The Mortality of Queens

8. In the Pooka's Eyes

Arthur

With Amorrie returned to her deep, now neatly sewn, pocket, Arthur reclaimed his sketches and made his leave of the building, having promised to travel to Larkenfen at the first opportunity.

'Must you scrap with narls?' he asked Amorrie as he hurried away.

'They had been sent against me.'

'But that frightful Piskie reported them harmless.'

'They are not "harmless", their wings are clawed. There's two teeth like stakes.'

'Stakes, you say, Amorrie. Do you not realise that if harm befalls you...'

'I know.'

Arthur imagined the innocent indulgent smile upon her lips as she said this. He shook his head, 'And what did you say to Scampion to make him disappear so?'

'That I would rip off his bulging hat and show your world that, beneath it, his head is the self-same obscene shape.'

'You used such a harrowing language.'

'It was Hedge.'

'You...' the words caught in Arthur's throat, 'you spoke Hedge in one of the finest morning rooms in London?'

Amorrie popped out her head. 'He is a Hedge Imp. He understood me well enough.'

'No, The Book of 500 has him for a High Piskie.'

'Your book,' Amorrie said, 'is wrong.'

Perhaps, realised Arthur, he did have some power over the Countess after all.

He skirted the park on his return. Amorrie's head bobbed out of the coat pocket. She sniffed the air and then climbed up on Arthur's shoulder.

'Get down. You have embarrassed me enough.'

She ignored him. 'You are followed.'

Arthur turned in time to see a small ragged figure step behind a tree-trunk. Walking back, he stopped a yard from the tree. 'Come you out.'

It was the child from the Africas.

'You cannot follow me, child,' said Arthur.

The little ragamuffin sniffed and wrung its hands.

'We're you perhaps employed as a page boy in a house?'

The child nodded.

'What is your name?'

'My mistress named me Norman.'

'What did your mother name you?'

'Nouhou.'

'Where in the Africas do you come from, Nouhou?'

'I do not know, Master. I was hidden still inside my mother on the ship, so born here, in England.'

'Ah, I see.' It was not a small point, born on British soil, Arthur knew, the child would ultimately have an Umbra. 'Then you are an English boy.'

The child was a study in uncertainty.

'Please, follow me no longer.'

'I must, Master,' the child produced a penny from somewhere and showed it to Arthur. 'I have been paid a penny to do so.'

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Arthur had agreed that Nouhou could follow him to the studio at Cowcross Street as he had shadowed Arthur from there that morning, but that was to be an end to it.