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“BUBUBUBUBUUUBUBUBUBUBUBBB!”
The vat had been screaming for a span by the time Sari woke Fluppit and they joined everyone else in the Sanctuary. Dun and Padg had returned and seemed to be trying to have a conference with Amber at the same time.
“Shreds! Can someone shut that thing off!” Padg was the first to lose his temper.
“No,” said Sari. She managed to cut through the chaos without even raising her voice. “It would be like putting a hand over their mouth. They need to talk.”
“So do we!” said Dun, “the Grey Duchy are massing troops outside. We need to plan and react, or they’ll be in here.”
“We think it’s the Grey Duchy who’ve poisoned the vat then?” said Amber. “Why?”`
Fluppit felt a hand on her shoulder, and Sari led her to where the noise was loudest in the room and handed her the medical satchel she always carried with her. Although the others were talking behind her, all Fluppit could focus on was the sound of the vat and Sari. “Okay, hold this,” she scooped a cup of fluid from the vat. She sniffed it. “Okay, bag.” Fluppit was starting to get overwhelmed with all the things in her hands, but she was also aware that the fluid in the cup was somehow, some part of a person. She pressed the bag towards Sari, who rummaged. Once she’d found what she wanted Sari poured whatever it was into the cup. There was a splosh as she stirred it with her finger. She then poured the concoction back into the vat. “It’s analgesic, now, we wait.” She attracted Nev’s attention to find out if there was any food available if, they were all cut off by the Grey Duchy.
“I’ll take you there if you like. Some of the guards we’ve posted are going up there in shifts. There’s only racta and houbous I’m afraid.”
“That will do perfectly, come on Fluppit, we can’t save the world on an empty stomach.”
The room was up a flight of stairs and along a corridor Fluppit had never been on before. The Air-sense was odd the moment Nev opened the door. Although the walls of were only about five strides in each direction, the space seemed bigger. It took her a moment to work out why. Aside from the small trestle with refreshments on and a narrow central table with enormous chairs either side, there was an open side to the end of the place. That was what was giving the odd Air-sense read. She was drawn to it. She could smell clearly and hear faintly the goings on of the whole of Gantrytown. There was an opening and when she got to it, she realised there was someone there before her. In the corner was a tall folk Warrior munching thoughtfully on a piece of bread.
“Watch where you’re going!” said the guard, chuckling, “You’ll fall off the edge.” Then when Fluppit started, “It’s okay. Joking. There’s a wall all round it.”
“Huh.”
“You can Air-sense everything from up here,” he said.
And she could. Their home—the cavern that housed the Duchies and the Collective and all the rag tag bunch of Folks from Below was stretched out beneath her like a noisy, fragrant carpet. But from the hanging chaos of Gantrytown to the little oasis around the massive pond, today everything felt different. Tense. She could feel blocks of people—formations of troops or militia below them. It was difficult to Air-sense people numbers from this far away, but she could feel the sense of the block of Folk and the way they were moving but in order—like the matrix of molecules in a solid block, maybe semi-solid. The Grey Duchy were never quite as mad on soldiering as the Red Duchy, which begged the question, why were they there on manoeuvres at all?
As if reading that thought, Sari bumped her shoulder gently. “Hmm,” Sari craned her neck over the balcony to get a better feel for the goings-on. “Here, for you,” she said, thrusting a cup of racta and a hunk of bread at Fluppit.
The bread smelled good, and Fluppit found she’d stuffed all of it into her face and gone back for more before her stomach had chance to go through the proper channels to announce any hunger. She heard a bark from below and rushed back to Sari, she was stock still and tense as a wire. Over the edge, the shape of soldiers had just become more solid and silent. “Bag!” Sari barked at Fluppit.
“Where?”
“Table.” Fluppit was there in an instant, reached, hooked the satchel with her hand and swung it towards Sari as she ran the few steps to her.
Sari caught the offering and flipped open the bag in one movement. She clinked and rustled in the satchel. “Hold,” she said, as she pressed a bottle into Fluppit’s hand. “Stay there,” she said to the soldier who thought it was time to depart and report what had happened.
“But I—”
“Thirty ticks. You’re needed here.” Sari had a fantastic tone of command. Fluppit wondered what kind of a general she’d make. In the time it took to contemplate that, Sari seemed to have collected the correct things from the bag and proceeded to stuff them into a glass flask. “One more ingredient,” she said, “if you will Sari. Gently.”
Fluppit hoped that instruction had meant uncork her bottle and pour it into the mix, for that was what she did. It fizzed fiercely in response to the fluid and Sari whipped it away and stuck a cloth in the top. In its wake, it left the worst smell to have ever crossed Fluppit’s nose. “What—”
Sari put an arm on her shoulder to stop her. “What’s your aim like?” she said to the soldier.
“Fair?”
“I’ll settle for that. Between them and the stairwell if you please,” Sari handed him the flask.
The pause implied that he was going to reply, but he thought better of it and leaned his head over the side. He stayed in place until a smashing noise from below and groaning told them that he’d been bang on target.
“What was that?” said Fluppit as the three of them walked back down the stairs to the Sanctuary.
“Oh, just a little something I cooked up when I was a wee pup about your age,” she chuckled. “Haven’t made one in eons. It won’t do them any harm, but they won’t come near the stairs for a little while.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so, that stuff stinks,” said Fluppit.
