Hattie walked from the cell flanked by Victor and Arthur. Lady Serena fluttered beside Arthur and, behind them all, walked the guard, nodding to anyone who saw them, keen to make sure that they were aware of the company he was keeping. This was the first time Hattie had seen the inside of the city when she wasn’t slung over the shoulder of a guard, kicking and screaming like she was a little child again. Now it was the right way up, the first thing she thought was how clean the city was. The red dust that coated everything outside didn’t seem to exist here.
A cheer greeted them as they emerged into a square lined with buildings decked with flowers. ‘It’s him. It’s Nimbus,’ a hedgehog squealed, and Hattie saw Arthur look down to the ground, blushing. The crowd before them was about the same size as the one that had accompanied them to the Anywhere Office, but that was where the similarities ended. These rabbits were plump, their fur glossy, not matted and patchy. The squirrels’ tails were bushy, not tatty. The hedgehogs’ quills were sharp, not broken. And the people wore smart clothes, not rags. Hattie took in every difference. So not everyone in Somewhere-Nowhere was desperate. Lord Mortimer must hate everyone who lived outside the city if he didn’t want them to be as healthy as everyone she saw around her.
But thinking this didn’t spoil her happiness at being freed quite as much as she might have expected. And the two reasons for that were walking beside her. She glanced first at Arthur and then at Victor, stretching out her hand to touch his hide. She would have put her hand out to touch Arthur, too, apart from the fact it would have been what he’d call ‘weird’. So she just smiled at him instead. Only Sir Gideon hadn’t been there when she’d needed him. He’d run away the moment there was trouble. She didn’t know where the cowardly dragon was now, but she knew she was well rid of him.
A call of ‘Make it rain, make it rain’ pulled Hattie’s attention back to the crowd. A woman with a swirling green cloak was calling out to Arthur. Hattie watched him smile uncertainly, then look up. ‘There aren’t any clouds.’ He sounded relieved.
The woman wasn’t put off. ‘Go to the Keep,’ she called after him. ‘Make it rain.’
Arthur kept walking, smiling nervously.
‘Go to the Keep,’ the woman called again.
Beside her, a man nodded. ‘Go to the Keep,’ he joined in.
The idea spread. First it was a murmuring, then it grew louder. Soon the whole of the crowd was chanting. ‘The Keep, the Keep. Go to the Keep.’
‘But I don’t know where the Keep is,’ Arthur said, his smile growing tenser.
‘It’s over there, just outside the city.’ Lady Serena pointed away from where they were going, but her eyes stayed nervously on the crowd.
‘Why do they want us to go there?’ Arthur asked.
‘It’s where they keep the clouds before the Hundredth ...’ Her voice faltered, but she recovered her composure quickly. ‘I think we should go back to Lord Mortimer,’ she said briskly. ‘That way.’ She pointed in the opposite direction.
Before Arthur could move, a young boy stood in front of him. A balloon with Arthur’s grinning face on it bobbed menacingly above them both. ‘Go to the Keep,’ the boy said. Twenty people swarmed round Arthur.
Lady Serena’s scales turned mauve. Hattie wondered what the problem was. She glanced over to Victor. He was watching what was going on intently.
‘Go to the Keep,’ the crowd urged. ‘Make it rain. Go to the Keep.’
‘We need to go to see Lord Mortimer.’ Lady Serena’s voice was strained.
Hattie saw Victor’s back arch, as if he was about to say something.
‘Go to the Keep.’
‘No,’ Lady Serena said, her wings fluttering anxiously.
‘I think I’d better do it,’ Arthur told her, eyeing the crowd around them. ‘They’re not going to stop until I do. I’ll go to the Keep,’ he announced, and the crowd cheered. They began to surround him, pushing him along with them, away from the path that would take them to Lord Mortimer.
I hope the thing that’s making Lady Serena so flustered isn’t a problem, Hattie thought as the crowd swept him away.