The Watchmen of Port Fayt by Conrad Mason

Author:Conrad Mason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

As he flew, Slik entertained himself by repeating everything Tabitha had said in a range of silly voices. Unless that’s too difficult for you … A child, telling him what to do. He’d show her.

He turned down an alleyway, in the opposite direction from the pie shop. There was someone he needed to see. A secret someone. Someone who paid more sugar than Newton did.

A few streets later, he was knocking on a thick wooden door, and a red-coated bullyboy opened it. Down a corridor, round a corner, and up to another door. A second bullyboy ushered him in.

“Slik,” snapped Jeb the Snitch. “Where in all the blue sea’ve you been?”

The goblin was pacing the carpet in front of a large mahogany desk with a gray shark-hide surface. Harry was at the sideboard, his own fairy on his shoulder, pouring tumblers of a dark red liquid. Without the usual tricorne hat, his gray hair clung to his skull, matted and greasy, with the odd curl bouncing off at strange angles.

“Hello, sunshine,” he said.

Slik headed straight for the squashy leather armchair on the far side of the desk and settled down on one of the arms, keeping an eye on the creepy elf. He never felt completely comfortable here at Harry’s Shark Pit, and it was mainly because of Harry himself. The pit pulled in a tidy haul of ducats, but weirdly, Harry wasn’t interested in the money. All he cared about was his sharks. It was bad enough that he named them after a long succession of ex-wives. But, even stranger, there were rumors that he went down to the cages every night to chat to them, for hours on end. Port Fayt had its fair share of idiots. No one knew that better than Slik. But Harry was something else—plain mad.

“Come on then,” said Jeb. “Let’s hear it. What’s the news, Slik? What’s Newton up to? Any sign of that stinking mongrel?”

“You need to relax, my lovely,” said Harry cheerily. “Look at you, all tense.”

“Of course I’m tense,” said Jeb. “I’m upset. I’m angry. Why shouldn’t I be tense?”

“Won’t do you no good, Jebedee.”

He handed a goblin-size tumbler to Jeb and a fairy-size one to Slik, and they knocked the drinks back. Slik coughed as the bitter liquid scorched his throat.

“What in all the stinking sea is this stuff?”

“Just a little cocktail I came up with.”

“It’s disgusting. What’s in it?”

Harry’s brow creased as he tried to remember.

“Now, let me see. A measure of firewater, a dash of trout essence, a sprinkling of hot herbs from the New World, and three fingers of griffin blood.”

Jeb and Slik both spat the liquid out, spattering the carpet and the sharkskin desk with red.

Harry and his fairy burst out giggling.

“Only joking, my ducks. No griffin blood.”

“That’s not funny, Harry,” growled Jeb.

It wouldn’t be so hard to believe that the elf would feed them griffin blood. The stuff was poisonous, but a crackpot like Harry was capable of anything.

“Like I say, my lovely, you need to relax.

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