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...
"At the Derricks today. That was you. The old man."
Nick smiled.
"Why were you disguised?" Ward said.
"I'm a criminal."
"What'd you do?"
"Many things."
"Like what?"
"I never killed anyone, Ward."
"I never said you did."
"But you were thinking it."
Ward said nothing. He had been thinking it.
Nick went on. "There are many reasons the Brotherhood want me, but the main reason is that I escaped execution."
"How?"
"That's a long story."
"Have many people have done that?"
"Only two. Myself and another man. His name was David Nassar. He lived about four hundred years ago. The story goes that he was a great sorcerer, who bewitched a flock of birds into carrying him away." He made a swooping action with one hand – a mockery of flight – and, it seemed to Ward, of the story itself. "But me? I was just a common criminal."
Ward wondered if he could trust this man. He felt that he could. He was not sure why. "Snapper told me that – well that Corvus was going to -"
"Corvus?"
"I thought he was going to send me to the mines at first, but Snapper said he'd hand me over to the Brothers."
Nick leaned forward, the lit sigarillo dangling between his fingers. Smoke rose in tendrils past his eyes. "Tell me how you met Corvus."
Ward leaned in too, until the sigarillo smoke started to burn his eyes. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "He came to the island where I grew up. He bought me."
"Your parents?"
"Dead."
Nick leaned back again, and watched the tabletop in silence for a while. He seemed to be making up his mind about something. "Abdal Corvus is a dangerous man," he said.
"What do you think he would've done?"
"It's as likely he would have sent you to the mines as turn you over to the Brotherhood. But why would the Brotherhood be so interested in you in the first place?" A corner of his mouth twitched.
He knows, Ward thought. He knows all about my foot.
"Well it's enough that you escaped," Nick said. "Fooling Abdal Corvus is no small thing."
"Snapper helped -"
"But you came up with the plan."
Ward opened his mouth, then closed it again. It had been his idea to hide in the sea chest and roll the barrel overboard in the storm, now that he thought about it.
"What I'm getting at," Nick said, "is that I may be able to offer you employment. You have certain qualities I look for."
Ward looked up. "Work – for you?"
"No doubt that's why Snapper introduced us."
"But I don't know how to do any -"
"It requires nothing but some natural aptitude, and a willingness to learn."
And Nick went on to describe his profession. His words were like a spell, for nobody believed in the legitimacy and honour of his trade as did Saint Nicolas Faust, and his passion for it was unrivalled. Had Ward not been alone and penniless in that great city he probably would have fallen under the spell just the same.
So it came about that, as the sun set like molten ore over the city, the man and the boy left the Slough and Bellows and vanished into the labyrinthine streets of Bareheep.
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