Syren (11 page)

“Aaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

In the darkness of the Coven’s kitchen lurked thirteen cats. The Coven’s cats were a litter of bloodsucking kittens—now grown—that had been thrown from an incoming ship after they had ambushed the cabin boy and drained him dry of blood. Linda had recognized them for what they were. She had snatched a small boy’s fishing net, scooped the vampire kittens from the harbor flotsam and taken them triumphantly back to the Coven, from where they sallied out to prey upon babies and small children.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaah! Aaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

From the piles of rotting garbage, the cats Watched Wolf Boy frantically search for something to feed to the Grim. Wolf Boy could feel the Watching of twenty-nine pairs of eyes crawling across his skin and, in his feral state, he sensed where they were coming from. In less than thirty seconds, he found two cats hidden in a giant fungus beneath the sink. Wolf Boy pounced.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!”

“Aaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

Lucy’s screams drowned out the cats’ yowls perfectly.

Holding the struggling, scratching beasts at arm’s length, Wolf Boy ran to the trapdoor. The dark water slapped and slopped below, but there was no sign of the Grim. It could feel the vibrations of Lucy’s screams and it was not coming up for anything—not even fresh cat.

Lucy’s screams began to falter.
“Aaaaa…aaa…ahem…uhurgh!”
She coughed and put her hand to her throat.
I’m losing my voice,
she mouthed.

In the depths of the Municipal drain, the vibrations from Lucy’s screams faded. The Grim removed its tentacles from its hearing tubes—which doubled as its nose—and it now smelled food.
Fresh
food. The oily water below the trapdoor began to stir, and suddenly a great black glistening head broke the surface. Wolf Boy let the cats drop.

The effect was impressive.

The Grim flipped backward, revealing a great, gaping serrated beak. A forest of tentacles enclosed the screaming cats, and the kitchen was filled with a revolting, sucking sound as the Grim set about eating its first meal of fresh meat in almost fifty years. (The last meat had been provided by a young Aunt Zelda. She had been offered the Coven’s goat and had accepted
it, thankful that they had not given her the boy next door, which they had done to her predecessor, Betty Crackle. Betty had never quite recovered from this and refused to tell anyone whether she had accepted the boy or not. Aunt Zelda rather feared she had.)

The Grim, excited by fresh food, put a few tentacles out the trapdoor and began searching for more. (This had, on occasion, been successful. Intended Keepers did not always return from their Task.) As the thick tentacles with their powerful suckers crept toward Wolf Boy, his first instinct was to slam the trapdoor shut and get out of the kitchen fast—but there was still something he must do. Bracing himself against the Darke, Wolf Boy kneeled beside the trapdoor and took out a small, silver pocket knife. And then, to Lucy’s amazement, with one swift slice, he cut off the tip of its tentacle. The Grim did not notice. It did not notice anything much anymore as, due to some bizarre evolutionary blip, each tentacle held a portion of the creature’s brain. And with each successful visit of an Intended Keeper, the Grim became just a little bit more stupid.

Clutching the bloodied portion of Grim brain, Darke and dripping, Wolf Boy triumphantly slammed the trapdoor
shut—and immediately wished he hadn’t. At the
clang
of the door hitting the metal rim, a distinctive Dorinda squeal came through the ceiling.

“Oooh, he’s
done
it. He’s fed her to the Grim!”

Suddenly a great thundering of boots erupted on the ceiling above and a shower of plaster rained down on Lucy and Wolf Boy. The Coven was on its way.

W
e’ve gotta get out of here,”
Wolf Boy whispered, heading for the kitchen door. He grabbed the handle and pulled—the doorknob came off in his hand and sent him flying backward. There was a
clink
as the spindle fell out on the other side of the door. Wolf Boy stared at the door—how were they going to open it now?

“Leave it, stupid!” hissed Lucy. “Come on!”
She grabbed Wolf Boy’s hand—the one that did not hold a disgusting tentacle tip—and dragged him across the sodden kitchen, through the mush of garbage and past silent, Watching cats. They had just reached the cellar door when the ladder began to shake. Wolf Boy glanced around and saw the unmistakable spikes of the Witch Mother’s boots appear through the hole in the ceiling. He did not resist when Lucy pulled him through the door.

Wolf Boy closed the door and began pushing the huge bolt across it.

“No,” whispered Lucy. “Leave it open. Like it was. Otherwise they’ll guess we’re here.”

“But—”

“Come on.
Hurry
.” Lucy pulled Wolf Boy down the cellar steps. With every step he felt more trapped—what was Lucy doing?

At the foot of the steps they were met by a sea of filthy water heavily populated by pulsating brown toads. Wolf Boy was shocked—was
this
where Lucy had been kept prisoner? He stopped for a moment, wondering how deep it was. He really didn’t like water—it always seemed to turn up in his life when things were bad. Lucy, however, was unperturbed.
She waded in and, to Wolf Boy’s relief, the water only came up to her knees.

“Come
on
,” said Lucy, kicking a toad out of the way. “Don’t just stand there gawping like a stuffed herring.”

In the kitchen above, the Coven streamed off the ladder. The sound of their boots hitting the ground sent Wolf Boy plowing through the toad-strewn water. Wading frustratingly slowly, as if he were in a bad dream—a
really
bad dream—he followed Lucy across the cellar, trying to avoid the well-aimed spit of the toads. At the far end of the cellar, Lucy stopped and proudly indicated a few missing bricks in the wall.

“It’s the old coal chute. They bricked it up. But look at the mortar, they got the mix wrong, it’s all powdery.” Lucy demonstrated, but Wolf Boy’s attention was not on the quality of the mortar—he was listening to the heavy thumps coming from above. Lucy took out a couple of bricks and handed them to Wolf Boy.

“Oh, gosh, hang on, I forgot,” said Wolf Boy, realizing he was still clutching the tentacle tip. He quickly shoved it into the leather wallet that Aunt Zelda had made him wear around his waist; then he took the bricks and quietly put them in the water.

“I spent all yesterday and today doing this,” Lucy whispered. “I was nearly out of here when that spiteful cow came and grabbed me.” Quickly she removed a couple more bricks. “We can get out through here onto the pavement. Good thing you’re thin. I’ll go first and then I’ll pull you up. Okay?”

The voices of the Coven in the kitchen were getting loud and angry. Wolf Boy helped Lucy up to the hole. She wriggled in, and soon all he could see of her were the wet soles of her boots—and then she was gone. Wolf Boy peered in, and a shower of dust fell. He wiped the dust from his eyes and grinned. Far above he could see Lucy’s grubby face looking down and behind her was a small chink of blue sky.

“Come
on
,” she said impatiently. “There’s a weird nurse person wanting to know what I’m doing.
Hurry!
”

Suddenly a howl of rage came from the kitchen. “Blood! Blood! I smell Grim blood. Blood, blood, I
taste
Grim blood!”

“Oooh!” This was from Dorinda.

And then: “The blood—it leads to the cellar. They’ve taken our Grim to the cellar!”

A thunder of feet pounded across the kitchen toward the cellar stairs.

“Hurry up! What are you waiting for?” Lucy’s voice came from far above.

Wolf Boy was not waiting for anything. With the sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs, he pulled himself up into the hole. It was not as easy as Lucy had made it look. Although he was thin, Wolf Boy’s shoulders were broad and the coal chute was a tight fit. He raised his arms above his head to try to make himself narrower and, skinning his elbows and knees, he pushed up through the rough bricks toward the light. Lucy’s helping hands reached down to him, but Wolf Boy could not reach them. Try as he might, he could not move.

From the coal cellar came Linda’s furious yell. “Double-crossing little toe rag! I can see you. Don’t think you can get away with this, you—you
GrimKiller
.”

Now came the sound of splashing. Linda was wading across the cellar and
fast
. Desperate, Wolf Boy thought feral. He was a wolverine trapped in a burrow. The owner of the burrow, a Forest night creature, had woken beneath him. He must reach daylight now.
Now
. And then suddenly Lucy’s hands were in his, pulling him up, up toward the light, dragging him out of the burrow while the night creature snapped at his heels and
dragged off his boots—yelping as the toad spit burned into her hands.

Wolf Boy lay prone on the pavement, shaking dark, wolverine thoughts from his mind. But Lucy would not let him be.

“Don’t just lie there, stupid,” she hissed. “They’ll be out here any minute. Come on.”

Wolf Boy did not resist as Lucy dragged him to his feet and pulled him, barefoot, along with her as she fled down the street in the late afternoon sunshine. Behind him Wolf Boy was sure he could hear the locks and bolts of the Coven’s door being opened and feel the eyes of the Darke Toad following him.

The Coven—minus Linda—were out the door before Lucy and Wolf Boy had turned the corner. Dorinda hung back, unwilling to risk her towel unwinding in a chase. The rest set off in pursuit, but the Witch Mother got no farther than the front step of the house next door before she gave up. Her boots were not made for hot pursuit. That left Daphne and Veronica to go clattering down the road, running in their very own peculiar knees-together-feet-out style. It was not an efficient way of covering ground, and Dorinda knew they would never catch Wolf Boy and Lucy. Dorinda might not
have bothered with this had not the sight of Wolf Boy and Lucy fleeing hand-in-hand made her feel very jealous. And so Dorinda scuttled off to the cellar to find Linda.

Linda was out the door in a flash—literally. The Coven did not do broomsticks—
no one
did broomsticks anymore—but they did do some FlashBoard riding, and Linda did it particularly well. A FlashBoard was a simple idea but a dangerous one. It required nothing more than a small slab of wood and a slow-release StunFlash. The StunFlash was harnessed to the wood, which the rider balanced on as best she could. Then the rider set off the slow-release StunFlash, trusting to luck and no one being in the way.

Generally Linda found that no one ever did get in her way on the FlashBoard. Dorinda and the Witch Mother watched admiringly as, with a roar of flame shooting from below the board (which was, in fact, the top of Dorinda’s dressing table), Linda careered off down Fore Street, scattering a group of old ladies and setting fire to the cart of the
Port and Harbor Daily News
delivery girl. In a Flash Linda overtook Daphne and Veronica as they tripped girlishly around the corner and sent them tumbling down the basement steps of the local fishmonger. They emerged sometime later covered in fish guts.

To Linda’s irritation, there was no sign of Lucy and Wolf Boy, but that did not deter her. Linda was an expert at tracking down fugitives from the Coven. Using her own foolproof system, she began to systematically cover the warren of streets leading down to the harbor. In this way, Linda knew that her quarry must always be in front of her. It was, she thought, like herding sheep into a pen—sheep that were soon going to be acquainted with mint sauce and roast potatoes. It never failed.

T
hat afternoon, while Wolf Boy
was trying not to feed Lucy to the Grim, Simon took Maureen’s advice. He sat on a bollard on the quayside and stared gloomily across the open space of the harbor front.

It was a wide, paved area surrounded on three sides by a variety of tall flat-fronted houses. Sandwiched between the houses were a few shops. In addition to the popular Harbor and Dock Pie Shop, there was a small, rundown shop
selling artists’ materials, a tiny bookshop specializing in maritime manuscripts and Honest Joe’s Chandlery. The chandlery took up the ground floors of three adjoining buildings next to the Harbor Master’s imposing red-brick house. All manner of ropes, blocks, windlasses, nets, boat hooks, spars and sails tumbled out from its open doors and colonized the harbor front. The Harbor Master was engaged in a perpetual quarrel with Honest Joe, for the chandler’s wares often spilled across his impressively pillared front doorstep.

Like an attentive audience in the theater, Simon watched the comings and goings across the Quay. He saw the Harbor Master—a portly man wearing a navy jacket with a good deal of gold braid—emerge from his house, pick his way over three coils of rope that lay neatly set out on his doorstep and march into the chandlery. A line of children chattering and clutching their notebooks walked past on their way to the little museum in the Customs House. The Harbor Master—somewhat redder in the face than he had been—came out of the chandlery and marched back into his house, kicking the rope to one side and slamming the door behind him. A few minutes later Honest Joe scuttled out. He recoiled the rope, replaced it on the doorstep and added a few boat hooks for good measure.
All this Simon watched with a steady gaze, waiting for the moment when Lucy would walk across the harbor front, as surely she must—eventually.

Every now and then, when it grew quiet, Simon stole a glance at a small window at the top of the stucco-fronted Customs House. The window belonged to the attic room that he and Lucy had rented a couple of days ago, after leaving the Castle rather more suddenly than they would have wished.

It wasn’t a bad room, thought Simon. Lucy had seemed really excited when they saw it, talking about how she would paint the walls pink with big green stripes (Simon hadn’t been so sure about that) and make some rag rugs to match. They had taken the room right away, and when Lucy had said she wanted to go to the market “just to check out that fun stall with the fabrics and all those ribbony things,” Simon had pulled a face and Lucy had laughed. “Yeah,” she had said, “you’ll only get bored, Si. I won’t be long. See you!” And she had blown him a kiss and breezed out.

No, thought Simon, Lucy hadn’t been in a temper. If she had been, he would not have wandered off, happy and carefree, down to the old bookshop in Fishguts Twist to see if there were any Magyk books worth having. He had been lucky and
found a very mildewed and ancient Spell Book with the pages stuck together. A suspicious lumpiness had told him that there were still some Charms trapped between the pages.

Simon had been so absorbed in extricating the Charms and discovering the delights of his purchase—which was a good one—that he had been surprised to find it was already getting dark and Lucy had not returned. He knew that the market closed one hour before sunset, and his first thought was that she had gotten lost. But then he remembered that Lucy knew the Port far better than he did—having spent six months living and working with Maureen at the pie shop—and a stab of concern shot through him.

That night had not been good for Simon. He had spent it searching the dark and dangerous streets of the Port. He had been mugged by a couple of pickpockets and chased by the notorious Twenty-One Gang—a group of teens, many of them ex–Young Army boys, who lived rough in Warehouse Number Twenty-one. At dawn he had trailed back to the empty attic room in despair. Lucy was gone.

Over the next few days, Simon had searched for her ceaselessly. He suspected the Port Witch Coven and had knocked loudly on their door, but no one had answered. He had even
crept around to the back of the house, but all was quiet. He waited outside the house the whole day and Listened. But he had Heard nothing. The place seemed deserted, and eventually he decided he was wasting his time.

By the time he had talked to Maureen in the pie shop that morning, Simon had convinced himself that Lucy had run off with someone else. He didn’t really blame her—after all, what could he offer her? He would never be a Wizard, and they would forever be exiled from the Castle. She was bound to find someone else sooner or later, someone whom she could take home to meet her parents and be proud of. He just hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon.

The afternoon wore on and Simon did not move from his bollard. The harbor front became busy. A flood of officials in navy blue Port uniforms embellished with varying amounts of gold swept across the quayside like a dark riptide. They negotiated around the ambush of boat hooks and rope and poured into the Harbor Master’s house for the annual Harbor Moot. Behind them they left the usual detritus of the Port—sailors and shopgirls, fishermen and farmers, mothers, children, dockhands and deckhands. Some rushed by, some sauntered, some dithered, some dallied, some nodded to Simon and most
ignored him—but not one of them was Lucy Gringe.

Still like a statue, Simon sat. The tide rose, creeping slowly up the harbor wall, bringing with it the fishing boats that were being made ready for departure on the high tide later that day. Morosely Simon stared at all who walked across the harbor front, and when it began to empty in the lull before the evening’s activity, he stared at the fishing boats and their crew instead.

Simon did not realize how threatening he appeared to the fishermen. He still had a certain brooding quality to him, and his Magykal green eyes had a commanding stare, which was not lost on the superstitious fishermen. His clothes also set him apart from normal Port folk. He wore some ancient robes that had once belonged to his old Master, DomDaniel—when the Necromancer had been younger and a good deal thinner than he later became. Simon had found them in a trunk and had thought them rather stylish. He was unaware of the effect that the embroidered Darke symbols had on people, even though they were hard to see now that the cloth had faded to a dull gray and the symbols themselves had begun to unravel and fray.

Most fishermen were too wary to approach Simon, but one,
the skipper of the nearest boat—a large black fishing boat named
Marauder
—came up to him and snarled,
We don’t want your kind here, ill-wishin’ the fishin’. Bog off.

Simon looked up at the skipper. The man’s weather-beaten face was far too close for comfort. His breath smelled of fish, and his black-button little piggy eyes had a menacing look. Simon got to his feet and the skipper stared belligerently, his short gray hair standing on end as if personally offended. A large vein in his wiry neck throbbed underneath a tattoo of a parrot, making it look as though the parrot was laughing. Simon had no wish for a confrontation. With a certain dignity, he wrapped his tattered robes around himself and walked slowly away to the Customs House, where he trailed up the stairs to the attic room and resumed his watch from the window.

The window looked across the quayside, quiet now in the hiatus between the daytime bustle and the nighttime Port life. The only activity worth watching was on the
Marauder
. Simon saw the skipper yell at his crew—a boy of about fourteen and a thin, shaven-headed man with a nasty scowl—and send them off to Honest Joe’s. A tall, bony woman with spiky hair emerged from the Harbor Master’s house and went across
to the
Marauder
, where she stood on the quayside, talking intently to the skipper. Simon stared at the woman. He was sure he knew her from somewhere. He searched his memory and suddenly her name came to him—she was Una Brakket, someone with whom Simon had had dealings during an episode involving some bones, an episode he would like to forget. What, he wondered, was Una Brakket doing with the skipper? The boy and the shaven-headed man came back clutching armfuls of rope—the boy carrying so much that he looked like a pile of rope on legs. They were sent back for more, and the skipper’s conversation continued.

Simon thought the skipper and Una Brakket looked like a most unlikely couple, but you never knew. After all, who would have thought he and Lucy…Simon shook his head and told himself to stop thinking about Lucy. She must have found someone else; he was just going to have to get used to it. He watched Una Brakket hand over a small package, give the skipper a thumbs-up sign and stride off. Not the most romantic of good-byes, thought Simon gloomily—but who cared? Romance was a waste of time.

A waste of time or not, Simon could not tear himself away from his window. The shadows were beginning to lengthen
and the wind was picking up, sending the occasional pie wrapper skittering across the old stones. On the water the excitement of the high tide was beginning to take effect. The last of the nets were being stowed, and fishermen were beginning to unfurl their sails and make ready to leave. The
Marauder
already had her heavy red canvas staysail fixed at her stern, and her crew were hauling up her mainsail.

Simon felt his eyelids begin to droop. He had had very little sleep since Lucy disappeared, and the soporific feeling of the late afternoon was beginning to catch up with him. He leaned his head against the cold glass of the window and briefly closed his eyes. A chorus of shouts jolted him awake.

“Hey!”

“Bad luck—look away,
look away
!”

“Cast off, cast off!”

The crew of the
Marauder
were frantically untying their last mooring rope and pushing off from the harbor. And as Simon wondered what could possibly be sending them into such a panic, he saw a boy and a girl hand-in-hand, dirty and drenched, come tearing across the quayside. The girl was dragging the boy behind her, her braids flying just like
Lucy’s always did, and—

Simon was out the door, leaping down the narrow stairs three at a time, down, down through the tall Customs House he flew, skidding around the corners, scattering the returning line of children and at last hitting the harborside just in time to see his Lucy leap onto the departing
Marauder
with the barefoot boy at her side.

“Lu—!” Simon began, but his shout was cut short. A great roar like a furnace came from behind him and something Darke pushed him out of the way. Simon fell through a tangle of ropes, hit his head on an anchor and tumbled into the deep green water, where he drifted down and came to rest on the harbor bed.