Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [109]
And so it was a rat filled with foreboding that finally scaled the outside wall of the East Gate Lookout Tower—headquarters of the Message Rat Service and home to Stanley and his four teenage ratlets. Stanley peered in through the tiny, arrow-slit window and saw nothing. But he smelled something. His delicate rat nose smelled the Darke—a sour, stale smell with a touch of burned pumpkin about it—and he knew he was too late. The Darke Domaine had invaded his home and somewhere inside were the four foundling ratlets whom Stanley loved more than anything else in the world.
Florence, Morris, Robert and Josephine—known to all but Stanley as Flo, Mo, Bo and Jo—appeared to any other rat to be four scrawny, awkward teen ratlets, but to Stanley they were perfection itself. They had been no more than a few days old when he had found them abandoned in a hole in the wall on the Outside Path. Stanley—who had never been remotely interested in babies—had scooped up the blind and hairless ratlets and taken them home to the East Gate Lookout Tower. He had loved them as his own; he had fed them, picked off their fleas, worried about them as they first went out scavenging alone, and recently he had begun to teach them the basic skills of a Message Rat. They were his whole life—they were the bright and starry future of the Message Rat Service. And now they were gone. Stanley dropped down from the window, utterly desolate.
“Ouch! Watch it, Dadso!” a young rat squeaked.
“Robert!” gasped Stanley. “Oh, thank goodness . . .” He felt quite overcome.
“You’re heavy, man. You’re squashing my tail,” said Bo gruffly.
“Sorry.” Stanley shifted his weight with a groan. He was getting too old to fall a hundred feet and not notice it.
“You all right, Da?” asked Flo.
“Where you been?” This from Jo.
“Oh Da! We thought it had got you.” A hug from Mo—always the emotional one—made Stanley’s world feel right once more.
The five rats sat in a despondent line on the Outside Path, which was no more than a narrow ledge below the East Gate Lookout Tower. Stanley recounted the events of the past few hours.
“It’s bad, Da, isn’t it?” Mo said after a while.
“Doesn’t look good,” said Stanley gloomily. “But, according to that Alchemist chappie, we’ll be all right here—we’re outside the walls. It’s all those poor rats trapped in the Castle I worry about.” He sighed. “And I’d only just got the Service fully staffed.”
“So where to now, Dadso?” asked Bo, kicking his feet impatiently on the stones.
“Nowhere, Robert, unless you want to swim the Moat. We’ll sit the night out here and see what the morning brings.”
“But it’s so cold, Da,” said Flo, looking mournfully at the tiny flakes of snow drifting down.
“Not half as cold as it is inside the Castle, Florence,” said Stanley severely. “There’s a stone missing from the wall a bit farther along. We can spend the night in there. It’s good training.”
“For what?” moaned Jo.
“For becoming a reliable and effective Message Rat, that’s for what, Josephine.”
This was met by a barrage of groans. However, the ratlets made no further protests. They were tired, scared and relieved to have Stanley back safe. Led by him they trooped along to the space in the wall and, reverting to babyhood, they fell into a rat pile—exactly as they had been when Stanley had found them—and resigned themselves to an uncomfortable night. When Stanley was sure they were settled he said, very reluctantly, “There’s something I have to do. I won’t be long. Stay there and don’t move an inch.”
“We won’t,” they chorused sleepily.
Stanley set off along the Outside Path toward Jannit Maarten’s boatyard, muttering grumpily to himself.
“You really should know