The Giant's Almanac Andrew Zurcher (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

moonlight did not filter through them; and as they passed round it, rising on the ramp that circled it, dark and menacing shadows kept pace with them, gaining speed as they veered away, then lunging back towards the perimeter of the tank. They moved with such purpose it seemed the fish might surge straight through the glass and sink their two-foot teeth into the children. Fitz shuddered at the thought of it, and kept his eyes on the lantern where it swung from Payne’s limp hand.

When he finally reached the atrium at the top of the hall, he saw that Navy had already thrown open the balcony doors that overlooked the Commissary.

But that was all she had done. As she stood looking over the stone balustrade, something seemed to have rooted her to the spot.

‘What is it?’ said Padge, joining her. Navy didn’t answer. Padge didn’t ask again.

Fitz was the last to the balcony, but the first to say what they were all thinking.

‘Are those snakes?’

The court had been closed off on all four sides, each of its gates firmly sealed. In its centre the fountain stood as usual, but around it the normal pattern of hexagonal paths lay in the high, bright light of the moon entirely invisible. Instead the ground seemed to heave with glistening black shapes; but these were far larger than any snakes Fitz had ever seen, or read about, or even heard about in stories. The slick bodies that writhed one over the other were thicker than ropes, thicker than cables, as brawny as a man’s thigh; and in length – he squinted into the darkness, trying to follow the coil and tangle of just one of the bodies in that heaving twist of muscle and venom. They were ten or twelve feet apiece, if they were an inch.

‘Those aren’t snakes,’ said Fingal. His tone was mocking, as if he thought them all credulous fools. Turning down the corners of his mouth in disdain, and looking away as if he almost couldn’t bear the stupidity of his childish companions, he lifted the lantern where it sat before Payne on the balustrade, and tossed it down into the court below. It shattered on a bare patch of paving, and the oil in its reservoir – suddenly catching the flame as it exploded – spattered in sheets and tongues of fire across a wide area, then disappeared as quickly.

The burst of light from the lantern left them in greater darkness than before. But the flame had burned bright enough, and had spread far enough, to prove what Fingal had thought to dismiss. Twenty sleek heads or more had reared, hissing, as the burning oil had hit the ground; tongues had flickered against the fire; and now, in the moonlight that was left them, the gleam of their white fangs suspended on the air seemed to sear the children’s eyes.

‘Those are snakes all right,’ said Padge. ‘But the good news is that someone has dumped about half a ton of gigantic diamonds in the fountain. One of them is bound to be the Blank Eye.’

‘If only we could get to them,’ said Navy. Her eyes were on the left wall where, in the House of the Jack, down one of the long halls of his library, with a little help from the imagination one might almost make out the lofty screw of the helix rising. Her thoughts were with Russ.

‘Give it a few minutes and we won’t need to,’ said Dolly. She pointed directly across the courtyard, where Dina was slipping with one leg extended down the steep pitched roof of the Commissary. She hit the iron guttering that ran across the outside of the building and carefully crouched atop one of the drains, craning her head round the eaves in order to take her bearings. Her plan was obvious; under one arm she carried what looked to be three or four makeshift torches – tightly wadded rolls of rags probably soaked in oil or fuel of some sort. Fitz remembered the matches she had earlier pulled from her pocket.

‘Torches,’ Padge whistled. ‘That girl.’ He was impressed.

‘She didn’t see what they did – before – when Fingal threw the lantern,’ said Navy. ‘Whatever those things are, they didn’t seem scared by fire. They’ll gobble her up.’

‘Good,’ said Dolly.

‘Not good,’ said Padge. ‘Dolly, give me your bow –’

‘No.’ Fitz cut him off. Even he was surprised. Everyone else turned as if they had seen a ghost. Fitz stammered for a moment, trying to frame his mouth to speak. The words hung on the air as Dina hung, now, from the gutter.

But when the lantern had hit the court, and the others had been watching the snakes, Fitz had been looking up. He had seen something else, something the others had overlooked.

Friends.

Mr Ahmadi’s albatrosses – all seven of them – sat perched in a row along the topmost gable of the Registry. When the oil had exploded across the Commissary yard, the largest of them – the old one – had silently fanned his colossal wings.

‘No,’ said Fitz again. ‘We won’t be able to stop her. The only way to save her, is to beat her to it. Dolly, can you get me a fish? Or two? Meaty ones.’ Dolly looked at Fitz and blinked twice, uncomprehendingly; then, like a fire catching, she saw Fitz’s glance dart to the great birds sitting above them, and her eyes widened. Fitz motioned to the bow slung over her shoulder. Dolly never took asking twice. She disappeared inside, Navy close behind her.

‘Padge,’ said Fitz. ‘I need your knife. And some of that revolting tar you have stuck to your leg.’

The older boy extended the knife, holding it out by the blade. As he took it, Fitz heard one of Dolly’s arrows thud off the bowstring and into the water of the Registrar’s tank. Navy came running as Dolly loosed a second. By the time she returned, holding a fat tuna with an arrow