Beam punched him in frustration, his fist making contact with the merchant's nose and sending him clattering into the wall. Judas hurried over to him in alarm, but Greeves held his hand up for him to stop, as he staggered back to his feet, clutching his battered face. But the anger had still not faded from his eyes.
"You don't get it boy," he said quietly, as Beam stood there, breathing heavily. "I'll tell you what I believe in – why I've killed as much as I have. I believe in me. ME! Fucking me. Yeah, you talk of slavery and that?
Where do you think I crawled up from? Mm? You think you can stay a pure little uncut gem whilst going through that, eh? Naw. Naw. Fuck that.
The weak get trampled on, that's just how it goes."
"I managed," Beam said. He already knew that Greeves had guessed he was a slave.
But Greeves shook his head. "Nah. You didn't. No fucker without a sea of darkness has eyes like yours. You have the same belief as me, and yet you stand there, judging me? If you were in the same position, you'd have done the same fucking thing.
My little way out of slavery, do you know what that was? Do you know what that golden opportunity that the gods shone light on looked like? It looked like that," he said, pointing at the knife Beam was clutching. "A knife to my master's neck. He begged me for his death, just like I did to you. Only, my choice was weightier.
I knew it was either kill him as he asked me to, or waste away the rest of my life as a slave. You fucking know what I did."
Beam grit his teeth.
"If you were in that same position, would you not have slid that blade across his throat too? The fucker was begging me for it. He got overwhelmed by the weight of his own darkness. Begged his bastard slave to end his life. Would you run away from that?"
I just thought it was necessary – thought that was just how it goes... But now I'm thinking, maybe it should be the strong that I devour, eh?"
"The strong?" Beam repeated with a raised eyebrow. "That's what you got from it?"
"C'mon now, spare me your scorn. For a devil like me, that's a big insight. In fact, you should be applauding me. I've made up my mind to slowly phase myself away from all this low level business. I'm gonna challenge me a proper merchant. I'm gonna sink my teeth into them, and I'm gonna devour them," Greeves said.
Beam sighed. "I don't know how you think this makes up for what you've done."
"Pah, fuck all that. If you judge me so harshly, you should just come find me to cut me down. If you don't have the balls to do it, then I'm out, running free. N' I figure, if I challenge one of these dirty merchants – some bastards even more rotten than I am – and I eat them up, doesn't that make me something of a hero, mm? Don't I sort of pay for my sins?" Greeves said.
Beam looked at Judas. "Is he serious?"
Judas shrugged, a thoroughly confused look on his face, but he said nothing, apparently daring not to.
"What? You looking down on that too? Hah, you're hard to please kid. I thought, given your age, you'd be able to relate to that kind of delusion, y'know? Doesn't every kid wanna be a hero? See to me, the difference between a hero and a villain is just a matter of timing," Greeves flashed a grin.
"Well, what do you say, do you want in?"
"In on what, even?" Beam said.
Greeves shrugged. "In on whatever. I'm serious about it, you know. I want to see just how far I can go before I get any older. And when the time comes, when I've got the enemy cornered, might be I'll send our little lad here in to strike the heroic blow, what do you think?"