Catherine Webb [Horatio Lyle The Obsidian Dagger (epub)

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.The light drained the colour out of a brown and white dog with huge ears trailing in the snow, that lay, wrapped in a tartan blue blanket by a black tree heavy with snow, and slept.As it slept, it snored.Loudly.One long ear twitched in time to the tail, the very end of which flexed between the snores in a rhythmical sequence that would have impressed even the most stringent of conductors.Somewhere, just below the verge of the hill, voices, too lively for the black pall of smoke that rose out of the chimneys below and the heavy, snow-weighted clouds above, drifted into the air.‘I said put it there.’‘You said left!’‘That way!’‘That’s right!’An embarrassed pause.‘Oh.’ Then, just in case, ‘Is it?’‘I think you’ll find it is.’‘Are you sure?’The dog in the thick blue blanket, which itself seemed greyer for the monochrome landscape, stopped snoring, opened a single lethargic eye, and regarded the world over the end of its large brown nose.Unimpressed, it closed the eye again, and snoozed on.A man appeared from behind a thicket of leafless twigs, carrying a box of heavy tools and a large watering can smelling of oil.He strode past the dog, oblivious to anything but his task, humming under his breath.His head was bare, despite the cold, revealing sandy-red hair, looking as if it couldn’t decide whether to be entirely yellow or entirely ginger and had settled for a reluctant compromise.His face was young enough to still be deemed handsome, and old enough to be deemed respectable, though he had always suspected that respectability was just another way of paying tax.Grey eyes blinked at the grey landscape, and found themselves uninspired.There was the sound of feet crunching snow, accompanied by voices, rapidly getting closer.The man stopped to listen, head on one side, as if trying to understand an eccentric social ritual.The voices drifted closer.‘Well, if you will light the fuse what do you expect?’‘I was going to attempt to put it out.’‘By steppin’ on it?’‘I’m sure it could have worked and I feel sure that if you’d given me the opportunity, rather than just grabbing me in that undignified manner.’Two shapes appeared over the rise of the hill.One, a tall, skinny boy with yellow hair, wore a greatcoat that was clearly designed to give him a certain aged gravitas, but flapped embarrassingly around the wrists and ankles.The other, a girl somewhat shorter and younger than he was, bounded along at a lively pace, and was wearing so many layers of thick clothes in so many faded and stained colours, it was hard to tell where one garment began and the other ended.When the boy spoke, it was as if he had stolen all the vowels from her, so that each syllable dripped good diction, while she often stopped short of a full word, as if expecting any intelligent listener to surmise immediately what it was she could be talking about.Today, and not for the first time, the girl was dragging her elder companion by the sleeve and, sighting the sandy-haired man, she called out in a sing-song voice, ‘Mister Lyle? That ain’t a clean coat what you’re wearin’?’The man addressed as ‘Mister Lyle’ looked down at himself, as if he hadn’t given the idea much thought.‘Well, I suppose it’s relatively -’Somewhere, just below the hill, something exploded.The noise sent birds, sleeping a second ago, racing for the sky, and set dogs barking all around.The shock wave caused trickles of snow to run off the branches of the trees, shook what few withered leaves still remained from the bushes, swirled the powdered snow in eddies and, in the direction of the actual blast itself, lifted up a fat, mammoth-sized spoonful of black earth and white snow, threw it twenty feet into the air, pushed it outwards, and then slowly dropped it down again with a squishplopsquish noise.The dog, snoozing in the blanket, twitched its nose disdainfully, and kept on dreaming of biscuits yet to come.There was a long silence, while everyone and everything waited for something else to happen.When it didn’t, Horatio Lyle picked himself up from where he’d dived on to the ground, brushed the worst of the snow and dirt off his front self-consciously, ran a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture that belied his deliberately calm face, and surveyed the crater below.When he spoke, his voice had a weary alertness and lilt that softened some vowels and gave some consonants a crippled edge, so that every costermonger in the street would touch their hand to their forehead in respect for a gentleman, and every gentleman would retreat a little polite pace, in suspicion of a man who couldn’t quite be of their class.It was a hard voice to place, so most people identified it as ‘not mine’ and left it at that.He said, ‘Now, do you think it was a problem with the chemical composition and ratios, or with the packaging?’The three regarded the crater a little longer.In his blanket, the dog made a contented snorting noise.Finally the boy, brushing snow out of his hair and off his greatcoat that barely disguised the thinness of his frame, said hopefully, ‘Do you think we can.have it filled in?’Lyle didn’t answer.His eyes had settled on a dark shape beyond the crater, that was slowly getting closer, and a frown had started to draw together across his face.The girl, however, turned and stared at her companion.‘Uh?’‘No one need ever know.’‘It’s a hole in’a ground, bigwig!’‘Perhaps it could serve as an ornamental fishpond?’‘A pond?’The boy shuffled, his feathers rumpled.‘Well, what would you do with it?’The girl didn’t hesitate.‘We walk away, all polite, and if any bigwigs send the bobbies after, we can hide out in this place I know ’til the cry’s gone down an’ then.and then [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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