“And they always work fast,” said Maurice proudly. “They don’t mess about when it comes to . . . messing about.”

  “One town we were in last month, the council advertised for a rat piper the very next morning,” said Keith. “That was Sardines’s big day.”

  “My father shouted a lot and sent for Blunkett and Spears, too,” said Malicia. “They’re the rat catchers! And you know what that means, don’t you?”

  Maurice and Keith looked at one another.

  “Let’s pretend we don’t,” said Maurice.

  “It means we can break into their shed and solve the mystery of the bootlace tails!” said Malicia. She gave Maurice a critical look. “Of course, it would be more . . . satisfying if we were four children and a dog, which is the right number for an adventure, but we’ll make do with what we’ve got.”

  “Hey, we don’t do breaking and entering—we just steal from governments!” said Maurice.

  “Er, only governments who aren’t people’s fathers, obviously,” said Keith.

  “So?” said Malicia, giving Keith an odd look.

  “That’s not the same as being criminals!” said Maurice.

  “Ah, but when we’ve got the evidence, we can take it to the council, and then it won’t be criminal at all because we will be saving the day,” said Malicia, with weary patience. “Of course, it may be that the council and the Watch are in league with the rat catchers, so we shouldn’t trust anyone. Really, haven’t you people ever read a book? It’ll be dark soon, and I’ll come over and pick you up and we can shimmy the nodger.”

  “Can we?” said Keith.

  “Yes. With a hairpin,” said Malicia. “I know it’s possible, because I’ve read about it hundreds of times.”

  “What kind of nodger is it?” asked Maurice.

  “A big one,” said Malicia. “That makes it easier, of course.” She turned around abruptly and ran out of the stable.

  “Maurice?” said Keith.

  “Yes?” said the cat.

  “What is a nodger and how do you shimmy it?”

  “I don’t know. A lock, maybe?”

  “But you said—”

  “Yes, but I was just trying to keep her talking in case she turned violent,” said Maurice. “She’s gone in the head, if you ask me. She’s one of those people like . . . actors. You know. Acting all the time. Not living in the real world at all. Like it’s all a big story. Dangerous Beans is a bit like that. Highly dangerous person, in my opinion.”

  “He’s a very kind and thoughtful rat!”

  “Ah, yes, but the trouble is, see, that he thinks everyone else is like him. People like that are bad news, kid. And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.”

  “Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?” asked Keith.

  “Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies . . . it’s just a word.”

  The Number Three Heavy Widdlers squad was taking a rest, and they’d run out of ammunition in any case. No one felt like going past the trap to the trickle of water that dripped down the wall. And no one liked looking at what was in the trap.

  “Poor old Fresh,” said a rat. “He was a good rat.”

  “Should’ve paid attention to where he was going, though,” said another rat.

  “Thought he knew it all,” said yet another rat. “A decent rat, though, if a bit smelly.”

  “So let’s get him out of the trap, shall we?” said the first rat. “Doesn’t seem right, leaving him in there like that.”

  “Yes. Especially since we’re hungry.”

  One of the rats said, “Dangerous Beans says we shouldn’t eat rat at all. . . .”

  Another rat said, “No, it’s only if you don’t know what they died of, ’cos they might have died of poison.”

  Another rat said, “And we know what he died of. He died of squashing. You can’t catch squashing.”

  They all looked at the late Fresh.

  “What do you think happens to you after you’re dead?” said a rat slowly.

  “You get eaten. Or you get all dried up, or moldy.”

  “What, all of you?”

  “Well, people usually leave the feet.”

  The rat who’d asked the question asked, “But what about the bit inside?”

  And the rat who’d mentioned the feet said, “Oh, the squishy green wobbly bit? No, you ought to leave that, too. Tastes awful.”

  “No, I meant the bit inside you that’s you. Where does that go?”

  “Sorry, you’ve lost me there.”

  “Well . . . you know, like . . . dreams?”

  The rats nodded. They knew about dreams. Dreams had come as a big shock when they’d started to happen.

  “Well, then, in the dreams, when you’re being chased by dogs or flying or whatever . . . who is it who’s doing that? It’s not your body, ’cos that’s asleep. So it must be an invisible part that lives inside you, yes? And being dead is like being asleep, isn’t it?”

  “Not exactly like asleep,” said a rat uncertainly, glancing at the fairly flat thing formerly known as Fresh. “I mean, you don’t get all blood and bits sticking out. And you wake up.”

  “So,” said the rat who’d raised the whole question about the invisible part, “when you wake up, where does the dreaming part go? When you die, where does that bit that’s inside you go?”

  “What, the green wobbly bit?”

  “No! The bit that’s behind your eyes!”

  “You mean the pinky-gray bit?”

  “No, not that! The invisible bit!”

  “How would I know? I’ve never seen an invisible bit!”

  All the rats stared down at Fresh.

  “I don’t like this kind of talk,” said one of them. “It reminds me of the shadows in the candlelight.”

  Another one said, “Did you hear about the Bone Rat? It comes and gets you when you’re dead, they say.”

  “They say, they say,” muttered a rat. “They say there’s Big Rat Deep Under the Ground who made everything, they say. So it made humans, too? Must be really keen on us, to go and make humans too! Huh?”

  “How do I know? Maybe they were made by a Big Human?”

  “Oh, now you’re just being silly,” said the doubting rat, who was called Tomato.

  “Okay, okay, but you’ve got to admit that everything couldn’t have just, well, turned up, could it? There’s got to be a reason. And when Dangerous Beans says there’s things we should do ’cos they’re right, well, who works out what’s right? Where does ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ come from? They say if you’ve been a good rat, maybe the Big Rat has got this tunnel full of good eating that the Bone Rat will take you to—”

  “But Fresh is still here. And I ain’t seen a bony rat!” said doubting Tomato.

  “Ah, but they say you only see it if it’s coming for you.”

  “Oh? Oh?” said another rat, nervous to the point of mad sarcasm. “So how did they see it, eh? Tell me that! Life’s bad enough as it is without having to worry about invisible things you can’t see!”

  “All right, all right, what’s been happening?”

  The rats turned, suddenly incredibly pleased to see Darktan scurry up the tunnel.

  Darktan pushed past. He’d brought Nourishing with him. It was never too soon, he said, for a member of the squad to find out what happened to people who got things wrong.

  “I see,” he said, looking at the trap. He shook his head sadly. “What do I tell everyone?”

  “Not to use tunnels that haven’t been marked clear, sir,” said Tomato. “But Fresh, well, he’s not a . . . he never was a good listener. And he was keen to get on with it, sir.”

  Darktan examined the trap and tried to keep his face fixed in an expression of confident purpose. It was hard to do it, though. He’d never seen a trap like it. It looked like a really nasty one, a squeezer rather than a chopper. It had been put where a rat hurrying to the water would be bound to trip it.

  “He’s not going to do any more listening now, that’s for certain,” he said. “The face looks familiar. Apart from the bulging eyes and the tongue hanging out, that is.”

  “Er, you talked to Fresh in the muster this morning, sir,” said a rat. “Told him he was raised to be a widdler and to get on with it, sir.”

  Darktan’s expression remained blank. Then he said, “We’ve got to go. We’re finding a lot of traps all over. We’ll work our way back to you. No one is to go any farther along that tunnel, understood? Everyone say, ‘Yes, Darktan’!”

  “Yes, Darktan,” the rats chorused.

  “And one of you stand guard,” said Darktan. “There could be more traps up that way.”

  “What shall we do with Fresh, sir?” said Tomato.

  “Don’t eat the green wobbly bit,” said Darktan, and hurried off.

  Traps! he thought. There were too many of them. And too much poison. Even the experienced members of the squad were getting nervous now. He didn’t like to come across unknown things. You found out what unknown things were when they killed you.

  The rats were spreading out under the town, and it was like no other town they’d found. The whole place was a rat trap. They hadn’t found a single living keekee. Not one. That wasn’t normal. Everywhere had rats. Where you got humans, you got rats.

  And on top of everything else the young rats were spending too much time worrying about . . . things. Things you couldn’t see or smell. Shadow things. Darktan shook his head. There was no room in the tunnels for that sort of thinking. Life was real, life was practical, and life could get taken away really quickly if you weren’t paying attention. . . .

  He noticed Nourishing looking around and sniffing the air as they trotted along a pipe.

  “That’s right,” he said approvingly. “You can’t be too careful. Never rush in. Even the rat in front of you might have been lucky and missed the trigger.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t worry too much about Fresh, though.”

  “He did look awfully . . . flat, sir.”

  “Fools rush in, Nourishing. Fools rush in. . . .”

  Darktan could sense the fear spreading. It worried him. If the Changelings panicked, they’d panic as rats. And the tunnels in this city were no place for a terrified rat to be running. But if one rat broke ranks and ran, then most of them would follow. Smell held sway in the tunnels. When things went well, everyone felt good. When fear arrived, it flowed through the runs like floodwater. Panic in the rat world was a kind of disease that could be caught too easily.

  Things did not get any better when they caught up with the rest of his squad. This time they’d found a new poison.

  “Not to worry,” said Darktan, who was worried. “We’ve come across new poisons before, right?”

  “Not for ages,” said a rat. “Remember that one in Scrote? With the sparkly blue bits? It burned if you got it on your feet? People ran into it before they knew?”

  “They’ve got that here?”

  “You’d better come and see.”

  In one of the tunnels a rat was lying on its side. Its feet were curled up tight, like fists. It was whimpering.

  Darktan took one look and knew that, for this rat, it was all over. It was only a matter of time. For the rats back in Scrote, it had been a matter of horrible time.

  “I could bite her in the back of the neck,” a rat volunteered. “It’d be all over quickly.”

  “It’s a kind thought, but that stuff gets into the blood,” said Darktan. “Find a snapper trap that hasn’t been made safe. Do it carefully.”

  “Put a rat in a trap, sir?” said Nourishing.

  “Yes! Better to die fast than slow!”

  “Even so, it’s—” the rat who had volunteered to do the biting started to protest.

  The hairs around Darktan’s face stood out. He reared up and showed his teeth.

  “Do what you’re told or I’ll gnaw you!” he roared. The other rat crouched back.

  “All right, Darktan, all right. . . .”

  “And warn all the other squads!” Darktan bellowed. “This isn’t rat catching, this is war! Everyone’s to pull back smartly! No one touch nothing! We’re going to— Yes? What is it this time?”

  A small rat had crept up to Darktan. As the trap hunter spun around, the rat crouched hurriedly, almost rolling on his back to show how small and harmless he was.

  “Please, sir . . .” he mumbled.

  “Yes?”

  “This time we’ve found a live one. . . .”

  CHAPTER 6

  There were big adventures and small adventures, Mr. Bunnsy knew. You didn’t get told what size they were going to be before you started. Sometimes you could have a big adventure even when you were standing still.

  —From Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure

  “Hello? Hello, it’s me. And I’m going to give the secret knock now!” There were three knocks on the stable door, and then Malicia’s voice rose again with “Hello, did you hear the secret knock?”

  “Perhaps she’ll go away if we keep quiet,” said Keith, in the straw.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Maurice. He raised his voice and called out, “We’re up here!”

  “You’ve still got to give the secret knock,” shouted Malicia.

  “Oh, prbllttrrrp,” said Maurice under his breath, and fortunately no human knows how bad a swear word that is in Cat. “Look, this is me, okay? A cat? Who talks? How will you recognize me? Shall I wear a red carnation?”

  “I don’t think you’re a proper talking cat, anyway,” said Malicia, climbing the ladder. She was still wearing black, and she had bundled up her hair under a black scarf. She also had a big bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Gosh, she’s got that right,” said Maurice.

  “I mean you don’t wear boots and a sword and have a big hat with a feather in it,” said the girl, pulling herself into the loft.

  Maurice gave her a long stare. “Boots?” he said at last. “On these paws?”

  “Oh, it was in a picture in a book I read,” said Malicia, calmly. “A silly one for children. Full of animals that dressed up as humans.”

  It crossed Maurice’s cat mind, and not for the first time, that if he moved fast, he could be out of the city in five minutes and onto a barge or something.

  Once, when he was no more than a kitten, he’d been taken home by a small girl who’d dressed him up in doll’s clothes and sat him at a small table with a couple of dolls and three quarters of a teddy bear. He’d managed to escape through an open window, but it had taken him all day to get out of the dress. That girl could have been Malicia. She thought animals were just people who hadn’t been paying enough attention.

  “I don’t do clothes,” he said. It wasn’t much of a line, but it was probably better than saying “I think you are a loony.”

  “Could be an improvement,” said Malicia. “It’s nearly dark. Let’s go! We shall move like cats!”

  “Oh, right,” said Maurice. “I expect I can do that.”

  Although, he thought a few minutes later, no cats ever moved like Malicia. She obviously thought that it was no good looking inconspicuous unless people could see that you were being inconspicuous. People in the street actually stopped to watch her as she sidled along walls and scuttled from one doorway to another. Maurice and Keith strolled along after her. No one paid them any attention.

  Eventually, in a narrow street, she stopped at a black building with a big wooden sign hanging over the door.

  The sign showed a lot of rats: a sort of star made of rats, with all their tails tied together in a big knot.

  “Sign of the ancient Guild of Rat Catchers,” whispered Malicia, swinging her bag off her shoulder.

  “I know,” said Keith. “It looks horrible.”

  “Makes an interesting design, though,” said Malicia.

  One of the most significant things about the door below the sign was the big padlock holding it shut.

  Odd, Maurice thought. If rats make your legs explode, why do rat catchers have to have a big lock on their shed?

  “Luckily I’m prepared for every eventuality,” said Malicia, and reached into her bag. There was a sound as of lumps of metal and bottles being moved around.

  “What have you got in there?” said Maurice. “Everything?”

  “The grapnel and rope ladder take up a lot of the room,” said Malicia, still feeling around. “And then there’s the big medicine kit, and the small medicine kit, and the knife, and the other knife, and the sewing kit, and the mirror for sending signals, and . . . these.”

  She pulled out a small bundle of black cloth. When she unrolled it, Maurice saw the gleam of metal.

  “Ah,” he said. “Lock picks, right? I’ve seen burglars at work—”

  “Hairpins,” said Malicia, selecting one. “Hairpins always work in the books I’ve read. You just push one into the keyhole and twiddle. I have a selection of prebent ones.”

  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 that 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 fairy 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.