The Book of Dead Days Read Free Page A

magician. There was Grolsch, a famous escapologist whose career had come to an untimely end one night when he failed to escape, and Bertrand Black, a bear-tamer who had had a similarly rapid demise on stage. But all the faces were from days long gone, when things had been different, more lucrative.
    Korp scratched his bald head for a minute or so, then, without looking down, put his hand into a drawer in the ornate desk at which he was sitting. He fumbled around, still without looking. He put his hand on his pistol, and shoved it aside. It wasn’t what he wanted.
    “Yeush!” he said, with a frown. “Where’s it gone?”
    Then he remembered the bottle he’d left in his “secret” box. Wearily he got to his feet and made his way down the darkened corridors backstage. As he passed one of the dressing rooms he noticed a light.
    “Who’s there?” he called.
    “Oh, Director,” said a voice from inside. “It is Madame.”
    He stuck his head around the door.
    “Ah!” he said. “Madame! Madame Beauchance! May I say how exquisitely you sang tonight!” He smiled a wide smile.
    Madame Beauchance appeared to ignore this compliment.
    “It will have to change,” she said.
    “Madame?”
    Now Korp noticed the girl, Beauchance’s assistant, kneeling at the singer’s feet and rubbing her ankles. The girl glanced up at him.
    “Madame means…?” he began again.
    “I mean,” said Madame, not even looking at Korp, “that I will not continue to appear in an
inferior
position. To that prestidigitator.”
    Korp blinked.
    He felt tired. He wanted to be in bed with Lily curled up around his feet. Lily was his dog.
    “The magician,” whispered the girl, almost unheard.
    “Exactly!” cried Madame Beauchance.
    “Ah!” said Korp.
    Valerian.

4
    A little after midnight.
    Boy had caught up with Valerian at the top of the next alley-a particularly nasty little gutter of a lane called Blind Man’s Stick, where the roof tiles of the buildings on either side were close enough to touch in places. Here and there it was possible to catch a glimpse of the night sky between them, but Boy was not interested in the stars. Not yet.
    He clung tightly to Valerian as they made their way quickly along the foul-smelling culvert. A minute later they emerged into a relatively wide street. An open drain ran down its middle. Valerian stepped across it in a single stride. Boy, small for his years, leapt the gap and slipped as he landed.
    He sat dazed in the stream, then, realizing where he was, leapt to his feet.
    “Oh!” he said. “Ugh!” His bottom half was covered in unnameable filth.
    “Ugh! Oh!”
    Valerian did not even glance back.
    Boy limped after him. They turned a corner and crossed a final street.
    Valerian stopped for a moment at a wrought-iron gate let into a high stone wall. He rattled one of the big keys from his pocket in the lock, and shoved the gate open. Only now did he look back long enough to be sure Boy had got through the gate with him; then he swung it shut and rattled its lock one more time.
    They were home.
    Boy stood dripping, trying not to smell himself as he waited in the small walled courtyard that lay between the iron gate and the front door.
    Valerian opened the door with another key from the huge bunch and went inside.
    The house seemed to tense as Valerian shut the door behind them both. He said nothing but stood absolutely still, as if waiting. Then he turned and looked at Boy.
    “What is that vile stench?” he barked.
    Boy shrugged.
    “I fell over…”
    “For God’s sake go and get clean! Then come to the tower.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Boy.
    He shuffled down one of the corridors that led off the hall.
    “And be quick. You have work to do!”

5
    Boy ran along two corridors and then up three flights of rickety wooden stairs to his room. “Room” was perhaps something of an exaggeration. Room, or space, was one thing the place he slept in did not have. There was a mattress, which was actually quite