The Whatnot Read Online Free Page A

Pikey thought. He frowned.
    â€œBoy?” It had reached the seventh step. It stretched a thin-fingered hand up toward Pikey, pleading.
    â€œWhat d’you want?” Pikey asked gruffly. He shoved the bread into his pocket and glanced around to make sure no one was near. Fraternizing with faeries was dangerous. If anyone so much as smelled of spells or piskie herbs, it was off to Newgate, and Pikey had heard there was a kindly looking old man there in a butcher’s apron, and he was always weeping, and he would weep and weep as he pulled your fingernails out, but he would interrogate you until you’d say anything. Then you’d be sent to a different prison. Or hanged. Whatever the case, you were in for it. Pikey had been in for it all day, and he’d had enough.
    The faery continued up the steps, its round eyes locked on his.
    â€œWhat?” Pikey snapped. “You can’t have my bread if that’s what you want. I ran a long way for it. Go away.”
    â€œBoy,” it said, yet again. “ Wing.”
    â€œYeh, looks broken to me. Rotten luck.” Some servant in the downstairs had probably caught it stealing and had smashed it with a frying pan. Served it right, too.
    â€œHelp.” The faery was on the step below Pikey now, looking up at him with great mirror eyes that seemed to grow larger with every breath.
    â€œI ain’t helping you.” Pikey turned his face away. His gaze flickered back. He didn’t want to be awful. But he wasn’t about to put his neck out for a faery. Someone might be watching from one of those glowing windows. A street sweeper might pass just in that instant. Pikey couldn’t be seen with it. It was hard enough staying alive with one eye looking like a puddle of rain.
    â€œPlease help?” The voice was so human now; it sent a little stab through Pikey’s heart despite himself. The faery was just bones, a few thin sticks wrapped in papery skin. And it was hurting. He wouldn’t leave a dog like that. He wouldn’t even leave a leadface like that.
    He frowned harder and joggled his knee. Then he leaned forward and took the damaged wing in his hand. The faery shied ever so slightly at his touch, but it did not pull away.
    â€œFine,” Pikey said. “But if someone sees, I’m going to shove you at ’em and get outta here, you hear me?”
    The feathers felt smooth and oily between Pikey’s fingers, strangely immaterial, like smoke. He felt gently along the bone. He didn’t know a great deal about doctoring, but Bobby Blacktop, the old chemist’s boy, had gotten run over by a gas trolley a year ago and had both his legs broken. Pikey had learned a few things from that.
    Suddenly the faery sat up, ears twitching, as if picking up a sound only it could hear. “Quickly,” it hissed. “Quickly!”
    â€œOw, aren’t you one to make demands. What’s the hurry, then? Where you gotta be?” Pikey’s fingers found the joint, clicked it back in place. “It was just banged out o’ the socket is all. Is that better? Does it work now?”
    The faery’s eyelids snapped, once, across its eyes. In a flash its wings unfurled, faster than Pikey would have thought possible. He jerked back. The faery peered at him a second longer, its tongue slithering between its teeth. Then it whirled, wrapping itself in its feathers. There was a brush of wind, a chorus of whispers, like many little voices calling to one another, and then the faery was gone.
    It didn’t exactly vanish. Pikey thought it might have, but it was more as if it had moved into a pocket, as if the stairs and the street and all of London were painted on the thinnest of veils and the faery had simply slipped behind it.
    Pikey stared at the place where it had been. Then he stood quickly. Lights were coming on in the servants’ hall below. He could hear voices raised in excitement, the clatter of metal. A hand