The Peculiar. Stefan Bachmann

looked into his. For an instant they had been filled with a terrible anger. And then the creature’s lips had curled back and it had smiled.

      Bartholomew lay gasping on the floorboards, heart pounding inside his skull. I’m dead now. So, so dead. He didn’t look very much like a half-blood, did he? From down in the yard he would look like a regular boy. He pinched his eyes closed. A regular boy spying on her.

      Very slowly he brought his head back level with the window, this time keeping deep in the shadows. The lady in plum had moved a little ways distant from the boy in the yard. Her other, hideous face was gone, hidden under her hair. One long, velvet-gloved hand was extended, beckoning.

      The boy looked at her, looked back again at his house. For the shortest instant, Bartholomew thought he saw someone in one of the upper windows, a stooping shadow, hand raised against the pane in farewell. One blink later and it was gone, and the window was empty.

      The boy in the yard shivered. He turned back to the lady. She nodded, and he moved toward her, taking her outstretched hand. She clasped him close. There was a burst of darkness, a storm of black wings flapping. It exploded up around them, screaming toward the sky. A ripple passed through the air. Then they were gone, and Old Crow Alley was sleeping once again.

      

      RTHUR Jelliby was a very nice young man, which was perhaps the reason why he had never made much of a politician. He was a member of Parliament not because he was particularly clever or good at anything, but because his mother was a Hessian princess very well connected and had gotten him the position while playing croquet with the Duke of Norfolk. So while the other officials were fairly bursting their silken waistcoats with ambition, plotting the downfall of their rivals over oyster dinners, or at the very least informing themselves on affairs of state, Mr. Jelliby was far more interested in spending long afternoons at his club in Mayfair, buying chocolates for his pretty wife, or simply sleeping until noon. Which is what he did on a certain day in August, and which is why the urgent summons to a Privy Council in the Houses of Parliament caught him completely unprepared.

      He stumbled down the stairs of his house on Belgrave Square, one hand trying to get the worst of the tangles out of his hair, the other struggling with the tiny buttons of his cherry-red waistcoat.

      “Ophelia!” he called, trying to sound cheerful but not really succeeding.

      His wife appeared in the doorway to the morning room, and he pointed an apologetic finger at the length of black silk that hung limply under his collar. “The valet’s off, and Brahms doesn’t know how, and I cannot do it on my own! Knot it up for me, darling, won’t you, and spare us a smile?”

      “Arthur, you must not sleep so long,” Ophelia said sternly, coming forward to tie his cravat. Mr. Jelliby was a tall man, and broad-shouldered, and she rather small, so she had to stand on tiptoes to reach.

      “Oh, but I need to set an example! Think of the headlines: ‘War averted! Thousands of lives saved! The English Parliament slept through its session.’ You’d find the world a far more pleasant place.”

      This did not sound nearly as witty as it had in his head, but Ophelia laughed anyway, and Mr. Jelliby, feeling very amusing, sallied forth into the noise of the city.

      It was a fine day by London’s standards. Which meant it was a day slightly less likely to suffocate you and poison your lungs. The black curtain of smoke from the city’s million chimneys had been worn away by last night’s rain. The air still tasted of coal, but shafts of light sprang down through the clouds. Government-issue automatons creaked through the streets on rusty joints, sweeping the mud in front of them and leaving puddles of oil behind them. A group of lamplighters was out feeding wasps and dragonflies to the little flame faeries that sat behind the glass in the streetlamps, dull and sulky until nightfall.

      Mr. Jelliby turned into Chapel Street, hand raised for a cab. High overhead, a great iron bridge arched, groaning and showering sparks as the steam trains rumbled across it. On normal days Mr. Jelliby would have been riding up there, head against the glass, gazing idly out over the city. Or perhaps he would have had Brahms, the footman, heave him onto his newfangled bicycle and give a good push to get him started across the cobbles. But today was not normal. Today he hadn’t even breakfasted, and so everything felt spoiled and hurried.

      The carriage that stopped for him was driven by a gnome, sharp-toothed and old, with gray-green skin like a slimy rock. The gnome drove his horses as if they were a pair of giant snails, and when Mr. Jelliby knocked his walking stick against the carriage ceiling and shouted for a quickening of pace, he was thrown back into his seat by a volley of curses. Mr. Jelliby frowned and thought of all sorts of reasons why he should not be talked to so, but he didn’t open his mouth for the rest of the journey.

      Westminster’s great new clock tower was ringing thirty-five minutes when he alighted on the curb in Great George Street. Drat. He was late. Five minutes late. He dashed up the steps to St. Stephen’s Porch and pushed past the doorkeeper, into the vast expanse of the main hall. Huddles of gentlemen stood scattered across the floor, their voices echoing in the rafters high above. The air stank of lime and fresh paint. Scaffolding clung to the walls in places, and some of the tile work was unfinished. It was not three months since the new Westminster Palace had been opened for meetings. The old one had been reduced to a pile of ash after a disgruntled fire spirit blew himself up in its cellars.

      Mr. Jelliby hurried up a staircase, along an echoing, lamp-lined corridor. He was almost pleased when he saw he was not the only one late. John Wednesday Lickerish, Lord Chancellor and first Sidhe ever to be appointed to the British government, was also running behind the swiftly ticking hands of his timepiece. He rounded a corner from one direction, Mr. Jelliby came from the other, and they barreled into each other with some force.

      “Oh! Mr. Lickerish! Do forgive me.” Jelliby laughed, helping the faery gentleman to his feet and slapping some imaginary dust from his lapels. “A bit clumsy this morning, I’m afraid. Are you all right?”

      Mr. Lickerish gave Mr. Jelliby a withering look, and removed himself from Jelliby’s grip with a faint air of distaste. He was dressed to perfection, as always, every button in place, every snippet of fabric beautiful and new. His waistcoat was black velvet. His cravat was cloth of silver, faultlessly knotted, and everywhere Mr. Jelliby looked he caught a glimpse of leaf stitchery, of silk stockings, and cotton starched so stiff you could crack it with a mallet. It only makes the dirt stand out more, he thought. He had to bite his tongue to keep from smiling. Brown half-moons looked up from under the faery’s fingernails, as if he had been clawing about in the cold earth.

      “Morning?” the faery said. His voice was thin. Just a rustle, like wind in leafless branches. “Young Jelliby, it is no longer morning. It is not even noon. It is almost night.”

      Mr. Jelliby looked uncertain. He didn’t exactly know what the faery had just said, but he supposed it not very polite to be called young. For all he knew, the faery gentleman was not a day older than himself. It was hard to tell, really. Mr. Lickerish was a high faery, and like all high faeries he was the size of a small boy, had no hair at all, and his skin was as white and smooth as the marble under his shoes.

      “Well,” Mr. Jelliby said brightly. “We’re very late, whatever the case.” And much to the faery gentleman’s annoyance, he kept pace with him all the way to the privy chamber, talking amiably about the weather and wine merchants and how his summer cottage in Cardiff had almost been blown into the sea.

      The room in which the Privy Council was expected to meet was a small one, dark-paneled, at the heart of the building, its diamond-paned windows overlooking a hawthorn tree and the court. Rows of high-backed chairs crowded the floor, all but two of them already filled. The Speaker of the Council, one Lord Horace V. Something-or-other (Mr. Jelliby could never remember his name) sat perched at its center, at a sort of podium artfully carved with fauns and sagging clusters of grapes. The