Free The Whatnot by Stefan Bachmann

from the war. Away from leadfaces and faeries. Away from horrid people like Missus Jackinpots.
    He was going to do it. He was going to get out of here and he was never coming back.
    The walk from Spitalfields to anywhere respectable was a long one. He trudged for miles, out of the slums and along the slow, greenish river toward the wide streets and straight-backed houses of St. James’s. One hand he kept under his arm, trying to stop his fingers from cracking off. The other stayed in his pocket, clamped tight around the gem.
    Every time he thought of it there he felt a little thrill, a pleasure at its weight. It would turn into so many shillings and sovereigns for him. A whole stack of them. He would sell it and fill his pockets, and then he would leave London behind him once and for all.
    An hour later he was in the part of the city that folks called Mayfair, on a big, noisy street full of shops and carriages. He walked along, darting around bicycles and the frozen brooms of the mechanical street sweepers. The horses and gas trolleys meant that the air was somewhat less icy than in the more old-fashioned parts of the city, but it was still cold enough to make Pikey’s teeth chatter. A squadron of soldiers marched by, real grown-up ones in splendid red-and-blue uniforms. They stomped in formation, and a whistle at their head played a jaunty tune. Pikey watched them as they passed.
    He stopped in front of a tall, gray-stone shop. The sign above the door read, Jeffreyhue H. Millipede, Jeweler , but to Pikey it was only a lot of flourishes and lines. A plate-glass window spanned the shop’s front, so clean you might smack flat into it before you even knew it was there. And behind it was a wall of jewels. Row upon row of winking, glittering stones, pinned to the swaths of black velvet like so many brilliant insects. There were diamond necklaces and iridescent combs. There were strands of pearls, opals curled in silver, emeralds green as the verdigris on the old clock tower in Rot-Apple Street. They all looked so huge and polished. Pikey was suddenly afraid his own gem might not be good enough, that his dirty fingers had smudged it and that when he took it from his pocket it would look dull and flat, plain as a river stone.
    No , he told himself firmly. He had come this far and he wasn’t going to turn back now. He knew a caramel apple seller on the way out of the city. He could already taste it. He could feel the brown, sticky sweetness dripping over his fingers, warming them as he walked away into the country.
    Pikey squared his shoulders and pushed through the cut-glass door into the shop.
    A tinkling of golden bells, and one great iron bell to scare him off in case he was a faery, signaled his entrance. Three ladies in enormous feathered hats turned languorously to glance at him. A shopkeeper’s assistant did the same, and so did a bald, waistcoated gentleman standing behind a glass table. The table was filled with bulbous red necklaces, and the way the man stood with his large, milk-white hands spread over it made him look rather sinister.
    Pikey felt his heart flutter as they looked at him, but he didn’t hesitate. He marched toward the waistcoated gentleman, who he thought looked the most important, and said, “G’day, guvn’or. I have something for you. Are you the swanbolly?”
    Pikey tried making his voice as deep and rough as he could, the way the men in Spitalfields did when they wanted something their way. Then he looked the man in the eye and waited, hoping he had done a good job of it.
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œAre you the swanbolly?” Pikey asked again, and this time his voice slipped up a bit and squeaked.
    The man sniffed. “No, I’m quite sure that I am not. And if you do not state your business within three ticks, I’ll have you dragged to the workhouse. What is it you want?”
    Pikey almost bolted at that. Almost. But he was so close to