Billycan eyed the vacant quarters as they walked down the lonely corridor. “It seems sound, perfectly livable here.” He knocked on a wall. “What reason would rats have to desert this corridor? We’ve little space as it is.” As if on cue, a bloodcurdling howl followed by a cursing male voice bounced off the walls of the corridor. Both rats halted in their tracks.
“That would be your reason,” said Ajax.
“King Silvius, I presume,” said Billycan.
“Indeed.”
“I see,” said Billycan, gritting his teeth. “I was hoping Silvius could assist us, give us more information on Hecate—anything helpful, any plan she might have mentioned.”
“It was Hecate who caused his madness, with her poisons,” said Ajax as they reached a thick wooden door. “I’m afraid Silvius will give you a great deal of information, heaps of it in fact, just not the kind you’re looking for.”
“Brilliant,” said Billycan dryly, pulling on his whiskers. Scattered mutterings came from the other side of the door. When Ajax had said “mad” Billycan had hoped for mere senility, the confusion of old age, not actual insanity. It seemed a conversation with this aging king would be for nothing.
Ajax knocked softly. “Silvius,” he said in the mildest of tones, “it’s Ajax, come for a visit.” The muttering swiftly stopped. “I’ve brought a friend along, quite an interesting fellow. He’d love to meet you, and I reckon you two would have much to talk about.” Still silence. “He’s from Trillium . . . like you.”
The muttering started again, only this time louder and more chaotic, as if the rat was deeply agitated. The heavy iron lock was unlatched from the other side of the door. Behind his back Billycan readied his claws, unsure of what to expect from this demented, raving rat.
Slowly the door creaked open. A tall rat stood in the doorway, his head nearly grazing the ceiling.
Billycan’s mouth dropped wide open. He stared at the rat, speechless. His palms grew wet and his heart thundered as his eyes met those of the beloved Toscan king.
The rat stared back at him and chuckled. He curled his oversized paws into fists, resting them on his hips, as he gave Billycan the once-over. “You know what they say, don’t you? You best close your mouth, lad, lest you want to catch flies.”
Silvius patted Ajax’s shoulder warmly as he stepped into the corridor. “Ajax, always fine to see you, though I wish you’d come more often.” The aging rat was tall, big-boned, but lean, verging on skeletal. He wore a threadbare robe the color of plums. Despite his tattered attire, and patches of his fur that were yellowed with age, there was a regal air about him. “Ajax says you’re from Trillium, then?” he asked Billycan. “Is that right?”
“Y-Yes,” stammered Billycan.
The rat clapped his paws together. “Wonderful! Just wonderful. Come in, come in. We’ve so much to talk about, you and I, so much indeed!” He waved a long arm, motioning Billycan and Ajax inside. “Tea, tea, I must put on some tea!” He hurried ahead of them. “Where is that blasted pot?” Billycan watched in silence as Silvius tore through his things, documents, quill pens, and assorted objects flying through the air.
Ajax nudged Billycan. “What’s come over you?” he whispered. “I’ve never seen you at such a loss for words.”
“Why—why didn’t you mention Silvius was from Trillium?”
Ajax shrugged. “Silvius has been here for decades. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you mention he was an—”
“Come along, gentleman,” called Silvius, gesturing toward the fireplace with a chipped teapot. “Bad tea and good conversation await!”
“He’s in a fine mood today,” said Ajax. “When he’s like this, he likes to talk—as you can see. If you want any information about Hecate that makes any sense, we best get to it.”
When he’d seen his son for the first time, Billycan had been amazed. He’d looked at little Julius, and it was as though he were looking into a mirror, a vision of himself, only a great deal smaller. Intently, Billycan watched Silvius as the old rat extended a long, snow-white arm, grasping the fire poker in his tarnished yellow claws, his crimson eyes glinting off the dying embers. The little mirror image Billycan had seen in Julius had suddenly grown full size.
Silvius was not exaggerating when he said bad tea. Apart from its burnt aftertaste, it was watery and flat, though tea was the last thing on Billycan’s mind. He glanced around the mildewed quarters as Ajax filled Silvius in on recent Toscan happenings. The room was a shambles. Ink-stained quills and crumpled papers were strewn about. Crates of rolled-up parchments and documents of all shapes and sizes were stacked in crooked towers all the way up to the ceiling; others were piled on any available shelf, stool, or dresser. Ajax and Billycan managed to clear off two armchairs near the fire.
The walls, once covered in fine cloth, had been painted black; drawings, words, and diagrams in white chalk scrolled across them, crowding together, forming a jumbled sea of frenzied thoughts and shapes.
Silvius stood as he spoke, pitching his arms passionately, as though every word had profound meaning. “Hallowtide!” he declared after Ajax told him of their little celebration for the children. Abruptly he held an offended paw to his chest and gave Ajax a wounded look. “And why was I not invited? Surely the children would have delighted in my presence.”
With a visible gulp, Ajax said evenly, “We didn’t want to keep you from . . . your work.” He nodded toward the muddle of words snaking across the walls. “We know how important it is, and your time—it’s so valuable.” He looked at Silvius expectantly, his expression an odd mix of dread and hope.
Silent for a long moment, Silvius finally said, “Oh. Well of course!” Ajax exhaled. “My findings are quite pressing. I can’t be frolicking with little ones when there is work to be done.” His eyes twinkled. “Why, I haven’t thought of Hallowtide in decades. What a delicious, albeit creepy, occasion—stealing candy, scaring the life out of one another! What fun I used to have back in Trillium, skulking about, pretending to be Batiste. Oh, the days. . . .”
Billycan studied Silvius from his chair. “That’s my birthday,” he said, almost in a whisper. “I was born on Hallowtide.”
Silvius cocked his head, his left ear drooping slightly. His eyes widened. He regarded Billycan with a strange air. “Were you?” he asked.
“Yes . . . in a lab, in Trillium.” Billycan mustered a thin smile, hoping his comment didn’t spark questions about the lab, the shots . . . his mother. He tried to change the topic. “When did you leave Trillium?”
Scratching his chin, Silvius leaned against the fireplace mantel, nearly setting the edges of his robe ablaze. “Probably before you were born,” he finally said. He shook his head rapidly. “In fact, I’m sure I had left Trillium by then. I’m far older than you, to be sure.” He leaned in, inspecting Billycan’s face. “How old are you? You’re battle-worn without a doubt, but by no means an old mossback like me!” He laughed. “Did you know, most rats pay little attention to their years in this world? Come to think of it, I can’t recall a single Toscan who’s mentioned his birthday.”
“I’m—”
Before Billycan could answer, Silvius snatched up a filthy mirror lying atop a stack of ragged maps and regarded himself. He yanked up a side of his mouth and inspected his ruddy gums and graying teeth. “I’m not entirely certain how old I am either, but I’m over one hundred, to be sure.”
Billycan needed no further convincing that Silvius was indeed insane. Not even a Trillium rat could reach that age. Furthermore, this rat looked younger than Trilok, and he was in his seventies at the time of his demise—an age considered ancient among Trillium rats. What a pity, he thought, his hopes of finding out more about Hecate dying. “Surely you must be mistaken,” he replied as mildly as possible. “Years like that rarely come to humans. They certainly don’t come to the likes of us.”
“Oh, pish-posh,” said Silvius, waving a dismissive paw. “I may not know
my exact year of birth, but I’m most positively over one hundred years of age. Of that I am certain.”
“You can’t possibly be that old,” Billycan insisted. “Yes, rats of our kind do live long lives, leaps and bounds longer than ordinary rats, but to live a century? Why, it’s not possible—not in the least.”
Suddenly Silvius lunged forward. He loomed over Billycan, trapping him in his chair, and glared at him snout to snout. “Is that so, rat?”
Ajax jumped to his feet. “It’s all right, Silvius,” he said in a soothing tone. He patted Silvius’s shoulder, gently pulling him back. “Billycan means no harm, none at all. He’s merely stating facts as he knows them.” He grinned sheepishly at the former king. “He’s entitled to his opinion, just as you are.”
“His opinion is far from fact,” declared Silvius, grimacing at them both. “It’s pure ignorance!”
Billycan bolted from his chair. He had been called many things in his lifetime, but ignorant was not one of them. “Then educate me, King Silvius,” he said disdainfully. His eyes shifted to a scorching amber, his rage rising inside him. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to claw the old rat’s eyes out. “Explain to me—clearly a stupid rat who’s never known any creature, Trillium-born or otherwise, to live even close to one hundred years—tell me how it’s possible!” Silvius growled, glowering indignantly. Billycan poked Silvius in the chest. “I said, tell me!”
“Gentlemen, please,” said Ajax. “Control your tempers!”
Snarling, Silvius snatched up his teacup from the mantel and hurled it into the fire. Porcelain shards scattered across Billycan’s feet. Froth formed at the corners of Silvius’s mouth as he spoke. “Very well, I’ll tell you! Blast it all, I’ll show you!” He cursed under his breath, motioning with a wide sweep of his arm to the walls and ceiling. “I admit, whatever she gave me, it has damaged my mind.” He pulled wildly on his ears. “It eats away at my memories!” He kicked a pile of books across the room. “Why do you think I write it all down, for Saints’ sake, taking up every spare inch of my quarters? To remember!”
Silvius’s tone took Billycan by surprise. He didn’t sound confused or nonsensical, he sounded desperate and committed to what he was saying—as though he’d stake his life on his claim. Billycan’s anger subsided as he saw the bleak look on Silvius’s face. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you,” he said. “When I knew her, Hecate rarely made mistakes.” He pointed to the long scar on his torso. “It seems we were both lucky.”
“Hecate,” whispered Silvius, taking an unsteady breath. “I thought her name was Elvi. Of course she wouldn’t use her real name.”
Billycan nodded. “I knew her back in Trillium. There was a time when I respected Hecate, even trusted her with my life.” He remembered how easily she controlled the male ràts she commanded, how afraid of her they’d been. “She’s wicked to her very core.”
“Was she held captive in the lab, too?”
“No, I’m afraid the humans had nothing to do with the evil inside her. Even in her younger days, her malice was legendary.”
“You escaped the lab—Prince Pharmaceuticals—during the fire, did you not?” asked Silvius, staring blankly at the broken shards of his teacup that had landed in the fireplace. His gaze seemed trapped in some far-off place. “That fire . . . those of us who escaped with our lives, we were all very fortunate.”
“What do you mean, we?” asked Billycan, his whole body rigid. “You were in the lab, weren’t you?”
Silvius bowed his head. “Yes, I was . . . but that’s one part of my history I’d prefer not to remember. Somehow, though, it’s the only part I can’t seem to forget. It seems you’d like to forget it as well.”
“You were given the shots too, then,” said Billycan.
“Back in the lab, they weren’t just giving rats shots. They were taking from us, too. I wasn’t given shots. In that way, I was lucky. My torture involved something else entirely.”
“What do you mean?”
Silvius pointed to Billycan’s chair. “Please, sit.”
Billycan’s eyes drifted to the chalk-covered walls and ceiling. What he had thought was a madman’s maze of scribbles began to take proper shape. He wasn’t staring at the ravings of a lunatic. He hadn’t recognized it at first; maybe he hadn’t cared to. He was staring at a large map—a map of Trillium.
Evening had set in. Ajax snored in his chair. A place to rest his bones and a crackling fire were all that it took to put him fast asleep. Billycan was wide awake.
“Tell me,” said Silvius, reclining in his chair. “Why did you come here—to Tosca?”
“To get away,” Billycan replied. “I told you of my past. Staying in Trillium was a constant reminder of it. I thought I could do some good in Tosca, do something, at any rate. I’d heard of the harsh jungle conditions, the rough way of life here. . . . I can’t erase what I’ve done, the pain I’ve caused so many that will never go away, but coming here—I thought in some small way, perhaps, I could do a little good.”
“A very noble reason, young rat, but why did you come here? There are scores of places in the world where rats’ lives are less than tolerable. Why did you choose this place over all others? What got you to this precise location?”
Billycan pondered the question. There were many other places he could have gone, and done just as much good, places much closer and easier to get to. “I—I don’t know. Something just drew me here. I cannot explain it.”
“All these rats”—Silvius nodded at Ajax, snoring softly in his chair—“the rats who so freely allowed you to lead them, just as they did me, they are descended from Trillium rats. Only they don’t know it. Just as you were, their forefathers were driven to this island. Something inborn impelled them here, a compulsion they could not control.”
“But what?” asked Billycan.
“That’s what I’m trying to determine. Sadly, much of Tosca’s history is lost. The tropical environment, the constant humidity have rotted away much of their written words. We tried our best to preserve what we could over the years, but our archives are nearly destroyed.” Reaching into a wooden cask next to his chair, Silvius retrieved a large rolled-up parchment. “Here, take the other end.”
Unrolling it together, he and Billycan gazed upon a faded map. The map depicted a portion of the vast Hellgate Sea, with three coastlines around it. “Here is the coast of Tosca,” said Silvius, tapping it. He ran his claw all the way to the other side of the map. “And here is the coast of Mastiff County, the swamp you ended up in.”
Billycan studied the center coastline. “Is this . . . Trillium?” Silvius nodded. “I never realized it was midway between Tosca and the swamp.”
“Did you know Trillium sits on an ancient volcano?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that before.”
Silvius pulled out another map from the cask, a smaller one. Unrolling it on top of the other, he tapped on the three coastlines of the Hellgate Sea and pointed to three red dots, one in Trillium, another in the swamp, and the last in Tosca. “Each red dot represents a volcano.” He revealed more dots, farther away. “As you can see, volcanoes, extinct and otherwise, exist throughout our world, but Tosca’s and Mastiff’s volcanoes are the closet to Trillium.”
“What does that matter to us?”
“I found an early Toscan document, something written by the Trillium rats who originally landed here.” He pointed to a browned parchment pinned to the wall. “According to its translation, we once lived in the center of Trillium’s extinct volcano. I think we’re chasing something from that volcano. Something we can no longer find in Trillium—something hidden from us.”
“But what?”
Silvius looked down at the map on his lap, tracing the small drawing of Trillium’s City Museum with his claw. “The City Museum is built in the center of Trillium, the exact center of the volcano. And do you know what was next to the museum?” Billycan shook his head. “Our former home.”
His ears perkin
g, Billycan sat up in his chair. “You mean . . . the lab?”
Silvius smiled. “Good, lad. You’re catching on. Not only was the lab next door, the buildings were connected—one and the same. The blaze was put out before it reached the museum.”
“You said the Topsiders took something from you in the lab. What was it?”
Lifting his left leg, Silvius revealed a massive scar running along the inside, an area of his flesh that went concave as though carved out with a knife. “They took my flesh. They took my blood. Remarkably, they didn’t take my soul, thank the Saints for that. Whatever changed us—made us bigger, stronger, better—they wanted it.”
“But what was it? What were they after?”
Silvius traced a circle around the drawing of the museum. “Whatever makes a rat like me, a creature that should live no more than four or five years, live to over one hundred—that’s what they were after, and I reason that if they haven’t yet found it, they’re still searching. The humans will always want more than they have. If whatever lies in the heart of that volcano is the reason for our extended lives, our strength and intelligence, just think of what it could do for a human.”
“They could live forever,” said Billycan.
Silvius’s claw landed in the center of the map. “Whatever the answer is, I believe it is hidden in the museum.”
CHAPTER THREE
Diaries Found in the Attic
THE COUNCIL HAD GATHERED over tea, trying to make sense of several diary entries. “When they found the above-ground city our ancestors had built, the scientists clearly knew we weren’t ordinary rats,” said Juniper. “Lucky for us that they were the ones who found us. As we all know, the Topsiders’ world is full of those who hate rats.”
“It seems the scientists were driven out of Trillium by the city’s founders,” said Virden. “According to this journal entry, they had gone to the then new government and tried to tell Trillium’s leaders of our uniqueness, but politicians knew most humans would never want to live in a city of baffling, super-intelligent rats, so they forced the scientists out, denouncing them and threatening their lives.”
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