The Twyning (18 page)

. . . than I was that day, imprisoned, in the Justice Room. My company consisted of two old rats facing death, and ten warriors, under the captaincy of Slathe, who were guarding the entrance.

I realized that to every one of them I was a traitor.

For the younger warriors, I was the fool who had been given the chance to escape from the Tasting Court and had done nothing with it. Now and then one of them would swagger across to me, say something boneheaded and insulting, then climb on my back contemptuously or turn his back on me and spray in my direction.

Grizzlard and Quell remembered only that I had been one of Swylar’s witnesses. In their eyes, I saw that I was just another small disappointment in a bitter, ungrateful world.

I had been there some time when there were sounds of activity outside the Justice Room. The warriors parted, and Swylar stood in the doorway. He sniffed haughtily in the direction of Grizzlard and Quell.

— The kingdom awaits you, distinguished courtiers.

There was an excited snickering among the guards.

Slowly, painfully, Grizzlard stood. He stared defiantly at Swylar for a moment, then shuffled toward the door. Quell followed him.

As they reached him, Swylar seemed to remember me.

— Oh, and the little loyal subject will come, too. For his reward.

Eyes down, I approached, anxious to avoid the painful attentions of the guards.

Swylar looked at me. His revelation was quiet, almost pitiful.

— Fool. The chances I gave you. An insignificant little taster becomes a member of the Court of Governance. And where does he end up? In the Justice Room prison.

I was facing death. There was nothing to lose now. I turned to him, standing as tall as I could. Our noses were almost touching. Behind me I sensed the guards moving closer.

— I did what was right, Swylar. The kingdom is good.

One of the guards nearby bit me hard on the shoulder. I made no sound.

Grizzlard turned to me. For the first time that day, I scented friendliness.

— Die honorably, ratling. — The revelation was low, weak. — Your friends will remember you.

With that, he walked into the ranks of the guards and out the door.

— I will, Grizzlard.

It was a short procession to the Great Hollow. As we entered, I saw that it was as full as it had been when the kingdom had gathered to bid farewell to King Tzuriel.

But there was no acclamation, no chattering of teeth now. The three of us, the condemned, appeared on the Rock of State to a tense silence.

I looked around. What seemed like a million eyes were fixed on me. I wondered where Alpa was, what she would be thinking of her ratling now. Pride? Shame? Regret that she had ever been my captain?

Queen Jeniel, I noticed, had found herself a ledge to the right of the Rock of State, from where she looked down, involved yet above the proceedings in her Court of Governance. She looked only slightly interested.

My eyes searched for the Twyning. It was in its normal place, close to the Rock of State, but there was something strange and lifeless about it. The many heads rested upon the ground. There was no movement or sound from them. They breathed quietly, each gazing emptily into space, none showing the slightest interest in what was happening around them. Something terrible had happened to the Twyning.

— Citizens!

Swylar revealed from the very place where Grizzlard, not so many sunrises ago, had addressed the congregation as a courtier about to become king.

— The Court of Governance has been at work on behalf of the kingdom. It has considered three cases that have struck at the very heart of our safety at a time of peril. I call the traitor Grizzlard!

The guards attempted to move Grizzlard, but he shook himself free and walked slowly to the center of the Rock of State. For a few moments, he gazed out sadly at the thousands of citizens before him.

Swylar turned his back and scratched himself, then glanced in the direction of the queen. She raised her head slowly.

It was time.

Behind me I heard a movement, and suddenly the choking scent of terror was in the air. I heard the revelations all around me, from citizens and courtiers alike.

— The Court of Correction.

— The correctors are here.

Turning, I saw a group of rats slouching their way toward the front of the rock.

Only Grizzlard seemed unafraid. He turned slowly to face those who were here to destroy him.

The correctors, young rats from the Court of Correction, were widely feared throughout the kingdom. Neither as strong nor as brave as warriors, they were chosen because they had a talent and a taste for inflicting pain. Some had been badly treated as ratlings; others had suffered misfortunes and unhappiness that had nurtured within them a useful hatred of the world. A few were just very unpleasant and ill-adjusted. Together, they were ideally suited to do some of the kingdom’s nastier tasks.

Grizzlard, a warrior to the last, made the first move. Teeth bared, he hurled his bulky figure in the direction of the passage. Instantly, his body disappeared beneath the bustling fur of the correctors. Squealing with delight, they swarmed over him like pups around their mother’s teats.

I looked away and found myself looking into the eyes of Swylar. He held my look for a moment, then yawned.

The struggle seemed to last forever. Unused to open fighting, the correctors made the mistake of turning the old fighter onto his back in the hope of reaching his throat.

It was his teeth that they met. As Grizzlard flipped and squirmed, his razor-sharp incisors slashed the flesh of his tormentors, now and then closing swiftly and decisively upon the jugular of one of his attackers.

But as some fell back, others arrived from the darkness of the passage behind us. One leg was held fast, then another. Soon all four were in the teeth of young rats, and the bucking, tugging, and writhing became weaker.

They turned him over, holding him facedown upon the damp earth. An older corrector, with a withered rear leg, limped forward, then closed his jaws around the base of Grizzlard’s skull, between his ears, forcing his chin to the ground.

For the briefest instant, the mass was still. Grizzlard ceased struggling. Panting with exhaustion, held on all sides and pinned down from above, he awaited his fate.

There was a movement from the passage. The way cleared for an older, slightly smaller figure.

— Ozorka.

The revelation was from a courtier.

I had heard of Ozorka but had never seen her. It was said that she was the cruelest corrector that there had been for generations, that she willingly entered her own ratlings into the Court of Correction, mistreating them from the day that they were born to ensure that the family gift of inflicting pain lived on in them.

Could it be true? She looked unremarkable, ordinary, slightly plump. Were it not for the tracery of ancient scars around her mouth and neck, she might have been a stalwart of the Court of Breeders or a minor translator.

She advanced upon the tangle of bodies. In no hurry, she walked around the pinioned figure of Grizzlard, inspecting the handiwork of the members of her court.

Then, casually, she did a terrible thing. She clambered clumsily onto the courtier’s back. Enraged, he bucked and squirmed, but Ozorka held on. No one had been prepared for this level of humiliation. For any doe to clamber on the back of a buck in an imitation of the act of fathering was the ultimate insult. For a plump, matronly doe to commit the act upon a once-great courtier shocked even those who had seen the Court of Correction at work.

She fastened her teeth into Grizzlard’s neck in such a way that he seemed paralyzed. The correctors released him, moved back, so that for all the world it looked as if Grizzlard had wished this grotesque act of mock carrying to take place.

Ozorka writhed casually for what seemed a lifetime. Satisfied at last that Grizzlard was truly degraded, she slid off his body. He remained motionless. An odd chattering sound could be heard. The correctors were mocking their victim.

Ozorka moved to stand in front of Grizzlard. Nose twitching, she lowered her head and sniffed at the dark eyes that were looking up at her in silent, powerless rage.

From the direction of Swylar there came a small stir of impatience, and it was at that moment, when Grizzlard’s attention slipped away, that Ozorka made a neat little darting movement toward his head. She seemed to nod at him, striking him briskly in the forehead.

When she stepped back, a bloody morsel hung dripping from her teeth. Where Grizzlard’s left eye had been, there was now a glistening red socket.

Ozorka shook her head and the eye skittered across the floor. Then she watched, like a proud mother, as it was collected by one of the younger correctors.

It was at that moment I heard within me, with the searing intensity that only a rat blessed with the gift of a hearer could experience, the sound of a mortal scream. I closed my eyes as my body was wracked with the pain of a fellow rat.

A rat nipped me, hard. It was Loyter.

— Look and learn, ratling.

Ozorka had returned her attention to Grizzlard. The warrior closed his remaining eye in defeated resignation, awaiting the strike.

Ozorka looked slowly in the direction of Swylar.

Calmly, Swylar seemed to notice a scrap of something or other on his right paw. He nibbled at it as casually as if he had been alone and unwatched.

That was enough for Ozorka. She moved toward Grizzlard. As if to show her younger correctors that there are many different ways to remove an eye, she lowered her teeth slowly toward the warrior’s right eye, then stabbed downward. When she looked around, a gory burden hanging from her teeth, the damage upon Grizzlard’s face was messier, with blood pouring from the open wound that had been a socket.

Flicking the eye over her shoulder, Ozorka gave a signal to three of the correctors who stood nearby.

With undisguised pleasure, they pushed forward, and like creatures who had been starved of food for days, they fell upon Grizzlard’s right ear, tearing its delicate flesh with their teeth.

Now, for the first time, a scream filled the throat of Grizzlard. The smell of terror was in the air. I thought of the end of Tzuriel in the world above.

When all that was left of both ears were two small, uneven ridges of glistening gristle, the rats who had been holding Grizzlard released him.

Somehow, the courtier managed to stand. A line of correctors was behind him so that there was only one way for him to go. He staggered toward the lip of the stage, then dropped into the river. The water reddened with his blood, and for a moment it seemed as if Grizzlard would drown before the eyes of the kingdom, but his body twitched. Gently, he was carried downstream toward the world above.

After he had disappeared from view, the correctors turned their attention to Quell.

. . . carrying a heavy metal box. We have returned from our visit to Mr. Petheridge, and the doctor is in high spirits. When I make to leave, he tells me we must go out to work this evening.

“There’s a shilling in it for you, Mr. Smith,” he says.

I have no choice. Caz will be expecting me back at the tip, but there is no arguing with the doctor, and there is no arguing with the shilling.

It is hard work. I am carrying a heavy metal case containing three bottles packed in ice, which the doctor has taken out of a locked cold cabinet in the laboratory. I can feel it contains liquid of some sort, and I worry.

We are walking toward the place where the river emerges from underground, but the doctor seems anxious not to be too close to the case I am carrying. He follows, twenty yards behind me. Now and then, he shouts out directions. “Carry it carefully,” he says. “As if your life depended on it.”

I fear it does.

We reach the path by the river where we found the giant rat.

Still standing a distance away from me, the doctor tells me to place the metal case on the ground.

When I have done so, he approaches slowly, his eyes on the box, as if some fierce creature might jump out of it at any moment.

He points to the road, up a slope from where we are.

“There is a drain up there,” he says. “Together we shall lift the cover. Then you shall drop the bottles into the cavern below. When we hear the bottles break, we shall cover the drain posthaste.”

I say nothing, as usual, but the doctor behaves as if I have asked a question.

“There is nothing to worry about, Mr. Smith. We’re killing rats with a little poison of my own making. Tomorrow, our new friend Mr. Petheridge will ask the local sewerage company if he can check the underground sewer for signs of rodents. They will find thousands of corpses.”

He gives a little smile.

“I shall be standing over there.” He nods in the direction of a nearby bridge.

Poison. Now I am truly worried, and the expression on my face shows it.

“You need not be concerned so long as you do what I say.” The doctor rubs his hands together, although it is not particularly cold. “Tomorrow we shall show the world just how many rats there are down there. It will be the start of our great campaign.”