King Rat by China Miéville Read Free Book Online Page A

surface, he panicked. His brittle ringers lost their grip.
    For a long, sick-making moment he was sliding towards his death, until he met King Rat’s strong hand.
    He was halted sharply, plucked from the roof and swung up and over in a terrifying hauling motion before being dropped hard onto a steel fire escape below.
    The noise of his landing was muffled and insubstantial. Above him grinned King Rat. He still hung on to the edge of the roof with his left hand, his right extended over the stairs where he had deposited Saul. As Saul watched, he released himself, and fell the short distance to the iron mesh of the platform, his big rough boots landing without a sound.
    Saul’s heart was still racing with fear, but his recent
    undignified precipitation galled him.
     
    ‘I... I’m not a fucking sack of potatoes,’ he hissed with spurious bravado.
    King Rat grinned. ‘You don’t even know which way’s up, you little terror. And until you’ve a bit of learning in your Loaf, that’s exactly what you are.’
    The two crept down the steps, past door after door, descending to the alley.
    Dawn came fast. King Rat and Saul made their way through the crepuscular streets. Afraid and excited, Saul half expected his companion to repeat his escapades of last night, and he glanced from side to side at drainpipes and garage roofs, the entrances to rooftop passageways. But this time they remained earthbound. King Rat led Saul through deserted building sites and car parks, down narrow passages masquerading as culs-de-sac. Their route was chosen with an instinct Saul did not understand, and they did not pass any early morning walkers.
    The dark dwindled. Daylight, wan and anaemic, had done what it could by seven o’clock.
    Saul leaned against the wall of an alley. King Rat stood framed by its entrance, his right arm outstretched, just touching the bricks, the daylight beyond silhouetting him like the lead in a film noir.
    ‘I’m starving,’ said Saul.
    The too, sonny, me too. I’ve been starving for a long time.’ King Rat leaned out of the alley. He was peering at a nondescript terraced row of red brick. Each roof was topped with a dragon rampant: little flurries of clay enthusiasm now broken and crumbled. Their features were washed out by acid rain.
    That morning the city seemed made up of back streets.
    Page 25
     
    ‘Alright then,’ murmured King Rat. ‘Time for tucker.’
    King Rat, a figure skulking like a Victorian villain, stepped carefully from his point of concealment. He lifted his face to the air. As Saul watched, he sniffed loudly twice, twitched his nose, turned his face a little to one side. Gesturing for Saul to follow him, King Rat scampered down the deserted street and ducked into a gash between two houses. At the far end was a wall of black rubbish bags.
    ‘Always follow your I Suppose.’ King Rat grinned briefly. He was crouched at the end of the narrow alleyway, a hunched shape at the bottom of a brickwork chasm. The surrounding walls were inscrutable, unbroken by windows.
    Saul approached.
    King Rat was tearing at a plastic sack. The rich smell of rot was released. King Rat plunged his arm into the hole, and fumbled inside in an unsettling parody of surgery. He pulled a polystyrene box from the wound. It dripped with tea-leaves and egg yolk, but the hamburger logo was still evident. King Rat placed it on the ground, reached inside the bag again, and pulled out a damp crust of bread.
    He thrust the sack aside and reached for another, ripped it open. This time his reward was half a fruitcake, flattened and embedded with sawdust. Chicken bones and crushed chocolate, the remnants of sweet corn and rice, fish-heads and stale crisps, the bags yielded them all, disgorged them into a stinking pile on the concrete.
    Saul watched the mound of ruined food grow. He put his hand over his mouth.
    ‘You have got to be joking,’ he said, and swallowed.
    King Rat looked up at him.
    ‘Thought you was peckish.’
    Saul