Sun Thief. Jamie Buxton

Gentleman.

      ‘So, boy,’ he says, ‘you found a way round my guard. Don’t drop what you’re carrying.’ His voice is calm and level.

      I was about to, I admit, just to show that I don’t really care if I keep them or not. I can hardly breathe.

      ‘Talk, boy.’

      ‘Can’t.’

      ‘You just did.’

      ‘Found these. Cleaning. They yours?’ My voice is shaking and high. I hold out the leather roll and the heavy little bag. He takes the roll, which clinks like there’s metal in it.

      ‘You hang on to that,’ he says, nodding at the bag.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Just while we have a little chat. Now’s the time to tell me everything you know.’

      His voice is as flat as a knife. In that little shrine, with the sun slanting down through the holes in the roof, making everything striped, the truth comes pouring out of my mouth like grain from a slashed sack and it doesn’t stop until there’s no more truth to tell. The City of the Dead, the hiding, the rats, the men and all they said . . .

      I finish and wait for the punishment I’m sure is coming, but the Quiet Gentleman just asks questions.

      ‘So you think I’m a tomb robber, do you, mud boy?’

      ‘I don’t want to think anything,’ I say.

      ‘Why’s that?’

      ‘If you’re a . . . you know what, you’ll kill me.’

      ‘So you know other tomb robbers?’

      ‘No!’ I almost shout.

      ‘Then don’t you worry about dying quite yet,’ the Quiet Gentleman says pleasantly. ‘I need you alive to answer a few more questions. These people you overheard: you never saw their faces?’

      ‘Sort of. I think one of them was here the night you turned up. He left as soon as you arrived, but I recognised his voice.’ I describe him, but can’t see any change in the Quiet Gentleman’s expression.

      ‘Will you know the voices if you hear them again?’

      I nod. ‘And one was called Jatty.’

      A pause. ‘Did the other have a voice like a smear of cold vomit?’

      I nod enthusiastically, but suddenly he’s towering over me like a mountain. ‘And why did you look for my things? To steal? To sell them to these men if they found me? Are you lying? Did they catch you? Did you do a deal with them to save your life?’

      ‘NO! I just . . .’ I gabble. ‘I was scared to tell you in case you killed me. And then I was angry because you called me a cringer. I just – just wanted to look at what you had.’

      He inhales like he’s about to say something, then breathes out through his nose. When he finally speaks, I know it’s not what he was going to say at first.

      ‘Well, in that case, you’d better look before you die,’ the Quiet Gentleman says. His eyes are like little dark slits, pushed up by his cheeks.

      I open the bag. The object is wrapped in swathes of fabric.

      ‘Careful, boy.’

      And I unwrap a statue. It’s the size of a kitten and the weight of a baby: a naked woman with the head of a cow and a sun balanced between her spreading horns.

      ‘There,’ the Quiet Gentleman says. ‘Know what you’re holding?’

      ‘A goddess,’ I whisper. ‘One of the dead goddesses. Hathor.’

      The gold is warm and buttery under my fingers and somehow it feels like there’s give in it. I want to stroke it all over.

      ‘Melt her down and you could buy this whole town. Think you should do that?’

      I nod. Shake.

      ‘It’s too beautiful,’ I say. ‘It’s worth more like this.’

      ‘You’re a strange one,’ the Quiet Gentleman says. ‘I should kill you, but you’re more use to me alive than dead so here’s how you pay me for your life. I want you to keep watching and listening. You see a group, any group, of three men in the street, you tell me.’

      I nod.

      ‘Know what will happen if you sell me short?’

      I nod.

      ‘Good, because now I won’t have to watch the street, boy. I’ll just have to watch you,’ he says.

      Next day, Imi’s playing with her toys in the corner of the courtyard. She knows something’s wrong with me because her eyes keep flicking from me to the Quiet Gentleman and back again.

      My father sticks his head out of the kitchen and calls me over.

      ‘How’s it going with our friend over there?’ he half talks, half mouths. He smells of onions and woodsmoke from cooking.

      I shrug. ‘He’s fine.’

      ‘Would you say he’s taken a liking to you? Because your mother and I were wondering . . .’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Sometimes a gentleman likes the look of a boy and takes him on.’

      ‘Takes him on?’

      ‘As a companion. A servant. Remember, jobs are hard to come by in this day and age.’

      ‘But I’ve got a job,’ I protest. ‘I work here.’

      ‘There may be money in it,’ he says.

      I have never been more hurt or angry in my life.

      ‘If you’re so keen to get rid of me, why not just ask him? Better still, why not make a FOR SALE sign and hang it round my neck?’

      My father smiles weakly. ‘Come on, you know how things stand.’

      ‘He doesn’t want to take me on,’ I say bitterly. ‘He stares at me because he hates me.’

      ‘What have you done?’ he asks. Worried suddenly.

      ‘I behaved like you.’

      It’s not a clever thing to say. My father’s face twists and he lifts his hand to hit me, then remembers the Quiet Gentleman and steps away.

      ‘We need more wine,’ he barks. ‘Go and get it.’

      He says it loud enough for the Quiet Gentleman to hear, who meets my eye and moves his head ever so slightly to the courtyard gate, giving me permission to go.

      I can’t quite read his face but there’s something showing on it. Something like pity. Something like disgust at his ending up in a place like this.

      The wine merchant lives on the other side of town in a shop that smells of vinegar and mould. There are small jars of the good stuff on shelves and huge jars of the crap stuff out the back, which is what we sell to our customers.

      The only way I can carry one of these giant jars is on my head and it feels like it’s trying to drive me straight down into the earth. The wine merchant loads me up and I stagger off like a two-legged camel, top-heavy and twice my normal height, down the dusty streets to the market square. I’m spotted by a gang of boys about my age who chuck pebbles at me, but just as I’m