The Whatnot (11 page)

 

Pikey woke the next morning to Bartholomew shaking him urgently by the shoulder.

“Wake up! Wake up, there's a faery prison just over the rise. It'll be upon us in moments.”

“What?” Pikey's mind was foggy with sleep.
It'll be upon us?

“Now,
get up
!” Bartholomew's voice held a distinct edge now; not of fear exactly, but something very close.

Pikey propped himself up on his elbows. “What are you talking about?” He glanced about. “It's not even daylight yet.” The sky was still dark blue. The fire was out, the ashes stamped into the ground.

Bartholomew dragged Pikey to his feet and practically threw him toward the thicket of brambles and stunted trees that grew along the edge of the rise. Pikey just managed to snatch up his cloak, and then he was plunged into the branches, and the frosty prickers were snagging on his clothes.

Not a moment too soon.

A deep, bellowing horn sounded from the other side of the hill. Then the faery prison mounted the ridge, and Pikey's breath came out in a cough.

The prison was an iron globe, a cage three hundred feet high, barbs and spikes radiating out from it like a monstrous metal thistle. Brimstone bulbs pierced the early morning darkness. The globe heaved itself to the top of the hill, amid screams and the cracking of whips, hovered for a moment on the edge, and then began to roll, thundering down toward them. Trees snapped under it. In a few seconds the grass where Bartholomew and Pikey had been sleeping would be nothing but a huge gash of dirt.

Pikey looked at Bartholomew. He seemed to be counting under his breath,
four, three, two . . .
And then he grabbed Pikey's arm, and before Pikey knew what was happening they were out in the open, running full tilt into the faery prison's path.

“What are you doing?” Pikey screamed. The roar of the prison filled his ears. The huge metal bands were gouging tracks into the hillside, crushing trees, slinging mud.

Bartholomew ran faster. Pikey tried to pull away, but Bartholomew's grip was like a pincer. The globe loomed above them. Pikey caught glimpses of tiny figures inside, of houses and alleys and thin metal chimneys and flickering lights. Then the globe came crashing down, and he was enveloped in blackness.

Pikey heard himself yelling. He felt Bartholomew's hand, still around his wrist, pulling him desperately up onto a metal beam. Then he didn't feel it anymore, and he was sliding and falling and sliding some more, and red lights whirled past, and when he looked down, he saw that he was three hundred feet above the ground, and the arch of the cage was tipping down, down toward the snow and the tiny trees, and the earth was rushing up to meet him.

He screamed. He was pinned to the metal beam like an insect. Nothing was holding him. Nothing but the force of that great iron globe, spinning. His stomach squirmed.

“Bartholomew!” he tried to shout, but his voice cracked, lodging like a splinter in his throat. He swooped up again into the sky. His hands scrabbled for something to cling to, found nothing. He began to slip. And then he saw a shape, crawling toward him along the beam, slowly, painfully. It wasn't Bartholomew. Pikey couldn't tell what it was for all the black grime that covered it, but he saw that its limbs were barely bones, and it dragged a chain behind it, made of iron. The creature let out a sickly, gurgling wail. It had almost reached him. “Help me,” it coughed, and a wave of black sludge slid from its mouth. “Help us all. Take us away from here—” And then the globe slowed, and Pikey was tumbling through empty air.

His chest slammed against a railing. He clung to it with all his might. A hand reached down to grip him, and Bartholomew pulled him over onto a walkway. Pikey dropped like a sack to the grating. All at once, the rushing in his ears stopped. The creaking and the cries and the darkness clattered away. Pikey lay still, dizzy and gasping.

Owww . . .
he thought, and then,
If that bleemin' Peculiar pulls another trick like that, I'm leaving, I don't care what happens,
and then he noticed the ground wasn't swaying. At least, not badly. He pushed himself onto his elbows. Somehow the faery prison's insides didn't move with the rest of it. Somehow it had been constructed so that its core remained flat even as the outside whirled across the countryside. It was probably a marvel of science, but Pikey took one look at the sky and the ground spinning outside and pinched his eyes shut so that he wouldn't be sick.

He would have liked to stay like that, but Bartholomew was stooping over him, nudging him to his feet.

“Up,” Bartholomew whispered. “Come on, we can't stop here.”

Pikey opened his eyes and stood shakily. They were on a long curving walkway. Everything was dimly lit, tinted red. Above, going up for hundreds of feet, he could see protruding black metal and ladders and air vents and the endless ruddy flicker of the brimstone bulbs. And below, over the railing, was a seething mass of limbs and faces. A thousand, thousand faeries. They were chained to the skeletal rim of the globe—goblins, sprytes, tiny water piskies, beautiful nymphs and merefolk, all dying on the cold iron. They were pushing the great prison, on and on, collapsing as they swooped overhead, then pushing again as it they spun down and it was their turn. Whenever a faery went limp, a guard in goggles and a gas mask would lean off the walkways and ladders and prod it with an extendable black pike, poking until the creature was up. The globe never stopped.

A shout sounded nearby. Pikey whirled. He had stared a moment too long.

One of the guards was coming along the walkway, pike raised. It had seen them. It broke into a run. A crackling, metallic shriek came from the air filter on its mask. Another guard materialized at the other end of the walkway. Pikey and Bartholomew went back-to-back, eyes jerking about for a way to escape. Both the guards were running now, boots clanging against the metal walkway. Pikey could see his own terrified reflection in the mirrored lenses of the goggles.

“Climb!” shouted Bartholomew.
“Climb!”
And then he leaped onto the railing and clawed his way up a chain.

Pikey scrambled after him. Just in time. Below, he heard the two guards collide, clockwork and black rubber crashing together.

Pikey and Bartholomew struggled upward, up ladders and snaking passageways that were little more than pipes.

It was so strange being in this dark metal jungle, when minutes ago they had been in an English field, with nothing but snow and silence. Pikey still felt half asleep, in a daze.

Bartholomew helped him up onto a ledge. “I'm sorry I burned your sock,” he said.

“Sorry I couldn't see your sister yesterday,” Pikey mumbled.

They climbed on. Steam hissed into their faces. Sometimes the metal under their hands was scalding hot, sometimes icy cold. Pikey's cloak snagged on a bolt and got a tear right up to the knee, which made him want to scream. At last they pushed up through an air vent and burst onto something broad and solid.

They were on a dismal, bustling thoroughfare, and a faun was about to stomp on them.

Pikey stood bolt upright. Bartholomew rolled into a crouch. Faeries were trudging past on all sides, wandering the gloomy street. They were dressed in rags, tattered waistcoats, and broken hats. Branches and wings poked this way and that. Whole families were here, huddles of sprytes and tired-eyed goblin mothers, their many tiny children clutching at their skirts and crying. None of them seemed to notice the intruders.

The ground was sheet metal. A layer of cauterized black grease coated it like mud. The houses on either side were built of slag and sooty bricks. Gasoliers burned, weighting the air with fumes. Above, the great arc of the globe cage rolled on. There was a constant wind, a constant thundering, but the houses stayed steady, only creaking gently now and then, sending flakes of rust falling to the street.

“Why'd you have us jump aboard
this
place?” Pikey whispered. “We could've been killed or squashed into jell
mph
—”

Bartholomew clamped a hand over Pikey's mouth and pulled him backward into an alleyway.

“Shh,” he said. “Faery prisons travel north. All of them. Away from London and Parliament and any chance of treachery, or so Parliament hopes.” Pikey tried to wriggle away, but Bartholomew was stronger than he looked and he continued to speak in a quick, low voice. “Trains don't go north. Not with passengers. Not with anything but war goods nowadays. And you'll not get a carriage to take you as fast as this. Look at the sky. Look at the clouds passing. We're moving at forty miles an hour, and nothing goes that fast that's not a train. We'll lay low until it gets us past Leeds and then we'll jump off again. I don't know how long Hettie'll be alive. A day here could be a year in the Old Country, a hundred years. I don't know how long we have, but I'll not take any chances by dillydallying.”

Pikey stared at Bartholomew dumbly. Then he nodded, eyes wide.

“Good,” Bartholomew said. He dropped his hand from Pikey's mouth. “Now. This place will be swarming with leadfaces soon. Let's try to—”

But Bartholomew never finished his sentence, because just then a booming, crackling voice blared from above, echoing through the entire prison.

“Attention, Detainment Unit Inhabitants. Attention, wardens of the Scarborough Faery Prison.”

“Oh, now we did it,” Pikey said under his breath.

“There are two intruders aboard our peaceful facility. They are hooded and cloaked, of diminutive stature, and without doubt in league with the enemy. Do not give them aid. Do not speak to them. Any faery found fraternizing with them will be assigned to the Pushing Pits. Permanently. All sightings are to be reported to the Royal Officer at the head of this facility.”

Pikey glanced into the street. The faun with the chipped hooves had galloped back to the air vent where Pikey and Bartholomew had emerged and was scratching about, head lowered. It had a sharp, pale face. Even from a distance Pikey could see that its eyes were dead-black.

“Attention, Detainment Unit Inhabitants. There are two intruders aboard our peaceful facility.”

Bartholomew pulled Pikey behind a fat, steam-belching pipe that curved up out of the ground.

Pikey spat. “Good luck hiding now. Now they're looking for us. How are we supposed to lay low when everyone in the prison wants to
find
us?” He looked down the alley. It ended in a high wall studded with rivets and popped sheets of metal. Dead end. Not even a door. Ignoring Bartholomew's grip on his arm, he peeked around the pipe.

The faun had disappeared, but the other faeries in the street were looking about now, too, squinting from under hat brims and mossy eyebrows. The thoroughfare seemed to be emptying, the gasoliers dimming. Ragged creatures disappeared into alleys and doorways.

“They are hooded and cloaked, of diminutive stature . . .”
the voice droned on. “
Do not give them aid. Do not speak to them. . . .”

“We'll survive,” Bartholomew said. “But not if you keep popping your head out like a jack-in-the-box. Stay hidden!” Again he jerked Pikey back.

“Any faery found fraternizing with them will be assigned to the Pushing Pits. Permanently.”

And then the faun cricked its neck around the pipe and stared at them, black eyes glinting.

“Found you.”

Bartholomew's hand went to his side. A knife appeared, narrow as a blade of grass. He spun it in his hand, letting the point stop at the creature's throat.

The faun crouched back and put up its hands, making a
ch-ch-ch
sound as if to calm them. “Now, now, my pretties, hush. Hush! I won't tell. You come from the Sly King, yes? He has sent you to us, yes, in the hour of our desolation?”

Pikey and Bartholomew exchanged glances. Or rather, Bartholomew looked in bewilderment at Pikey, and Pikey looked suddenly very frightened.

A tower of blood, a tower of bone, a tower of ash and a tower of stone,
he heard the madwoman singing again, the tune slithering through his head.
Don't let the Sly King see. Not the Sly King.
Pikey didn't know what it meant, but somehow hearing the name uttered here, in this strange iron cage, by this strange faun as if it were real, as if there really
was
a Sly King, made Pikey go cold.

“What?” Bartholomew managed at last. And then, hurriedly, “Oh, the—the Sly King. Of course.” His voice steadied. “Yes, we are from the Sly King. In fact, we have just delivered a message to one of
Uà Sathir's
spies and now we must get to the Old Country. Is there a way in that you know of? Even just a rumor?”

The faun tilted its head. It did not look as if it had understood him. There was a strange smell coming off it, a horrid tincture of rot and graveyards and decay. And that was when Pikey saw the thing clutching the back of the creature's scalp, the sagging, wrinkled little faery, all teeth and warts and eyes like the eyes of insects.
It
was the one doing the speaking. Not the faun. The faun was dead.

The leech-faery squirmed. “The Sly King is coming to rescue us, yes? All of us. And you are his emissaries. His envoys. His flag-bearers.” It was not a question. The faun slid itself over the ground, inching closer. “We've all been waiting for you. We all knew it would be soon.”

Bartholomew was beginning to frown. “Yes, but did you hear me? We need to get in. The Sly King is still in the Old Country and we—”

“What?”
The leech-faery's many eyes widened. “Still in the Old Country?”

Oh no,
thought Pikey.
Wrong thing to say, Barth.

“But I heard he had come! Come to the North with a great army, come to lead the free faeries. To fight!”