As Neeps climbed and Chadfallow steadied the rope, Pazel went to rouse the three remaining men. Uskins had bedded down in his patch of weeds; he gave a bewildered snort when Pazel shook him, and his eyes seemed reluctant to open. Druffle was instantly alert, and rose to his feet as though he had been waiting all night for a signal. That’s a smuggler for you, Pazel thought. Dr. Rain muttered to himself, frail and disoriented.
“I’ll hurry the doctor along,” said Druffle. “Get old Chadfallow up that wall if you can manage it.”
But “old Chadfallow,” as Pazel knew, was strapping for his age, and climbed with ease. The trouble came from Uskins, who looked frightened by the whole procedure. As Pazel steadied the rope for Chadfallow, the first mate stared at him, lips a-tremble. “Muketch,” he said at last, “I have no desire to return to the ship.”
Pazel turned his head, astonished. “Mr. Uskins,” he said, “we don’t know where we’re going yet. The important thing is to get out of here, while we can.”
Softly, the dog began to whine.
“Not important to me,” said Uskins. “I’ll follow orders, thank you very much.”
“Orders? Who ordered you to sit in a blary asylum?”
“Sir,” corrected Uskins.
“Sir,” repeated Pazel, increasingly confused. “Listen, you don’t want to stay here. They could lock you up forever, or experiment on you, bury you alive-anything. Don’t you realize who’s in charge in this city? Arunis and his gang, that’s who.”
At the mention of the sorcerer, Uskins recoiled, as though Pazel had struck him in the face. “You scoundrel!” he exploded. “You’ve had it in for me from the start! I told Rose to put you off the ship back in Etherhorde, that day you tormented the augrongs. And now you’ve provoked the sorcerer!”
“Mr. Uskins-”
“You’re insolent and clever, and you won’t stop until we’re dead. This is what Arqual’s coming to-you, you’re the face of the future. I can’t bear it. To think that you’ve served on Chathrand herself. In my grandfather’s day you’d not have been allowed to speak to a gentleman sailor, let alone serve under him.”
The dog whined louder, and even began to paw at the glass. “A gentleman sailor,” said Pazel, seething now. “Mr. Uskins-Pitfire, that’s not even your real name. You’re Stukey Somebody, or Somebody Stukey, from a guano- scraping village west of Etherhorde, and the only reason I’m trying to save your damned pig-ignorant hide is because I think you’re ill, actually ill, and I feel a bit-Oh credek, never mind, just get up the blary wall, for the love of Rin. Now, sir.”
Uskins froze, clearly shocked by the tarboy’s vehemence. Pazel thrust the rope into his hand. Slowly a look of understanding crept into Uskins’ eyes, and with it came a new, sharper fear. He put his feet against the wall and began to climb.
The dog gave an anxious yip. Pazel looked at it: the creature was dancing on its pedestal, turning in circles. On an impulse, Pazel dashed across the courtyard to stand before it. “Hush!” he whispered. The dog glanced down the corridor and cocked its head. Then it looked Pazel in the eye, whining pitifully. Its breath clouded the glass.
“Shhhh,” said Pazel, “good dog, good dog.”
Suddenly the dog pressed its nose to the fogged-over glass between them. It moved sideways, dragging its nose, struggling for balance. “Mr. Druffle,” said Pazel aloud, “I think this dog is awake. I mean woken. Because, Gods below, it’s… writing.”
The dog was writing. With its nose. One scrawled and desperate word.
RUN.
Pazel jumped. And then he heard it, soft but certain: the rumble of angry voices. Many voices, shouting, and growing nearer by the second.
He backed away. The dog wiped out the word with its forehead. Mystified, Pazel raised his hand, a gesture of thanks.
“Deserters! Faithless deserters!”
Pazel whirled about again. It was Dr. Rain, in the doorway of the bedchamber. He was staring at the figures on the rooftop, his shouting like crockery hurled at a wall. “Leave your shipmates, leave an old man behind in this human zoo! Villains! Backstabbers! Cold, mean, monstrous-”
Pazel had to hand it to Mr. Druffle: the freebooter did exactly what was called for. He silenced the doctor with one humane, swift thump to the stomach, then lifted him and ran to where Pazel stood clutching the rope.
“Under the arms, lad! Tie him quickly!”
Shouts echoed from somewhere down the corridor-many voices, loud and even menacing. They’re in the north wing! Get that door open! Which of you has the key?
The dog raced back and forth. “Haul him up!” begged Pazel, and the others complied. Rain kicked and struggled; the poor man simply had no idea what was being done to him.
The next two minutes were agonizing, as Thasha tore at the knot around Rain’s chest, and the doctor batted her in confusion. At last she gave up, seized Dastu’s knife and slashed off the rope above the knot. She hurled the shortened rope down to Pazel and Druffle. There were a few awful moments of paralysis, as each begged the other to climb first, and the voices grew louder, nearer. At last Druffle relented, and scurried up the wall like a monkey.
“Tell them to lie down!” said Pazel, “flat and quiet, and away from the edge. Hurry, Mr. Druffle, please!” He looked back anxiously at the glass wall and the doorway. The dog had vanished; from some distance away he heard it barking. He heard Druffle grunt as he rolled over the edge. Thasha tossed him the end of the rope. Even as he caught hold of it a door smashed open. Pazel climbed, wishing he had Thasha’s strength, as the others hauled him upward. “Faster!” hissed Thasha through her teeth. Pazel gasped, pulling, swaying as feet pounded down the corridor. He hooked a leg over the roof, and Chadfallow seized his shirt and wrenched him up with one great effort. Pazel caught a glimpse of torchlight through the glass. He rolled away from the edge, and those still standing threw themselves down. No one moved.
Angry voices, men’s and women’s both, sounded from just outside the glass wall. “They’re in the bedchambers! Open the door, open the door!” Keys jangled, hinges gave a rusty shriek, and a mob forced its way in, shouting, raging. “Don’t let them bite you,” a male dlomu cried. “And don’t get their blood on you, either. Turn your faces away before you cut them down.”
Pazel felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. It was the voice of the man who had led the mob the day before. The one who had promised to come back and kill them.
The cries changed abruptly: “Not here, Kudan! The place is empty! This brainless dog’s guarding an empty cage!”
“But I heard something.”
“They were here, it’s been lived in. Maybe they were moved to the south wing.”
“Spoons, cups, plates. Earth’s blood, they were treated just like men. And so much food!”
“Some of it’s mine,” said Rain aloud. Neeps pounced on him, covering his mouth. Fortunately the old doctor was still catching his breath, and his voice did not reach the dlomu.
“We’ll have to burn all the food,” one of them was saying, “and the mattresses too. Just the same as their bodies. Fire for the cursed, as they say.”
“Best do it well outside the city. Somewhere too far away for the curse to come back. The Black Tongue, maybe.”
“The Black Tongue! Surely we don’t need to go that far, Kudan.”
“We still have to catch the humans,” said their leader. “Come, it’s time to talk with those physicians again.” Some nervous laughter, then: “Get along there, dog! No treat for the likes of you.”
The voices faded. For several minutes no one moved. Pazel found himself shaking from head to foot. “Don’t move, anybody,” he whispered. “They’re still looking for us, remember.”
For nearly ten minutes they lay silent; even Dr. Rain seemed to have comprehended the situation at last. Pazel gazed past his own feet: above them rose more mountains, more city, more waterfalls. He had the strange sensation of looking at the same picture through a smaller window: Masalym was still looming above them, as it had from the deck of the Chathrand, but now he was inside the Middle City, peering between its domes and towers and solitary trees, at what was surely the Upper City, the highest level, where the mountains came close to one another, and the river squeezed through to fall over one more cliff, in one more white mass of foam.
Cautiously, they sat up. “What now?” whispered Thasha.
