“Why ssssteal?”
Maybe I was still a little loopy from the gas, but I had no idea what he was getting at. “You mean, why does anybody steal, in general? No, wait. You mean, why steal my mom back?”
He nodded. “Why sssssteal?”
“I didn’t steal her. Lady Roslyn did. And anyway, if I had stolen her, it wouldn’t be stealing. She’s my mom.”
“Why ssssteal?”
We weren’t getting anywhere. Now, I didn’t know the first thing about how magic worked here in London, but my dad had taught me seven magic words that often got things done back home. So I tried saying them now: “May I please speak to your supervisor?”
“Ssssupervisssor?” The monster thought it over, which was clearly a slow process. Then he shuffled out and closed the door behind him.
“Hey! Where’d you go? Come back! Hey!”
Silence.
It must have been a good ten minutes before the door opened again and another Saltpetre Man stumbled in. This one seemed a little different from the others. For one thing, his Royal Mail uniform had epaulets on the shoulders, like a military uniform. For another, he had the fastest shuffle I had seen. It was like somebody had filmed one of the other monsters and then played it back at double speed.
“Good morning, misss,” he said. “Insspector Ssandss, Royal Mail Polisse Forsse.” The hiss in his voice was unmistakable but much gentler than the other Saltpetre Men’s.
He offered me his hand. I shook it with my unhandcuffed hand and tried not to make a face – it felt like squeezing a full nappy.
“Before you sspeak,” he continued, “I musst warn you that the room is being moissturiszed with enchanted river water.” He gestured to the humidifier. “Your lungss are full of it. I do not advisze you to lie.”
Did that mean he had to tell the truth, too? Did he even have lungs?
I said, “That other thing I spoke to—” Then I stopped myself, because I wasn’t sure if he’d be offended by being called a thing. I corrected myself, just to be safe. “I mean, your coworker – I don’t think I understood what he wanted to ask me.”
“You were in the prossess of returning the requessted magical item. All you had to do wass await your mother’ss return. Why causse uss all sso much trouble?”
Honestly, I was wondering the same thing myself. A lot of the things Lady Roslyn had done had seemed crazy at the time, but they had all ended up making sense – even jumping into the sewer. But I couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t just handed over the umbrella and let me get Mom.
Still, she had come back for me before, rescuing me from Little Ben just in the nick of time. Surely she’d come back and get me out of this situation, and I could demand explanations then.
In the meantime, I wasn’t going to give any answers to one of the creatures that had kidnapped my mom. Instead, I took a page from Lady Roslyn’s book, and changed the subject. “Where am I?” I asked.
“You are in the Mount Pleassant Mail Ssorting Fassility, medium ssecurity divission.”
Oh. That didn’t sound good. Maybe I should change away from that subject, too. “You’re the first Saltpetre Man I’ve heard speak in complete sentences.”
“I have an advantage over the otherss,” he said, and took off his cap. For a moment, I thought he was just making a polite gesture. Then I realized that the top of his skull had come off with his hat. He tilted his head forwards so I could look inside his head.
“It’s empty!” I exclaimed.
“Better empty than full of mud,” he said. “Indeed, I have ssometimess found an empty head to be better than a human brain.” He plopped the cap, and the top of his skull, back into place. “Now, if you’ve finisshed dodging my quesstion, perhapss you can ansswer it.”
Maybe I wasn’t as good as Lady Roslyn at dodging questions after all. I didn’t know what else to say, so I just sat there in silence.
Finally, Inspector Sands gave a disappointed sigh.
“Very well, misss. You leave me no choisse.” He pulled the rusty lever that I had noticed sticking out of the floor. Immediately the hissing of the humidifier was drowned out by the thunderous rumble of stone moving over stone. All four walls began to slide slowly down into the floor.
And meanwhile, the iron chair I was handcuffed to started to twist and unfold and stretch out. As it straightened, I had to stand up if I didn’t want to fall to the floor. I wondered if it was going to end up as some kind of torture device. My hand trembled in the handcuff.
But the iron chair wasn’t turning into a rack or an iron maiden. When it had finished flipping around, it had turned into a Victorian version of the treadmill my dad used to exercise on. The leather that had been the seat was now under my feet, and it started to move, forcing me to walk fast to keep up.
By now, the walls had slid down into the floor, and I could see that my little cell had just been a blocked-off part of a much bigger room, made of the same dank stone. There were two dozen other treadmills there, all arranged in rows. A few of them were empty, but most of them had other prisoners handcuffed to them, all walking in place.
Most of the other prisoners were human, although the faces of a bunch of them were hidden behind long dirty hair, or lots of scars, or both, so I couldn’t be sure what they were.
Others were definitely not human. One of them, dressed in a tuxedo and top hat, had the head of a mosquito. Another was a massive white lion, three times as tall as I was, who looked like he had been carved out of some kind of living stone. There was even a fairy on a teeny-tiny little treadmill.
And right next to me was a unicorn, chained to his treadmill by a golden collar around his neck. When I was little, I had loved reading about unicorns, and I had always dreamed I might meet one someday. Trust me: this was not the unicorn I had dreamed about. He had an unhinged look in his eyes, and the white hair on his chin was flecked with black, which made him look like some sleazy guy who had just woken up and hadn’t bothered to shave. When I looked at him, he looked back at me with an intense stare that made me look away immediately.
I figured the safest thing to do was just point my eyes straight ahead so I would be looking at the back of the head of whoever was on the treadmill in front of me. The only problem was, the guy in front of me was wearing his head completely backwards, so even though his back was to me, we ended up making eye contact. He winked at me, which made him look even creepier, because his eyelids flicked in from the sides instead of the top and bottom.
“You can’t leave me here!” I said to Inspector Sands.
“Oh, it’ss perfectly ssafe, asz long asz none of the other priszonerss break their chainss.”
“Does that ever happen?”
“Rarely more than oncze a month. I sshall return sshortly to ssee whether you have reconssidered your ssilensse.”
He’s bluffing, I thought. No way is he going to leave a twelve-year-old girl locked in here with all these—
The door slammed behind him.
Maybe he wasn’t bluffing after all.
Hello, little girl, the unicorn said. But he didn’t actually say it. His lips didn’t even move. The words just appeared inside my head.
“I’m not a little girl. I’m—”
Oh, I know exactly how old you are, Hyacinth Herkanopoulos. I know things about you that you don’t even know yourself. And as soon as I get out of this chain, we’re going to have all sorts of fun together.
I was about to tell him that Herkanopoulos was my mother’s name, not mine, but I decided I didn’t want to give him any more personal information than he already knew. Then I worried that just by thinking about it, I had.
“I don’t know what you’re telling her,” the tuxedoed mosquito said, “but you better not be calling dibs. I’m going to want a piece of her, too. Save me the contents of her veins, and you can have the rest.”
The other prisoners roared with laughter – all except for the giant stone lion, who roared with anger instead. “You yoinks! You
rotters! You cads! Leave that, that, that poor girl alone or, or I’ll – hic!” He cleared his throat with a hoarse roar and tried again. “I’ll – hic!”
The others laughed even louder.
The lion turned its stone head towards me and gave me a friendly nod. “Young lady, don’t let these – hic!” Even from a distance, his hiccup was powerful enough to send a gust of his breath towards me. It smelled like an entire bottle of Aunt Callie’s favorite whisky. And now that I thought about it, he was weaving drunkenly as he walked along his treadmill. Even just turning his head towards me seemed to throw him off balance, forcing him to turn away with an apologetic look.
“Don’t think he’s any better than the rest of us,” said the mosquito. “I bet he’d eat you, too, if he could keep solid food down.”
“Liar! Hoodlum! Hic! Hic!”
I’m bored, the unicorn thought at me. Let’s make things more interesting.
It pointed its horn away from me and towards Backwards Head. That must have been how it aimed its thoughts, since I couldn’t hear it any more, but I did hear Backwards Head snickering. That couldn’t be a good thing.
“Great idea,” he said. And he and the unicorn started to walk faster.
As soon as they did, my own treadmill started to move faster under my feet. They must all have been linked together. I picked up my pace.
The unicorn pointed his horn back at me. I want you nice and worn out, little girl. It’ll give you that much less strength to fight back. He twisted his neck at an angle I wouldn’t have thought possible and stuck the tip of his horn into the lock of the chain around his neck. There was a click, and he giggled. One pin down. Two to go. And then you’re mine.
I looked up at the lion. Could I count on him for help? No – he clearly had troubles of his own. Now that the treadmills were going faster, he was staggering even more.
Hmm. That gave me an idea. But I hated to do it – the lion was the only one there who had shown me any kindness.
Click. Two pins down. One to go.
There was no time to think about it any more. Sorry about that, drunk stone lion.
I pretended to stumble a little and said, “Don’t make it go so fast! Please, I beg you! I can barely stand up!”
Backwards Head laughed and started to go even faster. Now I was jogging to keep up. “Oh, please stop!” I said, trying to sound as scared as possible (which wasn’t actually too hard, under the circumstances). Just in case I was being too subtle, I added, “I can just barely keep up, as long as nobody else is running, but—”
That did the trick. The other prisoners started hooting and cheering – and running as fast as they could. The treadmill beneath my feet whirred frantically. The lion was starting to stumble over his own paws, but he had a kind of a drunken grace, and he somehow managed to catch himself each time.
Click. The lock on the unicorn’s chain sprang open. He leered at me –
– and at that moment, the lion tumbled too heavily to right himself. His paws shot out from under him and he crashed down onto his speeding treadmill, which shot him backwards so forcefully, his chain snapped.
He flew backwards, crashing into the unicorn and sending them both smashing into the hard stone wall.
Backwards Head looked horrified. “Sirion!” he called. “Sirion! Are you OK?”
The unicorn didn’t answer.
In a few seconds, the other prisoners were going to realize what had just happened and stop running. That didn’t leave me much time. I grabbed hold of my handcuffed wrist with my free hand, locked my knees, and leaned forwards.
The speeding treadmill shot me backwards. I felt like my arms were ripping out of their sockets, but I held on tight. The handcuffs bent. They didn’t break.
“Stop running, you fools!” Backwards Head yelled. “She’s trying to—”
But I had already pulled myself upright, and before he could finish, I shot myself backwards again. This time, the handcuffs snapped into pieces. I flew backwards, crashing into the wall. But unlike Sirion the unicorn, I had known it was coming, which meant I could cushion my fall, and stop myself from getting hurt …
… much.
Ouch.
Ouch ouch ouch.
But at least I was conscious, and there was no time for moaning. I staggered to my feet.
The other prisoners had stopped running. They turned menacingly towards me – except for Backwards Head, of course, who didn’t have to turn around to glare daggers at me. “Look what you did to Sirion’s horn,” he said.
I looked. The horn was hanging off the unicorn’s head, held on only by a tiny thread of bone.
“You’re going to pay for that,” murmured Backwards Head. The other prisoners nodded agreement and started tugging on their chains, trying to break free.
Time to get out of here, I thought.
Dodging a series of smelly and/or hairy outstretched arms, I sprinted to the door and pulled madly.
It didn’t open.
“That’s a very solid door,” said Backwards Head. “Too bad these handcuffs aren’t so solid.” He yanked on them with his massive arms. I could see them bending.
I pounded on the door. “Hey! Inspector Sands! I’ll talk! You’ve got to get me out of here.”
No answer.
Backwards Head gave his handcuffs one last mighty pull, and they shattered.
He smiled at me.
It was not a friendly smile.
CHAPTER 20
I pounded on the door again. The only response came from the prisoners, who stomped along, as if I were beating out the rhythm for some kind of demented chorus.
Not the reaction I was hoping for.
I looked over at the stone lion, but he was still slumped unconscious on top of the unicorn. I was on my own.
Backwards Head wobbled towards me. He was not exactly a graceful walker, since he had to walk backwards to see where he was going. Then he got close enough to grab me, which meant he had to turn around so that his arms were pointing in the right direction for grabbing. But that meant, of course, that he couldn’t see where he was grabbing, so I ducked out of his reach easily.
I was just beginning to wonder what I had been so frightened of when somebody shoved me from behind and I went falling right into Backwards Head’s arms. Backwards Head spun me around and held me tight, allowing me to see who had done the shoving.
It was the tuxedoed mosquito. He must have broken his chains while I was busy with Backwards Head. His long nose twitched, sniffing up and down my arm in a disgustingly ticklish way.
“I’ve been terribly rude,” he said. “I haven’t even introduced myself. Seeing how I’m going to be deep within your veins, you ought to at least know my name. Geoffrey Noctofimus, at your service.”
“That’s very kind,” I said. “But I don’t actually require any services at the moment.”
His nose twitched higher, up towards my elbow. “Ah, but you do. You very much do. You see, those of you who dwell in London have a problem. You consume a small portion of magic with every glass of tap water, and the closer you live to one of the rivers, the larger that portion is. And you live right above a source, don’t you? I can smell it on you. Too much magic – well, it’s not good for anybody. So allow me to remove it for you.”
I tried to break free, but Backwards Head was holding me too tightly. Geoffrey Noctofimus plunged his needlelike nose into my arm, and, although it didn’t actually hurt, I screamed in surprise and disgust. He started slurping something out of me. I could see the clear, glowing fluid snorkelling up his snout. Whatever he was taking out of me, it wasn’t blood.
When he spoke again, his voice was slurring a little bit, like he was getting drunk. “Now, then, that’s better, isn’t it?”
I tried to answer, but nothing came out of my mouth. Things were going grey. I mean, the prison hadn’t exactly been the most colourful place I’d ever visited, but in the back of my mind, I could at least remember what lay outside. But as the f
luid slid up his snout, I could feel everything interesting about the world slipping away. It was all dimming. Grandma’s farm… Mom and Dad, dancing together before everything went bad… Aunt Rainey sitting on the porch…
Wait. That last one. There was something important about it. I let everything else slip away, but I grabbed on to that image with every bit of mental energy I had. And I remembered:
I’d been sitting on the porch with Aunt Rainey, and a mosquito had landed on her wrist. I would have swatted it, but Aunt Rainey just looked at it in her usual calm way. “Watch this,” she had said, and she had bent her hand down so that the muscles in her wrist tightened. Its stinger trapped, the mosquito couldn’t pull out. It swelled and swelled, and then it just kind of broke and Aunt Rainey’s blood oozed out of it.
It would be crazy to try the same thing now. Who knew how much this giant mosquito-headed thing could suck up of whatever it was sucking?
But it was the only idea I had, and somehow I knew that if I didn’t try it, I’d never have another idea again. So I tightened my muscles, just like Aunt Rainey had done. Having a giant mosquito in my arm had been disgusting enough, but holding it there added a whole other layer of yuck.
Fortunately, he didn’t look like he was enjoying it, either. He tried to jerk back, but he was stuck. He tried to say something – probably to call for help – but the only thing that came out was a little suffocated gurgle.
My knees started to buckle, but I could see him getting more and more panicked. I don’t have to last for ever, I thought. I just have to last longer than him. It was just a question of willpower. And now that he had sucked out all my imagination, willpower was all I had left.
His forehead was starting to bulge. At first, it was a little bump the size of a pea, but it was growing.
All around me, the room was fading. If Backwards Head hadn’t been holding me so tightly, I would have collapsed.
The bump in Geoffrey Noctofimus’s head was now the size of a quarter. Then a hockey puck. And suddenly, his whole head puffed up like a blowfish, and then his arms and his legs and his shoulders did, too. The other prisoners finally realized something was wrong – I could hear them shouting, but everything sounded very far away to me.
The City of Secret Rivers Page 10
