Twelve pairs of black eyes turned to stare at her. She froze. The faery butler lifted his head. A flicker of green, almost like surprise, passed behind his clockwork eye. Then the lady in the fish-bone dress strode up to Hettie and looked her in the face. She was only a bit taller than Hettie, and she resembled a pompous little child.
“English.” It was a statement, spoken with a faint, precise accent that no English person would ever use.
“Yes,” Hettie said, her boldness fading a little. Her hands went to her nightgown, and she looked down, suddenly shy.
“Are you an accomplice to this faery?”
“I—No. But I don’t want you to hurt him. What are you going to do with him?”
“This faery”—the lady said, waving a hand in the butler’s direction—“has been found guilty of murdering one of His Majesty the Sly King’s most valued servants. He will be put to death, of course. Drowned in a bog, I think.”
“Oh,” breathed Hettie.
“And you?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Who are you?” The lady punctuated the are with one sharply raised eyebrow.
“I’m not anybody.”
“Yes, I can see that, but what sort of nobody? You are the strangest-looking faery I’ve ever seen. And no hair, or I’d think you simply a particularly ugly human.”
Hettie knew better than to tell her she was a changeling. The daughter of a human mother and a faery father. Something in-between. English people didn’t like changelings, but she had always been told faeries liked them even less.
“Oh, I am a faery, miss. Only … See, I come from England and I’ve lived there my whole life, and—well, I s’pose I picked up a bit of their looks.”
Twelve pairs of eyes met across her head. There was a long pause in which the frosty air seemed to fill up and become heavy with all sorts of unspoken words and laughter.
Then the lady in the fish-bone dress let out a high, musical laugh that set everyone else to laughing, too, and the horse-people laughed, and the old woman laughed, and even the silver bells seem to tinkle with their own merry notes.
“She is so exquisitely funny,” the faery lady said.
“Ex-quisitely,” one of the horse-people mimicked, and that set them all to laughing again.
The fish-bone lady’s mouth twitched. Her eyes went a little blacker, and her brows seemed to become even sharper. Then she laughed again, too, louder than anyone.
“John?” she said, turning to a horse-person with white hair and white skin that glittered as if with frost. “John, let her ride upon you. We shall take her with us.”
“What?” The creature named John looked perfectly horrified. “That thing? On me?”
“Oh, no, I—” Panic gripped Hettie. It wrapped around her throat, made her breath escape in little gasps. “Please, I mustn’t—”
They were all staring at her, all those black eyes, sparks of amusement in their depths, sparks of malice. She couldn’t go with them. She couldn’t be taken away from these woods, or the cottage. This was where the door had opened and where she had arrived, and this was where Bartholomew would find her when he came for her. But what will he do if I’m not here?
The thought made her sick.
“Please, miss,” she said, taking a step toward the faery lady. “Please don’t make me leave.”
The faery lady did not even look at her. “You must. You will be my Whatnot. Or I will snip out your tongue. Don’t be tiresome.”
Hettie closed her mouth with a plop.
“Now,” said the faery lady, whirling away. “Vizalia? Send a dispatch to the King. One of his Belusites has been killed. The wrongdoer has been dealt with. Nothing was found. You needn’t say anything of my little bauble.”
And the next thing Hettie knew, she was on the back of a white horse with hair like wisps of snowy wind. Everything was confusion, stomping hooves and whispering cloaks. Her steed began to gallop, away into the woods. The faery butler. Hettie looked frantically at the other riders. Where is he? He isn’t here! With a little shiver, she glanced back over her shoulder.
Three figures had stayed behind in front of the cottage. The faery butler was on the ground, kneeling, his chin on his chest. Two horse-people stood over him, their faces strangely thin and hungry. And just before the company went over a rise and the cottage was lost from view, Hettie saw the horse-people begin to change again and their teeth grow long as needles and their eyes glow red as they looked down on the faery butler. Then Hettie was over the hill, riding away into the shadows and the snow.
He winced.
“Oy! Whozat? Pikey?”
Orange light flickered around the door.
“Yeh.” Pikey’s voice was rough as bark. He dashed toward the hole under the shop, his hand tight around the gem in his pocket. “Yeh, it’s me, Jem.”
The bolt scraped. Pikey pulled in his feet and lay still.
“Oy!” the chemist said again, when he found the alley empty. He had a deep voice, but it was sloppy and wet now, and Pikey knew Jeremiah Jackinpots had been in his bottles again. Jem wasn’t a bad man. Pikey liked him more than most folks. But he was slow-brained and weak, and gin did nothing to improve his wits.
“So quick into yer mouse hole, boy?” Pikey heard Jem take a few heavy steps toward the hole. Then a hacking spit. “No words for me? No talk? What ’ave the oil of earthworm prices gone to? Has the war started yet?”
Pikey remained perfectly still. “I don’t know,” he lied. “I didn’t hear. Weren’t no one around to tell me nuthin’.” He had heard. The town crier had been on Fleet Street as always, reading the news and the prices to the illiterates that flocked around him. Pikey had been there, too, poking his head between the dirty waistcoats. He went every day to Fleet Street to listen and make sure the herb-and-root sellers didn’t cheat Jem when they came to the shop. It was why Jem let him stay in the hole, why the aid ladies hadn’t come by in their black bonnets and hoop skirts and taken Pikey to the workhouse. He hoped Jem would forgive him, just this once. Just one more day.
“I’m dreadful tired, Jem,” Pikey called. “I’ll tell it all in the morning, promise my boots, I will.”
Jem grunted. There was the clink of a bottle and the smack of lips. Then grumbling as he staggered back toward the shop. The door banged. The alley became silent again.
Pushing himself as far into the hole as he could, Pikey wound himself into a ball, all arms and legs and rank-smelling wool. He was pressing his luck. He knew he was. Tonight Jeremiah Jackinpots was too sullen and too drunk, but he wouldn’t be in the morning. In the morning Pikey had to be gone.
Sell the gemstone, get an eye patch, leave the city. I’ll go southward. Away from the war. Away from leadfaces and cities