The Book of Dead Days Page 8

  “Is he a friend of yours?” asked Boy.

  Valerian frowned.

  “I know him. At least I used to, in my days at the Academy. He is the only source of cadavers for dissection in the City. Well, the only official source.”

  Valerian saw the question on Boy’s lips.

  “Work it out, Boy! Would it be clearer if I said ‘bodies to cut up’? To study the nature of the human organism. So I had a few dealings with him until I . . . left . . . academia. There’s a building in the Reach that’s his official residence. Go there and tell him Valerian sent you. Tell him I need to know the whereabouts of a grave.”

  Boy knew the Reach. It was a rich part of town. Before Valerian had found him, he had often spent summer days there, begging and, when no one was being generous, picking pockets.

  “You must go there and get the location of Beebe’s grave. All burials that occur in the City are recorded there. All official ones, that is.”

  Valerian brushed at the dirt on his coat.

  “What will you do?” Boy asked.

  A look of irritation crossed Valerian’s face, but it passed.

  “The girl—Willow and I will go to Kepler. I need him to mend my arm, and I need someone to help me. I also need someone to go to the Master of Burials, and that will be you. You know the way there and Willow does not. Meet us back here this evening. Only enter the house after dark, light no lights and answer the door to no one. The place is safe enough.”

  “How will I get in if I get back first?”

  Boy thought about the shock he’d had the time he’d tried to pick the lock.

  Valerian smiled.

  “It’s time you had your own key.”

  He pulled a key from the bunch and handed it to Boy.

  “The only spare. Don’t lose it. Now, back here after dark with the name of the cemetery. Understand?”

  Boy nodded, as usual.

  “Then go! And do not fail!”

  Boy turned to go.

  “Valerian?”

  “What is it?”

  “You said he was awkward, the Master of Burials. What do you mean?”

  “Cantankerous. Prone to strange moods. And difficult to work with too. When I last knew him he had become involved in some studies of his own. I never found out what. It made it impossible to get what we needed from him anymore, and we had to use . . . alternative sources. That’s all.”

  Boy fingered his key.

  “You have nothing to fear! Go!” Valerian said, and pushed him toward the door.

  Boy fled from the house, clutching his key, without even telling Willow where he was going. And this time Valerian would not be there to get him out of trouble.

  9

  It was long past noon. Boy trotted along the streets, out of habit keeping to the shadows and smaller alleys. He had never liked being on his own, and with the thought of those featherbrained, feather-hatted Watchmen on the lookout for him too, he felt more timid than usual.

  It was December 28. The sky was clear and ice-blue. Columns of gray smoke twisted feebly upward from chimneys and other funnels on the rooftops. It was cold, if anything colder than it had yet been all winter, but there was still no sign of the snow that Willow had sensed.

  It was a busy day, with people getting about their business in the street and behind doors.

  Boy had not even had time to clean his hands, and as he made his way along the streets he picked at the soil stuck to his fingers. It gave him the creeps.

  He had entered a dreamworld. Two days ago everything had been normal, or as normal as life ever was with Valerian.

  Now everything had changed. Although Boy knew that things had started to change for Valerian months ago, it seemed to be coming to a head now, in these last days of the year.

  The festivities and celebrations were over, for the time being, until another burst of frenetic fun at New Year’s. The City had been a riot of noise and rare winter color up to the twenty-fifth. Even the poorest people somehow saved and hoarded all the little luxuries they could for the midwinter feast: some rare dried fruit, some decent wine or strong beer was all it took to warm their hearts for a few days, reminding them that winter could not last forever, that spring would return eventually, bursting green and golden. For those very few of the City who were rich, it was a time of greater indulgence and lavish gifts, but the purpose of the festivities was just the same, creating a candle-bright haven in the depths of winter.

  Now, in the few days before the New Year arrived, there was a lull. It was an unusual time, Boy thought, and he knew he had always felt this. Even in the days before Valerian, when he had lived on his own like a mouse in the hidden nooks and crannies of the City, he had always felt these few days before the New Year to be different from the rest. This was a strange and quiet interlude, somehow outside the rest of the year, outside time itself. It was as if the rest of the year was alive, but these days were dead.

  Boy was not surprised that if he had entered a dreamworld, it had happened during the dead days.

  He had had barely any sleep—perhaps that was adding to his sense of the unreal. But it was true that he had been in a prison cell, under suspicion of involvement in Korp’s murder. Korp had been spread all over the box where Boy had spent whatever free time he could. And then, when Willow and Boy had been incarcerated in the Watchmen’s Citadel, Valerian had effected a daring escape. They had spent a night crawling around a cemetery looking not for a body, but for a book. Surely a library was the place to look for a book? And he and Willow had then pulled his master half alive from a freshly robbed grave.

  This was not normal, even for life with Valerian. And his master had told them there was worse to come. Nothing Boy knew, or had ever known about Valerian made him doubt it.

  Boy trotted through the City, grim resolution on his face.

  10

  “Where did you find him?” asked Willow.

  “Do you always ask so many questions?” Valerian snapped.

  “Only when I want to know something. So where did you find him?”

  Valerian and Willow were slowly making their way to see Kepler. Willow kept forgetting the reason for their visit, kept forgetting that Valerian’s arm was broken. The drug—whatever it was he had taken in the house—was doing a remarkable job of shielding him from the pain. Willow had retied his arm in something much more like a proper sling, and tucked the loose sleeve of his long dark coat into its pocket.

  “You wouldn’t even know there was anything wrong,” she had said, “unless you looked hard.”

  “I can tell you there’s something wrong,” Valerian had answered, and took a small swig from one of the bottles Willow had found in the cupboard.

  “Well?” Willow pressed, but gently. “Where did you find Boy?”

  Valerian looked down sideways at her, narrowing his eyes, but he was too sleepy from the drug to be really annoyed. He began to talk.

  “Boy fell from the sky,” he said, “sort of. I was in a church—not something I make a habit of, but it was raining hard and it was somewhere dry, if not warm. And he was in one of his hiding places. I think he had lots of them. He’s good at getting into small spaces—that’s why I thought he’d be good for the act. Anyway, I was talking to . . . well, Korp, as it happens. Our dear departed Director. We had arranged to meet to discuss the act. And the next moment Boy fell on top of me, more or less. Here, we need to take that street over there.”

  He nodded and Willow steered them on their way.

  “That can’t be all,” she said. “Why does he live with you? What did he do before?”

  “He lived on the streets. He says he can’t remember a time before that. He could speak, though, so he must have grown up with people somewhere or other.”

  Willow nodded thoughtfully.

  “And I taught him to read, though he is a terribly lazy scholar. . . .”

  Did she imagine it, or was there a slight softness in Valerian’s voice?

  “It mu
st have been hard for him,” said Willow, trying to get Valerian to tell her more.

  “What?”

  “Living by himself. In the City. That must have been hard.”

  Valerian snorted.

  “Maybe so, but he’d do better if he paid me more attention. It doesn’t matter. The point is, he came to live with me. I had started to work at the theater, being short of money, but although I had created an act, I needed help. I needed someone to be mine—someone who would do exactly what I told them without questioning why. Someone I could trust. Boy’s arrival was like a foretold event. It was meant to be, you see.”

  “Not really,” said Willow.

  “Well, there I was talking to Korp about my state of health, and the act, and the fact that I was nearly ready but just had to find the right assistant, and then . . . there he was. At my feet. And do you know, in a strange way I knew straight away he was the one. It was as though we had always been together. It works.”

  “So why are you so hard on him?”

  “I am not hard on him,” said Valerian. “He needs a firm, guiding hand. He is prone to laziness and stupidity.”

  Willow thought about defending Boy, but sensed Valerian’s mood. She changed the subject.

  “So why did he fall from his hiding place, then?”

  “He said it was what I was saying.”

  “What was that?”

  “As I recall, I was explaining to Korp why I needed— why I had decided to create the act for the theater. I was running short of . . . money. As a result of which, a . . . few problems had left me in a state of some ill health. A doctor was called. The doctor pronounced me either dead or dangerously sick. I understand it was those words that surprised Boy into relinquishing his grip on the stones.”

  Willow frowned.

  “ ‘Dead or dangerously sick’?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, I think Boy was as confused as you. This is, however, where I get my mistrust of doctors in general. The man was a charlatan, and nothing he did had the slightest to do with my survival and recovery.”

  “And Kepler?” asked Willow, thinking of the doctor they were about to meet.

  “Kepler is no ordinary doctor. In fact, Kepler is no ordinary man, and will do the best that can be done for my arm.”

  11

  A mile or two across the City, Boy was nearing his destination—the wide and relatively clean street known as the Reach. Halfway along it lay the official residence of the Master of City Burials. Like many of the organizations that ran various aspects of City life, that of City Burials was a little strange. Like the others, it operated from the official house of its Master. Each one was a small governance in its own right, with its own set of laws and rules, and those in charge giving orders to those who obeyed, with the Master himself at the top.

  Each was housed in a grand building, a reminder of the City’s ancient and proud past. Some were now more than a little worse for wear, according to the prosperity of the Chamber or Society that operated from them.

  Of course, all these organizations were ultimately ruled by the Emperor, but in practice no one knew much about this. Emperor Frederick was a strange and remote figure, hidden away in the Palace. Something of a city within the City itself, the Palace occupied a vast area atop a low hill near the banks of the river. It was composed of a huge variety of buildings of various ages and styles clambering over one another for supremacy, and all surrounded by a high, crenellated wall. The title Emperor was something of a joke—a pathetic hangover from the days when the City had been ruled by a leader of awesome power, when there had actually been an empire to rule, of which the City was its magnificent capital. Not anymore. Gone was the Empire, gone was the power and the glory of the City, and all that was left was Frederick, the last of his line, with no offspring to rule after him.

  It was more than ten years since anyone outside the Palace had seen Frederick, and only then by accident. Life in the City functioned largely without him.

  The building that housed City Burials was splendid and opulent. Death was always good business, and since the Master’s men coordinated all aspects of a person’s life after death, from mortuary services to undertaking to burial and funerary rites, he was very wealthy indeed.

  Boy stood on the other side of the Reach in a doorway opposite the ornate building. It stood imposingly, its front doors up a flight of at least a dozen stone steps, each door three times Boy’s height, heavy and solid. On them hung huge polished door knockers shaped like lions’ heads.

  There was an inscription in the stone above the doors.

  “Latin, I suppose, Valerian,” Boy said to himself, and smiled. Then the smile drifted from his face. Valerian was in trouble. It was more than just a broken arm, and it was up to Boy to find the solution.

  He swallowed, looked up and down the street and crossed. He skipped nimbly up the stone steps and, reaching up on tiptoe, swung one of the lions against its base.

  The loud metal clunk seemed to echo the length of the street, but as Boy looked around nervously he was relieved to see that no one was paying him any attention. Nor, unfortunately, did anyone inside the building seem to have heard.

  He swung the lion harder and waited.

  “Side entrance,” said a voice beside him.

  Startled, Boy looked to his right and noticed a small hatch set in one of the soaring pillars. Inside the pillar was a little room in which sat a tiny old woman with a wrinkled face and an expression to match.

  “Come about a death, have you? Round the side.”

  “Yes—no—not exactly.”

  The woman was unimpressed.

  “Death? Round the side. Side door, see? That’s where you register.”

  Boy was puzzled.

  “Then what do you do?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, “I tell people about the side door.”

  “That’s it?” Boy asked. “That’s all you do?”

  “It’s important. Someone’s got to tell people about the side door. For deaths. Important,” she added.

  “And I wonder,” he said, “who tells me where to go if I haven’t got a death to register.”

  The woman blinked.

  “Well,” she said, peering anxiously around before answering, “well, I could, probably, tell you.”

  “Oh, good,” said Boy. “So where do I go to speak to the Master of City Burials?”

  “Well, then you’d want to knock on the front door there and . . . What?” She spluttered to a stop. “What do you mean? Don’t waste my time!”

  “No,” said Boy earnestly. “No, I really need to see him. My master sent me—his name’s Valerian. He said to say he sent me. We have to find out where someone is buried.”

  “You can’t see him. You think proles like you just wander in off the street for a chat?”

  “But, look,” he said, “the thing is, Valerian, he’s a friend of the Master. And he needs to find out something, about where a grave is—”

  “Listen to me,” she said. “No one gets to see him.”

  “But I have to see him!” cried Boy.

  “No!” snapped the woman. “He’s very busy working on his animals in the Dome. He won’t think about anything else. No one talks to him.”

  “What’s he doing with animals? Doesn’t he have lots of work to do for the cemeteries and so on?”

  “Well, I don’t know, of course, but he’s been working in the Dome with his animals for years and it must be very important because he is the Master and it must have lots to do with burying people or he wouldn’t be doing it.”

  Boy was puzzled, but he nodded.

  “What is he doing with them?” he asked. “What are the animals for?”

  “Well, nothing much. They’re dead, you see.”

  A creeping little curiosity inside Boy told him he was going to have to find out what the Master of City Burials was doing before he went back to Valerian.

  12

  This was so
mething Boy was good at.

  Creeping and climbing around the dark spaces of buildings that no one even knew existed was something he had always done. Even Valerian had to admit that Boy was very good at not being seen.

  Standing back in the street he had immediately spotted the dome the woman had spoken of. It was a huge glass roof made of hundreds, probably thousands of individual panes of glass. They arched in a single beautiful sweep from some part of the building out of sight from where Boy stood. He’d spent a long time stalking the area, and now dusk was coming. In the half-light, the Dome shone with the light of a thousand torches—or so it seemed to Boy. It was a glowing, shining, crystalline bubble that gleamed out of the filth of the City like a diamond in a dung heap.

  Boy had scouted around the streets that joined the Reach and found a small alley running into the center of the block. There was a narrow but sturdy iron gate across the entrance to the alley, but Boy was over it before he had even wondered what he was doing. If he had stopped to think, he might have noticed that he was actually enjoying himself. This was like home to him. It was familiar ground—running, climbing, hiding in the dark, with a mission to perform for Valerian. It was almost like normal.

  He skipped down the alley as lightly as a rat, realizing as he went that the alley was some kind of rubbish heap for all the buildings that ran behind it. Walls rose up high on either side of him, but just as he expected, there were little gates into the back courtyards of each building.

  He guessed where the gate for the Burials building would be.

  There beyond lay the Dome, and for the first time he could see the stone building that it rose from. In a way he was disappointed that the shining glass roof rested on anything at all—it was so magical it ought to have floated in the air.

  He looked to the gate. No way to climb over this one— it was set into the solid stone wall—but he had his bent metal pin out of his pocket and into the lock in a moment.

  The gate swung and then he ran, quickly but cautiously, to the base of the Dome.