Page 2 of Kill the Beast
Dickie’s face turned the pale gray of workhouse gruel. “What in the Blessed Lady’s name is that?” he asked as Lyssa set the head down on the platter and arranged some lettuce leaves and lemon wedges around it artfully.
Surefire way to spot a city boy: he’d never seen a faerie with his own eyes before. There was too much iron—poison to their kind—in a place like Warham. What few of them remained keptto the gnarled forests and ancient lakes, a problem for the shepherds and farmers, mostly. But with the cities expanding farther into the countryside every year because of industrialists like William Clarke, they would soon be wiped out altogether. Lady willing.
Lyssa was happy to do whatever she could to help… though not for free. Not when the men employing her were almost as rich as the king himself.
“This,” she said, plumping the lettuce around the severed head, “is one of the monsters our grandmothers warned us about.”
“Like… like that thing that killed Eddie?”
There was that punch in the gut again. “No,” she said lightly, covering the head with the platter’s polished silver lid. It did nothing to improve the smell. “This is just a river troll.”
The thing that had killed her brother was far worse—not a faerie, but a monster made by the faeries for the sole purpose of slaughtering humans. Someone like Dickie wouldn’t know the difference, though, any more than Lyssa would know an oyster fork from a salad fork. The newspapers these days acted like stray goblins were just as dangerous as something like the Beast of Buxton Fields, giving them all equally sensationalized headlines, and since he hadn’t been there that night…
Well. If he had been, he’d be dead, too, and he still wouldn’t know the difference between a troll and a Hound.
“What are you doing with its head?” he asked.
“She’s the Butcher,” Mary hissed, as though Lyssa would take offence to his ignorance.
Dickie’s brows shot up, and he looked Lyssa over with a new appreciation in his eyes. “The Butcher, huh? Have you heard what the papers say about you?”
“I have.” That the Butcher was eight feet tall. That she could rip a man’s head off with her bare hands. That she was—alternately—half monster herself, or some kind of savior. Either way, it had been agreed upon that she was not entirely human. The details seemed to depend on what she had done to get into the news that day, and who had paid for the article. The only thing they’d gottenright was that she killed faeries for money, and that she was good at it.
“So, that head,” Dickie said. “You… cut it off yourself?”
“I did.” Lyssa nodded at the now-covered platter. “This troll was living under a bridge Mr. Clarke wants to tear down. It took a lot of work to kill it for him, and now he thinks he can short me on the payment. Either he gives me what he owes me today, or he leaves here with a belly full of rotting troll brains.”
The staff clapped and whistled at that.
Mary tossed Lyssa an apron and a cap. “Better get moving, then. He’s in and out today, on account of some big meeting this afternoon. Got an earful while I was pouring his wine.”
Lyssa tied the apron on over her filthy clothes and tucked her braids up into the cap. “Ready, Brandy?” she asked, and there was a woof of assent from behind the cloth draping the cart.
Lyssa wheeled the serving cart through the swinging double doors and out into the main dining room, blinking in the overpowering glow of the Kingmaker’s newfangled electric lights. She had only just gotten used to gas lamps by the time something even brighter had come along to replace them, and the intensity dazzled her for a moment before she managed to shake it off.
The hideous odor emanating from beneath the covered platter invaded the room almost instantly, and the murmur of polite conversation and the gentle clink of silverware ceased abruptly in its wake.
“Apologies,” Lyssa announced to the sea of wrinkled noses and scandalized faces now turned toward her. “Delicacy from overseas, incredibly rare and expensive. I understand the fragrance may be offensive to most of you—it takes a true connoisseur to appreciate. I’ll be out of your air in a moment, I assure you.” As she wound her way through the dining room, a handful of people hailed their waiters and demanded that the same delicacy be brought to their tables immediately.
“They’d eat goblin shit if they thought it was in vogue,” Lyssa muttered to Brandy.
The private booths were in the back, away from the barely upper-class riffraff in the main dining room. The booths were completely enclosed, the mahogany walls polished to a blinding shine. Lyssa opened the door to the largest booth and backed the cart in, Mr. Clarke already hurling reprimands at her.
“—took you so long? I have been waiting for a full fifteen minutes for your return, and I am not accustomed to—”
“Mary had to step out for a moment,” Lyssa said brightly, kicking the door closed and maneuvering the cart so that it was perpendicular to the table.
Whatever else he was not accustomed to, William Clarke was mostcertainlynot accustomed to being interrupted by the waitstaff. He glared at her, clutching his roast beef sandwich so hard the meat was beginning to slide out from between the bread. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing forearms covered in more hair than now resided on his head, and he had a napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt to protect his finely embroidered waistcoat from the au jus dribbling down his chin.
“What is this? What is thatstench?And who are you?” Mr. Clarke demanded, finally seeming to register the bloody button-up shirt and mud-splattered pants beneath Lyssa’s apron, far outside the usual dress code imposed upon the Kingmaker’s female staff.
Lyssa tapped the toe of her boot against the metal leg of the serving cart, and Brandy slipped out from beneath the cloth, taking up a position to Lyssa’s right.
“You brought adoginto my booth?” Mr. Clarke sputtered. “No wonder that cart smells so foul.”
Brandy growled low in his throat at that, his hackles rising.
“You asked me who I am,” Lyssa said with a grin, tearing the ridiculous cap from her head and letting her long, messy braids tumble down her back. “My name is Lyssa Carnifex. Some call me the Butcher.”
