The Book of Dead Days

  That was how she found the side door to the theater flapping open in the chilly night air, and how she walked cautiously into the auditorium, already sensing something was wrong, and how she stood halfway back in the stalls, looking at the stage, when she felt it raining on her head.

  She noticed that the footlights were faintly glowing. That too was odd—they were very expensive to run. Then she remembered she was inside and that it couldn’t be raining.

  She put her hand to her hair and felt the wetness. It was warm. In the dim light coming from the stage she looked at her hand and screamed.

  It was covered in blood.

  She looked up to see the head and shoulders of Korp’s corpse sticking out of the box’s window.

  12

  Green gave Boy’s throat another gentle squeeze. He had one of his huge spadelike fists wrapped around it, though not tightly.

  Not yet, thought Boy.

  Despite the fact that they were in full view of everyone in the tavern, Boy had no doubt that Green would snap his neck like a dry reed if he wanted to. The Trumpet had its own laws, and one murder or another was probably nothing to these people.

  Boy stood in front of Green, who sat with one arm outstretched, his fingers raising Boy onto his tiptoes. Even like this, Green was taller than him. At least it meant Boy wasn’t looking straight at Green’s foul face. He had a wide nose, with nostrils that had obviously been split in some fight or other. The whites of his eyes were yellow and watery; his lips were like two slugs sitting on each other. His hair was thinning and his scalp was diseased. Boy tried not to look, and anyway, he had other things to concentrate on. He had been standing precariously on tiptoe ever since he had had the nerve to approach the giant.

  “What do you want?” Green had bawled.

  “I—I—” stammered Boy. “I’ve been sent to—”

  “Ah!” said Green. “He sent you, did he? Too scared to come himself! Perhaps I should just give you what I was going to give him!”

  Boy nodded, and next thing he knew he was balancing on the ends of his toes.

  “He sent you?”

  “U-hurrrr,” squeaked Boy.

  “What?” shouted Green, letting Boy drop a little onto his feet.

  Green scowled and shook Boy briskly. He put him down again. “Tell him to come himself. I only deal with him. Now get lost!”

  Boy fell to his knees, choking. Hearing the tinny notes of the music box again, he looked up to find Green spinning the handle, laughing to himself, captivated by the simple tune.

  Boy caught only a glimpse before it was hidden in Green’s massive hand, but it was strange and beautiful.

  Boy sat in the dirt of the floor and rubbed his sore neck.

  Green lurched to his feet and sloped away across the room, pushing past people as he went. He staggered through the door to the latrine.

  Boy picked himself up, and followed Green. He couldn’t go back to Valerian empty-handed.

  As he stepped through the door there was a flash of light and a noise like a cork popping. Then everywhere was shrouded in purple smoke.

  He heard a thump and then the sound of feet clambering against the wooden wall of the crap-house.

  The smoke cleared and through the darkness Boy saw a shape at his feet. He knelt down and put his hand out.

  It was Green, and he was dead. Boy could tell that immediately from the peculiar angle of his neck.

  Boy was about to run when he saw something glinting in Green’s fist. His old magpie habits from his days on the street tugged at him. He prized the huge fingers open and there, unharmed, was the music box.

  He grabbed it and stuck it in his pocket. Then he heard the door to the Trumpet open behind him.

  He jumped to his feet and sped away up the side alley.

  “Hey!” shouted a voice behind him. “Hey!”

  “The Phantom!” cried the voice as Boy disappeared. “The Phantom has got Green!”

  As he ran it occurred to him that it was true. Green must have been struck by the Phantom, just as Boy was following him. It was a lucky escape. Any sooner and he might be dead too. Boy sped on, trying to ignore the fact that he had not got the information Valerian was after, and that now the source of that information was dead.

  Boy ran madly, until finally he turned a corner and ran slap into someone else. Together they flew into the mud of the street. Boy looked at the runner sprawled across him.

  “Boy!” Willow screamed. She was in a state, gabbling, “I saw—in his box . . .”

  A shadowy figure suddenly rose up in front of them.

  “In a hurry?” it asked.

  They looked up. From his black cape, and extravagant red-plumed hat, they knew who the man was. His was the garb of a City Watchman.

  Boy had spent much of his homeless years, the years before Valerian, trying to avoid the City Watchmen. In his opinion they spent far too much of their time trying to capture hungry boys who had stolen food, and not enough stopping people killing each other in tavern brawls.

  But Willow cried, “I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Yes,” said the Watchman sarcastically, “I’m sure you are. Now, would you like to tell me whose blood that is?”

  Boy looked at Willow and saw blood in her hair and across her shoulders. Then he noticed the Watchman was staring at him.

  Boy looked at his leg. He was covered in blood too.

  Things were getting messy.

  “I think you’d better come with me, don’t you?”

  Before either of them could answer he grabbed them both by the necks and dragged them away down the street.

  Some way behind, a tall figure followed, slipping in and out of the darknesses of the street.

  13

  Dawn had risen on the morning of December 27, its pale light stealing into the cell where Willow and Boy lay. The room was about six feet square, with solid stone walls and a single window with no glass but a closely spaced grid of iron bars instead. This let the cold in and stopped the prisoners from getting out, which was just what the Watchmen wanted. Cold prisoners were less trouble. They often died of exposure before anybody had to decide what to do with them, which saved a lot of trouble all round.

  Willow and Boy lay on some sparse and dirty straw, trying to keep away from a man who lay snoring next to one of the walls. He was huge. Once or twice he had rolled over and they had shivered on seeing his scarred face. Fortunately he had so far shown no sign of waking up.

  “Why don’t they hurry up and let us out?” Willow asked again.

  “We’ve got to get out,” said Boy again.

  The window was high up, but when she stood on Boy’s shoulders Willow was able to peer out across the City below. “I think it’s going to snow today.” For some reason it reminded her of when she was small, just a little child, when she hadn’t had to work to survive. On a day like that there had been a lovely, thick fall of snow, and she had played in it, carefree.

  The sunrise was casting a pinkish light across the whole City. Mile after murderous mile of it stretched away as far as she could see. From high in the dungeon inside the Citadel of the City Watchmen the sprawl of buildings was laid out before her like a carpet. Even this early in the morning the City hummed and bustled with the noise of tradesmen up before the sun. In the gentle pink light, and from this height, the City looked almost beautiful to Willow. Almost. In recent years she had spent too long ducking and weaving her way through its narrow lanes and dark alleys to ever think of the place as beautiful. From where she teetered on Boy’s back she could see a very long way. Could she even see the edge of the City, or was she just imagining it? Remembering it, maybe. A trip to the country when she was a little girl, with her parents. She was imagining it. She’d been too little when her parents had died to remember them.

  “Have you ever been out of the City?” she asked Boy.

  “Are you going to get down?”

  “Oh, sorry, yes.”

  She slithered off his
back and landed nimbly beside him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Well?”

  “I think it’s going to snow.”

  “The window, Willow?” he said.

  “Oh, there’s no way we’re going anywhere. The bars are solid and besides, there’s a drop that’d squash you flat. We’re stuck.”

  Boy slid back down into the straw.

  “Then I’m as good as dead.”

  “Korp is dead,” said Willow, and shivered again.

  They were both silent.

  “I don’t even know your name,” said Willow after a while.

  “Yes you do,” said Boy.

  “What? Boy? That’s just what he calls you, isn’t it?”

  Boy said nothing.

  “That’s your real name? Boy? That’s not a name. You must have a real one.”

  Boy looked at her.

  “That’s my only name. Before Valerian found me no one called me anything at all.”

  Willow stared at Boy.

  “So where did you come from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No,” said Boy, beginning to wish he’d been arrested on his own.

  “How can you not know? Where did you live before Valerian found you?”

  “In the City.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Always?”

  “Yes,” said Boy. “Is that so strange?”

  “No,” admitted Willow, “but I know my name and I know I was born in the City, though I can’t remember where.”

  “And so do I,” said Boy angrily. “My name’s Boy and I was born in the City too! All right?”

  Willow was quiet, flicking her feet with a piece of straw. “Sorry.”

  Boy mumbled something.

  “Why are they taking so long?” she asked again.

  “We’ve got to get out,” said Boy again.

  There was a rattling of keys in the huge iron lock and the door swung back on its heavy hinges.

  The Watchman who had locked them up several hours before ducked his head as he came back into the cell. He seemed surprised to see them. He glanced at the sleeping figure by the wall.

  “Lucky for you he drank so much,” he said.

  “Did you go to the theater and look?” asked Willow.

  “Oh yes,” said the Watchman. His hat had a pink plume in it. This meant he was more important than the red-plumed one who’d arrested them. Willow thought this was a good sign. He could let them go. She’d told them about finding Korp and explained about the blood. She’d told them to go and see for themselves, so they knew she was telling the truth. And Boy had just let them imagine that the blood on his clothes was the same blood that was on Willow.

  “So you see that what we told you is true?” Willow asked.

  “Oh yes. Very much so. And you will both be detained on suspicion of the murder of Director Korp of the Great Theater.”

  14

  Valerian lurked in the shadows across the road from the Citadel of the City Watchmen. It was an old building, one of the very oldest in this very old city, and was a crazy mixture of styles and materials. Black-timbered box windows lurched unnecessarily far out of rough stone walls, doors halfway up walls led only to empty space, and ornate towers and spires twisted high into the early morning air above Valerian.

  He hated being here, he disliked even being in this part of the City, which was a much richer and altogether nicer area than he was used to—than what he had become used to. The longest side of the Citadel overlooked the river, and the stink coming from it was worse than ever. As if all that were not enough, it was daylight. Valerian could not remember the last time he had been outside during the day. It disturbed him.

  It had all gone wrong, and time was running out. Had he really expected the boy to get the information he’d sent him for? And now he’d have to get Boy out of the Citadel, to know for sure that he hadn’t. Valerian cursed; he didn’t have time to be messing around like this.

  Once, things had been so different for him, but as the last few years had turned under his feet, the specter of his past had risen to meet him like the dawn of a terrible day.

  Well, there would be worse to come yet, that much Valerian knew for sure.

  15

  The figure in the straw stirred again. Very soon he might wake up, and with a significant hangover.

  “Why did you tell them about Korp?” Boy asked Willow.

  “I couldn’t not, could I? I was covered in blood. I still am.”

  She tried not to look at her clothes. It was bad enough that the stuff had now dried in her hair and matted it together in places. She wanted a bath very much. Boy looked no better. For some reason he was wearing only sackcloth leggings under his overcoat, and from the knees down his legs were stained red-brown. Although Red-plume and Pink-plume thought this was Korp’s blood too, Willow knew it was not.

  “So tell me again how you’ve got blood on your legs. And where your clothes are. And what you were doing out at three in the morning.”

  Boy sighed. Why did she always have to ask so many questions? He changed the subject. “I can’t believe Korp’s dead.”

  “No,” Willow agreed.

  “But that means . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, the theater. What will happen? There’s no one to take it over. It will close and that means I’m out of a job.”

  “Me too,” said Willow, “but we don’t know for sure it’s going to close. Someone will take it over.”

  “Who?” asked Boy.

  “Well . . . ,” said Willow, thinking hard. “Valerian?”

  Boy was about to laugh, but then thought about it. Valerian was just about the only reason the Great Theater was still going anyway. Why shouldn’t he take it over? In fact . . . A terrible thought crossed his mind, but he pushed it away. There were other things to think about first. Besides, Valerian was utterly bored with the theater these days, only keeping the act going as a steady source of income.

  “What will they do to us?” he asked Willow, but he knew the answer.

  “Hang us, I expect.”

  “Or drown us, maybe.”

  They both fell silent again. The sun climbed higher over the City and shed a little light directly into their cell. Boy and Willow wasted no time in sitting in the patch of sunlight, and at last they began to feel warm.

  Boy shoved his hands deep into his pockets and his left struck something solid. He pulled out the music box. He turned it over. The only other time he’d seen one was in Kepler’s house. He collected clockwork mechanisms of all kinds, and had once shown some to Boy.

  Boy daydreamed, remembering the time a year or so ago when Kepler had come to stay in their house for a week while he installed the camera obscura. It had taken Kepler the whole week to fit it into the Tower room. There was a lot of banging and sawing and swearing, until finally Kepler had thrown open the door.

  “Behold!” he cried dramatically, and Valerian, who had not been allowed into his own chamber during the construction, had entered. Boy had watched the door close behind them, and many months later he was still none the wiser about what the machine actually did. As the door had closed, however, he had heard Valerian exclaim, “You, Kepler, are the greatest Doctor of Natural Philosophies who has ever lived!”

  “What’s that?” asked Willow.

  Boy waved the music box at her and wound its handle a couple of times before putting it back in his pocket.

  “I . . . found it,” he said. “At the Trumpet. Listen to the music, because it may be the last we hear!”

  “Oh, Boy, don’t give up. It could be worse.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  Willow didn’t answer, because the figure lying in the straw suddenly rolled over and vomited across the floor.

  “Please get me out of here,” wailed Boy.

  The door rattled and opened, and Valerian entered the room.

>   Before Boy could open his mouth, Valerian put his finger to his lips. Pink-plume followed him.

  “Two minutes,” he barked at Valerian, and then saw the mess on the floor. “Or less, if you prefer.” He pulled a face and locked them in again.

  “Valerian!” Boy cried. “How did—?”

  “How did I know you were here? You don’t think I’d trust you to get it right by yourself, do you? Something this important?”

  Boy wished Valerian wouldn’t talk like that, especially in front of Willow, but he was too relieved to care.

  “Well?” said Valerian.

  Boy said nothing. Then:

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything. I—”

  Valerian lurched forward toward Boy, who flinched backward. But did not hit him.

  “He’s dead,” Boy cried. “Someone murdered him. The Phantom!”

  “What?” roared Valerian, then seemed to remember where they were and made an effort to calm himself.

  “He’s dead. He—”

  “Not that! Did he tell you anything? What did he say before . . . ?”

  “He wouldn’t,” Boy stammered. “He—”

  “Be quiet! So he told you nothing before he died? Kepler sent him with information for me—the name of a grave. You’re sure?”

  Boy nodded, and Valerian flung his arms out wide, failing to find words bad enough for Boy.

  “I do have something,” Boy said. He fished in his pocket and pulled out the music box.

  “Are you trying to be funny? I need a name, not trinkets!”

  “Valerian?” asked Willow.

  Only now did Valerian seem to notice her presence in the cell.

  “Hmm?” he said, still staring at the music box.

  “He said two minutes. Are you going to get us out of here?”

  Boy cringed. This was not a good way to go about getting anything from his master. In fact, there was no good way to get anything from him, but Willow didn’t know that.

  Valerian dragged his eyes away from the tiny mechanical object and shoved it in his pocket.

  “I may as well leave you here,” he snarled. “You are no use to me.”