The Twyning (13 page)

Molly Wall watches, her face pale. Beside her, Bill mutters again and again, “This is wrong. No, Molly, this is wrong.”

The massacre lasts five minutes, maybe longer, before the men begin to lose interest. All the rats are dead now. For a moment, the men stand in the crimson pit, looking at the blood that is now all over their boots and trousers. Then, one by one, they climb out of the pit, reddening the floor of the pub with their footprints.

“Collect your winnings and be off with you.” The voice is that of Molly Wall. “There’ll be no more bouts in this pub.” She looks down at me. “Poor lad.” She speaks softly. “You should never have seen that.”

I am feeling sick, and weary at the thought of clearing up the remains of the rats.

Bill lays a hand briefly on my shoulder. “You’ll be needing a shovel, lad.”

Just for a moment, I am tempted to tell him that there is one rat who survived the massacre at the Cock Inn, and she is resting in the arm of my shirt.

No. Bill will probably think me soft in the head. I take the shovel and get to work.

. . . and respectful when Quell appeared on the Rock of State. Now as he shuffled forward, all gray and important, the bustle of activity in the Great Hollow continued. A couple of ratlings scrapped over food. A captain was calling her courtiers. Near the front of the crowd, warriors were jostling one another as a doe turned away from them invitingly.

It was not as large as the throng that had attended the farewell of King Tzuriel, and the mood in the Great Hollow was utterly different.

I stood behind a wall of courtiers, hoping to be invisible on the Rock of State as Jeniel was pronounced queen. I was already tired of the power games, the fights that would break out within the court, the half-heard revelations, the rumors. I was a taster. I wanted to go home.

On the Rock of State, Quell looked around and quested the air with his gray, scarred snout. It was several seconds before eyes turned to him and he was able to start his revelation.

Even then, the audience was only half listening, until he mentioned the word for which, I now realized, every citizen had been waiting.

— Jeniel . . .

The noise of chattering teeth started quietly but grew louder, so that Quell had to wait before he continued.

— Jeniel . . .

He tried again. As the acclamation echoed off the walls of the Great Hollow, Quell seemed to lose his thread, as if what he had been about to reveal no longer made any sense.

It was at that moment that there was movement among the courtiers not far from me. A small figure emerged from the shadows of the Rock of State.

The noise was deafening. Jeniel walked forward, not with the strut of warrior and courtier but with a sort of scuttle, her head lowered, her eyes fixed to the ground before her. She passed Quell as if he were not there. When she reached the front of the rock, the acclamation grew louder. Slowly, she raised her eyes until she was staring out at her audience, returning their adoration with a loving gaze. The warmth in that look seemed to say to every rat that the future of the kingdom, the future heritage of rats, was safe with her.

She was queen, without it even being announced on the Rock of State. She was the queen of our hearts. Some of the warrior rats, forgetting duty in their excitement, dived into the river in front of the Rock of State, in order to be closer to her. I noticed one or two of the courtiers glancing in the direction of Quell, expecting a command to be issued to the court guards, but the old rat seemed no longer to care what was happening in the hollow.

The closing words of his revelation were weak, but the two words for which the kingdom was waiting were clear enough.

— Queen Jeniel.

At the back of the Rock of State, I peered past the courtiers as the new queen delivered her first royal revelation.

There was nothing new in the speech. Destiny, duty, faith, loyalty — citizens had heard it all before. But Jeniel’s manner was not like that of a courtier or a queen. She was easy, relaxed almost, like a mother revealing to her ratlings.

And yet I found it difficult to concentrate. Her words skittered off the surface of my brain. Matters of state were all very well, but at that moment I had other worries. Where had Floke and Fang been taken? As the queen revealed, I scanned the ranks of her audience for any sign of my friends.

— Efren!

I was so deep in thought that when I heard my own name, it took a moment for me to realize that it was part of Jeniel’s revelation.

That’s right. The queen, addressing her subjects, had just mentioned my name.

— Efren!

The revelation was as strong as a pulse of pain flashing across my skull. I looked toward Jeniel, who had turned and was questing the air, as if searching for me.

— Step forward, ratling. They need to see you.

Fearfully, I moved forward, holding myself low and humble against the stone beneath me. There was polite, confused acclamation. Turning to me, Jeniel continued.

— What this young rat from the Tasting Court has done shall act as an example of bravery and intelligence to other young rats in the kingdom. Without his bravery, we never would have known the evil and deadly plans of our greatest enemy. The name of Efren shall be remembered in generations to come.

I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that the moment would end.

— For this reason, I am appointing him to the Court of Governance.

At that moment, I glanced at the queen in astonishment. Her face showed nothing. It was as if I were not there. I shuffled backward to stand beside Swylar once more.

Now I knew it.

Now it was certain.

There was no escape.

. . . given to me by Molly Wall. And in it are the bodies of hundreds of dead rats, killed by the teeth of dogs and the boots of humans.

Tomorrow I shall find a place away from here where I shall leave them. Food for my friends, the dogs of the town.

Now I have something more important to do.

I crouch by the tip, pull back the door. I scramble down the passageway that I have made through the rubbish.

In my shirt, spattered with blood, are presents.

A loaf of crusty bread.

A rat.

I whistle, a low, long note. From the heart of the tip, there is a shorter whistle in reply.

She is there. When I reach the room, the small stove is open, its burning logs lighting the face of a girl, her eyes dark and wary, her face a pale, dirty smudge of light in the gloom.

“Caz.”

“Hullo, Peter,” she says quietly.

I hand her the loaf. She tears into it and eats her half ravenously.

“Good?”

She nods, smiles. With her mouth full, she says, “God bless your friend Molly.”

Watching Caz eat, I remember the moment when I first saw her, sleeping in a doorway, a pair of pink dancing shoes in her hand. She looked even younger than her eleven years.

Caz. What would I do without Caz? She makes me feel normal.

There are no more words until we have both feasted on the bread.

“It was a strange day,” I say.

Sometimes, when I come home, it takes time for the habit of speaking to come back to me, but now there is so much to tell Caz that the words come spilling out.

She listens as I tell her of the terrible things that happened at the Cock Inn.

When I describe the men shouting and stamping, she looks away. She has never liked my work with Bill Grubstaff.

“Poor creatures,” she murmurs, running a finger over her left hand to collect the few remaining crumbs.

“They say there will be no more bouts.”

“Good.”

“Fewer pennies for us.”

Caz is looking around at the tangle of wood, metal, paper, and rags that we have turned into a home.

“There aren’t many places that have rats like we have here,” she says. “And what harm do they do to us? They eat up the food that people have no use for.”

“Maybe.” It is true, over the months we have lived in the tip, that the rats who live here have become a sort of company for us. When they stop moving at night, I am alert for danger. They are our guard-rats.

It is now I remember the other present.

I reach into my shirt. “I saved one,” I said.

Carefully, I take out the gray-and-white fancy rat. She rests in my hand, making no attempt to escape.

Caz laughs, a happy sound. “It’s so small.”

“She. She’s a fancy rat. They reckoned she would not be much of a fighter.”

“I think they reckoned right.” She takes the beast from me and holds it to her chest. “Why is she that color?”

“Bill says that it was Jack Black, the queen’s rat-catcher, who started collecting strange-colored rats that he found. He bred them as pets.”

“Rats as pets.” Caz shakes her head. “Who would have thought it?”

“Fancy rats are all the rage among the gentry, Bill says. I thought she could join her friends in the tip.”

“No.” Caz strokes the rat’s head with a finger. “Let us be fashionable, too. We’ll keep her as a pet.”

“We’ll need a box. Food and water.”

“Now?”

“After we’ve slept.”

Caz puts the fancy rat into the front of her dress, then lies on the ground.

Soon all three of us are asleep.

. . . that I discovered more of the secret life of the Court of Governance.

I was lying in a hollow to which I had been sent by Swylar after the ceremony, when, in the quiet, I sensed that a stranger was nearby.

I sniffed the air, and at that moment, I saw, sidling between two stones, an adult buck.

— You have been played for a fool, Efren.

The stranger remained in the shadows. His revelation was low and intimate.

— Who are you? I asked.

— My name is not important. Follow me.

Ignoring my aching body, I followed the rat, keeping him a few lengths in front of me the whole time. He took me through a network of tunnels behind the court, until eventually, we came to a clearing where two paths intersected. A slab of ancient brickwork lay almost blocking the path.

The stranger scuttled over the brick, marking it with his scent.

— This is where the court sends its undesirables.

And then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows.

I was alone. There was no noise except the distant sounds of humans going about their business in the world above.

I looked around me. Was this some kind of a trap? Then I heard the faintest sound. It seemed to come from below my feet. I approached the slab. Sniffing, I noticed a crevice beside the brick. I put my nose to it and knew in that instant what, who, it was that I was smelling.

— Floke! Fang! Are you there?

A faint sound, somewhere between a groan and a gasp, came in reply. I pressed with my nose, pausing occasionally to look downward. There seemed to be some kind of pipe, at the end of which I could see the faint outline of rat shapes.

Desperate now, I pushed harder. I took a step back and hurled myself at the slab. It shifted, and nose first, I found myself slithering downward. My fall seemed to be in slow motion but was broken by the softness of a body. It was Floke.

His eyes were open but flecked with dust, his coat matted and dull from lack of food. The flesh around his mouth was stiff with dried foam. A faint smell of approaching death clung to him. When he revealed, it was weak, hardly a thought at all.