Scrivener's Moon by Philip Reeve Read Free Book Online Page B

half-quid that she had no hands for him to put it in, only a sort of mechanized lobster-claw strapped to the stump where each hand should be. She laughed at his confusion and showed him the brass bowl where the coins went, and Milly laughed too. Charley thought, Stupid tarts , but he grinned as he took the ticket from her pincers, and turned to go in through the painted mouth.
    They entered a dim-lit, awninged space. Blocks of steep-raked benches had been erected round an oiled canvas groundsheet mapped and marbled with alarming stains. The seats were filling fast. As he squeezed in next to Milly, Charley heard the barkers outside changing their message. “That’s all! Come back tomorrow. Another show tomorrow. . .”
    A hush fell over the crowd on the benches. Even the rich people stopped talking about themselves in such loud voices and used whispers instead. Charley could hear moths battering their wings against the big lanterns, which swung on chains from the timber props that helped hold up the roof. Milly giggled nervously, squeezing herself against him. He looked across the canvas arena, checking for Coldharbour and the others. He could not see them, but he did notice three latecomers making their way into a space opposite: two white coats and an expensive fur cloak.
    “What is it, Charley?” Milly asked, noticing the way he stared at them.
    Charley didn’t answer. He was too surprised. What were Wavey and those Crumbs doing at a thing like this? He studied them, confident that they would not notice him among so many other faces – they’d probably forgotten he had ever existed, he thought bitterly. Wavey was talking, smiling, but Doc Crumb looked bewildered, while Fever sat so stiff and straight that you could almost see the disapproval crackling off her. Charley looked at her long white neck, the subtle shape of her under that crisp, buttoned-up coat, and he felt angry again at the girl who sat beside him. If Milly Floater had looked more like Fever Crumb he would not have minded showing her off to Coldharbour or anyone else. . .
    Then the music started, so sudden and so deafening that all the thoughts flew out of his head like scared birds rising from a tree. He jumped. Everybody jumped, all along those rows of hard, uncomfortable benches. The music sounded like tin pans and bicycle chains, like bad plumbing and xylophone bones and the murder of elderly dustbins. Into the arena marched a bizarre army with a fur-clad dwarf strutting at its head.
    “Welcome!” shouted the dwarf, into the silence that came down when the music stopped. He had the voice of a much bigger man, and a manner that commanded you to watch him. Nimble as a tumbler, he vaulted up on to the armoured hand of a massive Stalker that stood just behind him; a man-shaped hulk that looked ready to leap into the crowd and start ripping heads off, but was restrained by a blindfolded African woman holding tight to a leash fastened around its neck. Charley had seen plenty of these armoured zombies since the Movement seized power, but never one like this: barnacled with studs and spikes, it wore as a headpiece two massive, curving mammoth tusks. Above the glowing green slot which served as its eyes the silver figure of a winged woman jutted from its forehead; the hood ornament from an Ancient motor-carriage.
    Who would decorate a Stalker like that? Charley wondered. How could this ramshackle circus even own a Stalker? Surely only powerful warlords and their technomancers were able to control those weird old war machines, and even they were starting to run short of them as stocks of mechanical brains wore out. Maybe this was one of those crazy ones you heard about that went rogue and struck out on their own?
    It started to dawn on him that being a spectator at the Carnival of Knives might not be altogether safe . . .
    The dwarfish ringmaster ran up the monster’s armoured trunk like a squirrel up a tree and perched grinning on its head, holding