Читать книгу The Luck Uglies - Paul Durham, Paul Durham - Страница 12

RYE PROTECTED HER face with her hands and peered through her fingers. Spidery wrists stretched from billowing black sleeves, long claws poised to pluck out her eyeballs. Its sharp-toothed mouth scowled down at her from its pumpkin head. Its face was carved like that of a feral cat, with whiskers and angular eyes whose glow came from the candle inside.

Rye lowered her hands. The claws were nothing more than branches, the menacing figure just a Wirry Scare mounted on a tall wooden frame. Apparently wirries weren’t the only things these stickmen frightened. It meant she wasn’t far from the Dead Fish Inn. Maybe Folly helped put up this one herself.

Rye straightened her clothes and scolded herself for being so easily spooked. Before she could rise, she heard the shuffling of boots, the clinking of metal on stone, and a voice yelling, “Did you hear that? It came from over there.”

The source of the voice hurried towards her. Rye looked for somewhere to hide. She lurched forward and rolled under an abandoned farmer’s wagon filled with rotting hay. It wasn’t a moment too soon, as three figures emerged from the alley she’d used.

Rye pressed herself flat on the cold, damp cobblestones. Villagers were not the tidiest folk. She was surrounded by rotting vegetables, other rubbish and an old shoe. She pinched her nose and peered through the spokes of the wagon’s one large wheel.

A man in a brown cloak led the way, scurrying out of the alley like a crab. He was bent and bow-legged, but moved much faster than one would expect given his rickety looks. Behind him lumbered two heavily armoured soldiers, one carrying an enormous axe over his shoulder. They wore the black and blue crest of the House of Longchance on their shields – an iron fist and a coiled, eel-like serpent displaying a gaping maw of teeth. Their armour sounded like Lottie when she got loose amongst Abby O’Chanter’s pots and pans. Rye had never seen, or heard, soldiers armoured so heavily in the village.

The man in front peered through the shadows.

“Bring the light,” he called. “Where are you, rat?”

From the alley, a much smaller person appeared carrying a large lantern. The link rat’s light rattled as he ran. Rye had never met a link rat before, but she’d heard about them from Folly. Link rats were children – usually orphans – paid to guide travellers through Drowning’s streets after dark. It sounded like terribly dangerous work for a child, but if one got lost, hurt or stolen, well, there was always a replacement. Orphans weren’t hard to come by in Drowning. Rye knew Quinn had suffered from nightmares about becoming a link rat ever since he’d lost his mother. It was why he clung so tightly to his father’s side.

When this particular link rat caught up with the other men, Rye saw that he was not much taller than her. His clothes hung in tatters off his narrow shoulders and his straight black hair fell past his ears. Rye also got a better look at the first man’s face squinting in the light. She recognised the dustball eyebrows. It was Constable Boil.

“Over here,” the Constable said, waving to the link rat. “What’s that?”

The link rat moved forward, casting the lantern light on the Wirry Scare. Boil’s feet scuffled forward and the clank of armoured boots stopped less than a metre from Rye’s nose. From under the wagon, Rye could only see their legs.

“Another one,” Boil growled. “Superstitious simpletons. Chop it down.”

Rye watched one of the soldiers brace himself and listened to the chop of the axe. She flinched as the Wirry Scare creaked and splintered.

“You,” Boil said to the other soldier, “keep your eyes peeled. I heard noises over here.”

Rye held her breath and watched the soldier’s feet circle round the wagon. The link rat seemed to have noticed something on the ground. Constable Boil’s feet shuffled round the wagon in the opposite direction. She was surrounded on all sides. When she turned back, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.

The link rat was just a boy, probably not much older than Rye. His eyes stared into hers without blinking, irises reflecting strange colours in the dim lantern light. Then he looked towards Rye’s own lantern, which lay on its side where she had dropped it, in plain view on the street not far from where the Constable and soldiers were now searching. He turned back towards her again. Rye shook her head, placed her palms together and pleaded with him silently. Her efforts seemed lost on him. It was like he wasn’t looking at her, but through her.

Finally, the boy lifted his index finger as if he was going to point her out to the Constable. Instead, he raised it to his lips – for quiet. With his foot, he gently slid Rye’s lantern under the wagon, hiding it out of sight.

“Boy!” yelled the Constable. “Don’t just stand there, bring the light round.”

The link rat glanced in Rye’s direction one last time and then moved on, following the Constable’s instructions.

There was another chop, then a loud crack, and the Wirry Scare collapsed into a heap on the street. Its pumpkin head rolled off its frame and landed centimetres from Rye’s face. It exploded with a splat as a soldier’s steel boot crushed it with a mighty stomp. Blech, Rye thought. It was going to take forever to wash pumpkin guts out of her hair.

“Let’s go,” Boil barked. “There are plenty more of those dreadful stickmen to be found.”

Rye listened as Boil and the soldiers continued down the street. Only when they sounded far enough away did she crawl out from under the wagon. She watched the link rat’s lantern light disappear as the patrol turned a corner. She wondered why the boy had put himself at risk to help her. What a terrible way to spend the night, trudging around in the cold being bullied by the Constable and those two knot-headed soldiers.

Rye considered turning round and going back home to Mud Puddle Lane. But she was closer to Folly’s house than her own. She wasn’t going to waste any more time sneaking around in the shadows. Rye grabbed her lantern, looked both ways, and ran right down the middle of Dread Captain’s Way as fast as her legs would take her.

Mutineer’s Alley wasn’t an alley at all, but a set of steep stone steps that led down from Dread Captain’s Way in the village proper to the dirt streets, shops and taverns of the Shambles. Ordinarily, it was hard to find unless you were looking for it. But on the night of the Black Moon, two Wirry Scares beckoned from either side of the archway and open torches lit the entrance. Paper lanterns trimmed into grotesque faces lined each step, creating a sinister glowing path down to the banks of the River Drowning.

Rye took a deep breath and started to go down. There was no turning back now.

The main street in the Shambles was a mud walkway called Little Water Street that ran parallel with the river’s bank. It was much busier than the streets Rye had travelled in the village itself. People milled about alone or in groups, both men and women, and no one seemed surprised to see a young girl walking alone after dark. Rye remembered some advice her mother had given her once: Walk strong, act like you belong, and no one will be the wiser.

Rye pulled her cloak and hood tightly round her and moved with purpose. Catching the eyes of a passer-by, she nodded curtly and kept walking.

Those on the streets of the Shambles wore colourful cloaks in hues Rye almost never saw in the rest of the village – bold reds, rich greens and vibrant purples. People kept to themselves, which is not to say they were quiet. She heard a woman laugh as she and her companion stumbled arm in arm into a dark alley. A gimpy man dragged a wooden leg behind him with a step-tap-step-tap.

The shopkeepers were busy even at this late hour, their windows flung open to entice customers in. An artist with a needle tattooed the enormous back of a shirtless man, who grimaced and sipped his ale with every pinch. A shyster played a shell game for bronze bits, making a small blue stone disappear and reappear under halved coconut shells through sleight of hand.

The commotion grew as Rye reached the end of the street. Wandering into the dense crowd, she looked up. In the shadow of the village’s most impressive structure – the great arched bridge that spanned the River Drowning – rose a brooding building made of heavy timber and stone. Candles burned in each window and the revellers spilled down the front steps and caroused in the glowing street. Rye had never seen the Dead Fish Inn this busy before. Boisterous conversations floated through the air and over the river, where Rye could see lights bobbing on the water. Boats and rafts filled the docks tonight. Given all the unfamiliar flags, Rye suspected they’d sailed from towns far upriver to join the festivities.

Wind gusted off the water into Rye’s face and set the black flag flapping over the inn’s massive, iron-studded doors, the white fish bone logo swimming against the breeze. Rye always found it curious that an inn would need doors so thick. Two hulking guards stood watch at the front, joined together from the waist down by some dark magic. Their identical faces, under thick mops of white-blond hair, scrutinised all who tried to pass. Rye knew the intimidating guardians to be Folly’s twin brothers, Fitz and Flint, who, since birth, had shared a single pair of legs. They had the final say over who was allowed passage in or out of the Dead Fish. With their keen eyes and quick fists, there was no sneaking past them. Fortunately, Rye knew another way inside.

She slipped unnoticed down a darkened walkway and tiptoed through the alley behind the inn, taking care to be quiet until she tripped over a body on the ground.

“Ouch,” a voice grumbled, and a dirty hand grabbed Rye’s leg.

“Baron Nutfield?” Rye whispered. “Is that you?”

“Yes!” The voice smelled of ale and onions.

“Let go of my leg and go back to sleep,” Rye said.

He did.

Baron Nutfield was the old man who lived in the alley behind the Dead Fish. He actually lived in a guest room, but the Flood boys threw him in the alley whenever he failed to pay his bill. He spent more time outside the Dead Fish than in it. He claimed to be a nobleman in a county far to the south, but he never seemed able to find his way back there.

Rye reached down and picked up a pebble. She looked up at the third floor and counted three windows over from the left. Taking aim, she threw the pebble and it bounced off the glass with a rattle.

Nothing happened.

She picked up another, larger stone and tried again. This time it went clear through the glass.

“Pigshanks,” Rye whispered.

Her mother would scrub her tongue with soap if she heard her use language like that, but Rye was pretty sure Baron Nutfield didn’t mind.

“Hey!” an angry voice called from above. A man’s head jutted out of the broken window, but he couldn’t see her in the dark.

Maybe it was three from the right, Rye thought.

“Here,” Baron Nutfield said. He reached up and handed Rye another stone. “Put a little more arc on it this time.”

Rye tossed the stone at the window three from the right.

A lantern blazed to life. The window creaked open and a rope ladder slowly slid down the wall.