Chapter 8 Son of Bane #2
He entertained uncharitable thoughts as he set off deeper into the red-light district, still somewhat tame in the middle of the afternoon.
Colleen would rather kneel on a cold church floor and beg forgiveness from the empty heavens than take a step outside her narrow comfort zone.
Perhaps Mal ought to find a self-flagellating Catholic to replace him as Colleen’s betrothed and offer the lad as a sacrifice at the altar.
He buried the thoughts where no one would find them. A painless solution to the Colleen problem would present itself, but first came business.
The meeting place was a suitably derelict pub near Kieran’s flat.
Judging by the haggard women wilting against the peeling wallpaper, the pub doubled as a brothel.
The rouge on their withered cheeks looked more desperate in the light filtering through the grimy windows. Mal’s cheap suit wasn’t so cheap here.
Kieran greeted him with a wave of his pint, sloshing beer on the wobbly table.
After acquiring a pint of his own, Mal joined him.
While they were both Irish Choromancers, that was where their similarities ended.
Mal was tall and broad, and Kieran was a stout Pit bull of an Ulsterman, with keen eyes under hooded lids sunk into the closed fist of his face.
“What took you so bloody long, Mal?”
“Colleen.” A world of burdens in a single name.
Kieran chuckled, loud and sputtering like a misfiring engine. “Still got your bollocks locked up tight in her handbag, eh? You better wring that old hen's neck before she pecks your eyes out.”
Mal cut off the usual insults before they turned into a barrage. “Tell me more about this job.”
Kieran downed his pint. Propping his elbows on the table, he leaned forward.
“Our best yet, mate. I have it on good authority that a certain grimoire is in the private vault of a certain English Lord staying in a certain posh Dublin hotel as we speak. The price we could fetch for a grimoire full of the Profane Arts…”
Hunger lit a fire inside Mal as Kieran’s words trailed off. Mal needed that money as much as he needed to be better than Kieran, the best. It wasn’t just a game to Mal; he had eight other mouths to feed, and Kieran had only his own.
“I’ll make you a bet, Doyle. Whoever steals the grimoire first gets ninety percent of the earnings.”
A wicked smile stretched Kieran’s mouth. He stuck out his hand to seal it with a shake. “Deal.”
Usually when Mal came home, the youngest Bane children would launch themselves at him like miniature battering rams, wrap their arms around his legs, and force him to drag them one heavy step at a time across the small room.
By the time he traversed home after the Dublin job, the grimoire tucked inside his coat, it was quiet.
Mal had already absconded from the British Lord’s hotel room before Kieran made it past the wards.
Traversing into the Lord’s private vault had been one thing; traversing the entire contents out had been quite another.
Why settle for a grimoire, Mal had thought to himself, when such a bounty was ripe for the taking?
With the money from this job, his family wouldn’t starve. For a little while longer.
Exhausted yet triumphant, he let himself inside.
Home was a pile of stones crouched on a windswept hillside in County Cork.
Nature had overtaken the thatch roof in a carpet of dripping moss.
His Choromancy had discretely expanded the space within the stone walls to fit all ten Banes, including a private room with a separate entrance for himself, where his stash was hidden.
The lone tallow had burned down into a stump, casting the room in darkness. He squinted through the windowless gloom choked with smoke from the hearth and spotted a snoring lump.
Da was as Mal often found him: lying on a bed of ashes before the hearth, limned in the embering glow, passed out from drink. One of Mal’s siblings had already performed the nightly ritual of turning Da onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.
Da had been a hulking brute of a man until the liquor shriveled him.
Now, he was as scrawny as the old wheat stalks rotting in the field.
But liquor gave a merciless violence to his fists.
Da would come home from the pub in a foul mood, and whoever didn’t run away fast enough would be that night’s victim.
Mal used to sit facing the door when his father stumbled inside in another drunken rampage, willing the other children to stay out of sight until Da exhausted himself or passed out.
Then, when Mal had gotten big enough, he’d started hitting back.
A few good wallops after he beat Mam or the other kids, and Da had learned to find his victims outside their home.
Mal had inherited his mother’s blue eyes and everything else from his father—his height, his wide shoulders and narrow hips, the deepening furrow over hardening eyes. But he’d be damned if he turned out like the worthless lump now curled at his feet.
Da was a walking cautionary tale, Mal reminded himself, not the fate he was condemned to. Unlike Da, Mal was clever. He wasn’t content with what little they gleaned out of the hard, cold earth or what he managed to steal.
Your cleverness will kill you, Mam had warned as she took another stolen wad of money from her oldest son. She’d never asked where it came from, and he’d never told her.
When child number twelve had died of a fever in the crib, Mal had turned to his mother with condolences, expecting to see heartbreak written on the lines of her weary face.
Mam had simply set a hand on his shoulder and said with a hard, grim expression that had become permanent: “One less mouth to feed.”
Less than a year later she was buried in a hole in the ground with the thirteenth baby that had killed her. They hadn’t bothered naming him, their last sibling who had never opened his eyes. Da, out on a days-long bender, hadn’t been there.
He glared down at his sleeping father now, hating him all over again, for killing Mam, for damning them all to this meager life. He kicked Da in his distended gut, hard. The drunk barely stirred.
Mal stepped over the lump and into his private room. He went to restock his hidden supply of stolen loot, only to discover that the lot of it had been plundered.
Fury crashed over him in a wave. Someone had taken the money Mal had rightfully stolen.
Money for the Dublin move, for seven-year-old Danny’s pox treatments, for ten-year-old Seamus’s lessons, for eighteen-year-old Róisin’s dowry—gone.
All that remained was the grimoire and other trinkets lining his coat.
Not enough. Never enough.
Rage darkened the periphery of his vision, tunneling his gaze to the lump before the hearth. In two quick strides Mal was standing over his father. He heard the money he’d earned gurgling in Da’s gullet. The useless bastard had raided Mal’s coffers for the liquor that kept his fists swinging.
Mal kicked his useless father onto his back. Leaning down, he hissed, “Choke on it.”
Mal awoke to screams. He startled up in bed as the screams solidified into a wailing chant of, “Da! Wake up! Why won’t he wake up?”
Understanding dawned with the morning. Mal allowed himself a deep, contented sigh before he joined the growing clamor beyond the door.
Children in rags gathered around their father’s corpse. Chunks of vomit trickled down Da’s chin onto the hard earthen floor. His eyes, bloodshot and vacant, stared unseeing at the ceiling.
Da had boked and choked. A fitting end to his reign of terror.
Katherine, not yet four, wrapped her tiny arms around Mal’s leg. Sobs wracked her frail body. He lifted her and dried her tears. “Oh Katie, the youngest princess in the kingdom of County Cork, don’t you fret. Your big brother’s going to take care of you.”
“What h-happened to Da?” Katie hiccupped.
“Must’ve rolled over in his sleep and died. It’s all right, Princess Katie. We don’t need him. I’ve earned us enough money. One day I’ll buy you a grand castle, eh? Big enough for the lot of us.”
None of the eight tear-stained faces staring at Mal looked convinced.
They looked like frightened, helpless orphans.
With one kick, Mal had orphaned all of them.
And rather than the liberation Mal felt, slipped from the bonds of that drunk tyrant at last, the other Banes cowered together as their uncertain futures loomed like circling vultures.
Even in death, Da still terrorized them.
“We’re fucked,” whispered fifteen-year-old Liam. He clapped a hand over his mouth, his panicked eyes widening on Mal. Tension rippled in the sudden silence.
Swear words were forbidden in the Bane household, a rule Da had been exempt from as he enforced it with his fists. Da had been Catholic when it was convenient for him, striking his children for swearing or taking the Lord’s name in vain, which was why Mal took such relish in doing both now.
“Jesus, watch your fuckin’ language,” Mal said with a small smile.
Liam’s eyes widened further. His hand fell from his mouth, revealing a matching smile. “Fuck,” he tested the word, earning a collective titter from the others.
“Words like that have a time and place,” Mal told them. He glanced at the stiff body of their father, beginning to smell in the cottage’s confines. “And now is certainly one of them. Liam, help me move this fuckin’ waste of space outside.”
They rolled Da in the threadbare rug and hauled him outside. Liam fetched shovels while the other children gathered around their father in a silent vigil. All had tears in their eyes, all except for Seamus.
The ten-year-old’s keen eyes were perfectly dry as they met Mal’s. Nothing fooled the lad. Old soul, the women in the village called him. Mal knew that Seamus wasn’t an old soul but a battered one. Innocence had been beaten and starved out of him faster than the others.