The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) Read Online Free PDF

let the Daily fall down to his rude desk. “You came here to mock. To ridicule. To demean. To print lurid descriptions of my show, for the titillation and fleeting amusement of your vapid, witless readership.”
    “That’s twenty thousand vapid, witless readers, each paying five coppers a week to be titillated and fleetingly amused.”
    He smiled.
    “Twenty thousand, you say?”
    “Twenty-two thousand by the end of the week.”
    The carnival master nodded. Amid the masks and the wigs and the rest, mirrors hung haphazardly on every wall, and the effect of his nod reflected in so many mirrors filled the tent with the illusion of movement.
    “May I ask what wage you are paid, to mock and demean?”
    “Five coppers a word,” I said. “Six, if I manage to fit in ridicule.”
    He laughed. The sound was abrupt and dry and harsh. I’d heard jackals once, while my unit camped under the stars at Branach. Jackals sang while sand dunes sparkled with hoarfrost in the night. Thorkel’s laughter sounded like a jackal’s cry, humorless and cruel.
    He fished in his jacket, withdrew a silver Old Kingdom coin, and tossed it to me.
    I caught it.
    “Make them good words, Mr. Bustman. Excellent words. Now then. Let us show your magnificent audience the varied and unforgettable wonders of Dark’s Diverse Delights, mobile circus extraordinaire.”

Chapter Five
    I learned a lot about circus folk that day.
    First of all, they drink, and drink hard. Especially the side-show wonders. I met the Man of Bones when he stumbled out of his tent, went down on all fours at my feet, and vomited between my boots. I was amazed at the volume of liquid he expelled, given the emaciated state of his spindly frame.
    The circus master kicked the Man of Bones unceremoniously in his gut. “And here we find the Man of Bones, who has terrified audiences from the Sea to the Wastes,” said Thorkel, as he sent the scuttling wretch away with a second kick squarely on his backside. “A living skeleton, whose grinning skull will haunt your dreams forever.”
    I nodded and scribbled in my notebook. It didn’t seem polite to point out that the Man of Bones was still entirely covered in skin.
    We met the Queen of the Elves next. She wore a moth-eaten flannel gown over her spider-webs. A pair of mismatched work boots adorned her dainty feet. She puffed on an enormous cigar between swigs of dark brown liquid gulped from a dirty jar.
    “Go to Hell,” she opined, before sprawling lengthwise on a bench.
    “Men have traveled the world to pay homage to the Queen of the Elves,” said Thorkel. The Queen responded with a raised middle finger. “Her beauty and charm are unmatched in all the mortal world.”
    “She wears flannel as only an Elf could,” I added. Thorkel’s brow furrowed beneath his immaculate top-hat.
    “That is to say, her ethereal beauty blinds, so dazzling is she to gaze upon,” I said, quickly. Thorkel rewarded me with a humorless jackal’s grin.
    We passed a stage, upon which a bleary-eyed thin man in an old-fashioned long-tailed coat and fancy high-heeled gentleman’s boots waved a short black wand over a yawning young woman.
    “Two, three, raise the cloth,” said the man. The young lady raised a dirty bed sheet up over her head, and the magician snapped his fingers.
    The cloth dropped, revealing an empty stage. I heard a distinct thud from beneath it, and a muffled feminine curse.
    “You forgot the damned mat again,” shouted the young woman.
    The magician cussed and yelled for a runner.
    “Here we have Malus the Magnificent, master of magic,” said Thorkel, with a flourish. “Prepare to be amazed as he confounds and mystifies!”
    A section of the stage floor lifted and the young woman emerged. “Bruised is all I’m getting lately,” she said. “Malus needs to lay off the hooch.”
    “An accomplished illusionist, Malus the Magnificent fills audiences with delight,” I said. “Performing perilous feats of magic unseen since the