The Keys to the Kingdom 6 - Superior Saturday by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix [Nix, Garth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781741145908
Published: 2008-06-10T14:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

AS DARTBRISTLE HAD claimed, the flood channel did not suddenly fill with rushing water as Arthur half-feared it might. All the way along he listened carefully for the sound of an approaching deluge, and was ready to race back to the ladder and the warehouse. Then, when he caught sight of a ladder ahead, he had to hold himself back from trampling over the Raised Rat to get to it and climb out.

Maybe all my worries have made me claustrophobic, Arthur thought with some concern. But then he told himself it was perfectly normal to be concerned when walking along what was basically a big underground drain, in the middle of a heavy rainstorm. People got drowned all the time doing stupid stuff like that, and as he had thought before in the Border Sea, Arthur was particularly concerned that the Key would keep him sort of alive underwater and he might take a long time to die.

However, he managed to stay calm, and didn’t streak up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe. Instead he remembered what Suzy had said about his looks, and paused to pick up some mud, which he smeared on his face and front. After that he climbed out slowly, and so had time to adjust to the light and noise that was filtering down the access shaft to the channel.

The chamber above was very different from the warehouse. It was smaller, sixty feet square, and had thick stone walls without any windows and only a single door, which was shut and barred. But it was full of light, from the dozens of lanterns that hung on wires of different lengths from the arch-beamed ceiling high above, and it was full of noise, from the thirty or so grease monkeys who were sitting on simple wooden benches at six old oak tables – or not sitting, since a good number of them were jumping over the tables as part of a dozen-person game of tag, or doing cartwheels along them, or playing shuttlecock with improvised shuttles and bats, or constructing curious pieces of machinery. Or completely monopolising a tabletop by lying asleep on it, as one nearby grease monkey was doing.

As Dartbristle helped Suzy out and she and Arthur stood at the rim of the trapdoor, all this activity ceased. The children stopped their games and activities and turned to look at the new arrivals.

‘Wotcher!’ said Suzy, and went to tip her hat. She got halfway to her head before she remembered it wasn’t there, and so had to be satisfied with a wave.

The grease monkeys didn’t wave back. They stood there, staring, until the one who was apparently asleep on the table rubbed her eyes and sat up. She looked like a typical Piper’s child, with her ragged, self-cut hair, dirty face and oil-stained coveralls. But from the way the other grease monkeys’ eyes shifted toward her, Arthur could tell she was the boss.

‘Mornin’,’ she said. ‘Dartie here says you’ve been demobbed and sent back, with a washing between the ears behind you.

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