Once again, Maurice felt a little chill at the back of his head. They work in stories, he thought. Oh dear me.
‘And how come you know so much about picking locks?’ he said.
‘I told you, they lock me out of my room to punish me,’ said Malicia, twiddling.
Maurice had seen thieves at work. Men breaking into buildings at night hated to see dogs, but they didn’t mind cats. Cats never attempted to tear their throats out. And what thieves tended to have, he knew, were complicated little tools which were used with great care and precision. They didn’t use stupi—
Click!
‘Good,’ said Malicia, in a satisfied voice.
‘That was just luck,’ said Maurice, as the padlock swung free. He looked up at Keith. ‘You think it’s just luck too, eh, kid?’
‘How would I know?’ said Keith. ‘I’ve never seen it done before.’
‘I knew it would work,’ said Malicia. ‘It worked in the fairy-story The Seventh Wife of Greenbeard, where she broke out of his Room of Terror and stabbed him in the eye with a frozen herring.’
‘That was a,’airy-story?’ said Keith.
‘Yes,’ said Malicia, proudly. ‘Right out of Grim Fairy-Tales.’
‘You’ve got some bad fairies in these parts,’ said Maurice, shaking his head.
Malicia pushed the door open. ‘Oh, no,’ she moaned. ‘I didn’t expect this…’
Somewhere below Maurice’s paws, and about a street away, the one local rat that the Changelings had found alive was crouched in front of Dangerous Beans. The squads had been called back. This was not turning out to be a good day.
Traps that didn’t kill, Darktan thought. You found them sometimes. Sometimes humans wanted to catch rats alive.
Darktan didn’t trust humans who wanted to catch rats alive. Honest traps that killed outright… well, they were bad, but you could usually avoid them and at least there was something clean about them. Live traps were like poison. They cheated.
Dangerous Beans was watching the newcomer. It was strange, but the rat who could think the most un-rat-like thoughts was also the best at talking to keekees, except that talking wasn’t the right word. No-one, not even Hamnpork, had a sense of smell like Dangerous Beans.
The new rat certainly wasn’t giving any trouble. For one thing, it was surrounded by rats who were big and well-fed and tough, so its body was respectfully saying sir as hard as it could. The Changelings had also given it some food, which it was engulfing rather than eating.
‘She was in a box,’ said Darktan, who was drawing on the floor with a stick. ‘There’s a lot of them here.’
‘I got caught in one once,’ said Hamnpork. ‘Then a female human came along and tipped me out over the garden wall. Couldn’t see the point of it.’
‘I believe some humans do it to be kind,’ said Peaches. ‘They get the rat out of the house without killing them.’
‘Didn’t do her any good, anyway,’ said Hamnpork, with satisfaction. ‘I went back next night and widdled on the cheese.’
‘I don’t think anyone is trying to be kind here,’ said Darktan. ‘There was another rat in there with her. At least,’
he added,’there was part of a rat in there with her. I think she’d been eating it to stay alive.’
‘Very sensible,’ nodded Hamnpork.
‘We found something else,’ Darktan said, still drawing furrows in the dirt. ‘Can you see these, sir?’
He’d drawn lines and squiggles on the floor.
‘Hrumph. I can see them, but I don’t have to know what they are,’ said Hamnpork. He rubbed his nose. ‘I’ve never needed any more than this.’
Darktan gave a patient sigh. ‘Then smell, sir, that this is a… a picture of all the tunnels we’ve explored today.
It’s… the shape I have in my head. We’ve explored a lot of the town. There’s a lot of the…’ he glanced at Peaches, ‘a lot of the kind traps, mostly empty. There’s poison all over the place. It’s mostly quite old. Lots of empty live traps. Lots of killer traps, still set. And no live rats. None at all, except for our… new friend. We know there’s something very odd. I sniffed around a bit near where I found her, and I smelled rats. Lots of rats. I mean lots.’
‘Alive?’ said Dangerous Beans.
‘Yes.’
‘All in one place?’
‘It smells that way,’ said Darktan. ‘I think a squad should go and look.’
Dangerous Beans got closer to the rat and sniffed at her again. The rat sniffed at him. They touched paws.
The watching Changelings were astonished. Dangerous Beans was treating the keekee as an equal.
‘Lots of things, lots of things,’ he murmured. ‘Many rats… humans… fear… lots of fear… lots of rats, crowded… food… rat… you said she’s been eating rat?’
‘It’s a rat-eat-rat world,’ said Hamnpork. ‘Always has been, always will be.’
Dangerous Beans wrinkled his nose. ‘There’s something else. Something… odd. Strange… she’s really
scared.’
‘She has been in a trap,’ said Peaches. ‘And then she met us.’
‘Much…worse than that,’ said Dangerous Beans. ‘She’s… she’s frightened of us because we’re strange rats but she smells relieved that we’re not… what she’s used to…’
‘Humans!’ Darktan spat.
‘I… don’t… think… so…’
‘Other rats?’
‘Yes… no… I… don’t… it’s hard to tell…’
‘Dogs? Cats?’
‘No.’ Dangerous Beans stepped back. ‘Something new.’
‘What shall we do with her?’ said Peaches.
‘Let her go, I suppose.’
‘We can’t do that!’ said Darktan. ‘We’ve triggered all the traps we’ve found but there are still poisons all over the place. I wouldn’t send a mouse out into that lot. She hasn’t tried to attack us, after all.’
‘So?’ said Hamnpork. ‘What’s another dead keekee?’
‘I know what Darktan means,’ said Peaches. ‘We can’t just send her out to die.’
Big Savings stepped forward and put a paw around the young female, cuddling her protectively. She glared at Hamnpork. Although she might nip him sometimes if she was annoyed, she wouldn’t argue with him. She was too old to do that. But her look said: all males are stupid, you stupid old rat.
He looked lost. ‘We’ve killed keekees, haven’t we?’ he said sadly. ‘Why do we want this one hanging around?’
‘We can’t send her out to die,’ said Peaches again, looking at Dangerous Beans’ expression. He had that faraway look in his pink eyes.
‘You want it trailing around eating our food and messing things up?’ said Hamnpork. ‘It can’t talk, it can’t think…’
‘Nor could we, not long ago!’ snapped Peaches. ‘We were all like her!’
‘We can think now, young female!’ said Hamnpork, his hair rising.
‘Yes,’ said Dangerous Beans quietly. ‘We can think. We can think about what we do. We can pity the
innocent one who means us no harm. And that’s why she can stay.’
Hamnpork’s head turned sharply. Dangerous Beans was still facing the newcomer. Hamnpork reared up
instinctively, a rat ready to fight. But Dangerous Beans couldn’t see him.
Peaches watched the old rat with concern. He’d been challenged, by a weedy little rat who would not last a second in a fight. And Dangerous Beans hadn’t even realized he’d made the challenge.
He doesn’t think like that, Peaches told herself.
The other rats were watching Hamnpork. They still thought like that, and were waiting to see what he would do.
But it was dawning even on Hamnpork that pouncing on the white rat would be unthinkable. It would be like cutting off his own tail. He very carefully let himself relax. ‘It’s just a rat,’ he muttered.
‘But you, dear Hamnpork, are not,’ said Dangerous Beans. ‘Will you go with Darktan’s crew to find out where she came from? It could be dangerous.’
This made Hamnpork’s hair rise again. ‘I’m not afraid of danger!’ he roared.
‘Of course not. That is why you should go. She was terrified,’ said Dangerous Beans.
‘I’ve never been scared of anything!’ shouted Hamnpork.
Now Dangerous Beans turned to face him. In the candlelight there was a glow in the pink eyes. Hamnpork was not a rat who spent a lot of time thinking about things he couldn’t see or smell or bite, but…
He looked up. The candlelight made big rat shadows dance on the wall. Hamnpork had heard the young rats talking about shadows and dreams and what happened to your shadow after you died. He didn’t worry about that stuff. Shadows couldn’t bite you. There was nothing to be frightened of in shadows. But now his own voice in his head told him I’m frightened of what those eyes can see. He glared at Darktan, who was scratching something in the mud with one of his sticks.
‘I’ll go, but I will lead the expedition,’ he said. ‘I’m senior rat here!’
‘That doesn’t worry me,’ said Darktan. ‘Mr Clicky is going to be going in front in any case.’
‘I thought he got smashed last week?’ said Peaches.
‘We’ve got two left,’ said Darktan. ‘Then we’ll have to raid another pet shop.’