The boy arrived on a morning when the rain had turned Ughoton's streets into rivers of brown sludge and the House of Chains smelled worse than usual.
Eki heard him before she saw him.
Not crying. Screaming. A full-throated, furious, lung-bursting scream that echoed off the compound walls and startled three sleeping infants awake simultaneously. The sound had a physical quality, a density, as if the child producing it had decided to weaponize his own voice and was succeeding.
Handler Udo appeared in the nursery doorway, soaking wet, carrying the source of the noise at arm's length like a man holding a bag of angry wasps.
"Take it," Udo said. His voice was flat with exhaustion. "Before I drop it."
Eki took the child. The moment he was transferred from Udo's grip to her arms, the screaming stopped. Instantly. Like a door slamming shut. The boy's chest heaved, his face was red and wet, but the sound simply ceased. He looked up at Eki with swollen eyes and hiccupped.
"He has lungs," Eki said. "That's all."
* * *
He was a sturdy child, broader across the shoulders than most his age, with a round face and thick wrists that suggested a body built for strength rather than speed. His eyes were bright, alert, looking around with the open, unguarded curiosity of a child who had not yet learned that looking too hard could hurt you.
She set him down beside the quiet boy.
The two boys stared at each other. The screamer and the silent one. The open face and the closed one.
The new boy reached out a fat hand and grabbed the quiet one's ear.
The quiet boy's expression didn't change. He didn't flinch, didn't cry, didn't pull away. He simply looked at the hand on his ear, then at the boy attached to it, with the patient, evaluating gaze that Eki had learned to find unsettling.
The new boy laughed. A bright, startling sound, the opposite of his scream in every way. It was a laugh that expected the world to laugh with it.
And the quiet boy's mouth moved. Not a smile. Not quite. But the ghost of one. The first crack in the mask.
* * *
He grabbed my ear.
Let me be clear about this. I was a man who had survived twenty-three years in Lagos by being invisible. I had spent months perfecting the art of blending in. I was a ghost in a baby's body. Disciplined. Careful. In complete control of my environment.
And this round-faced, snot-nosed, impossibly loud child crawled over, grabbed my ear, and laughed like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in the history of the world.
My face moved before I could stop it. Not a smile. I don't smile. But a twitch. A fracture in the mask.
He saw it. I know he saw it, because his face lit up like he'd won something, and from that moment, that exact moment, he decided I was his.
Not in the possessive sense. In the gravitational sense. Like a moon locking into orbit around a planet.
* * *
His name, assigned three days later by the Guild's record-keeper, was Aighon.
In the days following his arrival, Aighon established himself in the nursery with the subtlety of a rainstorm. He was loud. Relentlessly, magnificently, exhaustingly loud. He laughed when he was happy, which was often and inexplicably, given his circumstances. He screamed when he was unhappy, which was primarily when food was late or when Udo came too close.
And he followed the quiet boy everywhere. Not intermittently. Not casually. With the relentless dedication of a shadow that had gained sentience. Wherever the quiet one crawled, Aighon crawled behind. Wherever he sat, Aighon sat beside him. Usually touching. A hand on his arm. A head leaned against his shoulder. A leg thrown across his lap during sleep.
The quiet boy did not invite this. Did not encourage it. He tolerated it the way a stone tolerates moss, with silent, immovable patience.
And between the tolerance and the following, something formed that was harder than either.
END OF CHAPTER FIVE