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The faery kept walking. He didn’t even glance back.
She bounded after him. “You know, what if someone lives in that cottage? Have you thought about that? And what if they don’t like us? What’ll happen then?”
The faery kept his eyes locked straight ahead. “I suspect we’ll die. Of boredom. I’ve heard tell there’s a little girl in these woods, and she follows folk about and jabbers at them until their ears shrivel up and they go deaf.”
Hettie slowed, frowning at the faery’s back. She hoped he would drown in a bog.
She thought about that for a while. If he did—drown in a bog—it would be frightening. He would lie under the water, and his long white face and white hands would be all that showed out of the murk. And perhaps his green eye, too, glowing even a thousand years after he was dead. She wouldn’t want to see it, but she didn’t suppose she would object much if it happened. This was his fault, after all.
Finally, when even the faery butler was breathless and dragging his feet, they stopped. Hettie collapsed in a heap in the snow. The faery butler sat against a tree. The woods were dead-dark now. On her first night in the Old Country, Hettie had slept against a tree, too, thinking that the roots might be warmer than the ground, trees being alive and all. She soon learned better. The trees here weren’t like English trees. They weren’t rough and mossy like the oak in Scattercopper Lane. They were cold and smooth as polished stone, and she had woken with the ghastly feeling that the roots had begun to wrap around her while she slept, as if to swallow her up.
The snow was cold, but at least she was not in danger of being eaten by a tree. She curled up for the seventh time and went to sleep.
The sound of footfalls woke her.
At first she thought the faery butler must be up again, pacing, but when she peered around the tree, she saw he was lying still. His gangly legs were propped up akimbo, long white hands limp in the snow. He made only very small sounds as he slept, little wheezing breaths that formed clouds in the air.
Hettie sat bolt upright. Something was moving through the trees, quickly and stealthily toward them.
Tap-tap, snick-snick. Hard little feet on roots, then on snow, limping closer.
She remembered the faeries she had seen the day they had arrived in the Old Country, the wild, hungry ones with their round, bright eyes. They had all leaped and swarmed around her, poking and prodding until the faery butler had chased them off with a knife. For a few nights they had followed, slinking along at the edge of sight, darting around the trees and giggling, but after a while they had seemed to tire of the strangers and had vanished back into the woods.
Only the cottage remained.
Hettie crawled around the tree trunk. The faery butler was still asleep. She poked him in his ribs, hard.
He grunted. Slowly his face turned toward her, but his eye remained shut. The green-glass one was dull, tarnished lenses loose across its frame. Hettie shivered.
She looked back around the tree.
And found herself staring straight into the red-coal eyes of a gray and peeling face.
“Meshvilla getu?” it said, and placed one long finger to its lips.
Hettie made a little noise in her throat. The skin of its cheeks curled like ash from a burned-up log. Its breath was cold, colder than the air. It blew against her, and she could feel it freezing in a slick sheen on her nose. It smelled rotten, wet, like a slimy gutter.
“Meshvilla?”
She wanted to run, to scream. Panic welled in her lungs. She couldn’t tell if the gray thing’s voice was threatening or wheedling, but it was without doubt a dark voice, a quiet, windy voice that prickled up her arms.
“No,” she squeaked, because back in Bath that had always been the right answer for changelings like her. “No, go away.”
The creature pushed closer, eyeing her. Then its horrid hands were feeling over her cheeks, running through the branches that grew from her head. Bone-cold fingers came to rest on her eyes.
Hettie screamed. She screamed louder than she had ever screamed in her life, but in that vast black forest it was just a little baby’s wail. It was enough to wake the faery butler, though. He sat up with a start, green clockwork eye clicking to life. It swiveled once, focused on the gray-faced faery.
The faery butler jerked himself to his feet. “Valentu! Ismeltik relisanyel?”
The gray face turned, its teeth bared. Hettie heard it hiss. “Misalka,” it said. “Englisher. Leave her. Leave her to me.”
Hettie began to shake. The long, cold fingers were pressing down. An ache sprang up behind her eyes. She knew she should fight, lash out with all her might, but she could not make herself move.
The faery butler had no such troubles. A knife dropped from inside his sleeve and he swung it in a brilliant arc toward the other faery, who let out a grunt of surprise. It was all Hettie needed. She threw herself to the ground and began to crawl desperately around the base of the tree. Once on the other side, she wrapped her arms around the trunk and peered in terror at the battling faeries.
They moved back and forth across the snow, swift and silent. The faery butler was fast. Faster than rain. She had seen him fight back in London, seen him use that cruel knife on Bartholomew, but right now she was glad for his skill. He moved his long limbs with grace, whirling and slashing, liquid in the moonlight. The blade spun, streaking down over and over again toward the other faery, who barely managed to get out of its path.
“No!” it screamed, in English. “You fool and traitor, what are you—?”
The knife grazed it. Bits of gray skin flew away on the wind. Hettie saw that underneath there was only black, like new coal.
She turned her face into the tree, squeezing her eyes shut. She heard a shriek, a dull thud. Then a whispering sound and a long, long breath fading away. After that, there was nothing.
It was a long time before Hettie dared peek around the trunk. She listened to the faery butler, pacing in the snow and panting. She wondered if she should say something to him, but she didn’t dare do that either. He seemed suddenly frightening and dangerous. After a while she heard him lean against the tree, and after another while, his slow, whistling breaths. Only then did she inch from her hiding place.
The faery butler was still again, his green eye dark. The snow between the roots was trampled. At the faery’s feet lay what looked like a heap of ashes and old clothes. Already they sparkled with frost.
She edged over to the heap. It didn’t look like a faery anymore. It didn’t look like anything, really. Nothing to be afraid of. She nudged the pile with her toe. It rustled and gave way, the jerkin and boots collapsing over a delicate shell of cinders.
She wondered what sort of creature it had been. She didn’t know if it had been a woman-faery or a man-faery. She had never seen a faery like it in Bath, falling to ashes.
The moon was out like every night, and it shone through the branches, glinting on something in the clothes. Hettie knelt and shuffled about in the pile. Her fingers touched warmth. She jerked back, wiping her hand violently on her sleeve. Blood? Was it blood? But it couldn’t be. If there was frost, the blood would have gone cold by now. She leaned in again, brushing away the rest of the ashes with the hem of her nightgown. Her hand closed around the warmth. She brought it up to her eye, examining it … and found herself looking into another eye—a wet, brown eye with a black pupil.
Hettie let out a muffled shriek. She almost dropped it. But it was only a necklace. The eye was some sort of stone, set into a pendant, a pockmarked disk on a frail chain. The pendant lay heavily in her palm, the warmth seeping into her fingers.
She stared at it. She hadn’t felt anything warm in so long. She ran her thumb over the stone. It looked precisely like a human eye. There was even a spark in it, a knowing little light like the sort in a real person’s eye. She couldn’t tell what its expression was, because there were no eyebrows or face to go with it, but she thought it looked sad somehow. Lonely.
She peered even closer.
Behind her the faery butler shifted, white hands scraping over the snow. Somewhere in the woods, branches skittered.
Hettie tucked the pendant into the neck of her dress and darted back around the tree. She went to sleep then, and the eye kept her warm the whole night long.
The next morning, when she woke, the forest seemed to have lightened several shades, fading, like the pictures on coffee tins when they were left too long in the sun. The clouds no longer hung so low in the sky. The trees didn’t look so close together. The cottage was still a hundred strides away, but when Hettie and the faery butler took their first step toward it, it was quite distinctly only ninety-nine. A short while later they were halfway there.
No light burned in the window anymore. The door hung open on its hinges, showing blackness. The house appeared even emptier and more desolate than before.
When they were only a few steps away, Hettie glanced back over her shoulder. What she saw made her whirl all the way around and stare.
Their footprints extended back in a thin line into the woods. And then the forest floor became packed with them. Thousands upon thousands of prints, winding between the trees—her small ones, and the faery butler’s long, narrow ones—going back and forth and round and round, trampling one another and never arriving anywhere.
A tangle of footprints under the very same trees.
(#ulink_d922b023-4b3d-5537-a44a-b1d421ec384b)
OBLINS were in the walls of Wyndhammer House—two of them, hurtling down the servants’ corridor that hid behind the polished paneling of the ballroom. They streaked under fizzing oil lamps, quick as winks in the dimness. The corridor was hot, narrow, barely wide enough for the goblins to run in single file. Spools of wire lay on the floor. Iron bells lined the ceiling. It was an old precaution, meant to frighten off invading faeries, but it had been for naught. The wires had all been snipped.
The goblins were breathing hard, gasping as much from the thick air as from excitement.
“Did you see their faces?” the shorter one exclaimed, in a sort of breathless chuckle. His skin was cracked and brown like the bark of a tree, and he wore a red leather jerkin with copper bottles clinking all along the belt. The bottles were labeled such things as Soldier Illusion, Needlewoman Illusion, Weeping Waifs Illusion. …
The other goblin grunted. He was gaunt and pointy, the precise opposite of the short one. “Made ’em scared right enough,” he said, leaping a tangle of wire. “It’s what we came for. If’n we get out of here before the servants come, it’ll all be a good night’s work.”
The short goblin chuckled again, then wheezed. “A good night’s work, he says. A good night’s work. I should say it was a good night’s work. All those puffed-up pigeons, all pinned up with bottle caps. Won’t be going off to battle so happily, will they be? Not so happily at all.”
The goblins skidded around a corner and pounded down a flight of steep, worm-eaten stairs. The walls went from brass and gleaming wood to damp, mossy stone. At the bottom of the stairs was a long, dripping cellar, disappearing into blackness.
The short goblin wouldn’t stop talking. “The Sly King’ll be very pleased with us, don’t you think? Don’t you, Nettles? Most all of London’s up there. All the important parts, at least. All frightened so bad the wax in their whiskers melted. Shouldn’t wonder if the Sly King pays us a small fortune when we get back. Shouldn’t wonder.”
The goblins dashed to the end of the cellar and into a vaulted room, footsteps echoing. Wine barrels lined the walls. Somewhere high above in the house, they could hear a commotion, banging and thuds and raised voices. Then screams.
“Oh, the Sly King, the Sly King, in his towers of ash and wind,” the short goblin sang under his breath. “How much d’you think he’ll pay, Nettles? How much d’you—”
The goblin named Nettles spun and knocked the shorter one firmly on the head. “Don’t count your frogs before they’re hatched. Nobody knows what the Sly King’ll do. Nobody sees. We’ll know what we get once we’re safe on our way. Milkblood?” His voice was suddenly loud, booming under the stone vault. “Milkblood, get us out of here!”
Slowly a small, hunched shape slid out of the shadows.
“Has all gone well?” it whispered. “Will he be pleased with us?”
Knuckly branches grew from its head instead of hair. At first it seemed to be a child, all bones and huge, hungry eyes. But as it approached, the lines became visible around its mouth, the grooves in its corpse-white skin. It was an old woman. An ancient Peculiar.
The short goblin shuddered in disgust. Even Nettles darkened, his brows pinching.
“Not if we’re caught,” he growled, and opened his mouth wide. One cheek was swollen, the inside pressing against the rows of teeth. A box had been mounted there, grown into the red flesh. Both his hands went for it, and he fiddled with it, coughing. A small glass bottle rolled onto his tongue and he spat it out. It was filled with a dark, luminous liquid. He sent it spinning through the air. “Drink. Fast. Get us away from here.”
The Peculiar’s hand shot out, snatching the bottle. Her fingers were filthy. All of her was filthy, slicked with a layer of grime. Her bare feet stuck out from under a ragged ball gown. Her arms were stamped with wriggling red lines, like tattoos.
“He’ll be pleased with me. Oh, he’ll be pleased with me.” She sounded as if she were begging.
She uncorked the bottle and gulped it down. Black liquid dribbled over her chin. When there was nothing left, she took a deep breath, dragging in the air. Then she smashed the bottle to pieces at her feet.
Nettles glanced over his shoulder, shifting from foot to foot. They would be searching soon—servants, lords, Englishers, leadfaces. They would search the house, corridor by corridor. They would come here. He barely blinked as an inky line began to trace itself along the pale woman’s form. It whispered all the way around her. Then it pulled away. The air shivered, as if being beaten by invisible wings. A door appeared, a very small one, only a foot wide on either side of her. Nettles could just glimpse a seascape behind her, black cliffs and rolling, white-capped waves and a midnight sky full of stars.
“By stone, you’re getting worse by the day,” the short goblin said. “Soon we’ll be crawling into the Old Country on hands and knees.”
“Shut up, Grout,” said Nettles, but his scowl went even deeper.
The woman made a pitiful face, twisting her hands through the soiled lace of her gown. “Yes, watch your mouth. Watch who you’re speaking to.”
Grout spat. “Oh, and who’s that? You’re just a slave. You’re worse than a slave. You’re a Peculiar.”
“I am the King’s servant!” the old woman cried. “Show me the dignity!” But that only seemed to goad Grout further and he started prancing, rattling his bottles.
“You’re just a sla-ave!” he sang, hopping around her. “Just a slave, just a slave, just a rotten slave.”
The pale woman looked to Nettles, her eyes drooping and watery. “Make him stop!” she said.
“Slave, slave, slave!” Grout screeched.
The old woman’s eyes became imploring. “I used to be his favorite.”
That was that. Nettles’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Well, you’re obviously not anymore,” he said, and it was as if he had slapped the old woman.
She drew back, staring. “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you both?” She began to shake. She was so small and old, but she was trembling with fury.
And then suddenly a door banged open at the far end of the cellar and voices echoed, loud as gunshots. Lamplight danced along the walls, coming closer.
“I’ll show you,” the pale woman snarled. “I’ll show you what I can do.” She stepped toward the goblins.
“No!” Nettles barked, but too late.
A cold wind whipped into the cellar. And suddenly the space was filled with wings. They slashed past Nettles’s face. With a lurch, the door expanded.
“Enough!” he screamed over the flapping wings. He dashed forward, through the door, onto the cliffs. “Come on, both of you, or we’re all dead!”
The old woman started to walk. “Say you’re sorry!” she shrieked. “Say you’re sorry!” With every step she took, the door grew, the feathers whirling wilder and darker. The blackness had reached the ceiling. Bits of dust and stone sifted down. The stars of the Old Country shone into the cellar, glimmering in the puddles on the floor.
“Now, you dimwits! D’you want the whole house coming down on our heads? Get in!”
Shouts. The glow of the lamps grew, spreading. Shadows appeared on the walls. The shadows began to run.
Even Grout looked frightened now. “I—I didn’t mean nothing by it! I didn’t, I’m sorry!”
But the pale woman wasn’t listening. “I used to be his favorite,” she said. “I am the Door to Bath. I am the greatest door of the age. He’ll be pleased with me again.”
She began to run, straight toward the oncoming English.
“Come back!” Nettles shouted. “Come back!”
The wings swelled, darker than night. The ceiling gave a wrenching grunt. Grout leaped onto the cliffs.
A deafening screech filled the cellar. It came from Wyndhammer House above and the hall full of heat and dancers. Feet, hundreds of them, battered the floor, pounding on and on like thunder.
Wyndhammer House began to fall.
The bells of St. Paul’s were tolling thirty-five minutes past midnight, but Pikey was not even thinking about going to bed. He scratched through the ankle-deep mud, his shoulders up around his ears to keep them from freezing. He didn’t count the strikes of the bells.
There was no moon in the sky. The clouds drifted, black and endless, snagging on the spires of St. Paul’s, on weather vanes and gable tips. It was so dark.
Only dead folk and the fay come out on moonless nights. Dead folk and those soon to be dead. Anyone wanting to keep the blood inside his veins and the coat on his back would not be found alone in the streets after eleven o’clock. But Pikey didn’t have a choice. He needed to find his patch.
After the fall of Wyndhammer House he had fled straight back to the square in front of St. Paul’s. He had searched for hours, bent double, picking through the muddy cobbles like an old farmer seeding a field. He was on his seventh time now. The cold was sinking into his bones. His legs had gone stiff as posts. But he couldn’t find his patch. It was gone, taken away or trampled deep. When a gang of draft dodgers came, whooping and shouting into the square, Pikey ran off in a fright.
He limped toward the warren of alleys that led to Spitalfields, rubbing his hands to keep the dull ache of the cold away. He tried to stay in the shadows, darting from doorway to doorway, running whenever he heard footsteps. He didn’t know what had happened at Wyndhammer House, but he would bet his boots it had something to do with faeries, and he was beginning to be afraid. What if someone had seen him there? What if they were following him, right now? He couldn’t be caught like this. Not with his bad eye in full sight.
He tried to go faster. The city became a beast after dark; the streets were its throats and the graveyards were its bellies, and ever since things had started going rotten between the English and the faeries the beast had gotten hungrier. The leadfaces had appeared first, hired by Parliament to chase the faeries from the city and then gather soldiers to fight them once they’d fled. After them had come the highwaymen and gunslingers, the thugs and ruffians and faery hunters with their iron teeth and packs full of knives and nets. Since the Ban had been declared they had been popping up in London like mushrooms. They set about in the night, searching for any fay that had not already left. Sometimes they found one. Just last week Pikey had heard of a whole colony of nymphs and water sprytes discovered in the Whitechapel sewers, hiding in the green and stagnant water. Where they were now Pikey didn’t know, but he did not want to join them.
He was just turning the corner at Glockner’s Inn, shuffling along the edge of the gutter, when he saw the girl.
