Twelve-year-old Carmen has a secret: she can talk to her cat Grim. But the powerful Brotherhood has banned pets, and the penalty is death.
Ward is the most wanted boy in the world. The only thing standing between him and the hangman's noose is maste...
They flew in from every direction: from the river, from the wharflands, from the tenements of the city, from Xandra Wood and Flag Wood and the fields to the east, birds of every kind: gulls in the hundreds, oily black stooks, laughing burras, cawing miser birds, brightly-coloured parrots, archons croaking like rusty doors, bleating skrayls from the docks, a sackbill floating over from the river like a blimp, its yellow gimlet eyes gleaming with intelligence – even an eyr, soaring high above the rest, its great wings motionless as it wheeled above the Derricks. The birds settled on the gibbet itself – as many as could fit on it at least – fighting for room. The beam from which the nooses hung had vanished behind a squawking, squalling mass of beaks and claws and feathers.
The crowd reacted strangely to the birds. Most ducked down, covering their heads with their hands, as if they thought they were being attacked. But Ward saw some look up at the birds, their faces alight with recognition. Their eyes gleamed. It was as if they had heard the voice of some lost loved one. A great oooh swept through the crowd. A man near Ward laughed out loud, and he saw a woman with tears streaming down her face. There was an electric charge in the air unlike anything he had ever felt.
Screams now. The screams began at the edges of the crowd and worked in towards the scaffold. Suddenly snokeys in the hundreds were racing around and over Ward's feet, rolling out like some hideous carpet. But not everyone responded with revulsion. Ward could have sworn he saw people looking down at the writhing mass of black fur and leathery tails and actually smiling.
Before he could make sense of any of this he was caught up in the crush of the crowd, and carried away even further from Mildew. He caught a glimpse of her working her way back towards the street, surrounded by Scowerers, and pursued by a knot of Reds, who were having a hard time getting through the crowd. A flock of birds had separated from the main mass and descended upon the Reds, shrieking, tearing at their hair and clothes, and defecating with gleeful abandon upon their heads. Most of the Reds hit the ground and covered their heads with their hands. A group of townspeople stood in a circle around them, and appeared to be – but surely Ward was imagining this – urging the birds on.
Then Ward was lost in the crush of the crowd. He felt his feet leave the ground and his breath leave his lungs. He saw across the square to the road, where the wagons of the Brothers and the Reds stood. The horses were straining against their harnesses, and it was all the drivers could do to stop them careening into the crowd. Beyond them, fels and nines were emerging from the city in ones and twos, running, sometimes neck and neck, towards the square. Just before he fell back down into the mass he saw a pack of sloughs racing at incredible speed up Flynn street towards the Derricks, people leaping out of their way just in time
Then an elbow slammed into the small of his back, and the back of someone's head connected with his mouth mashing his lips against his teeth. The pain was incredible, but his lungs were so void of air that he couldn't even cry out. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth.
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Every once in a while a book comes along that is so amazing, moving, and life-affirming, that you wonder how you ever lived without it.
