The Whatnot. Stefan Bachmann

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СКАЧАТЬ in bramble patches.

      He continued to hurry, peering at everyone and wiping his nose. The pubs were bursting with light and riotous war songs. Some ways up ahead a door opened and a great fist punched out holding a filthy jabbering fool by the collar and depositing him in the green-tinged ice of a gutter. Closer, a street circus was setting up its hoops and props. An organ-grinder was playing a jangling, off-key tune. Pikey spotted a lady pulling a miniature hot-air balloon beside her, its basket filled with opera glasses and a fan and other necessaries. He saw someone wearing a pair of newfangled shoes, built of clockwork and powered by coal, that lifted your feet so that you didn’t have to lift them yourself. The man who wore them was galumphing about like a two-ton elephant, and Pikey was careful to give him a wide berth.

      He slowed to a walk, fishing in his pocket for the bread. His hand had dropped from his clouded eye, but he didn’t care. He doubted he would be the first person noticed here. The streets were becoming wider. The crowds dwindled away and all went very quiet, the air somehow heavy, as if all the snow that was waiting to fall was pressing down on it, compacting it over the city. Only the occasional steam coach passed by now. Pikey looked up at the soaring stone buildings, with their spires and gables and wrought iron anti-faery gates.

      He rounded a corner. He didn’t know where he was, but it must have been a rich place. The houses here seemed absolutely bursting with light. It was almost as if there were no floors or walls inside them and they were simply great hollow shells, little suns burning within.

      Traffic had picked up again. Well-bundled ladies and gentlemen were coming up the street, canes swinging, gowns whispering beneath heavy furs. Steam coaches and mechanical horse-and-fours rattled past, leaving swaths of coal smoke behind them. All were headed to the same destination—a great palace of a house, four floors and a green metal roof, and all of its windows, all the way to the roof, lit, punching golden holes in the night.

      Pikey approached the house, gnawing at his bread. He watched from behind a lamppost as a great fat lady went up the steps to the door. She wore a delicate hat shaped like a fly and was practically dripping with diamonds. But she didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked downright peeved. Pikey wondered how anyone could be peeved when they had so many diamonds. And going into such a bright, warm house. …

      “Ah, the Wyndhammer War Ball,” said a droopy, tucked-up gentleman, passing close by the lamppost. A very tall lady walked at his side, and he was hurrying to keep up. “What a dashing good bash this will be, don’t you think, dear? Don’t you?”

      After a while, Pikey spotted the telltale red-and-blue of a leadface and slipped behind a coach wheel, walking along with it as it rumbled over the cobbles. The coach wheel was taller than he was and hid him right to the top of his head. The leadface marched past. As soon as he was gone, Pikey hurried back to the huge house and swung over the iron railing, onto the steps that went down to the servants’ entrance. He didn’t want to leave yet. It was getting colder, but the lights from the windows were so cheery. They shone down onto his face and he imagined he could almost feel their warmth. The panes were fogged right over it was so hot inside.

      He sat down on the fourth step from the top and bit away at his bread. It was hard as a rock and full of gritty kernels that probably weren’t flour. Pikey liked it quite a lot. The last carriage left. Faintly the sound of an orchestra drifted into the street. He heard muffled laughter and loud, happy voices.

      And then he heard a different sound from the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. A scuttling, scraping noise, like knives dragging swiftly over stone. He sat up.

      Was it a rat? The windows of the servants’ hall were dark. No doubt everyone was in the kitchens, wiping and boiling and building towering platters of pork chops and hothouse fruits.

      A steam coach turned onto the street, headlamps blazing. The light sliced through the railings, sending spokes of shadow spinning along the wall. In the blackness at the bottom of the steps, a pair of eyes glimmered. Two huge silver globes, there for a second, then gone.

       Faery.

      Pikey scooted up one step, muscles tense, ready to run. The noise came again, the sharp flutter, and this time it was accompanied by a weeping, thin and high, like a child crying.

      Another steam coach coughed and sputtered up the street. The two globes lit again as the headlamps passed, then vanished into the dark. Whatever was at the bottom of the steps began to move.

      It approached slowly, painfully, a pale slender thing dragging heavy black wings behind it like a cloak.

      Pikey’s heart skipped a beat. That weren’t no cobble spryte.

      The wings were huge, ruffled with dark, spiny feathers, and the blue-lipped mouth was riddled with teeth. A black tongue flicked from it every few seconds. But when Pikey peered at the faery it didn’t look as if it were about to gnaw his leg off. Rather, it looked as if it were about to drip into a puddle. One of its wings hung limp, the feathers smashed. The bone was bent at a hideous angle.

      Pikey eyed the creature as it pulled itself up the stairs, keeping his bread safely behind his back. The faery might not seem dangerous, but faeries could look however they wanted to look if it suited their fancy. He wasn’t about to fall for any hookem-snivey.

      “Boy?” it said in a high, whistling voice. “Boy?”

      Just like a baby, Pikey thought. He frowned.

      “Boy?” It had reached the seventh step. It stretched a thin-fingered hand up toward Pikey, pleading.

      “What d’you want?” Pikey asked gruffly. He shoved the bread into his pocket and glanced around to make sure no one was near. Fraternizing with faeries was dangerous. If anyone so much as smelled of spells or piskie herbs, it was off to Newgate, and Pikey had heard there was a kindly looking old man there in a butcher’s apron, and he was always weeping, and he would weep and weep as he pulled your fingernails out, but he would interrogate you until you’d say anything. Then you’d be sent to a different prison. Or hanged. Whatever the case, you were in for it. Pikey had been in for it all day, and he’d had enough.

      The faery continued up the steps, its round eyes locked on his.

      “What?” Pikey snapped. “You can’t have my bread if that’s what you want. I ran a long way for it. Go away.”

      “Boy,” it said, yet again. “Wing.”

      “Yeh, looks broken to me. Rotten luck.” Some servant in the downstairs had probably caught it stealing and had smashed it with a frying pan. Served it right, too.

      “Help.” The faery was on the step below Pikey now, looking up at him with great mirror eyes that seemed to grow larger with every breath.

      “I ain’t helping you.” Pikey turned his face away. His gaze flickered back. He didn’t want to be awful. But he wasn’t about to put his neck out for a faery. Someone might be watching from one of those glowing windows. A street sweeper might pass just in that instant. Pikey couldn’t be seen with it. It was hard enough staying alive with one eye looking like a puddle of rain.

      “Please help?” The voice was so human now; it sent a little stab through Pikey’s heart despite himself. The faery was just bones, a few thin sticks wrapped in papery skin. And it was hurting. He wouldn’t leave a dog like that. He wouldn’t even leave a leadface like that.

      He frowned harder and joggled his knee. Then he leaned forward and СКАЧАТЬ