Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye Read Free Book Online Page A

the carriage’s state that horses had. Nothing sounds like a dying horse. That sort of scream sends a sick shock through your guts every time you hear it. No, the carriage had been rendered unusable.
    Temporarily unusable, it seemed. The sweep trotted up to it and threw open the double doors with a flourish.
    “Mother of God,” I whispered.
    The carriage had been converted into a display case. Cracked pieces of bright blue pottery lined the floor, shards of green glass were strung from the upholstery buttons, singular finds including a chipped ceramic rose and a chunk of sparkling river granite rested on the rotting seat cushions. Loose chandelier crystals and broken paperweights and a slender French liquor bottle—a cherished museum of unmourned, unremembered objects. I wondered if, before he’d joined the regiment of chimney dwellers, he’d lived nearby. It was probable. But I supposed I’d never know the answer. Stray children hereabouts are as closely tracked as the ants underfoot.
    The showcase’s pièce de résistance sat propped against the opposite door panel, festooned with a string of cheap amber-colored beads: a tiny painting by Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin. The shepherdess peered coyly at us, her head tilted back against a scandalously rosy summer’s evening. The curves of her fingertips and of her bosom echoed one another, and she seemed to be in the act of repressing a beautiful confession, tasting words of adoration on her tongue.
    The sweep pointed at it in triumph.
    Reaching, I plucked it from the glittering yellow glass. When the boy’s face tensed with worry, I took a seat on the carriage’s footrest and hung my wide-brimmed hat from my knee.
    “This came from a house on Fifth Avenue. You cleaned their chimney, didn’t you?”
    He rubbed at his eyes with ash-covered hands. Stared up again—not at me, but at the painting.
    “You must have known it was stealing, lad. Why should you have taken their property?”
    Furiously, his little fists rent the air. He made about a dozen stabbing finger points in all directions, then circled one hand with the other in a gesture of endlessness and concluded with a fraught, exasperated wringing of his fingers.
    “I know they’ve more art than they know what to do with. I’m sorry. But this painting already has a home.”
    The vitriol in his raw eyes was fully deserved on my part. So it burned me all the worse. I’d tricked him, and now he’d cottoned to the fact. Worse still, I understood him perfectly: the tender young shepherdess was far more passionately beloved in a ruined carriage than she was in that snob art warehouse on Fifth Avenue. I wished to holy Christ I’d never heard the name
Millington.
    Tearing my sketch from the memorandum book, I passed it to the scowling youth, who stood digging his boot toe into a patch of frozen earth.
    “This is yours. I’m not going to punish you for stealing, but you must promise me never to do it again. Scavenging is one thing, but thieving could get you croaked. This is your first and final art theft.”
    He reached for his portrait. Like enough thinking my art better than no art at all, and already deft at quick choices.
    “Promise me,” I insisted.
    The boy did, with an enraged little shrug. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Though he wasn’t weeping, or not any more than he did perpetually.
    “What’s your name?” Mr. Piest inquired. “I am Jakob Piest, and this is Timothy Wilde.”
    The child’s face fell. He gave a pained blink, staring at a moldy wheel spoke, before shoving both hands hard into his pockets.
    I’d thought him an orphan. There’s an independence about us, and a gravity, that’s unmistakable. But at least Val and I had been old enough to own our names, no matter that we’d nothing else. Old enough to remember the family who’d named us, as well. A name can make a man. I couldn’t imagine being robbed of anything more personal.
    “Surely they must call you something, where