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'You killed the rats,' said Maurice, quietly. Rat-catcher 1's head turned sharply. There was an edge to that voice that he recognized. He'd heard it at the pit. You got them there sometimes, high-rolling types with fancy waistcoats, who travelled through the mountains making a living by betting and sometimes making a killing by knives. They had a look to their eye and a tone to their voice. They were known as 'killing gentlemen'. You didn't cross a killing gentleman. 'Yes, yes, that's right, we did!' babbled Rat-catcher 2. 'Just go carefully there, Bill,' said Rat-catcher 1, still eyeing Maurice. 'Why did you do it?' said Keith. Rat-catcher 2 looked from his boss to Malicia and then to Keith, as if trying to decide who frightened him the most. 'Well, Ron said the rats ate stuff anyway,' he said. 'So… he said if we got rid of all the rats and pinched the stuff ourselves, well, it wouldn't exactly be like stealing, would it? More like… re-arranging stuff. There's a bloke Ron knows who comes up with a sailing barge in the middle of the night and pays us-'
'That is a diabolical lie!' snapped Rat-catcher 1, and then looked as if he was going to be sick. 'But you caught rats alive and crammed them into cages without food,' Keith went on. 'They live on rat, those rats. Why did you do that?' Rat-catcher 1 clutched at his stomach. 'I can feel things happening!' he said. 'That's just your imagination!' snapped Keith. 'It is?'
'Yes. Don't you know anything about the poisons you use? Your stomach won't start to melt for at least twenty minutes.'
'Wow!' said Malicia. 'And after that,' said Keith, 'if you blow your nose, your brain will well, let's just say you'll need a really big handkerchief.'
'This is great!' said Malicia, rummaging in her bag. 'I'm going to take notes!'
'And then, if you… just don't go to the lavatory, that's all. Don't ask why. Just don't. It'll all be over in an hour, except for the oozing.' Malicia was scribbling fast. 'Will they go runny?' she said. 'Very,' said Keith, not taking his eyes off the men. 'This is inhuman!' shrieked Rat-catcher 2. 'No, it's very human,' said Keith. 'It's extremely human. There isn't a beast in the world that'd do it to another living thing, but your poisons do it to rats every day. Now tell me about the rats in the cages.' Sweat was pouring down the assistant rat-catcher's face. He looked as if he, too, were caught in a trap. 'See, rat-catchers have always caught rats alive for the rat pits,' he moaned. 'It's a perk. Nothing wrong with it! Always done it! So we had to keep up a supply, so we bred 'em. Had to! No harm in feeding 'em dead rats from the rat pits. Everyone knows rats eat rats, if you leave out the green wobbly bit! And then-'
'Oh? There's a then?' said Keith, calmly. 'Ron said if we bred rats from the rats that survived in pit, you know, the ones that dodged the dogs, well, we'd end up with bigger, better rats, see?'
'That's scientific, that is,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'What would be the point of that?' said Malicia. 'Well, miss, we-Ron said… we thought… I thought… we thought that… well, it's not exactly cheating to put really tough rats in amongst the others, see, especially if the dog that's going in is a bit borderline. Where's the harm in that? Gives us an edge, see, when it come to betting. I thought… he thought…'
'You seem a bit confused about whose idea it was,' said Keith. 'His,' said the rat-catchers together. Mine, said a voice in Maurice's head. He almost fell off his perch. What does not kill us makes us strong, said the
voice of Spider. The strongest breed. 'You mean,' said Malicia, 'if they didn't have ratcatchers here they'd have fewer rats?' She paused, head on one side. 'No, that's not right. It doesn't feel right. There's something else. Something you haven't told us. Those rats in those cages are… mad, insane…' I'd be too, Maurice thought, with this horrible voice in my head every hour of the day. 'I'm going to throw up,' said Rat-catcher 1. 'I am, I'm going to-'
'Don't,' said Keith, watching Rat-catcher 2. 'You won't like it. Well, Mr Assistant Rat-catcher?'
'Ask them what's in the other cellar,' said Maurice. He said it fast; he could feel the voice of Spider try to stop his mouth moving even as the sentence came out. 'What is in the other cellar then?' said Keith. 'Oh, just more stuff, old cages, stuff like that…' said Rat-catcher 2. 'What else?' said Maurice. 'Only the… only the… that's where…' The ratcatcher's mouth opened and shut. His eyes bulged. 'Can't say,' he said. 'Er. There's nothing. Yes, that's it. There's nothing in there, just the old cages. Oh, and plague. Don't go in there 'cos there's plague. That's why you shouldn't go in there, see? 'Cos of the plague.'
'He's lying,' said Malicia. 'No antidote for him.'
'I had to do it!' Rat-catcher 2 moaned. 'You've gotta do one to join the Guild!'
'That's a Guild secret!' Rat-catcher 1 snapped at him. 'We don't give away Guild secrets' He stopped, and clutched at his rumbling stomach. 'What was it you had to do?' said Keith. 'Make a rat king!' Rat-catcher 2 burst out. 'A rat king?' said Keith sharply. 'What's a rat king?'
'I - I - I' the man stuttered. 'Stop it, I - I - I don't want to-' Tears ran down his face. 'We-I made a rat king Stop it, stop it… stop it…'
'And it's still alive?' said Malicia. Keith turned to her in amazement. 'You know about these things?' he said. 'Of course. There's a lot of stories about them. Rat kings are deadly evil. They-'
'Antidote, antidote, please,' moaned Rat-catcher 2. 'My stomach feels like there's rats running round in it!'
'You made a rat king,' said Malicia. 'Oh, dear. Well, we left the antidote in that little cellar you locked us up in. I should hurry if I was you.' Both of the men staggered to their feet. Rat-catcher 1 fell through the trapdoor. The other man landed on him. Swearing, moaning and, it had to be said, farting enormously, they made their way to the cellar. Dangerous Beans' candle was still alight. Beside it was a fat twist of paper. The door was slammed behind the men. There was the sound of a piece of wood being wedged under it. 'There's enough antidote for one person,' said Keith's voice, muffled through the wood. 'But I'm sure you can sort it out-in a humane sort of way.' Darktan tried to get his breath back, but he thought he'd never get it all, even if he breathed in for a year. There was a ring of pain all around his back and chest. 'It's amazing!' said Nourishing. 'You were dead in the trap and now you're alive!'
'Nourishing?' said Darktan, carefully. 'Yes, sir?'
'I'm very… grateful,' said Darktan, still wheezing, 'but don't get silly. The spring was stretched and weak and… the teeth were rusted and blunt. That's all.'
'But there's teeth marks all round you! No-one's ever come out of a trap before, except the Mr Squeakies, and they were made of rubber!' Darktan licked his stomach. Nourishing had been right. He looked perforated. 'I was just lucky,' he said. 'No rat has ever come alive out of a trap,' Nourishing repeated. 'Did you see the Big Rat?'
'The what?'
'The Big Rat!'
'Oh, that,' said Darktan. He was going to add 'no, I don't go in for that nonsense', but stopped. He could remember the light, and then the darkness ahead of him. It hadn't seemed bad. He'd almost felt sorry that Nourishing had got him out. In the trap, all the pain had been a long way off. And there had been no more hard decisions. He settled for saying, 'Is Hamnpork all right?'
'Sort of. I mean, we can't see any wounds that won't heal. He's had worse. But, well, he was pretty old. Nearly three years.'
'Was?' said Darktan.
'Is pretty old, I mean, sir. Sardines sent me to find you because we'll need you to help us get him back, but-' Nourishing gave Darktan a doubtful look. 'It's all right, I'm sure it looks worse than it is,' said Darktan, wincing. 'Let's get up there, shall we?' An old building is full of pawholds for a rat. No-one noticed them as they climbed up from manger to saddle, harness to hayrack. Besides, no-one was looking for them. Some of the other rats had taken the Jacko route to freedom, and the dogs were going mad searching for them and fighting with one another. So were the men. Darktan knew a little bit about beer, since he had gone about his business under pubs and breweries, and the rats had often wondered why humans sometimes liked to switch their brains off. To the rats, living in the centre of a web of sound and light and smells, it made no sense at all. To Darktan, now, it didn't sound quite so bad. The idea that, for a while, you could forget things and not have a head buzzing with troublesome thoughts… well, that seemed quite attractive. He couldn't remember a lot about life before he'd been Changed, but he was certain that it hadn't been so complicated. Oh, bad things had happened, because life on the tip had been pretty hard. But when they were over, they were over, and tomorrow was a new day. Rats didn't think about tomorrow. There was just a faint sensation that more things would happen. It wasn't thinking. And there was no 'good' and 'bad' and 'right' and 'wrong'. They were new ideas. Ideas! That was their world now! Big questions and big answers, about life, and how you had to live it, and what you were for. New ideas spilled into Darktan's weary head. And among the ideas, in the middle of his head, he saw the little figure of Dangerous Beans. Darktan had never talked much to the little white rat or the little female who scurried around after him and drew pictures of the things he'd been thinking about. Darktan liked people who were practical. But now he thought: he's a trap-hunter! Just like me! He goes ahead of us and finds the dangerous ideas and thinks about them and traps them in words and makes them safe and shows us the way through. We need him… we need him now. Otherwise, we're all running around like rats in a barrel… Much later on, when Nourishing was old and grey around the muzzle, and smelled a bit strange, she dictated the story of the climb and how she'd heard Darktan muttering to himself. The Darktan that she'd pulled out of the trap, she said, was a different rat. It was as though his thoughts had slowed down but got bigger. The strangest bit, she said, was when they reached the beam. Darktan made sure that Hamnpork was all right, and then picked up the match he'd shown to Nourishing. 'He struck it on an old bit of iron,' said Nourishing, 'and then he walked out along the beam with it flaring, and down below I could see all the crowd, the hay racks and the straw all over the place, and the people milling around, just like, hah, just like rats… and I thought, if you drop that, mister, the place will fill with smoke in a few seconds and they've locked the doors and by the time they realize it they'll be caught like, hah, yeah, like rats in a barrel and we'll be away along the gutters. 'But he just stood there, looking down, until the match went out. Then he put it down and helped us with Hamnpork and never said a word about it. I asked him about it later on, after all the stuff with the piper and everything, and he said, “Yes. Rats in a barrel.” And that's all he said about it.'
'What was it you really put in the sugar?' said Keith, as he led the way back to the secret trapdoor. 'Cascara,' said Malicia. 'That's not a poison, is it?'
'No, it's a laxative.'
