“A finding, you say?” He turned to the boy, and grinned like a skull. “Then that must be a job for Claw Carter.”
At the Jolly Tar, Ben was met with raucous laughter and a grey fog of tobacco spilling out of the door. Inside he found the usual mass of unwashed bodies and, after a second of searching, caught sight of Mr. Moon, sitting hunched over a table in his usual corner beside the fire. Ben eased his way through the drinkers and lingerers, taking great care not to jog any elbows on his way; it was more than his life was worth to spill someone’s drink.
Far from his home in East India, a morose and muscular lascar stood at the bar, drinking steadily. Beside him stood a coal porter with biceps the size of hocks of ham. A monkey chattered angrily from its vantage point on the lascar’s shoulder, alternately picking at its fleas and spitting in the coal porter’s glass. If the porter’s glazed eyes ever cleared up long enough for him to notice, then a right old heave-to was definitely on the cards.
Ben hurried past.
As silently as he could, Ben eased himself into the seat opposite Moon, taking care so that his chair did not make a sound against the flagstone floor.
“Good evening, Master Kingdom,” said Jago Moon.
“Good evening, Mr. Moon,” Ben replied, amazed at how the old man saw him coming every time.
With two blind eyes, Jago Moon regarded him across the table. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said in a voice of gravel.
Ben was taken aback, but not wrong-footed; he was a regular customer, after all. He eyed Moon’s satchel and wondered what treasures it contained this time.
In defiance of his blindness, Jago Moon was a seller of second-hand books, specializing in lurid tales just suited to an imagination like Ben’s. Moon always had a supply of the cheap cloth-bound pamphlets that stuck-up toffs called the “penny dreadfuls”. Ben read them greedily and knew their names by heart: Black Knight of the Road, The Skeleton Burglar, Starlight Sal, The Resurrection Men... Stories about villains and robbers and bodysnatchers and terrible doings in the night; what could be so dreadful about that?
It would horrify old “Cowpat” Cowper, the Sunday school teacher who had taught Ben his letters, to know that he was wasting the precious gift of reading on such tawdry tales. But then Cowpat Cowper probably went home to a nice warm house and a nice safe life and didn’t need to escape from his reality quite so much as Ben.
“What have you got for me today, Mr. Moon?” said Ben, getting ready to slide his well-worn coin across the table. “Pirates? Highwaymen?”
From over by the bar, an angry voice rose above the throng. “Is that your monkey gobbin’ in my rum?”
Ben knew that was his signal to leave; all he wanted was to get his book and get out before things turned nasty. But Moon seemed to be taking for ever, rummaging in his satchel. Eventually he drew out a dog-eared old volume entitled The Boy Burglar.
“That’ll do nicely,” said Ben, reaching for the book with one hand and pushing a farthing forwards with the other. “A pleasure doing business with you, sir.” But even as Ben made to get up, shoving his chair away with the back of his legs, Jago Moon’s fingers accidentally brushed against Ben’s. In that instant, Ben felt an invisible power pass from him to Moon and they both flung their hands up in shock, struck by strange lightning.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Moon,” Ben began, “I don’t—”
Ben’s words were cut short as Moon’s hand whipped out and clasped Ben’s forearm tight. Ben winced and made to pull away, but Moon was surprisingly strong and dragged him down until their faces were level. The milky orbs of Moon’s blind eyes rolled in his skull as he breathed doom upon Ben. In spite of the stifling heat, Ben’s blood turned to ice in his veins.
“Listen here and listen good,” Moon hissed urgently, his lips so close that Ben could feel the rasp of stubble against his face. “You’ve got the Touch, lad.” Moon made it sound as if this was a good thing. “Your life ain’t never gonna be the same again. You’ve been chosen, Ben. The Weeping Man is coming for you.”
Professor Carter swept through the streets. The tails of his coat billowed out behind him like wings. The air was bitter, although not as cold as it had been in