Under the Poppy by Kathe Koja Read Free Book Online Page A

less balcony than chamber-pot perch but Up here, he says, we can getto the roof, and they do, hand over hand to crouch at last shivering and safe, one coat for the two of them; they share everything, these feral boys, on the street where no one else cares except to fuck or rob them, make slaves or toys or servants of them, dispose of them like rubbish when the service is done.
    The fox and the wolf, the other children call them. The mercury boy is twelve, perhaps, or slightly younger; he is a general favorite, a joker, a liar, a prankster, he can make an onion cry as he peels it, he can change or throw his voice. The older boy keeps himself to himself, dark melancholy mouse in a hole. He came from an orphans’ home run by monks, or priests, he forgets, it was a long time ago. Men in skirts who spoke a funny tongue, they called him Tacio, the silent one, or in French farouche , half-savage and half-shy. But they taught him to cipher, spell his name, even read; now he is teaching his friend. His friend is teaching him things, too.
    And helping him, with the help of a little girl, the boy’s sister, half-sister, it is not certain how they are related but certainly they are, the buttoned-up girl in the foundling’s dress who worships the boy, and the boy who visits her on the sly, brings her paper dolls and pilfered ribbons, takes from her coins and woolen hats and wrapped packages of food; she is a clumsy thief, and often beaten, but she never yields. He has taught her how to spell out her name, AGATHA, and FUCK YOU, a useful phrase. He promises one day to take her with him, them, but not just now; not yet.
    Now he settles closer to his older friend inside the coat. Got a smoke?
    Wait. The light, nodding toward the street. If they’re still down there, they’ll see. Instead he takes from his pocket a packet of rye bread, a shriveled knob of cheese, and a fierce little flick knife, butterfly knife white in his dark hand, and slices the food, half for each. The knife is scarred, beautiful, and Real old, the younger boy says admiringly. May be a hundred years?
    May be… He said that it came from a unicorn horn. That makes it magic.
    What kind of magic?
    You can’t lose it. Always it will find its way back to you.
    Where you get it, Mouse?
    He shrugs one thin dark shoulder. The fat man had had a case, and the knife was one of the things in the case; the others are sold, or in the river with the man. You keep it, he says, folding the other’s hand around the hilt.
    The other slips the knife into his pocket. Wish we had some wine, yeah.
    Don’t.
    Don’t what?
    Don’t wish. Only the devil hears wishes…. Anyway they don’t work.
    The younger boy laughs, loops his arms around his friend, pressing close and closer in the cold; is he cold? You still a monk, he says. Are you?
    Don’t laugh at me.
    I’m not.
    Istvan—
    The younger boy’s lips are soft and cold; his kiss is a smile, too.

“Sit,” Rupert nodding to a chair, cracked leather and hobnails, a hideous thing; Istvan makes a face. The whole room is like that chair, dreary and unwelcoming: no windows, stagnant wallpaper printed with martial fleurs-de-lis, its furniture meant for stern usage: the dire armchairs permit no lounging, the table is bare, the lamps plain, the spittoon dry. The most abundant article in the room is the writing cabinet, with its piled papers, black inkwell, tufted pigeonholes and spring-locked drawers, steel keys dangling from a chain. This office-parlor opens onto a smaller, even more forbidding room; a bedroom? Rupert closes that door.
    “Quite the dungeon,” Istvan says pleasantly. “I prefer the whores’ chambers, on the whole.” He sets aside his apple and knife, shifts, trying to sit comfortably, tries again, then sighs and reseats himself on the edge of the table, close by Rupert who leans back in his chair, away but not far enough to elude Istvan’s touch, two fingers lightly brushing the stubble on his cheek: “No silver,