Today, after all I had been through underground, Dad’s screw-ups seemed pretty mild in retrospect. But when I was nine and he messed up our sink so that the smell of sewage wafted up from it, I was horrified. In fact, that’s what had inspired me to learn some plumbing basics myself, so that I could fix his mistakes.
Anyway, here’s the key thing I remembered: our sink always smelled worst right after we had used it. As the water went down the drain and into the sewage deep below, it stirred up the odors, sending them floating back up.
So there was my hat-given inspiration. Now I just needed to put in a little work. “Maybe if we pour water down this drain,” I said, “it will stir up the sewer down below, and the magic will come floating up.”
Little Ben shook his head. “If it were that simple, then it would happen every time it rained. And it rains a lot. Magic is usually better hidden than that.”
I thought some more. “I bet we need river water.”
“Oooh! Good idea. But I didn’t bring any.”
“Me neither. A few hours ago, I could have just wrung out my hair and my clothes, but now I’ve dried out completely.”
“Avert my eyes from what?” I asked.
Beneath his thick bristles, Oaroboarus blushed, and I realized what he was getting at. “Oh!” I said. “You mean… Sure, no problem.”
Little Ben and I looked up at the sky. There was a rustling noise, which I assume was Oaroboarus lowering his bathing suit. Then there was the sound of flowing water, which I pretended not to notice. I whistled casually.
When the water sound had stopped and I had heard the rustling of cloth again, I figured it was safe to look. Oaroboarus was back in his suit, and a thin yellow stream was wending its way down the drainage channel.
The last drops vanished, and nothing happened. “Oh, well,” I said. “It was worth a—”
And then I heard a rattling. I looked down and spotted a discarded soda bottle rolling along the ground. Odd, I thought. Why would it be rolling, unless—
Oh, boy. “The Monument is tilting!” I cried. The bottle bumped into the railing, slipped between the rails, and went plummeting twenty storeys down to the street below.
And as the tower kept tilting, I felt gravity pulling me along, too. I tried to lean back, but the tilt was too strong, and I lunged forwards. I managed to keep upright for the first few steps, and then I crashed into the wire railing. Little Ben plunged into it next to me. Oaroboarus held out a little longer – I guess because he had two extra legs and a lower centre of gravity – but as the Monument tilted farther and farther, he slammed into the fence, too. His massive bulk shook the railing so furiously, I worried it would break open.
But it held.
And the tower kept tilting, faster and faster, until it was no longer tilting but falling, and the square below was rushing up towards us, and buildings shot by, and we were just about to hit the ground –
– but the Monument slammed into the wooden bollards on the ground, and the bollards sank down into the courtyard, somehow absorbing the full force of the tumbling stone tower. It came to a sudden stop.
Now, this next bit is a little confusing, so you’ll have to work with me for a minute. Look up at the ceiling of the room you’re in, and imagine that the building suddenly fell over on its side. That ceiling would now be the wall. And if the building fell fast enough, you’d get thrown straight into the ceiling-that-was-now-a-wall.
And if that building were the Monument, and the ceiling were made out of birdcage wire, you’d get thrown straight into it, and you’d suddenly understand why the balcony has a ceiling in the first place. It’s to catch people who get thrown forwards when the Monument topples over.
Which is exactly what happened to me, Little Ben, and Oaroboarus.
The wire cage stretched out, slowly bringing us to a stop, and I was just beginning to feel like I’d come through this without any injuries, when it snapped back like an overextended trampoline, and we all crashed into the stone floor.
But of course, the stone floor was now an upright stone wall, so we slid right down it and landed on the wire railing of the wall that was the new floor. (Confused? Hey, try living through it.)
The whole thing had shaken a single card out of Oaroboarus’s box. It fluttered down and landed in my lap.
Ouch.
“Tell me about it,” I said. But then I noticed something that took my mind off my bruises. (OK, mostly took my mind off most of my bruises.)
When the Monument had been standing upright like a monument is supposed to, there had been a metal statue of a flame on the very top of the wire cage, above our heads. Now that the Monument was lying on its side, that flame touched the plaque that marked the actual spot where the fire had begun.
A spark leapt out of the plaque and onto the metal flame. For an instant, the metal erupted into real fire. As it turned back to metal, the spark flowed out into the wire fence around us, and then all the way down through the Monument, right to the ground where the column had stood before it fell over. And as the spark sank down into the earth, the ground opened, revealing a massive hole.
“I think we have to get into that hole,” I said.
If the monument had been standing upright, we would have just walked down the staircase. But when you lay a spiral staircase on its side, it turns into a bunch of curvy stone walls.
I climbed carefully over the first one, followed by Little Ben, and as I was making my way over the second, a fat comet barely cleared the space above my head.
It was Oaroboarus, leaping several sets of steps at once. He made it halfway down the staircase (or, I guess, the staircase-themed obstacle course) before he stopped and looked back, as if it had only just occurred to him that humans couldn’t keep up.
Then he thundered back to where we were and bent his legs. Little Ben climbed up onto his back immediately, but I hesitated. Somehow, it seemed like kind of an insult to Oaroboarus’s dignity. “Is that – do you mind? I mean—”
I climbed up behind Little Ben. And with an effortless flick of his mighty legs, Oaroboarus was off, bounding over the little stone walls like a sprinter gliding over hurdles. Giant boars don’t come with handles, so I had to cling to his back. His bristles pressed into my face a little uncomfortably, and I nearly bounced off every time he crashed to the ground – but it was still one of the most comfortable ways I had travelled lately. It certainly beat being swept along a sewer or carried by rats.
We reached the entry room at the (former) base of the tower. The ticket seller was sprawled out on a (former) wall. He blinked at us with a dazed look and mumbled, “Twice in one day?”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, but before he could answer, Oaroboarus leapt up through the door, which was now on the ceiling.
And then we fell into the hole under the Monument.
CHAPTER 25
And we fell and fell and fell.
We must have dropped for a good twenty feet, and when we finally hit the ground, I could feel the force of our landing ripple through the thick layer of fat on Oaroboarus’s back. It was nearly enough to throw me off, but I clung tightly until everything settled down.
Cautiously, I lifted my head.
We were in a wide, deep hole. The walls were mostly black earth, but running around them a few inches above our heads was a line of red clay. Something about that line looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.
Sunk into the dirt floor was a big, old-looking stone pedestal. There were two metal rods sticking out of the top, as though they once had held something up in the air. Whatever they had held was now gone. That, plus what the ticket seller had said about “twice in one day”, could only mean one thing.
“Lady Roslyn got here first,” I said.
“Looks like it,” Little Ben said. “But what did she take?”
I looked more closely at the pedestal and noticed words carved into the base. They were faded and dirty and easy to overlook, but I could st
ill make out the words: FALCEM ENIM IGNUM.
“That means ‘fire hook’ in Latin,” Little Ben said. Then he stopped and grinned. “Oooh! Cool! I know Latin! Is that something most kids know?”
“No, it’s pretty impressive,” I said. “But shouldn’t you have forgotten Latin along with everything else?”
Little Ben thought about it. “When I got amnesia, I must have forgotten all the facts I knew, but not the skills. They’re probably stored in different parts of the brain. After all, I can still walk and feed myself and speak English – I’m not like a newborn baby or anything.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ve dealt with enough poop for one day. OK, so this was a fire hook. What’s a fire hook?”
“I read about that in my dad’s files. Back in 1666, there wasn’t any way to put out a big fire. The best you could do was to pull down the buildings nearby before they caught fire, so it wouldn’t spread.”
I thought about it. “Lady Roslyn showed me a rune that was a picture of a clay pot. Clay pots control water, so that rune gives people power over the magic from the rivers. Maybe fire hooks give people control over magic relating to fire. And given how much trouble they took with it, the one stored here must have been a particularly important one.”
Little Ben looked worried. “In that case, if Lady Roslyn has it—”
Before he could finish, Oaroboarus let out a frantic snort and started throwing a shower of cards at my feet.
I looked up and gasped. Over our heads, the top of the hole was beginning to close up. The Monument was slowly rising back into place.
Little Ben leapt onto Oaroboarus’s back, and I jumped on behind him. With a mighty bound, Oaroboarus shot upwards.
He almost made it. His hooves touched the top edge of the hole and he scrabbled frantically, but with our weight on his back, he couldn’t pull himself up. He plummeted back down, hitting the ground with a loud THUMP.
He paused, caught his breath, bent his legs, and was about to spring up once more –
– when something started coming out of the walls. Right at the level where the circle of red clay ran around the room, lumps pushed forwards out of the dirt. They resolved themselves into faces, then heads. Grey heads, made out of London clay, with red bands running around them at eye level.
The heads of Saltpetre Men.
Dozens of them.
Lower down on the wall, other lumps solidified into hands, pushing outwards.
The hands broke through, and we were surrounded. The Saltpetre Men lumbered towards us.
Oaroboarus sprang up, up, up, and this time, he was high enough to grab the top of the pit with his front hooves. He began to scramble up.
And I began to slip down.
“Help!” I yelled. Little Ben turned around, saw what was happening, and grabbed my wrist just as I slid off. Oaroboarus made it up and over the edge of the pit, and for a moment, I thought I was home free.
That’s when a clammy, crumbling hand grabbed my ankle.
I kicked frantically, but the Saltpetre Man wouldn’t loosen his grip, and all I accomplished was to slip out of Little Ben’s grasp completely –
– but I didn’t fall far, because Oaroboarus spun around and snuffled up my hand into his massive snout. I could feel the sharp edge of his long row of teeth, but he had a surprisingly delicate touch, and his teeth held me there without piercing my skin.
Oaroboarus tugged on one side, and a Saltpetre Man tugged on the other, and I hung there, half in and half out of the hole, every joint in my body stretching like it was going to pop.
Then more Saltpetre Men grabbed my feet, and I started inching downwards.
All the while, the Monument had been slowly rising up into its usual place. By now, there was only the narrowest gap left. Oaroboarus already had to duck to hold on to me. But the base of the Monument was getting lower and lower, forcing his snout farther and farther down.
The Saltpetre Men kept pulling. I kept inching towards them.
Oaroboarus tossed his head, and somehow, without letting my wrist slip out of his gentle teeth, he speared my sleeve with his tusks. But it wasn’t enough. There were too many Saltpetre Men, and they were going to pull me down, and that stupid stubborn pig wasn’t going to let go until his snout was crushed under a giant stone monument.
“Let go,” I said.
He ignored me.
I felt a sharp pain in my shoulders, as if my arms were coming out of their sockets.
“You’re not helping either of us!” I yelled. “They’re going to pull me apart!”
“Let her go, you dummy!” Little Ben yelled. I could see the Monument’s stone base pushing deeper and deeper into Oaroboarus’s snout. He must have been in as much pain as I was, but still he refused to let go. If we waited any longer, his mouth and my limbs were going to shatter.
With a desperate, yanking twist, I managed to pull my arm out of his mouth. The sleeve ripped off my shirt, and I fell into the darkness and the clammy, waiting hands.
CHAPTER 26
In the faint remaining light, I could make out a seething mass of misshapen figures. The ones that weren’t already holding my legs grabbed on to my arms and hoisted me up between them. I struggled and fought back. They didn’t seem to notice.
I wondered what they thought they were going to do with me. The only human-accessible way out had just been sealed by the Monument.
Then the Saltpetre Men began to flow back into the dirt wall.
“You’re not going to try and take me through—” I started, and then I had to stop, because they had just carried me into the wall, and the dirt was rushing into my mouth. I slammed it shut before I could choke. When I tried to breathe through my nose, I inhaled nothing but dirt.
I held my breath.
We were going somewhere – I could feel the clammy earth flowing across my skin – but I had no idea where, or how long it would take us to get there. I held my breath as long as I could, and then I held it longer. My eyes were closed, but I saw pink and red flashes. My lungs spasmed in my chest, like they had decided if I wasn’t going to use them, they were darn well going to get some exercise on their own. All I wanted to do was to open my mouth and take a huge breath, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t, because there was only dirt there, and now my lungs had stopped spasming and started thrashing, and my eardrums felt like they were going to burst, although I didn’t know whether it was from the breath inside pushing outwards, or the dirt outside pushing inwards, and the red and pink flashes were beginning to fade away, which was even scarier than seeing them, and I had to, I had to open my mouth and inhale whatever was there, so I tried to do it, but I couldn’t because the sheer weight of the earth was holding my mouth shut and oh, God, I was going to die and—
CHAPTER 27
And the weight lifted and my mouth flew open, and I sucked in a lifetime’s worth of air. It was stale and damp, but it tasted as sweet as farm air to me. I was so busy breathing, I took a dozen breaths before I realized I could open my eyes, too.
I was in another dirt-walled room, but this one was smaller, with a low roof. I was surrounded by masses of Saltpetre Men, and one of them must have been holding a flashlight – I could see the beam bending as it filtered through a dozen misshapen bodies.
Then, one by one, the creatures melted back into the wall. Each one that vanished left the flashlight beam a little less fragmented, until it was a strong, steady beam, held by a single Saltpetre Man.
“Hello, Hyassinth,” Inspector Sands said. He was leaning against a closed door that looked like the only exit. The flashlight was tucked under his arm as he flipped through a folder full of papers.
By then, I had finished gasping and choking, but I was still too angry to speak. Finally, I got out the words, “They almost killed me.”
“Yess, my men sseem to have forgotten that humanss have lungss. My apologiess.”
He said it so casually, without even looking up from his papers, that it only made me angrier. “Your
apologies? That’s the second time you’ve almost gotten me killed. I want to speak to your supervisor.”
He finally looked up, and I thought I saw something like amusement glitter in his mica eyes. “My sssssupervisssssor?” he said, drawing out the word as though he found it delicious. “Truly, you do not wissh to sspeak with my sssssupervisssssor. If szhe had had her way, my men would have taken you under the dirt and left you there.”
“Why would she want me dead?”
“You desstroy a Royal Mail offiss. You break out of a magical holding fassility, freeing dozhenss of highly dangerouss beingss in the procsess. Then King Charless’ss Fire Hook dissappearss, and when my men arrive at the sscene, they disscover you, and you attempt to flee. You musst admit, it’ss all a bit susspisciouss.”
“But the hook was already gone when I got there.”
“Indeed. My men do not move with great sspeed. The Monument wass opened for the firsst time sseveral hourss ago; it hass taken uss thiss long to resspond. I believe that whoever took the Fire Hook wass long gone by the time we arrived. When my ssupervissor ordered me to kill you, I pointed thiss out to her, and zshe grudgingly permitted me to bring you in alive.”
“Oh. Well. Then, thank you.” Embarrassed, I lowered my eyes, and for the first time, I noticed the words written on the folder he was holding: Hayward, Hyacinth. “Is that my police file?”
“Your medical recordss. I ssee you have not been vaccsinated againsst ssmallpoxx.” He pulled a needle out of the folder.
“And why does that – ow!” I had forgotten how much faster he could move than the other Saltpetre Men – he had the needle in my arm before I could finish the question. And before I could say anything else, he pulled out a spray bottle and spritzed me in the face with something disgusting. “Eww! What was that?”
The City of Secret Rivers Page 13
