Surprisingly, considering the mayhem, the fight seemed to be between only two men. The bulk of the din came from the people watching, who were cheering, shouting and fighting amongst themselves.
Boy picked his way to a small table half hidden in the space under the staircase that led upstairs.
“Beer, love?”
He looked up to see a barmaid staring at him expectantly. She held a tray of empty beer jugs in one hand and was piling short, stubby glasses up with the other.
“Well?”
Damn! thought Boy. Money. I didn’t think of that. Neither did Valerian, but that won’t stop me getting a thrashing if I get this wrong.
“I don’t have any money,” he said, looking up sadly.
She scowled briefly; then her face softened and she smiled.
“Did you know you’ve got nothing on under there?” she asked, smirking.
Boy looked down and hurriedly pulled his coat shut over his legs.
“It’s cold outside,” he ventured, trying to sound as miserable as he could. “You know, on the streets…”
“All right,” she said, “but just half an hour, mind, then out you go. Here, take this.”
She put one of the glasses she had collected back down in front of him, and then emptied the dregs of five beer jugs into it. She nodded at the glass, now containing a couple of fingers of beer slops, and smiled again.
“Better make it last, Gorgeous,” she said, and went off collecting more glasses while they were still unbroken.
Boy took one look at the beer and pushed it away.
The fight was just about over. The victor, a giant of a man, sat on the chest of the vanquished, a fat brute, raining a few last punches down on his face for good measure. But now it was all for show. Finally someone came to pull him off the fat man.
“That’s enough. Well done.”
The giant got up and for the first time Boy saw his face. He was as ugly as a dead cat.
He seemed not to appreciate being pulled off the fat man, because he swung a fist at his would-be helper and sent him sprawling across a table.
Everyone cheered except Boy, who had a sinking feeling. He pulled the sleeve of a toothless old man with a stick who was sitting nearby.
“Who’s that?” Boy asked, but he knew the answer.
“Eh?” said the man. “Don’t you know Jacob Green, the Green Giant?” He laughed, spat on the floor and waved his stick in the air for a drink.
Meanwhile Green swaggered around, taking drinks from all and sundry and downing them in a single draft.
The man he’d come to meet.
Boy looked at his beer.
Green sat talking loudly to a group in a corner, playing with something tiny in his giant hands, like a child with a toy. It was a small wooden box. He was spinning it between thumb and forefinger. Then he stopped and wound a little handle coming from its side. A small tinkle of musical notes floated through the hubbub of the tavern. A music box.
Around him, two serving girls picked up bits of shattered bottles and broken chairs. Boy did not have a clue what was going on. This was a feeling he often had working for Valerian, but things were definitely getting more peculiar. The business in Korp’s box, when Valerian had materialized behind him no more than a few seconds after he’d left the stage, had unnerved him. And now Boy wondered what on earth Valerian could need from Green. There was only one way to find out.
Boy looked at his beer. Picking up the glass, he swigged the cloudy brown liquid straight down, wiped his mouth and took a deep breath. He stood up and made his way across the room.
11
Boy was not the only servant abroad at that moment. Back in the Quarter of the Arts, Willow ventured out into the cold night, moaning to herself as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and over her head. Her mouse-brown hair was thick and long, keeping her warm. She had been working for Madame Beauchance for a year now, ever since Madame had come to the Great Theater. It was a year too long, in her opinion.
Madame was unattractive; she was vain and arrogant; she was lazy and spiteful, and miserly too. There was one thing which redeemed her: her voice. It was the voice of an angel. A voice that could murmur soft and low and soothe a bawling child, that could rise shrill and clear and shatter a mirror and that could slide so sweetly over a melody that a killer might sit down and weep. With her voice she had made a good career, and a small fortune that she kept to herself.
Willow ended up working for her by chance. She had been employed as tail-carrier in her previous job, working for the Fellowship of Master Liverymen. Willow didn’t know what the fellowship actually did, but she knew what she was supposed to do, and that was enough. And besides, anything was better than her life in the orphanage. The liverymen wore fancy clothes on official occasions, including long-tailed coats. It was her job to follow her master, carrying the tails of his coat so they did not trail in the dirt. There were eleven other girls and boys employed likewise, one for each of the Fellowship. That was the full extent of their duties, but since there were at least two official occasions every day, they were kept busy enough carrying coattails and brushing off mud where necessary. After three years, she had been told to take a coat to the Great Theater, where they required the costume of a liveryman.
Willow had immediately fallen for the excitement of the place. It was thrilling. She had begged Korp for a job and had begun scrubbing floors that afternoon. She never went back to the Liverymen and they did not come looking for her-there were plenty more urchins to be had. After Willow had spent a week doing odd jobs, Madame B had arrived and immediately demanded a personal assistant. Her last one, a man with a weak heart, had collapsed carrying her cases of costumes on the journey to the City.
Willow was not fond of her mistress, especially this evening, when she’d blamed Willow for not bringing her hairbrush home after the performance. “Go back. Get Korp to open up,” she’d snapped, even though she had hundreds of brushes at her lodgings. So Willow had set off.
That was how she found the side door to the theater flapping open in the chilly night air, and how she walked cautiously into the auditorium, already sensing something was wrong, and how she stood halfway back in the stalls, looking at the stage, when she felt it raining on her head.
She noticed that the footlights were faintly glowing. That too was odd-they were very expensive to run. Then she remembered she was inside and that it couldn’t be raining.
She put her hand to her hair and felt the wetness. It was warm. In the dim light coming from the stage she looked at her hand and screamed.
It was covered in blood.
She looked up to see the head and shoulders of Korp’s corpse sticking out of the box’s window.
12
Green gave Boy’s throat another gentle squeeze. He had one of his huge spadelike fists wrapped around it, though not tightly.
Not yet, thought Boy.
Despite the fact that they were in full view of everyone in the tavern, Boy had no doubt that Green would snap his neck like a dry reed if he wanted to. The Trumpet had its own laws, and one murder or another was probably nothing to these people.
Boy stood in front of Green, who sat with one arm outstretched, his fingers raising Boy onto his tiptoes. Even like this, Green was taller than him. At least it meant Boy wasn’t looking straight at Green’s foul face. He had a wide nose, with nostrils that had obviously been split in some fight or other. The whites of his eyes were yellow and watery; his lips were like two slugs sitting on each other. His hair was thinning and his scalp was diseased. Boy tried not to look, and anyway, he had other things to concentrate on. He had been standing precariously on tiptoe ever since he had had the nerve to approach the giant.