Chapter Text
3 tapped the map once and rolled it up before stowing it safely in its holder on the supply cart. Tierce straightened up from tying Riposte’s scarf more securely around his neck and turned to speak to Neuvy.
“Make sure to keep an eye on your little brother,” she said as Riposte surreptitiously loosened his scarf again. “Don’t let him wander off or get lost, and if he gets tired, let him ride on the cart for a while.”
Neuvy adjusted her sword belt. “Mum, Dad already gave me this speech when Riposte asked to come with us. It’ll be fine.” She ruffled her six-year-old brother’s hair. “Nightmares or not, he’s tougher than you give him credit.”
Riposte held himself a little straighter and tried to look grown-up. It didn’t quite work, thanks to the soft toy whale he had clamped under his arm. Tierce sighed. “I know, I know. Riposte, are you sure you want to take Looky with you? He might get lost.”
Riposte held onto the whale a little tighter. “Neuvy says Crow carried Rabbit around for years, and he never got lost.” Crow suddenly became very interested in one of the supply cart’s wheels.
“True,” admitted Tierce. Crow coughed and went to see if his parents had any requests they hadn’t already passed on to the twins. “You’ve got your route all plotted out?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Neuvy, rolling her eyes. “We’re going out to that hill northwest of the city walls – you know, the one just outside the ruins.”
“I’ve seen it from the University watch tower,” said Tierce, nodding. “There’s some kind of building there.”
“Yeah, apparently it belonged to the University… Anyway, the twins spotted it on one of their maps and wanted to take a look, now that it’s safe to go and see these things. It’s about… oh, four kilometres as the raven flies.”
“Aye? Well, make sure to stick to the main roads – some of the buildings in the side alleys are a bit unstable.”
“Yes.”
“And try to be back before it gets too dark, all right? If you’re not back by full dark, I’ll send someone to find you and-”
“Yes. Makers, you never gave Dad this kind of trouble when he took me out into the city!”
Tierce sighed again and brushed one hand against her belly, just for a moment. “That was… a long time ago.”
“Yeah,” said Neuvy more gently. Riposte glanced from his mother to his sister and back again, frowning. “It’ll be fine – I’ll keep an eye on him.” She turned to Riposte. “Try to run off and I’ll tether you to the cart.”
Riposte narrowed his optics a little, trying to work out if she was joking or not. Tierce gave a rueful smile and knelt to give her son a hug. “Behave yourself for your big sister, all right? If she says to hide, or stop, or move-”
Riposte bore the hug with good grace for a few seconds before trying to wriggle free. “Mu-um.”
Tierce laughed and let go of him. “Just make sure you’re with at least one of the others at all times, all right?” She paused for a second. “Preferably not Crow.”
“Oh, now that’s not fair,” said Neuvy, grinning. “He only nearly got us all killed once, and after that he’s been a lot more careful.”
“Are you still talking about me?” asked Crow, coming back into earshot.
“We were talking about different stuff when you were away,” said Neuvy. “Conversation’s only just come back to you.”
“Aw.”
“Did 7 and 9 ask for anything?”
“Yeah, a couple of things – bootlaces, spare knife-blades. Dad lent me this,” he added, holding up 9’s second-most-recent lightstaff. “He said to try and bring it back in one piece.” 4 flickered something that made Crow laugh. Neuvy gave him a questioning look. “That was, um, ‘Says him who’s broken five of them’.”
Tierce just shook her head, smiling. “You’d best get going, if you want to make the most of the daylight,” she said. “I’ll keep a light on for you when you get back.”
What had looked like a fairly short, direct route on the map turned out to be neither. For one, the long-dead cartographers had not seen fit to include any contours on the map, hiding from the ragdolls the fact that the hill they sought was both a lot steeper and a lot rockier than it looked. Not that they found this out immediately: their route through the city was blocked by several half-collapsed or otherwise unstable buildings, forcing them to take a time-consuming detour around to the one clear street. Even the detour involved a slight delay when Riposte dropped Looky the whale and insisted on going back for him, but finally they made it to the foot of what must, at some point, have been an access road for the building. It seemed to have made it through the War relatively intact – Neuvy could only see one bomb crater about five metres up the road, and a line of bullet holes in the trunk of one dead tree – but the intervening decades had not been kind to it. Several new trees had grown among the dead ones in the years since the rain and their roots had forced their way under and through the road surface, lifting some sections and leaving deep cracks in others.
“You think we should’ve brought Shuck with us?” asked Crow, folding his arms. “It could’ve got over that no problem.” True enough, the cracks would not have posed a problem to anything larger than a dog, but to a ragdoll they made a challenging assault course.
“Yeah, I think we should,” said Neuvy. “Unfortunately we didn’t. C’mon, let’s make a start on this. ’Pos, get off the cart – we might need to carry it part of the way.”
Grumbling, Riposte clambered down from the supply cart. 3 and 4 shared a rueful glance before they braced their shoulders against the back of the cart and helped Neuvy and Crow half-push, half-drag it up the shattered road. A few curious birds arrived to investigate as they walked, but they quickly lost interest and fled when Crow brandished his spear at them. Finally, they managed to haul the cart to the top of the hill, where they stopped for a rest and discovered to their dismay that the building had steps.
Two storeys of red brick towered above them. A quick patrol of the perimeter revealed multiple doors, most of them by some miracle of preservation still firmly in their frames. The windows had fared less well: only a few of the glass panes were still intact, with the rest either completely shattered or, at best, bearing a few fractures. Some enterprising soul had clearly done their best to repair it, pinning wooden boards or sheets of fabric over the damaged or missing panes, but the overall effect was still that of a building that had seen better days. It seemed to be roughly cross-shaped, with a single large, white dome in the centre and three smaller ones on the ends of the shorter arms. The main door – firmly closed – had once had a sign over the door, but the embossed metal letters had fallen off and were scattered on the ground beneath. 3 and 4 quickly conferred with one another, running through everything they had ever read in the Library about the buildings of the city, but the only thing they found was a single blurred photograph torn from a rotting book. It showed the sign over the door as it had once been, but not with the clarity needed to actually read it. Eventually they just shrugged and led the little group towards the nearest passable door.
The hallway in which they found themselves was pitch black. Unconsciously, they all huddled together; Riposte took a deep breath and caught hold of his sister’s hand, keeping Looky firmly under his other arm. Crow tied his spear across his back and lifted 9’s lightstaff, twisting the bulb one-handed. Immediately the filament began to glow, but the tiny bulb – not much bigger than an adult human’s thumbnail – was not enough to fully illuminate the corridor. Riposte did his best to look brave as strange shadows sprang into life all around them. Neuvy rubbed her knuckles lightly against his hair.
Crow turned to the twins. “Where to?”
3 pointed away to their left, and scurried away with his sister hot on his heels without waiting to see if the three younger ragdolls were following. Neuvy sighed and prised her hand free of Riposte’s grip.
“Stay with Crow for a sec, will you? I’m just gonna grab something off the cart.”
Crow looked down at Riposte. “You’re not holding my hand,” he said firmly. Riposte adopted his saddest face. “…OK, fine. But just until Neuvy gets back, right?”
“OK.”
He had been cleaning one of the library’s remaining windows when his audioreceptors picked up a slight sound. Immediately, he straightened up and pushed his rust-coloured hood back off his head, concentrating hard as he tried to zero in on the sound. Removing the hood wasn’t enough. With a sigh, he undid the uppermost clasp holding his chest shut and reached inside with one hand, finding the right thumbwheel on his spine with the tips of his fingers. He turned the tiny wheel two notches to his left, dialling up the sensitivity of his audioreceptors.
Voices. His jaw dropped and he turned the wheel one notch further, letting him pick up the words. Had the Master finally come back for him?
No. None of the voices belonged to the Master. None of them was even familiar. He sighed again and turned the thumbwheel back to its original position, then closed the clasp and pulled his hood back up. That window wasn’t going to clean itself.
Then a horrible realisation struck him. Strange voices meant that there were strangers in the Observatory! Strangers couldn’t possibly be trusted to know where everything was supposed to be, or how it all worked. Suppose they tampered with the lens array, or – even worse – decalibrated the orrery? The Master would be so furious when he returned. It didn’t bear thinking about. Clearly, he would have to keep a much closer eye on these strangers. He left the yellow duster neatly folded on the windowsill and hurried for the handholds he’d painstakingly carved into the wooden panelling. He paused for a second, looking guiltily at the pale marks against the dark varnish. The Master wouldn’t be pleased about that, either.
“You’re six now, right?” asked Crow.
“Yeah,” said Riposte, picking a piece of grit out of his ankle joint.
“I already had my first spear when I was six. You thought about asking your parents for some kind of weapon?”
“I’ve heard ’em talkin’,” said Riposte, checking the other ankle just in case. “Dad thinks it’s a good idea but Mum’s not so sure about it. I dunno why – she’s got a sword, so I guess she’s not scared of them or something, but…”
Crow scratched the lower rim of his right optic. “I remember Neuvy didn’t get her own sword until she was seven. Sixte’ll talk your mum around – he gave Neuvy her first sword. If you want a spear instead, you can have my old one,” he added a little grudgingly.
“But then I’d have to learn from 7,” said Riposte.
“And what’s wrong with my mum?”
“…I’m kinda scared of her.”
Crow let out a snort of laughter. “Really?”
“She’s got a scary hat!”
Crow rolled his eyes. “You could probably ask her not to wear the ‘scary hat’ in lessons,” he said, and shrugged. “Maybe axes are more your speed. Freyja’d give you a few pointers.”
“Wouldn’t I have to tie one arm up or something?”
“You don’t have to have one arm to learn from someone with one arm,” Crow pointed out. “I figure she’d be a pretty laid-back teacher. Hell, she’s laid-back about everything else.”
“Riposte, is Crow teaching you bad words?” said Neuvy, returning with a length of string slung across her chest and one eyebrow raised.
“Naw, we were just talkin’ about weapons,” said Riposte, thoughtfully eyeing the sabre at Neuvy’s belt. “Crow says you got yours when you were seven.”
“Yeah, Dad gave it to me,” said Neuvy. “I figured he needed something to do with his time, so I asked him to teach me to fence.” She craned her neck, squinting into the darkness. “Where’d the twins scuttle off to?”
“They went that way,” said Crow, jerking his head in roughly the right direction.
“Lucky they’ve got their eyelights, then,” said Neuvy. “Better catch up before one of them burns out.”
They found the twins musing around the foot of a bookcase in a library. It was nothing like as big as the one where they all lived, but many of the books were in much better condition. As the young ragdolls caught up, 4 climbed up onto the lowest shelf and carefully selected one volume, easing it out of its place on the shelf and lowering it down to her brother as slowly as she could. 3 almost collapsed under the sudden weight, but managed to steady himself long enough for Neuvy and Crow to lend a hand. Together, the three of them laid the book on the floor, and the teens stood back to let the twins reverently lift the cover. The frontispiece was a beautiful woodcut of the night sky, but the contents seemed to involve an awful lot of numbers and both Crow and Neuvy quickly lost interest as the twins carefully scanned each page. Crow wandered off to see if he could find something that looked a bit more interesting. Neuvy sat down on the floor next to Riposte.
“Neuvy?” asked Riposte.
“Yeah?”
“When you were little, did Mum worry as much about you as she does about me? I mean… she doesn’t make a fuss about you havin’ a sword or anythin’, but Dad’s really havin’ to work on gettin’ her to let him get one for me.”
“I… No, she didn’t.”
“Why not?” pressed Riposte.
“It’s just… ’Pos, it’s a long story, and I think Dad would be better at telling it than me. You should ask him about it when we get home.”
“Yeah, but Dad’s not here, and I wanna know now.”
Neuvy sighed. “Well… All right, but don’t ask for any more details, ’cause I don’t think I can do them justice.” She paused for a few seconds, trying to rally her thoughts. Riposte poked her in the side. “All right, hold your horses, I’m getting to it!” She took a deep breath. “You’re not their first son,” she said finally.
“Huh?”
“Mind-blowing, right? Anyway… Years ago, a few years before you were born, Mum was gonna have another baby – a boy, like you – but… Things went wrong. She got hurt. Badly hurt. She got better after Dad patched her up, but…” Neuvy sighed. “The baby died, and I think it hurt her worse on the inside than she’s ever let on. I’m big enough to take a few knocks now, but… Well, she just doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Huh.” Riposte frowned down at his whale. “Was it Mum who made Looky for me?” he asked, holding up the toy.
“She picked the fabric,” said Neuvy, “but Dad did the sewing. Mum’s not very good at it.”
“Hey, Neuvy!” Crow’s voice came from through a door at the opposite end of the library. “Come check this out!”
Neuvy lurched to her feet and followed the voice, Riposte trotting after her. The twins glanced at each other for a second before going back to their cataloguing.
Crow was standing at the edge of a wooden walkway, staring out at the huge room beyond. Even with the lightstaff, it was too dark to make out the fine, precise details marked on the domed ceiling high above their heads, but in the gloom beyond the walkway Neuvy could just make out what looked like several large spheres mounted on poles of some kind. The smallest sphere looked to be twice as tall as she was. She crept up to the edge of the walkway and went down on one knee to try and get a look at the floor. She couldn’t see it, but she could just about see the vague shape of the stand supporting the spheres and poles, and a collection of immensely complicated clockwork. Crow held the lightstaff out over the edge, lending just enough light to show them the concrete floor almost three metres below.
“What is it, d’you think?” asked Neuvy, straightening up.
“No idea,” said Crow with a shrug. “Kind of reminds me of the globe back home, though. Dunno why – it doesn’t look much like it.”
“I can see what you mean, now that you mention it,” said Neuvy. “Maybe the twins have got a few ideas. Wait, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” asked Crow. Riposte wrapped both arms around Looky and edged in between the older pair.
“Thought I heard something moving…”
“Must’ve been the twins getting a new book,” said Crow.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” said Neuvy. “I’m just a bit jumpy with all this darkness.”
Then she definitely saw something moving. Through the door into the library, she spotted a small figure – a ragdoll – moving quickly and stealthily along the very top of the bookshelf and heading straight towards them. She placed a hand on her sabre hilt and took a precautionary step backwards.
Her foot landed on open space.
“Oh, shit,” she managed, a split second before toppling backwards. Crow made a wild grab for her collar. He missed.
Crunch.