Never Knew Another by J. M. McDermott Page A

I don’t hire dirty people. Gotta have clean hands.”
    Djoss rubbed his hands together. They were nearly black from grime and calloused.
    “He ain’t our dad,” said the middle-sized boy.
Djoss said nothing. He frowned down at his hands. There was nowhere to clean them. The water was all muddy here.
“Hey,” said the middle boy. “I’m hungry.”
    “Get out of here, all of you,” the butcher growled.
    “I said…” The middle boy squatted down, coiled and tense. He jumped the fence. His brothers followed. The middle boy darted around the butcher, making for the shop. When the butcher went after him, yelling, the other two boys leaped after pigs at the fringe of the huddled masses.
    Djoss reached over the fence and grabbed the nearest child’s earlobe, pulling up the tallest one. The youngest boy had managed to tackle a pig, and hang onto it. The middle boy came running out of the butcher’s shop. His hands were bloody, but he didn’t have any meat.
    The butcher came out next, mean-eyed, a huge skewer in his hand. His face was so red that it looked like the veins on his skull were going to burst.
    Djoss let go of the boy he held and stepped over to the butcher with his hands up. “Hey, don’t kill the little bastard! He’s just hungry!”
    The butcher raised the skewer higher, trembling.
    Djoss grabbed the man’s forearm and stopped the butcher’s strongest swing as casually as holding an egg over his head. Djoss was the stronger man, by far.
    The butcher spit in Djoss’ face.
    Djoss laughed. “I’m on your side, pigman.”
    The youngest and the oldest got a pig between them and ran for it. The middle boy tried to catch another, but the pigs were too fast. He fell on his face. He got up from the muck, laughing, and dove again.
    Djoss threw the butcher back against the wall and snatched the middle boy. He hefted the fighting child up like a sack. To the butcher, he said, “Be back with your pig in a minute.” Djoss looked over at Rachel and shook his head at her not to follow. Rachel stood up and leaned against the wall across the butcher’s yard to wait in plain sight of the angry man.
The butcher stepped over the fence.
    Rachel snapped her finger at the butcher. “You all right?”
    The butcher sneered at her. “I’m going to get my pig back. Going to the king’s men for it. If that’s your man, I ain’t paying reward for what he stole. That was a grind, and I know it.”
    “Djoss is getting your pig back,” Rachel replied. “Whether you pay him or not, you still get it back.”
    The butcher didn’t say anything. He just walked off, looking for guards.
    Rachel left, too, in a hurry. Farther up the street, Djoss carried the pig under his arm.
    Rachel shook her head. “We go back, he might get us arrested.”
    Djoss looked up and down the street. There weren’t any king’s men, yet, and running would only draw attention. He pointed off down the street behind him. “Boys ran off that way, to this alley.” he said, “Maybe got somewhere to cook it that way.”
    At the corner of it, peering down the long, narrow path between two buildings, the alley was busier than the street. After the buildings ended, it even opened up into a kind of yard, but what exactly was back there was hard to see from the street. There were people moving around, there, and sitting along the sides of the buildings, and moving around. A man in a red cloak stepped out from a doorway right at the front. “You going back there?” he said. “Yeah,” said Djoss. “You stopping us?”
    “No.” He was ugly and thin. He smoked a pipe with pink smoke and watched from a doorway. “Don’t cause trouble. King’s men come looking for your pig, I might not stop them, if they want it bad enough.”
    Djoss nodded.
    Past the alley was an abandoned shipping yard. People lived there in tents and old crates. Rachel scanned the crowd while she and Djoss walked around. She set her eye on a woman dressed in the same kind of