‘What was what?’ another Denizen asked.
Arthur moved very slowly towards the wall. There was no cover at all, nothing in the room save the table and chairs, but there was a narrow band of shadow along the edge where the floor met the wall.
One of the Denizens stood up.
‘I thought I heard something near the water gate.’
Arthur crouched in the shadow.
It’ll take a while to pump out the escape chamber ready for Suzy to come through, he thought. But maybe she’ll swim faster than I did. If she comes through now, the Denizen will see her for sure, even as a rat …
‘Sit down! It’s your turn!’
The Denizen slowly sat down and turned his attention to whatever was on the table. Some sort of game, Arthur saw, being played on a board with glittering pieces made from gold and gems. Not chess, because he didn’t recognise the pieces, and all four Denizens were playing. They each had piles of paper in front of them too, which changed hands frequently. Not bank notes, but badly torn-up scraps and pieces with scrawled writing on them.
Arthur crawled along the wall, thinking furiously. If Suzy came out now, and they heard her, he’d try to distract them.
‘What was that?’
The same Denizen stood up again. Arthur looked around and saw a rat scuttle across the floor, out of the archway.
‘A rat!’
All of the Denizens erupted out of their chairs, sending them flying. As they bent down to grab their crossbows, Arthur ran straight at them. Not daring to hesitate, he jumped on the table, kicked the board over, and jumped again to the far side, almost stumbling as a sharp pain shot through his bad leg, despite the crab armour’s support.
‘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.