The Book of Dead Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

that. Neither did Valerian, but that won’t stop me getting a thrashing if I get this wrong.
    “I don’t have any money,” he said, looking up sadly.
    She scowled briefly; then her face softened and she smiled.
    “Did you know you’ve got nothing on under there?” she asked, smirking.
    Boy looked down and hurriedly pulled his coat shut over his legs.
    “It’s cold outside,” he ventured, trying to sound as miserable as he could. “You know, on the streets…”
    “All right,” she said, “but just half an hour, mind, then out you go. Here, take this.”
    She put one of the glasses she had collected back down in front of him, and then emptied the dregs of five beer jugs into it. She nodded at the glass, now containing a couple of fingers of beer slops, and smiled again.
    “Better make it last, Gorgeous,” she said, and went off collecting more glasses while they were still unbroken.
    Boy took one look at the beer and pushed it away.
    The fight was just about over. The victor, a giant of a man, sat on the chest of the vanquished, a fat brute, raining a few last punches down on his face for good measure. But now it was all for show. Finally someone came to pull him off the fat man.
    “That’s enough. Well done.”
    The giant got up and for the first time Boy saw his face. He was as ugly as a dead cat.
    He seemed not to appreciate being pulled off the fat man, because he swung a fist at his would-be helper and sent him sprawling across a table.
    Everyone cheered except Boy, who had a sinking feeling. He pulled the sleeve of a toothless old man with a stick who was sitting nearby.
    “Who’s that?” Boy asked, but he knew the answer.
    “Eh?” said the man. “Don’t you know Jacob Green, the Green Giant?” He laughed, spat on the floor and waved his stick in the air for a drink.
    Meanwhile Green swaggered around, taking drinks from all and sundry and downing them in a single draft.
    The man he’d come to meet.
    Boy looked at his beer.
    Green sat talking loudly to a group in a corner, playing with something tiny in his giant hands, like a child with a toy. It was a small wooden box. He was spinning it between thumb and forefinger. Then he stopped and wound a little handle coming from its side. A small tinkle of musical notes floated through the hubbub of the tavern. A music box.
    Around him, two serving girls picked up bits of shattered bottles and broken chairs. Boy did not have a clue what was going on. This was a feeling he often had working for Valerian, but things were definitely getting more peculiar. The business in Korp’s box, when Valerian had materialized behind him no more than a few seconds after he’d left the stage, had unnerved him. And now Boy wondered what on earth Valerian could need from Green. There was only one way to find out.
    Boy looked at his beer. Picking up the glass, he swigged the cloudy brown liquid straight down, wiped his mouth and took a deep breath. He stood up and made his way across the room.

11
    Boy was not the only servant abroad at that moment. Back in the Quarter of the Arts, Willow ventured out into the cold night, moaning to herself as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and over her head. Her mouse-brown hair was thick and long, keeping her warm. She had been working for Madame Beauchance for a year now, ever since Madame had come to the Great Theater. It was a year too long, in her opinion.
    Madame was unattractive; she was vain and arrogant; she was lazy and spiteful, and miserly too. There was one thing which redeemed her: her voice. It was the voice of an angel. A voice that could murmur soft and low and soothe a bawling child, that could rise shrill and clear and shatter a mirror and that could slide so sweetly over a melody that a killer might sit down and weep. With her voice she had made a good career, and a small fortune that she kept to herself.
    Willow ended up working for her by chance. She had been employed as tail-carrier in her previous