Ravenwood

by Andrew Peters

  32• DUNGEON DELIGHT

  “Where in Diana’s dim and inglorious name is my son?” Grasp sat behind his desk. If he had had any remaining hair, he would have been pulling it, hard. Instead, he took out his anger on the man in front of him.

  “Don’t know, sir. ’Aven’t seen ’im.” Since when was Salix responsible for that preening wood louse?

  “You don’t know, do you? That’s your problem,” hissed Grasp. “The people I employ tend to know nothing about nothing. It’s a wonder I even bother to pay you!”

  The guard fingered the stiletto in his belt, idly wondering how it would look plunged deep into his arrogant employer’s eye. “Well, I could go and look for him, I suppose.” The last thing Salix wanted to do was head out into the cold. He’d saved the boy’s life once. As far as Bombax Salix was concerned, that was once too often.

  Grasp paused, puffing out his chest hidden behind a ridiculously pink satin doublet. “He’s probably out sucking the sap or some other such nonsense.” The Councillor allowed himself a single, grim twitch of his lips. He’d been a hollyraiser when younger. And the boy was only fourteen after all … still, it was rather late. “Well, then. Let me know when he returns. You can send him to my quarters.”

  Salix turned to go.

  “By the way, have you told the Malikum parents that their son is truly and finally dead?”

  Salix nodded his head. The plumber’s boy had got away from them too many times. But to escape the clutch of the ravens? It had never been done, and Salix was not stupid enough to believe in miracles. The task of informing the parents had been the only satisfying part of his day. To see the once feisty mother reduced to a shambling wreck was pure pleasure, and the way the boy’s father crumpled back into his pathetic cot brought a savage twinkle to the guard’s eye.

  “Good. We still have the girl as leverage, which should keep them quiet until our plans are accomplished. Leave me.”

  Salix knew that Grasp liked his minions to walk backward out of his office in some kind of pathetic deference. He did the opposite, swiftly turning and walking to the door. To slam or not to slam, that was the question. He decided that leaving the door slightly ajar was a small victory, especially when he heard Grasp heave himself up a few seconds later and stomp toward the door, swearing loudly.

  “Buddy draft! Buddy incompetent nincompoops with squit for brains!” The slam, when it came, was particularly loud. Much as Grasp loathed his underlings, they were necessary for the dirty work of politics. Insolence would never result in getting the sack and Salix knew it as he whistled cheerfully all the way downstairs.

  Three floors below, in a cell lined with planks and riveted with iron, Mucum paced up and down like a caged dog. His ribs ached and the point where Petronio’s punch had driven home felt like one big bruise. The night before, the guard had given him a helpful shove.

  “Welcome to your new home!” he’d said. “Oh, and would sir like a snack before bed?” Salix had paused briefly, savoring the moment, while not waiting for the answer. “Well, tough luck!” The door had slammed, and the massive key scraped around the lock, leaving Mucum to both the dark and hours of sleepless regret.

  If only he’d stopped Ark from leaving the Rootshooters’ station. It was all his fault! And now his best mate was dead, ripped apart by the ravens. Suddenly, he missed his dad. The old geezer wasn’t too bad, really, and he must have been tearing his hair out, wondering where his lad had got to. There would be tears at some point, but for now he was only focused on what lay in front of him. He knew his own chances weren’t looking too good, either. At least he wasn’t alone.

  A high-pitched squeal brought him back to the present.

  “It’s an upside-down lady with funny eyes!”

  Mucum lay on the excuse for a mattress, trying to get some sleep. He huddled farther into the corner, trying to escape the slicing wind that came through the gaps in the walls. “What are you on about, Shiv?” He’d never understand the minds of little kids. They were truly a few planks short of a cupboard.

  “Upside down!” Ark’s sister insisted.

  “Yeah, right!” Mucum was surprised they’d stuck him in with her. For much of the night before, she’d sobbed her tiny heart out and for a while, as he tried to calm her down with a good cuddle, he had forgotten about his own problems. Instead, he thought about his earliest memory, being held in his mother’s arms. Those days were long gone.

  Shiv jumped up and down, disturbing the dust on the floor. “And she’s blowin’ a kissy. Oooh, she’s blowin’ it to you! Look, Moocum!”

  “Please, Shiv, leave it out, eh! I’ve had a bit of a rough time and I’m not in the mood for yer games.” He hadn’t dared tell the little girl about her brother. What did it take for someone to imprison a four-year-old? “Now, when yer finished makin’ fings up, how about we work out a plan to get us out of here, eh?” Mucum finally turned over and sat up.

  A shaft of moonlight broke through the high-up, barred window frame. And there, as Shiv had told him over and over, was an upside-down face.

  “Yow promised to come back and see me!” Her eyes twinkled like a pair of mischevious fireflies.

  Mucum jumped up and ran to stand under the window. “Flo! What the holly are you doing here?”

  “Thought Oi’d pop by for a visit. Ain’t yow going to introduce me?” Flo was hanging the wrong way up, her legs wrapped around a length of rope, her pale white face filled with concern.

  “Well … erm … This is little Shiv. Shiv, this is my friend Flo.”

  “Told you so!” said Shiv. She turned to the window and gave a little curtsy. “Pleased to meet you. Do you walk on your hands?”

  “Only when moi feet are sore!”

  Shiv giggled, peeking at those two enormous eyes through her interlaced fingers.

  Mucum couldn’t get over it. “You came all that way, just ter see me?”

  “Warghh! Weren’t that bad, with the lift ‘n’ all. Easy as … as pie! I hope yow missed me?”

  “Course I did.” Mucum was glad it was dark and no one could see him blushing.

  “Oi be glad of that!” Flo smiled. “Now, Oi thought yow might want this.” With much effort, the upside-down Flo reached a hand into her knapsack, which was threatening to fall into the forest depths below as it hung from around her neck.

  Mucum was excited. If she’d brought a hacksaw, they could cut through the bars and be out of there.

  “Thar we go!” She pushed a wrapped-up lump through the gap.

  Mucum reached up and caught it. He pulled off the cloth. “What’s this?” He frowned.

  “Oi brought yow a pie!”

  “Oh … thanks. A lot.” Mucum couldn’t believe it. Petronio would consider him a very overgrown loose end. There was no way the Councillor’s son would let him out of here alive. And what had his girlfriend brought him? A pie!

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  Flo’s eyes filled with tears. “Why, yow be eatin’ it, moi handsome, and sharing it out with that little girly yow be lookin’ after, that’s what. Ain’t it no good?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Flo. It smells great.” Mucum almost kicked himself. Her only thought had been of him all this time.

  Flo instantly cheered up. “Yas! It be made of dulberries, but the taste is not dull at all!” She crinkled her nose at her own joke.

  At that moment Mucum felt his heart cleave in half as if an ax had sliced through it. He remembered the dulberry patch growing deep in the hollow roots beneath the diving station. How could he have thought Rootshooters grew in the soil? This girl was flesh and blood. “Good on yer, Flo! What ’ave I done to deserve this?”

  “Why, yow be an honorable boy. That be plenty! Don’t give up hope yet! Boi the way, don’t bite too sudden on that pie; thar be something sharp and useful hidden inside! Warghhh!”

  Every time Mucum thought the Rootshooters were not quite all there, they proved him wrong. To survive down in the depths of the tree
required brains. Flo had brought him everything he needed. Food, and a weapon for when the right moment came. Maybe he wouldn’t die after all.

  “Give us a kiss, then!”

  Mucum was shocked. A kiss? “Err … Flo, not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of in prison here.”

  “That be no problem for a big boy loike yow! Now come ’ere!”

  At work, no one told Mucum what to do. Even Jobby Jones phrased his commands in a way that suggested Mucum might be doing them all a favor. But when it came to girls, Mucum was out of his league. He hadn’t had the courage at the Rootshooter party. It was now or never. He reached up the bars and strained, lifting his whole body off the floor. He pushed his mouth between the bars, feeling like a fool.

  “Yuck!” said Shiv. “That’s disgusting!”

  But before their lips could touch, there was a sudden slam far off in the building and footsteps coming closer.

  “Aww!” said Flo, pulling away. “Never yow mind! We be savin’ that kissy for later.”

  Mucum did mind. Life definitely wasn’t fair! He dropped back to the floor, aware of the danger.

  “Oi’ll be back in a few hours, Oi promise! Yow must get thee and the girl out before the night is done and then we shall meet up,” Flo whispered.

  “Wait, girl!” Mucum hissed. “How am I gonna —?”

  There was no answer, only a tug on the rope. Flo’s face rose up and away, vanishing as if she had been no more than a moony vision.

  Mucum had no time to think. He put his fingers to his lips, shaking his head at Shiv to tell her to be quiet as he quickly hid the food and its lifesaving contents under the mattress. As the footsteps pulled to a halt outside the cell door, he hoped they hadn’t been overheard. If they had, then a dulberry pie and a tiny knife would be no defense against the thrust of a well-aimed sword.

  33• THE MIRACLE OF TECHNOLOGY

  “You had a very, very lucky escape.”

  Petronio heard the words as if they were muffled. He knew they were addressed to him and that the voice was female. He also worked out that his chest hurt, as if some buddy carpenter had mistaken it for a plank and been practicing with hammer and nails. At that moment, his eyes were still closed, but the voice was evidence enough that he was probably alive. He doubted that the boatman on the River Sticks would have such a feminine lilt. Anyhow, if he were dead, it would hardly be called “an escape.”

  What exactly had Petronio escaped from? It came flooding back as a groan of pain issued from his lips: his little spying expedition; the soldier ready to shoot him after he said his prayers; the nettles rubbed in the other soldier’s face. Petronio flexed his fingers, feeling the swollen bumps where the stinging plants had exacted their revenge.

  As he tried to open his eyes, the voice continued. “As for my men, it took a good deal of persuasion to stop them from stringing you up from the nearest branch, especially as one of them had a shattered tibia thanks to your efforts. Though as a surgeon’s apprentice, I’m sure you knew what you were doing.”

  He could detect a grudging hint of admiration in the now comfortingly familiar voice.

  “Here, drink.”

  Petronio felt his head lifted up as Lady Fenestra’s face finally came swimming into view. “Ow! Lights too bright …,” he murmured. The drink was fizzy and sweet.

  “Yes, well, this is a flypod surgery bay after all. The morphine has reduced the pain. The eight hours of sleep should have helped as well. How the glass bullet managed to miss your heart, I will never know. It might be worth thanking the quaint goddess you worship on this little island.”

  Petronio grunted with the effort as he tried to sit up. Fenestra obliged by putting more pillows behind his back to give support. Aside from the bed, it was as if he’d been transported into a fantasy land. There was some kind of clear tube running into his arm. And two discs rested on his bandaged chest, joined by wires to a square box on a trolley. A number blinked out of the box.

  “Eighty-four bpm resting rate. Considering your internal injuries, your heart is doing remarkably well.”

  But as Petronio looked around, the number began to shoot up. He was surrounded by lights and levers lining the wall of some huge, metallic cocoon. There were too many straight lines for his liking. His first instinct was to rip all the wiring away and get out, quick. There was a window, and the glow of infernal machinery lit up the nighttime forest beyond. That was what he knew. Safe. Familiar. Maybe he could kick the glass out, squeeze through the frame? But his arms felt heavy and his legs wouldn’t do what they were told.

  “Calm yourself, young Grasp. You are protected here.” Fenestra’s usually cold eyes filled with concern. “If your own so-called doctors had experimented on you with their primitive bloodsucking leeches, you’d be dead meat. Our technology saved your life.”

  Petronio gasped. “Flypod, bullit … tek … no-log-y?” Every word sounded strange on his lips. But if he was alive and bandaged, then maybe Fenestra was speaking the truth. He hadn’t been sucked into the belly of an alien beast but was convalescing in a cave of wonders. He took a deep breath, willing his stupid heart to follow orders and slow down. Next came curiosity, the part of Petronio that had gotten him into trouble in the first place. He was suddenly greedy for the meaning behind these strange words. All in good time. A sudden wave of sickness passed through his system. “Thank you,” he finally muttered, before sinking back on the pillows.

  “It was partly my fault,” mused Fenestra. “You had done your duty, and done it well, convincing the Commander with a bag of somewhat valuable coins. But then I dismissed you. The way you found my trail was” — she paused briefly, looking at the pale boy on the bed — “enterprising. My men are highly trained. It is not easy to creep up on them, let alone take two of them down without a weapon in sight. Naturally, there are consequences to this. They have been demoted as punishment for letting a mere boy show them up.”

  “Wanted to know …,” Petronio whispered in his desperation to impress her with his initiative. “Found the plans and —” The drilling started up again in his chest. He felt the urge to scream, but clamped the agony down tight. “Had to see where you … were hiding.”

  “And you succeeded. We chose a part of the woods that was unlikely to be found, well away from the city. You are our first visitor, aside from a few curious goats. By the way, this is yours, I think.” She handed him a long thin shard that resembled an icicle.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your lucky charm. Shot from one of my men’s g-guns at a thousand meters a second with the aim of slicing open your heart. My personal surgeon dug it out of you. You wanted to know what a bullet was. Here. You’ve earned it.”

  Petronio fingered the projectile, feeling its lethally honed edge. Glass belonged in windows. This took boring materials into a whole new dimension. Suddenly, arrows and knives were tedious and dull.

  “Yes. I have grown used to the miraculous properties of firearms. In Maw, we take such things for granted.”

  Petronio was filled with awe. Firearm was the perfect description — like an extra invisible limb that could call forth instant flame. What he could do with one of these slung around his shoulder! The thought of stupid Dendrans begging for mercy under the gaze of such a weapon was more than appealing. The little island of Arborium suddenly seemed lacking in excitement.

  Fenestra continued, “Naturally, we had to have a base, a place to prepare. My method of transport? You’re sitting inside it.”

  Petronio’s eyes flicked around again as he remembered what he’d seen the day before, hovering high over the forest. “The metal bird? I’m inside it?” He looked at the number on the blinking box again shooting up to 105, 106, 107. He was both terrified and excited. No wonder his heart was slamming away under his ribs. “You can fly!”

  “Yes. We can. The skies and the rest of this planet belong to us. The only tiny, fetid green spot of resistance is right here. But yes, compared to your lumbering ravens, our m
achines are far superior.”

  Petronio detected her condescending tone. Arborium must feel so backward to her. But there was one thing that didn’t make sense. “With all this tekni … er … teknologgy …”

  “Technology,” she corrected.

  “Right. With all that … why didn’t you … take out Quercus and … set up shop?” Petronio was still short of breath.

  “Good thinking, young man, and believe me, we would. But the blasted trees appear to have their own powers. Do you remember injecting me?”

  Petronio nodded. If he hadn’t been curious in the first place, Fenestra would be dead.

  “Indeed. If the trees had had their way, I would have been no more than a virus stamped out by their protective gas. I explained this to you before. Making the vaccine is an arduous process and our scientists have been unable to mass manufacture. Otherwise, the armies of Maw would have swamped this backwater long ago. As for dropping molt-bombs, why destroy this most valuable crop, complete with ready-made slaves on site to do our bidding?”

  “Molt-bombs? What are they?”

  “Superheated glass. Four hundred and sixteen thousand degrees centigrade, dropped from the sky to burn up everything in its path. You’ll learn. This place is so backward.”

  “Still got soldiers.”

  “Some. We used up all of the last stocks immunizing them. Our researchers have told us the antibodies will only work for a further four days.”

  “Don’t understand.” She’d lost him again.

  “To put it simply. If we don’t pull this off within a few days, we’ll fall down dead like your rather pretty leaves. So we’d better hope that Commander Flint earns his wages. Don’t worry, though; every computer must have its backup, and so must every plan.”