Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [96]
Spit Fyre flew slowly on, past tiny attic windows containing flickering candles until they came to Snake Slipway. Below them, to the left of the Slipway was Rupert Gringe’s boathouse, still happily ablaze with a couple of buckets containing torches. The houses on either side of the slipway were also still untouched; many of them seemed to have caught Marcellus’s habit of burning forests of candles, and the whole slipway shone brightly.
Septimus had made his decision—Alther must wait. He would use his Darke Disguise to rescue Sarah and then he would stay and fight the spreading Darkenesse. But he could not risk Jenna’s safety. He wheeled Spit Fyre out across the Moat and over the Forest borders in order to give the dragon space to turn for a good run into Snake Slipway, where he planned to land.
“What are you doing?” yelled Jenna.
“Landing!” yelled Septimus.
“Here?”
“Not here. Snake Slipway!”
Jenna leaned forward and yelled in Septimus’s ear, “No, Sep! We have to get Mum!”
Septimus turned to face Jenna. “Not you, Jen. Too dangerous. I’ll go!”
“No way! I’m coming too!” Jenna shouted above the whooshing of the air as the dragon’s wings swept down.
Spit Fyre was lining up for the tricky swoop down into Snake Slipway, but Septimus could not concentrate with Jenna yelling in his ear. He wheeled the dragon around once more.
“No, Jen!” Septimus yelled as Spit Fyre flew back across the Moat toward the Forest again. “I’m taking you somewhere safe first. We don’t know what’s in the Palace now!”
“Mum’s in there, you—you total dumbrain!”
Septimus was shocked. Jenna never used language like that normally. He blamed the witch’s cloak. He turned Spit Fyre around and lined him up once more for landing on Snake Slipway.
Spit Fyre began his second attempt to land.
“Septimus Heap, you are not dumping me!” Jenna yelled.
“But Jen—”
“Spit Fyre!” yelled his Navigator. “Go up!”
Spit Fyre—who obeyed his Navigator’s instructions in the absence of any from his Pilot—began to go up. But not for long.
“Down, Spit Fyre!” his Pilot countermanded. Spit Fyre went down. His Pilot was in charge.
“Up!” yelled Jenna.
Spit Fyre went up.
“Down!” Septimus yelled. His dragon obeyed. Septimus had one last go at persuading Jenna.
“Jen, please, listen to me! The Palace is dangerous! If something happens to you, that’s it. No more Queens in the Castle. Ever. We can land here and I’ll take you to Marcellus’s house—he’s got a SafeChamber—or we can even go to Aunt Zelda’s. You choose. But you have to be safe!”
Jenna fumed. How many times had she been sidelined just because she had to be safe? She leaned forward—all the better to yell at Septimus and tell him she didn’t care about being Queen, so there—and The Queen Rules dug into her. Angrily she pulled the book out of her pocket, intending to hurl it into the Moat below. But something stopped her. The little red book sat so naturally in her hand and felt so much a part of her that suddenly Jenna knew she could not throw it away—in fact, she could never throw it away. This fragile, worn, little red book contained her history. Whatever she thought of it, whether she liked it or not, this was who she was, who her family was, and she knew, as she looked down onto the Darkening Castle below, that this was where she belonged. Nothing she did would ever change that.
And so, sitting on a somewhat confused dragon, Jenna realized what the Day of Recognition actually meant. Somehow, without any official ceremony, procession or traditional hoo-ha, it had happened. She understood who she was and she accepted it. It was, she realized, recognition of something she had known for a while but had preferred not to notice. It was a bit late in the day, she thought, as she heard the chimes of the Drapers Yard Clock strike ten, but that was fine.
Septimus took Jenna’s sudden silence to mean that she had stopped speaking to him in disgust.
“Landing!” he yelled.