Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

The noise was getting louder. Bartholomew could hear it even above the clatter of the keys. A heavy clang, like a metal door slamming. Then running feet, pounding somewhere in the depths of the building. Shouts. Someone was shouting at the top of his lungs, but Bartholomew couldn’t hear the words.

The secretary’s fingers froze, hovering above the keys. He looked up sharply, black eyebrows bristling.

The shouting came closer. Bartholomew didn’t dare move, but his ears were straining, trying to make out the cries. Just a little bit closer. .

Both Bartholomew and the secretary caught the words at the same time. “Run, boy!” Mr. Jelliby was screaming. “Get out!”

The secretary leaped. Sheaves of papers went sailing into the air as he scrambled across his desk, but Bartholomew was too quick. He ran out the door, slamming it behind him. He turned just in time to see Mr. Jelliby stumbling up out of a stairwell, eyes wild and frightened.

“Run for the street! We’ll find each other outside!”

The hallway of the police station was lined with dozens of walnut doors and all those doors seemed to open at once, revealing ruddy, curious faces and loose ties. A few officers ran out, struggling with the buckles on their weapons. Mr. Jelliby barged past them. Bartholomew wormed under them, and soon they were both out in the open again, limping and stumbling among the supports of the iron bridge.

Mr. Jelliby glanced back over his shoulder. Dr. Harrow had reached the steps of the police station. He was walking jerkily, blood running from his nose where Mr. Jelliby had struck him. Behind him, police officers shouted and pushed, staring in confusion after the fleeing figures. Two blew their whistles and gave chase, but they were soon lost in the evening crowds as Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby hurried deeper into the city.

Mr. Jelliby guessed right away why the police did not try harder to catch him. They knew who he was. A member of the Privy Council with a penchant for spying and violent outbreaks could not very well disappear. They would be wiring London right this very minute, telling the constabulary to send a patrol to the house on Belgrave Square, with orders to have him arrested as soon as he arrived.

But Mr. Jelliby had no intention of returning to London. Not yet. There were two more addresses on that scrap of paper. Two lives he could possibly save. As long as Ophelia isn’t in London. . He hoped she had gone to Cardiff. It would break her heart if she were in Belgrave Square when the police came.

When they had slowed enough that they could breathe again, Bartholomew scurried forward.

“What happened?” he asked, dodging a heap of wicker-bound casks to keep at Mr. Jelliby’s side. He didn’t really want to know. It would probably make him angry. They had wasted so many hours in there, and it was likely because the gentleman had done something foolish again and gotten in trouble for it. But Bartholomew thought he should try to say something to make up for being silent when the man had thanked him.

“Melusine was a pawn,” Mr. Jelliby said, not even glancing at Bartholomew. He raised his hand, hailing a passing cab drawn by two giant wolves. The cab didn’t stop. The wolves loped on, yellow eyes dull and unseeing. Mr. Jelliby scowled after them. “It makes a bit of sense now, I suppose. The lady was controlled by a faery. Like a puppet on a string. And I’d wager my little finger that faery works for the Lord Chancellor. It’s why she tried to kill me, and now that she’s locked up with the Bath police the faery’s gone into the bearded chap. He looked a bit unsteady on his feet, though. It’ll buy us some time, I hope, before he’s after us again.”

Mr. Jelliby hailed another cab. This one stopped, coal smoke belching from every seam, but it clacked away noisily when he told the driver where they wanted to go.

Mr. Jelliby cursed and set off again, crossing a stone bridge that spanned a frothing little river. “We’ll need to buy provisions. Weapons, perhaps, and I want a hat. I have no idea what is waiting for us at the other coordinates, but I will be prepared.”

“What coordinates?” Bartholomew asked. “I need to find my sister. Where are we going?”

“North. I can’t tell you where your sister is, but I know where John Lickerish’s birds flew, and if she’s anywhere, she’s there. We must get to the faery city and find a train to Yorkshire. We’re going north.”

Not fifteen minutes after they had fled the police station, they were both collapsed behind the red curtain of a rickshaw, jolting up the road into New Bath. The rickshaw was of the conventional sort, helmed by a large-wheeled bicycle and pedaled by a very tiny spryte, who gasped and strained against the pedals with all his might.

The interior was dark. Mr. Jelliby sat sprawled across the bench, holding his aching head and moaning. Bartholomew had pressed himself into the farthest corner.

When he was certain the gentleman wasn’t paying attention, he parted the curtain an inch and looked out in awe at the vertical city unfolding around him. Never in all his life had he entered New Bath. It was barely half a mile of narrow streets away from Old Crow Alley, but in Bartholomew’s world that was an impenetrable forest. You didn’t simply go places. It was unwise to leave the house, dangerous to go into the street, but it was mind-bogglingly foolish to venture out of the faery slums. Bartholomew had not needed to be mind-bogglingly foolish until very recently. Besides, Mother didn’t like New Bath. She had always told him it was a wicked, deadly place, even worse than the faery districts of the old city. New Bath, she had said, was where the Sidhe ran rampant, where the fay lived in all the wildness and lawlessness of their own country, and where not even the long arm of the Royal Police could reach. When Bartholomew was very small, she had gathered him into her lap and told him a tale about how New Bath was a living, breathing creature, and that one day it would grow legs and open its cloud-gray eyes and stalk away into the countryside, leaving the city behind it.

Staring out from behind the curtain, Bartholomew almost believed Mother’s story. The rickshaw was creaking up a steep road made of stone and seemingly held aloft by the branches of a massive tree. Evening was approaching, and little yellow lights were springing up all about, lining the street and sprinkling the mass of odd buildings with droplets of gold.

Bartholomew pulled his cloak tighter around him. It was all so very different from Old Bath. Everything was quieter, the shadows somehow deeper. Now and then he thought he heard a sad passage of music flitting in and out on the breeze, brushing against his ears like moth wings. He imagined it was the city’s thoughts escaping from its brain and dancing away through the air. There were no steam creatures here either, he noticed. No street trolleys, or automatons. No technology of any sort. Perhaps that was why it seemed so silent. The only engines in the whole place were those rattling in and out of the New Bath Train Terminal far below, near the roots of the city, and that was a relic from an age past, when the government had tried to connect the faery city with the rest of England. It was the only thing that connected the two. Those iron tracks. Nothing else.

Spluttering and heaving, the poor spryte at the helm of the rickshaw steered them up the wide thoroughfare, past towers and hovels and houses hanging from chains, until they came to the edge of a vast open space at the heart of the city. It’s not so much like a monster, Bartholomew thought. It’s more like an apple. A huge, black, rotten apple with the core pulled out. The space extended from the structures on the ground, all the way to the clouds far above. Walkways wrapped around it, crisscrossing it on all the many levels-bridges and ladders and gangplanks trussed up with ropes, dangling, creaking, swaying. Thousands of small shops lined them, shacks, and carts, giant silk cocoons of the sort butterflies slip from, and colorful tents with fluttering awnings. Lanterns shone from every post and railing, turning the walkways into blazing ribbons.