out to the mutilated lad with nowhere to turn. “What did you do?”

“I slept in doorways for a few nights and got hungry, and thought about the choice I’d just made. But, Miss Delaney, there was a lesson to be learned in it: sometimes a person has to weigh in on the side of right even if it costs everything. You might want to keep that in mind.”

Cat’s heart leaped in her breast. Had he told that whole terrible story only to her benefit? Slowly, she said, “Point taken, Mr. Kilter. But what if the cost of making such a choice for right falls not upon you but on someone you love? What if you knew the man’s dogs would be killed as a result of your defiance?”

“Well, I suppose that would be a different kettle of fish. But I’ve also learned things like that tend to work out if you just keep on believing.”

“Believing is very hard, in darkness.” How strange it felt to be sitting here at the tail end of the night discussing such things with a virtual stranger.

“That it is. But the actual act of believing brings good things.”

He could say that with his ruined face and bleak past? “That hasn’t been my experience.”

“Nor mine, much of the time. But you have to keep your heart high anyway, despite the taunts and the anger and the urge to strike out and treat people as they deserve. Sometimes,” his tone became rueful, “you do strike out, nonetheless.”

“So, Mr. Kilter,” she challenged softly, “what good came to you out of your selfless act on the behalf of those dogs?”

“Tate found me, came looking for me, no less, got me a place to live, and offered me work when I was able.”

“What sort of work?”

“At first, just tasks about his place. Then, when I thought I could face people, I ran errands. Later I took up the job I have now.”

It must be difficult for him to face people, even now. Gently she said, “And you grew?”

He answered with a rueful laugh in his deep voice, “Grew and grew. I do not think Tate expected that, but he never left off feeding me, for all that. It is something you will do well to remember, Miss Delaney: there are folks in this world who won’t fail you, no matter what.”