Rise of the Darklings (10 page)

“Be gone, boy. Miss Snow and I were just having a little chat. I’m from Scotland Yard.”

“You’re a policeman? A bobby?”

“Indeed I am.”

“Then I’m Queen Vic’s butler,” said Jack, pulling out a knife. The blade was dull and rusted, but it had a point, and that was all that mattered. “You just let her go, you hear? Otherwise this could get unpleasant.”

Ravenhill’s eyes widened slightly. Then he started to laugh, a low, unpleasant chuckle. After a moment’s hesitation, Blackmore joined in, although he kept a nervous watch on the blade in Jack’s hand.

Jack’s face tightened with anger. Before he could do anything that would land him in trouble, Emily made her move. She barged past Ravenhill, grabbing the satchel and parchment from his hands. She dodged a clumsy attempt by Mr.
Blackmore to catch her and pushed Jack out the door of the tenement.

“Run!” she shouted into his surprised face.

Then she took her own advice and sprinted out into the streets of London.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

H
is name was Scaithe, and he was an Unseelie piskie, a member of the Black Sidhe. He was wounded, a gash that ran from the front of his shoulder all the way around his back and down his spine. He held the hawk’s feathers with one hand, the other dangling uselessly by his side.

Scaithe crouched low against the bird, dodging the wind that threatened to unseat him. The clouds whipped past like streamers of mist, leaving droplets of moisture on his black clothing. The hawk flew as fast as she could. She understood the urgency of his message.

The Dagda, his King, wasn’t going to be happy. When the Dagda had first discovered the parchment was missing, he had flown into a fury so terrifying that his anger had drawn
a storm to their mountain. Once it had passed, trailing a path of destruction across the lowlands of Wales, he had the Black Sidhe after the thieves. They were expected to bring back what was stolen or not return at all.

Scaithe felt a twinge of fear. Surely the Dagda would understand? He didn’t have the parchment, but that was hardly his fault. He was bearing important intelligence, after all. The Cornish filth had help. Help from a human. How could they have anticipated that?

The hawk screeched a warning and banked sharply. They dropped through the air, leaving the concealment of the clouds. The border mountains appeared below them, their snow-covered peaks blinding Scaithe as the sun flashed between the clouds. Scaithe squinted and leaned forward, whispering directions to the hawk. The bird dropped until they were skimming over the white-and-gray clifftops.

Yellow-green scrub grass poked out from between the ragged stones, pushing up through clumps of snow and ice. His people were like that grass, Scaithe thought. Holding on for dear life, barely surviving in a hostile environment. How long before the faeries were all wiped out, shoved into the corners of the world to await their deaths?

He sighed. The battle had made him melancholy. That always happened, even when they won.

As they flew deeper into the mountains, into the treacherous,
mist-shrouded areas impassable to humans, Scaithe felt a small surge of relief. He was safe now. Scaithe hated the city. It was dirty and suffocating. He needed the clear air of the mountains to survive.

The mist thickened into a fog, but the hawk knew where she was now. She flew confidently, as if something was calling to her, guiding her through the wall of gray.

Scaithe eventually fell into an exhausted doze. He was awoken some time later by the bird’s shrill call. He yawned and leaned over to see where they were.

The mist had disappeared. They were approaching a deep basin, a huge space that looked as if it had been scooped out of the mountains by a giant hand. The basin was leagues across, encircled by towering cliff faces, and covering the bottom were sweeping grass fields and deep, ancient forests, all coated in a thick layer of fresh white snow.

In the center of the basin was a lake, and in the middle of the lake, an island.

The Dagda’s Court.

The hawk folded her wings back and dropped through the air. The ground rushed toward them at a terrifying speed, the wind whipping furiously. Scaithe was soon close enough to see flashes of color beneath the snow; a hint of winter green, a flash of dark brown.

The hawk soared over the still waters, the lake so calm it
mirrored the sky perfectly. Scaithe leaned over and could see the bird’s reflected underbelly, skimming calmly across the icy waters.

And then the hawk opened her wings wide and they slowed down with a lurch. She flapped a couple of times, then slowly dropped into the branches of a tall, leafless sycamore tree on the shore of the island. Scaithe leaned forward and stroked her feathers.

“Thank you, old friend.”

The hawk turned her head to look at him. She held out a wing and started preening, cleaning and tucking her feathers back into place.

Scaithe got the message. He slid off her back, landing atop the thick snow. His breath clouded the air.

He heard snuffling off to his right. A large black dog padded silently into view, stark against the white snow. The dog was one of the Dagda’s favorites. Scaithe’s presence was required.

He climbed onto the dog’s back and it sprang into action, loping up the incline toward the middle of the island. Scaithe caught glimpses of some of the others—faeries, brownies, and piskies, a few of the hollow men. They all watched silently as he passed, their dark eyes troubled at his lone return.

There was a small hill at the exact center of the island.
On its crown sprawled a giant oak tree, its branches reaching down to form a concealing shelter around the trunk. Scaithe slid off the dog’s back and waited. After a moment the green leaves, untouched by winter’s hand, rustled, as if a soft wind had disturbed them. The intertwined branches creaked and pulled apart, revealing a perfectly round opening.

Scaithe took a deep breath and walked forward. The branches and leaves closed instantly behind him. After a few moments, he left the shadowy tunnel and found himself standing on green grass.

He looked around. He was surrounded by his people: brownies, kobolds, gnomes, goblins, the stocky alfar with their beards trailing in the earth, and piskies. Faeries flitted through the air, quick streaks of white light.

“He’s angry,” one whispered.

“He’s going to skin you,” said another.

“Feed you to the dogs.”

Scaithe batted the irritating creatures away. They flew up into the boughs of the tree so that it seemed as if every branch was decorated with tiny glowing stars.

The lights revealed what he had come here to see.

The Dagda, King of the Unseelie, was sitting upon his throne, deep inside the trunk of the massive oak.

His face was in shadow. He sat unmoving as Scaithe
walked forward and bowed his head respectfully. The fey all around him fell silent, watching with glittering eyes and bated breath.

“What news?” asked the Dagda. As if in response, the leaves rustled an echo of his words, like voices heard through a wind.
What news?

Scaithe swallowed. “We followed the thieves, sire. All the way to Londinium itself.”

“And? Did you retrieve my property?”

“Sire, we did not.”

A wave of unease undulated through the watchers. Scaithe looked around nervously.

“They had help. A human girlchild. There was nothing we could do. She was too fast.”

The Dagda leaned forward, revealing a smooth, cruel face.

“A girl?”

“Aye. She helped the one who stole the parchment. Corrigan.”

“What did she look like?” asked the Dagda.

Scaithe searched his memory. “Black hair. Young.” He shrugged. “I am sorry, sire. It is hard to tell with humans.”

“Did she look like this?”

An image appeared in the air before Scaithe, an image of a young, frightened girl standing before a burning building. Even through a coating of soot, Scaithe recognized the
slightly rounded features, the large brown eyes, the dark hair.

“That is her.”

The Dagda let out a long, slow breath. “The time has finally come,” he said, a look of hunger writ plain across his features. “I think it is time to wake Black Annis and Jenny Greenteeth,” he said softly. “They have been too long from this world, and it is time they finished the task they were given all those moons ago.”

Jonathan Bridgewater, or “Grubber” to those who knew him, wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things. He was just a boy. He wasn’t going to accomplish great things or change the world. He wasn’t even going to grow up to raise children of his own.

That’s because he was about to die.

A low, broken stone wall bordered the section of the Thames River where Grubber waited for the tide to go out. When the water was gone, and all he could see was the thick, evil-smelling mud that made up the bottom of the river, it would be time to get to work. He saw his fellow mud-larks staring over the misty water, waiting just as he did, hoping that today they would make that big find. Maybe a chest fallen overboard from a transport ship all the way from India. Or some silk from China, wrapped in waterproof paper.
Something you could sell and make enough money from to live happy for a year.

He was so busy daydreaming he almost missed the rustle of movement among his fellows. He snapped back to attention and saw that the water had disappeared behind the thickening mist. It was time.

He made his way down the stairs and stepped gingerly into the cold mud. His bare feet sank up to his ankles. He saw the others around him, indistinct in the mist, vague shadows and shapes that faded from view as each mud-lark took to his own jealously guarded area.

Grubber pulled a foot from the sucking mud, then placed it carefully in front of him and gingerly prodded the ground. One time he’d stood on an old nail and it had gone right through the skin between his toes. It had become infected and he hadn’t been able to work for two whole weeks.