The Peculiar. Stefan Bachmann

plowed up and trees chopped down because it was supposed that faeries could gather magic from the leaves and the dewdrops. Abraham Darby famously hypothesized in his dissertation The Properties of Air that clockwork acted as a sort of antidote to the unruly nature of the fay, and so professors and physicians and all the great minds turned their powers toward mechanics and industry. The Age of Smoke had begun.

      And after a time the faeries were simply a part of England, an inseparable part, like the heather on the bleak gray moors, like the gallows on the hilltops. The goblins and gnomes and wilder faeries were quick to pick up English ways. They lived in English cities, coughed English smoke, and were soon no worse off than the thousands of human poor that toiled at their side. But the high faeries—the pale, silent Sidhe with their fine waistcoats and sly looks—they did not give in so easily. They could not forget that they had once been lords and ladies in great halls of their own. They could not forgive. The English might have won the Smiling War, but there were other ways to fight. A word could cause a riot, ink could spell a man’s death, and the sidhe knew those weapons like the backs of their hands. Oh yes, they knew.

      

      ARTHOLOMEW Kettle saw her the moment she merged into the shadows of Old Crow Alley—a great lady dressed all in plum-colored velvets, striding up the muddy street with the bearing of a queen. He wondered if she would ever leave again. In the corpse man’s barrow perhaps, or in a sack, but probably not on her own two feet.

      Bartholomew closed the book he had been reading and pressed his nose against the grimy window, watching her progress down the alley. The faery slums of Bath were not kind to strangers. One moment you could be on a bustling thoroughfare, dodging tram wheels and dung piles, and trying not to be devoured by the wolves that pulled the carriages, and the next you could be hopelessly lost in a maze of narrow streets with nothing but gaunt old houses stooping overhead, blocking out the sky. If you had the ill luck to meet anyone, chances were it would be a thief. And not the dainty sort, like the thin-fingered chimney sprytes of London. Rather the sort with dirt under his nails and leaves in his hair, who, if he thought it worthwhile, would not hesitate to slit your throat.

      This lady looked very worthwhile. Folks killed for less, Bartholomew knew. If the half-starved corpses he had seen dragged from the gutter were anything to go by, folks killed for much less.

      She was so tall, so strange and foreign in her finery; she seemed to fill every nook of the murky passage. Long gloves the color of midnight covered her hands. Jewels glimmered at her throat. A little top hat with an enormous purple flower in it sat on her head. It was perched at an angle so that it cast a shadow over her eyes.

      “Hettie,” Bartholomew whispered, without turning from the window. “Hettie, come look.”

      Feet pattered in the depths of the room. A little girl appeared next to him. She was too thin, her face all sharp bones and pale skin, tinged blue from lack of sunlight. Ugly, like him. Her eyes were huge and round, black puddles collecting in the hollows of her skull. The tips of her ears were pointed. In a pinch Bartholomew might still pass as a human child, but not Hettie. There was no mistaking the faery blood in her veins. For where Bartholomew had a mess of chestnut hair growing out of his scalp, Hettie had the smooth, bare branches of a young tree.

      She pushed a wayward twig out of her eyes and let out a little gasp.

      “Oh, Barthy,” she breathed, clutching at his hand. “It’s the most prettiest thing I’ve seen in my whole life.” He went onto his knees next to her, so that both their faces were just peeking over the worm-eaten wood of the sill.

      Pretty indeed, but there was a wrongness about the lady outside. Something dark and unsettled. She carried no baggage or cloak, not even a parasol to shield herself from the heat of late summer. As if she had stepped from the shadowy hush of a drawing room directly into the heart of Bath’s faery district. Her gait was stiff and jerking, as though she didn’t exactly know how to work her appendages.

      “What d’you suppose she’s doing here?” Bartholomew asked. He began to gnaw slowly at his thumbnail.

      Hettie frowned. “I dunno. She might be a lady thief. Mummy says they dress pretty. But isn’t she far too splendid for a thief? Doesn’t she look like …” Hettie glanced at him, and a flicker of fear passed behind her eyes. “Like she’s looking for something?”

      Bartholomew stopped chewing his nail. He peered at his sister. Then he squeezed her hand. “She’s not looking for us, Het.”

      But even as he said it, he felt the uneasiness curl like a root in his stomach. She was looking for something. Or someone. Her eyes, half hidden in the shadow of her hat, were searching, studying the houses as she moved past them. When her gaze fell on the house they lived in, Bartholomew ducked down under the sill. Hettie was already there. Don’t get yourself noticed and you won’t get yourself hanged. It was perhaps the most important rule for changelings. It was a good rule.

      The lady in the plum-colored dress walked the full length of the alley, all the way to the corner where it wormed into Black Candle Lane. Her skirts dragged over the cobbles, becoming heavy with the oily filth that covered everything, but she didn’t seem to care. She simply turned slowly and made her way back down the alley, this time inspecting the houses on the other side.

      She must have gone up and down Old Crow Alley six or seven times before coming to a halt in front of the house directly across the way from where Bartholomew and Hettie watched. It was an ancient, sharp-roofed house, with chimneys and doors that poked through the stone in odd places. Two larger houses stood on either side, pinching it in, and it was set a little farther back from the alley, behind a high stone wall. An archway was set into the wall in the middle. The twisted remains of a metal gate lay on the ground. The lady stepped over it and into the yard.

      Bartholomew knew who lived in that house. A family of half-bloods, the mother a faery, the father a bellows worker at the cannon foundry on Leechcraft Street. The Buddelbinsters, he’d heard them called. Once they’d had seven changeling children, and Bartholomew had seen them playing in the windows and the doorways. But other people had seen them, too, and one night a crowd had come and dragged the children away. Now there was only one, a frail-looking boy with thistle-hair. Bartholomew and he were friends. At least Bartholomew liked to think they were. Some days, when Old Crow Alley was particularly quiet, the boy would steal out onto the cobbles and fight invisible highwaymen with a bit of stick. He would catch sight of Bartholomew staring at him from the window. The boy would wave. Bartholomew would wave back. It was utterly forbidden—waving at people through windows—but so wonderful to do that Bartholomew forgot sometimes.

      The lady in the plum-colored dress stalked across the rubble-strewn yard and rapped on the door nearest to the ground. Nothing happened for what felt like an age. Then the door was yanked open to the end of its chain, and a thin, sour-looking woman poked her head through the gap. It was the father’s old-maid sister. She lived with the Buddelbinsters, minded their business for them. That included opening the doors when they were knocked on. Bartholomew watched her eyes grow round as saucers as she drank in the sight of the exquisite stranger. She opened her mouth to say something. Then she seemed to think better of it and slammed the door in the lady’s face.

      The lady in the plum-colored dress stood very still for a moment, as if she didn’t quite understand what had happened. Then she knocked on the door again, so loudly it echoed out of the yard, all the way up Old Crow Alley. A few houses away, a curtain twitched.

      Before Bartholomew and Hettie could see what would happen next, the stairs outside the door to the rooms they lived in began to creak noisily. Someone was hurrying up them. Next, a red-cheeked woman burst in, huffing and wiping her hands on her apron. She was small and badly dressed and would have been lovely with enough to eat, but there was never enough to eat, so she looked somewhat wilted and bothered. When she saw the two of them on the floor she clapped her hands to her mouth and shrieked.

      “Children,