‘Another rat!’
‘It’s mine!’
‘Ware crossbow!’
A crossbow bolt zinged to the left of Arthur, sending chips of stone flying. He zigzagged and another bolt whisked past his ear. Then he was outside, in the bright sunshine, standing on sandy ground strewn with rocks. There was a stand of palm trees nearby, the first of a whole line that stretched along the narrow peninsula back to the island proper.
Arthur hurled himself towards the closest palm, continuing to zig and zag, but there were no more crossbow bolts. Once he got behind the trunk, he risked a glance back.
The four Denizens were standing by the entrance to the shed, reloading their crossbows. They didn’t look like they were going to pursue Arthur.
There was no sign of Suzy. Arthur scanned the ground, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he grew more afraid that she had been hit by a crossbow bolt. After a few breaths that didn’t get properly into his lungs, Arthur tried to calm down.
This is a bubble from the Secondary Worlds, he told himself. The bubble is inside the House but the bubble contains a fragment of a Secondary Realm. Maybe even of Earth. It looks like it. So I’ll get asthma here. Have to be careful. Don’t push too hard …
A sudden squeak near his foot made Arthur jump. He looked down. A rat was looking up at him, making gestures with her paws.
‘Suzy!’ Arthur exclaimed, before he remembered she would only hear a squeak.
Suzy squeaked some more, insistently. Arthur correctly translated this as ‘Get a move on!’
He turned and, jogging rather than running, moved to the next palm, and then the next. As he jogged, he looked ahead, trying to match up the geography with the map he’d seen.
There was the harbour off to the right. Arthur could see the hulks of at least a dozen vessels all piled up on the far side. Total wrecks, or near enough. But closer, floating at anchor, were the Shiver and the Moth. And worst of all there was the Flying Mantis, its sails furled, their green radiance dimmed.
‘So Feverfew has captured Leaf,’ Arthur muttered to himself.
If she isn’t already dead.
He stopped, sheltered by a clump of palms, to get his breath back and look around more easily.
There were half a dozen low stone buildings clustered around the quay, clearly warehouses. Up the slight hill from there was Feverfew’s fort, a building of earth and stone ramparts shaped like a star within a star, with cannons visible on many levels. Across from that, and under its guns, were three ramshackle wooden buildings, little more than long sheds, with holes for windows.
Slave quarters, Arthur thought.
There were few signs of life. The occasional glint from the helmet of a sentry in the fort, and a bit of movement aboard the Shiver. But the slave quarters were still. The breeze was blowing towards Arthur, but he couldn’t hear anything, save the plaintive cry of some kind of seabird. He looked for that, remembering the black cormorants that had flow from the buoy to warn Feverfew, but no birds were visible.
Arthur looked away, up to the hills, where the Raised Rat spy had noted Followers of the Carp. Escaped Slaves. on her map.
The hills were a lot higher than he’d expected, perhaps more than a thousand feet, and were also covered in what looked like dense jungle or rain forest. It would not be easy to climb them or to find anyone there, particularly if they were trying to stay hidden.
Suzy squeaked something at him and jumped up and down on the spot, an action Arthur took to mean ‘get on with it.’
He got on with it, walking quickly to the next clump of palms. His breathing was all right, but he knew he couldn’t take any risks. He had no medication here. No inhaler, and no paramedics with beta-agonists and oxygen or emergency rooms nearby.
Suzy squeaked again and did a somersault, showing her impatience.
‘I can’t go any faster,’ said Arthur, even though he knew she’d hear only the squeak. He shrugged his shoulders up and down as well.
It did seem to pacify Suzy for the moment. She stopped being agitated and walked along with Arthur peaceably enough. They still went from clump to clump of palms, to be on the safe side, and every fifty yards or so Arthur stopped to listen and look around. The peninsula they were on was about a mile from the harbour, so he figured they should be reasonably safe.
After a while, they left the peninsula and started out across the mainland, where the palms and sandy ground gave way to thick dark earth with lots of rocky outcrops, and stunted, windblown trees with grey-green leaves. These spread low to the ground and made the going more difficult, particularly as Arthur occasionally found himself thinking he was much smaller than he was, and hit his head on a branch. This was disturbing, as it suggested Doctor Scamandros’s rat disguises were having some effect on their wearers as well as observers. But Arthur couldn’t worry about it. He concentrated on heading toward the hills, watching out for pirates or cormorants or other things that might serve Feverfew, and keeping his breathing steady.
The stunted, spreading grey-green trees didn’t last long. As the ground continued to rise, the bare earth and stones were replaced by leaf litter, small ferns, larger ferns, and big pale-trunked trees that rose straight up for forty or fifty feet before spreading out to make a thick canopy that greatly reduced the light and heat from the sun.
The air felt much more moist too, and there were little rivulets of water to jump across every ten yards or so, usually into soft ground that was not quite mud — or if it was, it had a sufficient layer of leaves, bracken, and forest debris to make it more solid.
There were occasional small noises in this verdant undergrowth, but nothing too alarming, and Arthur hadn’t seen any footprints or other signs that the pirates ever left their harbourside dwelling. He was also starting to think of himself more and more as a rat, so when they had clambered up to a clearing that he thought marked the first stage of their hill ascent, he stopped and took off his rat mask and tail.
Suzy didn’t take hers off. She sniffed around his feet and then sat in a begging posture, squeaking. Finally Arthur leaned down, gripped the rat by the nose and tail, both of which felt totally authentic, and pulled.
Finding himself suddenly pinching Suzy’s real nose and tugging on a loose piece of cloth from her ripped-up dress, Arthur let go.
‘Cor, what I wouldn’t give for a piece of cheese,’ Suzy said as she massaged her nose. ‘I reckon the Doctor made those charms too strong. I was only following you that last bit cause you were another rat and I thought you might know where some food was.’
‘At least they worked properly to begin with,’ said Arthur. He peered up at the sky and then back down the slope. He could just see the topmast of the Mantis and a patch of blue that was the outer harbour. The harbour buildings were out of sight, obscured by a ridge lower down. But in the valley below, he could see a huge circular patch of dark brown edged in bright yellow. He realised this must be the nose cavity of the skull he’d seen drawn on the map. A lake of mud that the mapmaker had also annotated with the word Nothing and a question mark.
After watching the lake for a few seconds, Arthur saw that the mud must be hot, for huge bubbles appeared and the surface was in constant, low movement as the mud roiled and turned over.
‘Bet that fair stinks,’ said Suzy, looking down at the lake. ‘Lucky the wind’s the other way. Where to now?’
‘I think we’re about halfway up the first hill,’ said Arthur. ‘But I really don’t know for sure. I wonder where these Followers of the Carp hang out? I mean, where would you go if you’d escaped from the pirates? Besides away from the harbour, which we’ve done.’
‘Up,’ said Suzy. ‘They’re Denizens, right? They always want to go up. Up is good, inside the House. The higher the better. That’s why the superior ones, like the Noons and such, make themselves tall. Got a thing about it. Bit silly really, just makes it harder to get clothes to fit.’
‘Up,’ said Arthur. ‘That makes sense. Unfortunately. I hope
I’ll be okay to keep climbing.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Suzy. She hadn’t spent any time with Arthur in the Secondary Realms when he didn’t have a Key.
‘I have a . . . I guess you’d call it a breathing sickness,’ said Arthur. ‘Sometimes it comes on if I do too much exercise. Because this worldlet is part of the Secondary Realms, I might get affected by it.’
‘Like black lung, is it?’ asked Suzy, clearly interested. ‘Or the greenspit cough?’
‘Maybe,’ said Arthur. ‘Don’t worry about it, though. I feel fine for now. Slow and steady, that’s how we’ll go.’
‘Without the rat disguises?’
Arthur nodded. ‘We should be okay up here. But we’d better hang on to them just in case we need to use them to get back out.’
After a brief rest, they continued on. The rain forest drew in again as they left the clearing, and there were no obvious paths. Arthur simply went where the undergrowth had a gap in it or was less sparse, but he always aimed uphill.
After another half hour or so of thrashing their way upslope, Arthur paused for another rest. He wanted to wait till they hit a clearing, but there had been no sign of one and he had to take a break.
‘Not much to see, is there?’ said Suzy. ‘Smells a bit too.’
Arthur sniffed at the rich odour of the forest.
‘It’s only all the leaves and stuff turning into mulch,’ he said. ‘I wonder whether the Followers of the Carp have built houses up here, or found caves or something. You wouldn’t last long just camping out.’
‘Could be worse,’ said Suzy. ‘Down in the Pit or in the Lower House Coal Cellar.’
‘Or collecting salvage for Feverfew,’ said Arthur. He was thinking of all the golden bones strewn outside the dome. ‘They must not last long doing that.’
‘Who speaks of Feverfew?!’ boomed a voice out of the undergrowth — a deep, powerful voice, trained to rise above the fiercest gale.
Twenty–five
‘WHO SPEAKS OF FEVERFEW?’
Arthur and Suzy leapt to their feet and drew their weapons. But there was no sign of the person who’d spoken. The rain forest around them was quiet and still.
‘No one ever looks up,’ continued the voice. ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’
Arthur looked up, his sword at the ready. There was a Denizen high up in the nearest tree, hanging on with the aid of hooked spurs in his boots and what looked like clawed gloves, though Arthur wasn’t entirely sure if they were gloves or actually the Denizen’s hands. He was wearing a shirt and breeches of light tan splattered with patches of green mould, effective camouflage for the rain forest, particularly since the mould looked like it had spread across the Denizen’s skin as well.
‘Now for the traditional questions,’ said the Denizen. ‘And the traditional warning. Answer correctly, or you will die where you stand. Or, to tell a truth, die a bit later, because our arrows, while tipped with Nothing-contaminated mud, are not very effective.’
Arthur looked around as the Denizen spoke. There were rustlings in the undergrowth around them, and he spotted several other green-mould-and-tan-wearing Denizens moving up on them. These ones had short bows. Not crossbows, but the simple stave and bowstring kind.
‘We’re friends,’ called out Arthur. ‘We’re looking for the Followers of the Carp.’
‘Can you just wait for the questions?’ asked the Denizen up the tree. ‘Let’s do this properly, please.’
‘Sure,’ said Arthur.
Suzy yawned and sat back down.
‘Denizens,’ she muttered to herself.
‘Are you now or have you ever been a pirate?’ asked the Denizen.
‘No,’ said Arthur.
‘Do you serve the pirate Feverfew in any capacity?’
‘No,’ said Arthur.
‘Do you believe in the Carp?’
‘Uh, I’m not sure what you mean. I want to meet it —’ ‘Is that a ‘no’?’ asked the Denizen.
Arthur took a sideways glance at the bow-wielding Denizens, who were nocking arrows and drawing bowstrings back.
‘We do believe in the Carp, don’t we, Suzy?’
‘Sure,’ said Suzy. ‘I’ll believe whatever you want.’
‘You must have faith in the Carp,’ said the Denizen. This statement was echoed in a whisper all around.
Arthur nodded vigorously several times, indicating that he had tons of faith in the Carp.
‘Now, also for the record, state your names.’
Arthur thought for a moment.
If the Carp is who I think it is, I can’t go wrong. But if it isn’t, then …
‘This ’ere’s Lord Arthur, Master of the Lower House, Lord of the Far Reaches, Hero of the House, Eater of the Biscuit, and Rightful Heir of the whole lot,’ said Suzy, standing up again. ‘And I’m Suzanna Monday’s Tierce, so you’d better act a bit more respectful, if you don’t mind.’
‘Really?’ asked the Denizen in the tree. ‘I mean, I have faith and all, but are you really the Rightful Heir?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘I am. Can you take us to the Carp?’
‘And you’re going to rescue us all from Feverfew’s dominion?’
‘What?’
‘Rescue us, like the Carp says you will.’
‘Uh, I have to talk to the Carp first.’
‘How many of you are there?’ asked Suzy. She was staring out between two of the trees, where more and more green-tinged Denizens were becoming visible as they moved out of cover.
‘Seven hundred and seventy-nine, at last count,’ said the Denizen as he slid down the tree trunk, his boot-spikes shredding bark. He landed and bowed in one smooth motion.
‘Allow me to present myself. I am Jebenezer, First Follower of the Carp, and formerly Second Mate of the Naiad, may her wooden bones rot in peace.’
Before Arthur could answer, a female Denizen pushed forward and bowed, declaring, ‘I am the Second Follower of the Carp, and my name is Pennina!’
‘I am the Third Follower,’ shouted someone else, farther back. ‘My name is Garam. I have faith in the Carp!’
A cacophony of voices followed, with Denizens shouting out their names, their numerical ranking as Followers, and various protestations of faith in the Carp, belief that the Rightful Heir would come, and other stuff that Arthur couldn’t hear properly over the din.
As they shouted, the Denizens moved closer and closer. More and more of them appeared out of the undergrowth, till there was a great crowd advancing on Arthur.
‘Uh, I think I’d like to see the Carp right now,’ said Arthur as he retreated back against a tree trunk. Many of the Denizens had forgotten to put away their Nothing-poisoned arrows, and there were lots of muddy, sharp arrowheads sticking out ahead of them, straight at Arthur.
‘The Rightful Heir says everyone take three steps back!’ shouted Suzy, but even her sharp voice was lost in the tumult.
‘I’m the Ninety-Ninth Follower —’
‘Hundred and Sixth —’
‘I believe —’
‘Faith in the —’
‘The Carp! The Carp!’
‘Three steps back!’ roared Jebenezer, at a volume to match Sunscorch’s best shout.
The Denizens halted, then — after some scuffling — stepped back. Arthur took a breath, found he couldn’t get a full lungful, and concentrated on staying calm.
‘Lord Arthur wants to see the Carp,’ said Suzy.
‘I’m in a bit of a hurry,’ Arthur added, a slight wheeze underlying his words. He looked at his watch. They’d been out of the submersible for two hours. Ten hours to go before the Balaena departed, and now he had nearly eight hundred Denizens thinking he was going to do something for them as well.
‘Of course, sir! Follow me!’ said Jebenezer. He pushed two Denizens aside and gestured at the others to move to make Arthur a path through the crowd. ‘It’s just natural high spirits, sir, most of us having been trapped on this island for so long, and in fear of recaptu
re. Feverfew always sinks captured slaves.’
‘Sinks?’ asked Suzy.
‘In the Hot Lake,’ Jebenezer continued. ‘If the mud doesn’t drown you, or the heat burn you up, the patches of Nothing do the business. Nothing’s quick, of course, or should be. But Feverfew don’t let that happen. He’s got a yardarm rigged up so he can lower you in a bit at a time, like a leg or whatever. A hand usually. He likes to start with the hands —’
‘I get the idea!’ interrupted Arthur. He felt very tense. Every minute wasted could mean disaster, and he had so many problems and so many decisions to make. And then there was the asthma, lurking . . .
‘Where is the Carp?’ asked Suzy. ‘Is it far from here?’
‘Why, the Carp is under our feet, ma’am,’ said Jebenezer. ‘When the Carp first freed the slaves, that’s the first twenty, which is me and Pennina and Garam and Obelin and Herush and Peppertoe and Thin Edric and —’
‘Maybe save the names for later,’ said Arthur. ‘Just tell me the basic story.’
‘Well, when the Carp freed us from our shackles in the dead of night, we picked him up and carried him into these hills. He said if we had faith, and looked around, we’d find a place to shelter, a fortress safe from Feverfew. And sure enough, we soon found a mighty cave, and it has served us ever since as our home. And the Carp said that we must have faith that the Rightful Heir would one day come and bring us all back to the House, and blow me down if it isn’t happening, and me still here without being dissolved into Nothing or my bones bleaching out in the Stomach! Here we are.’
The Denizen stopped before what appeared to be a cliff face, a vertical section of pale yellow rock, liberally covered with the same green mould or lichen that grew on his clothes and skin.
‘Just step through, sir. It looks solid, but if you believe it to be a door, as the Carp says, then it’ll be a door.’
‘That Carp sounds like a right pain in the midsection,’ grumbled Suzy in a low voice to Arthur. ‘And a faker as well. I bet it just made the cavern entrance look like this and carried on with all that belief hocus-pocus.’
‘We won’t get that mould growing on us, will we?’ Arthur asked Jebenezer.