Garth Nix - Shade’s Children

“We’ll have to go hand over hand,” she explained. “But use your feet as well for safety. Then, at the end, you’ll have to swing down into the room. Be careful to aim for the centre of the hole. And remember to swing forward… or it’ll be a very long drop. Ninde, you go first.”

“I will not!”

“Shut up and get your hands on the rope,” commanded Ella. “Can’t you hear those Ferrets? They’ll be through—”

Even as she spoke, the trapdoor sounded with a sickening boom and one of the restraining bolts screeched, stretched… and let go.

Held only in one corner, the trapdoor buckled inexorably upward to show the white teeth and red eyes of the Ferret blow, brilliant against the darkness of the steps. Drum stepped towards it, thrusting with his sword, and it ducked back down, the trapdoor falling shut behind it.

Without another word, Ninde launched herself on to the rope, twining her legs around it and pulling herself along with her hands.

“Like a rat on a hawser,” muttered Ella, but she seemed to be saying it to herself. So Gold-Eye didn’t ask her what a hawser was. He already know about rats.

“Gold-Eye! You’re next!”

Gold-Eye knew better than to argue. He’d seen what Ferrets could do to people. Did do to people.

Thinking about that got him halfway across before he even realised that the rope was swaying, the knots stretching, the ground swimming into focus so far below.

Then he made the mistake of stopping and looking down.

For a split second the idea of a possible fall seemed almost attractive. It would be an easy end, better than having his blood slowly drunk in some dark Ferret nest till there was just enough to keep his brain alive for use in the Meat Factory.

Then the rope jerked and the sudden fear of a real fall gave him the impetus for the second half of the crossing, and in just a few seconds he was swinging on to the carpet in the new building. Where Ninde sat on the floor, looking surprised that she’d made it.

There seemed to be a brief argument on the other side, ending with Ella furiously swarming across the rope. She came far faster than Gold-Eye and had barely swung in when she was testing the knot at the end and yelling at Drum.

“Come on!”

Drum was the real test of the rope. He pushed himself off with slow deliberation, looking like a cable car on maximum load… and the rope stretched and sagged still further.

He was two thirds of the way across when the Ferrets came boiling up out of the broken trapdoor, moving together in a sinuous wave of spitting, hissing death. There were five of them, each as long as a car, but no wider round the middle than Gold-Eye or Ninde. Something between a snake and a stretched-out rat, with only their paw-hands evidence of human origin. That, and their clever minds.

Rearing up a safe distance from the edge (for not even an Overlord could make them face such a height) they hissed together, showing long mouths with their rows of tiny teeth – and the two sharp fangs at the front. Hollow fangs, for drinking blood. Human blood, if they could get it. Otherwise, they resorted to rats, cats and dogs… or each other.

The rope held.

“Right,” said Ella wearily as Drum swung into the room. “Let’s get six or seven floors higher up, in case they have another go before dawn. We could all do with a bit more sleep before we start back.”

I am Gold-Eye.

Ninde is angry because Shade does this video now, without months’ wait. He not say why.

I remember Dorms. But not getting out. Petar and Jemmie took me.

Petar did something. Here. No scar like Ella, but no lump for monitor. It went away.

Peter said he was brother. My brother.

Older, bigger. His job to look for me. He said.

Jemmie was his friend.

Myrmidons took them. The window too small for Petar and Jemmie. Petar push me through. Shout to run, hide.

Wingers fly them away. I saw in the soon-to-be-now. The Meat Factory took them in.

No more Petar and Jemmie.

Only Gold-Eye. Running and hiding.

Like Petar said.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shade’s secret home was a submarine. Soon after the Change it had come away from its mooring and drifted in between two old, long, wooden finger wharves. Now the bow was wedged under the decking of one wharf and the stern trapped against the other. Sand had built up on the seaward side, locking it in place.

Shade’s children came and went via a torpedo tube in the bow, safely out of sight under the wharf. They could then wade between the piles up to a storm-water tunnel that led into the city’s network of drains.

The drains had the advantage of being hidden from Wingers, Trackers and Myrmidons, but it was always a gamble between two perils. Too much water in the tunnels meant a quick death by drowning – but a dry tunnel was nearly always infested with Ferrets. Even in their dormant stage during the day, they would still wake long enough to kill a careless human.

Gold-Eye, Ninde, Drum and Ella arrived under the wharf in midmorning. Exhausted from the night before and sodden from the neck, armpits or waist down (varying according to their height) from the drains, they were not pleased to see that the tide was high.

“The tube will be shut,” Ella said wearily. “We’ll have to wait a few hours for the tide to go down. It looks like it’s on the turn.”

“Wait where?” asked Ninde. Like the others, she was hugging the rim of the storm-water tunnel, the water cascading around her legs before swooping down the short drop into the sea.

“Here,” replied Ella. “Or we can swim out to the Sub and hang on. Stand or float. Your choice.”

“I’ll stand,” muttered Ninde, in a tone that hinted things should have been better organised.

They stood in miserable silence for another three hours. Gold-Eye almost fell at one point, his leg muscle suddenly cramping and giving way, but Drum pulled him back and pushed him upstream. After that, Gold-Eye just sat in the water, letting it wash around his shoulders and under his chin.

Finally Ella judged that the tide had receded enough for the torpedo tube to be accessible. She jumped down first, checked that the water came up only to her waist and signalled the others on.

The Submarine was much bigger than it had looked from the drain outfall. Its hull loomed up above Gold-Eye five or six times taller than Drum – a giant black cylinder that had forced itself under the wharf, twisting and warping the planks so that lines of sun shone through the gaps, falling on Gold-Eye’s upturned face and glittering across the sea.

Ella led them right up to the rounded nose of the Submarine, where four round hatches could be seen outlined in bright-yellow paint. Danger warnings and safety and maintenance procedures were stencil-typed next to them; flakes of rust around three of the hatches proclaimed that this maintenance had long been neglected.

The fourth hatch was rust free, and this was the one that Ella reached up to and knocked on with the hilt of her sword, creating a hollow, metallic boom that vibrated through the hull and into the water. Gold-Eye felt its buzz around his knees.

The knock was answered by a hiss of compressed air and the hatch slid open just a crack, a metallic tentacle suddenly springing out. Made up of hundreds of silver rings, it writhed in the air for a second, then turned so the end of the tentacle was facing them. A lens glittered there and Gold-Eye had the curious sensation that it was somehow looking at him.

“Don’t worry,” said Ella, noticing that he was unconsciously edging away. “It’s only one of Shade’s Eyes. He’s just checking to make sure we aren’t creatures.”