‘And pirates,’ added Longtayle. ‘The Shiver has been sighted too often in recent times for my liking, not to mention some of Feverfew’s lesser brethren, such as Captain Blooddreg of the Nightdream.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ said Arthur. ‘Kind of. I need to find Feverfew’s secret harbour, and I need to go in there and get something. I must ask for your help.’
‘We are mercantile Rats,’ said Monckton. ‘That is to say, we do not do anything without payment of some kind.’
‘Do you actually know where Feverfew’s harbour is?’ Arthur asked. ‘Or can you find out fairly quickly? I mean, there’s no point talking about payment if you can’t do anything.’
‘We think we know where it is,’ said Longtayle. ‘That is to say we have deduced its location from some evidence, but we have not actually been there ourselves. As for getting you there . . . if we’re right then that’s an even more difficult proposition.’
‘Okay,’ said Arthur, ready to bargain. ‘What payment do you want for the location, to start with?’
‘We deal in information,’ said Monckton. ‘So if we answer your questions, we’d like you to answer an equivalent number of ours.’
Arthur had been expecting to pay a ransom in gold or treasure. This seemed too easy. . .
‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘That may be more than it seems,’ Longtayle advised.
Arthur shrugged. ‘I don’t have anything to hide. At least I don’t think I do.’
‘Then you shall ask three questions of us,’ said Monckton. ‘And we shall ask three of you.’
‘There’s no trick to this, is there?’ Arthur asked suspiciously. ‘I mean, what I just asked doesn’t count as a question, does it? Because I’m not agreeing to that.’
‘Only significant questions count,’ said Monckton. ‘So, you want to know what we know about Feverfew’s secret harbour?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘That’s my first question. Where is it?’
In response, Longtayle unrolled a very large map that took up most of the table. It was labelled THE BORDER SEA and was nearly all blue water, with occasional small flecks of land, each neatly marked in tiny cursive script.
Arthur looked over the map eagerly, taking in place names like Port Wednesday, the Triangle, Mount Last, and Swirleen Deep. At first glance, he couldn’t see anything labelled Feverfew’s Secret Harbour, so he went back to the top left corner to start a systematic search up and down, only to be interrupted as Longtayle carefully placed a small ivory carving of a white whale on the map and tapped it twice.
‘It’s there,’ he said. ‘We believe Feverfew’s secret harbour must actually be inside Drowned Wednesday.’
‘Inside her!’
‘More exactly, we believe the secret harbour is a miniature worldlet that is anchored inside Drowned Wednesday’s stomach. It can be accessed in only two ways. One is via a unique augury puzzle that Feverfew possesses, made for him by Grim Tuesday, like the worldlet itself. The other is directly from Wednesday’s stomach.’
‘But it can’t be inside her,’ said Arthur. ‘She returned to her normal human form. How could a whole secret harbour still be in her stomach?’
‘I am not a metamathic sorcerer,’ said Longtayle, ‘but I believe the explanation is something like this: The secret harbour is contained within a bubble of the Secondary Realm that has been brought into the House. The size of that bubble may change from minuscule to gigantic without affecting the world it contains. When Lady Wednesday used the Third Key to return to her former shape, the bubble shrank with her. When she grew again, it grew. But the world inside the bubble did not change.’
‘And you can get into it from Wednesday’s stomach?’
‘We believe so,’ said Longtayle. ‘Or out of it. We think Feverfew had the worldlet sorcerously placed inside Wednesday for two reasons. It would be the ideal hiding place, but also would provide unparalleled opportunities for recovering salvage. You are aware that anything lost always turns up eventually in the Border Sea?’
Arthur nodded. He’d been told that by Sunscorch.
‘A great part of what is lost lies in the very deeps and is unrecoverable, unless it floats up before it sinks to one of the places where the Sea now impinges upon Nothing and is dissolved. But there is still considerable salvage in shallower water, and it, along with everything else in Wednesday’s path, ends up in her stomach, at least for a time. Feverfew uses his slaves to harvest the salvage Wednesday has swallowed, adding greatly to the plunder he takes from the ships of the Border Sea.’