You’re not the only one who has a problem with Colwyn Ballantine.  You have friends here.

Who are you?

My name is Kynella Good.  What’s yours?

Joe Warbeck.

And yeah, I’ve got a problem with him.  He’s got my children.

What do you mean?

Their mother sent them to him without telling me.

I tried to get them back, and I ended up in here.

I need to get out.  They’re not safe.

I’ll do whatever I can.

I don’t know how much I can reveal here, but I have friends who can help.

Can they get me out of here?

We’ll find a way.

Your children will be safe.

Thank God somebody here can see what’s going on. 

I’ve seen what he’s done to this place.

I’m not going to be here much longer, but I promise, you’ll hear from us.

One way or another, you’ll be out of here soon.

(To be continued)

There was a little rocky ridge about twenty yards away, so Rube and Lor went and hid behind it.  That was the easy part.  After that, the insects started arguing about whether or not all of them needed to be there, or whether Annie and Charlie could hide somewhere else.  Thirty seconds of frantic whispering about whether that would be safer or whether it would just make the Iridescences more suspicious turned into a series of variations on, “Go further up!  Graham, you go with them!” as the footsteps got closer.  Finally, the whispers stopped altogether, so they could hear the voices echoing out of the tunnel.

“…haven’t even been fed in three days, and they decided that now is the perfect time to go and see the sights,” came a sarcastic sing-song voice that Rube recognised as Dol, “You’d think they’d consider…”

“Consider what?”  That was Bo.  Rube hadn’t heard him talk as much as some of the others, but it could only be him.

“Well.  Consider anything.”  Dol let out a snuffly laugh- a kind of fnurg-fnurg sound- and suddenly the two of them were there, at the mouth of the tunnel.  Rube was a little surprised that they hadn’t merged together to come down here.  Maybe there needed to be a certain number of them in order to do that.

From where she was sitting, Rube could see Rosemary, Nadia, Vincent and Siobhan flying a little way ahead of the tunnel mouth, with the others sticking close to some bushes nearby.  Dol caught sight of them, raised a hand (the one that wasn’t carrying something heavy that Rube couldn’t see), and snapped her fingers to call them over.

Rosemary and Nadia swooped down.  Dol squinted at them.  “What about the others?”

“What about the others?” replied Nadia.

Dol put the heavy thing down on the ground, and stepped sideways so she could get a better look at the insects in the distance.  She nodded at Charlie.  “How are that one’s wings doing?”

She said it in a sugary-sweet voice, but Rosemary and Nadia caught her meaning.  They turned to the others and motioned for them to come over.

Behind the ridge, Lor nudged Rube.  “I don’t know what’s in the black case she’s got, but we should probably get it off her.”

Rube had no idea how they were going to do that, but she nodded anyway.

As the insects gathered, Bo cleared his throat.  “I won’t waste words.  We know that someone’s come through here, and we know you’ve seen them.  So where are they?”

The insects stared straight at him.  “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Rosemary.

Before Rube even knew what was happening, Dol had already done it.  She raised both hands and clapped, trapping Rosemary between her palms.  “I think it will take two or three minutes for her to suffocate,” she told the rest of the insects, “Just enough time for you to share with us what you know.”

But she’s a bee! thought Rube, She can sting her and make her let go!  Then she remembered something- the first thing they ever taught you about bees and their stings.  If Rosemary panicked, she probably would sting Dol’s hand, and then she was done for no matter what her friends said.

“We don’t know anything!” cried Nadia.

“Well,” said Dol, “That’s a shame.”  And she pressed her hands closer together.

Rube turned to Lor, about to ask what they should do… but Lor was already halfway up, grabbing a rock from the ground and hurling it forward so that it hit Dol right between the eyes.

Dol stumbled backwards, freeing Rosemary, who made a wobbly flight out of range.  Lor had already run past her, picking up the heavy case and trying to shift it as fast as she could.  Without even stopping to think about it, Rube picked up a rock of her own and hurled it at Bo.  He’d taken a step towards Lor, but when he was hit on the shoulder, he turned on Rube instead.

Rube didn’t even see how Lor got where she did.  She’d only looked away from her for a few seconds, watching Dol recover and Bo try to decide whether or not to pounce, when she heard a cheerful shout and looked back to see Lor sitting on top of the arch at the end of the tunnel, the black case balanced beside her.

Dol pointed an accusing finger at her and screamed something in the Opal Hill language.  Then she added, in English, “This is our home!”

Lor nodded.  “And these are your insects, are they?”

Bo looked back at Rube for a moment (in case she had any more rocks, probably), then shoved in front of his sister and shouted up to Lor.  “You were here before.  In our house.  And things didn’t go well for you then, did they?”

(Rube might not have thought about it if Dol hadn’t spoken another language just now, but she had no idea why they were speaking English to each other.  It had to be either for her benefit, or for the insects’.)

Lor’s legs dangled over the arch, and she swung them from side to side, trying to look nonchalant.  “Would I be right in thinking that whatever’s in here isn’t exactly legal?” she asked, patting the black case.

“Things didn’t go well for you, did they, the Radiance family?”  Bo spat those last three words as if they were poisonous.

Lor’s brow creased, but her voice sounded as cheerful as ever.  “Well, I suppose pretty much everything down here isn’t exactly legal…”

Dol spun around and spoke to the insects.  “She’s going to kill you!” she screamed, pointing and waving frantically, “It’ll poison the whole terrarium- she doesn’t care that she’ll die too!”

“It’ll poison the whole terrarium.”  When Rosemary spoke, Dol’s hands suddenly stopped waving.  She flew slowly down (still a little wobble here and there) until she was only a few inches from Dol’s face.  “And you brought it down here.”

“Why’d you do it?” demanded Nadia.

Rube picked up another set of rocks, in case Dol and Bo made a move towards the insects… but it didn’t seem to be happening.  Either they were genuinely scared that Lor was going to drop the case and kill them all, or they’d been shocked into silence by Rosemary’s anger.

“They were worried that more of us were going to turn out like Kai,” said Annie, “Might as well wipe us all out and start over.”

“No!” insisted Dol, pointing at Lor, “We brought it down for her!”

Rosemary made a noise that sounded like a snarl.  “Even if we believed that…”  She shook her head, took a deep breath, and asked Lor, “Where can we put it so it’s safe?  So it won’t hurt anybody?”

Lor waved a hand towards Dol and Bo.  “We could force them to drink it all.  That might help.”

Dol shrank back against Bo, making a high-pitched sound.

“Be serious,” said Rosemary dully.

Lor shrugged.  “You’re right.  I was messing about.”  She tapped the case again.  “It should be safe, as long as it’s locked in here.  So if we tie these two up and leave them here, we can take it with us.”

“No,” said Nadia, “They’ll get free.  And they’ve probably got more of that stuff hidden somewhere in the house.”

“Besides, what are we going to tie them up with in the first place?” added Siobhan.

They’re going to decide they have to kill them, thought Rube.  And was she going to be able to talk them out of it?  Should she even try?  From the little she’d seen and heard, the insects had plenty to be angry about.  But could she stand by and watch it happen?  Was there even an alternative?

The same thought had probably crossed the insects’ minds (from their faces, it had definitely crossed Dol’s and Bo’s), but when one of them spoke, it was to suggest something else.  “There are cages,” said Charlie, “Outside the terrarium, in the place I mentioned.  And they were empty when I saw them.”

Rube wondered how the cages had got there, and what they were for.  Well, I suppose pretty much everything down here isn’t exactly legal, Lor had said.  Maybe she didn’t want to know after all.

There was a brief silence, and Lor nodded.  “All in favour of cages?” she asked, raising a hand.

(To be continued)

In Underwood Hills, there was always a lot of pressure to pretend that everything was perfect.  Erda assumed that it was the same in most of the other towns on the paths, not that she’d ever know for sure.

Knowing that the paths were there did something to you.  Within a short walk, there were glorious places, lagoons full of strange, tentacled people, crystal cities full of people who could join together and become a huge, shambling thing, windswept planes full of tough little people with sharp fangs, skies full of beautiful multicoloured things that looked like they should have been sea creatures.  And you knew you’d never get to see any of it.  At best, you might be able to buy some stuff imported from one of them at the shops.  For everything else, you just had to trust the people at Dovecote Gardens.

There was a kind of happy sigh that came into people’s voices when they talked about Dovecote Gardens.  As if even thinking of it for a second was enough to give you a little burst of pleasure.  It was definitely enough to shut down any criticism of Underwood Hills as a place.  No matter what happened- people’s roofs caving in, employers trying to get you to do more work for less pay, council members being caught with their hands in the till- you weren’t allowed to complain too much, because, at the end of the day, you lived in Underwood Hills, which was right next to Dovecote Gardens, and wasn’t that just wonderful?  Weren’t you just blessed?

Never mind that Colwyn Ballantine had sole control of any resources travelling along the paths.  Never mind that he only met up with one or two council members a few times a year to discuss what to do with those resources.  Never mind that most ordinary people in Underwood Hills would never get a face-to-face meeting with him no matter what they did.  Colwyn Ballantine was perfect, Dovecote Gardens was perfect, and anyone who said anything different was just a grubby little malcontent who could be safely dismissed.

When Erda was younger, she’d gone through a phase of wondering whether the other places on the paths even existed, or if it was all an elaborate con so that Colwyn Ballantine could flog any old crap to Underwood Hills.  But, since then, she’d met a couple of people from Kindling Grove and Woebegone Valley and so on, and what they’d had to say more-or-less matched up with the stories Erda had heard.  She’d spent one summer following the paths in every direction she could, hoping that there was a weakness in the barrier somewhere that would allow her to visit one of the other towns, but all she’d found was the edges of Colwyn Ballantine’s property.

No.  The places on the path existed, and nobody from Underwood Hills could ever get to them.  So, the mission of the Pigeon Pie Society was to decide what should be done about that.

Today, the society were meeting, as usual, in Erda’s flat on the Dahut side of the mountain.  A lot of the other members were from the Spriggan side, and she’d had things set up so that they’d be comfortable- small chairs on top of the kitchen counter, a table with a tiny kettle and supplies for making tea.  They’d probably have had an easier time meeting in a rented hall (one of those would probably have provided both Dahut- and Spriggan-sized supplies, instead of Erda having to order them in), but they couldn’t take the risk.  You never knew when the council might come snooping.

So instead, Erda stood by her kitchen door and addressed her audience, the ones at her table and the ones on the counter.  “There’s been… a development,” she told them, “You’ve probably already noticed that Kynella Good isn’t here.”

The people in the tiny chairs on the counter looked around to confirm this.  Kynella would have been sitting among them- right at the front, most likely.  She was always the first to put her hand up and make a point.  Drove whoever was speaking round the bend, but you couldn’t help but like her.  Truly passionate people were hard to come by around here.

“Yesterday, I got a coded message from Kynella.  She told me that she was about to be arrested for shoplifting, and that I’d find a letter from her hidden on a particular shelf in a bookshop on the Spriggan side of the shopping centre.”  She nodded towards a man on the counter.  “I asked Toby to fetch it- do you have it with you, Toby?”

Toby stood up and took a piece of paper out of his pocket.  He unfolded it and squinted for a few seconds. “Sorry, the handwriting’s a bit…  Well, she was in a hurry.”  He cleared his throat.  “Dear Erda, I just saw a man from Dovecote Gardens being arrested in the newsagent.  He was shouting something about Colwyn Ballantine, and I got the impression that he knew him personally, and didn’t like him one bit.  Once I’ve hidden this letter, I’m going to go into one of the clothes shops and be really obvious about stealing something- hopefully when they arrest me, they’ll put me somewhere near where they’ve put him and I can talk to him.  I’ll get in touch as soon as I can- Kynella.”

One of the people at the table- Soren, a skinny guy with shiny green scales- frowned and made an uneasy noise.  “Do you think she’ll manage to get a message to him?  If they put them in different parts of the building…”

“If anyone can do it, it’s Kynella,” replied Erda, “Most stubborn girl I’ve ever met.”

The rest of the society nodded approvingly.

Erda clasped her claws in front of her.  “So…  I think we have two things to consider here.  One- Can this man help us at all?  Provide any useful information, say?”  There was a slight rumble of acknowledgement, but before anyone could say anything proper, Erda ploughed ahead.  “Two, and this is the riskier idea…  Whenever they arrest a Dovecote Gardens man, they ask Colwyn Ballantine to come over and fetch him.  In person.”

The room went quiet.

“If he was arrested yesterday, Ballantine might have already come and got him by now…” said Soren.

“He hasn’t,” said Dirk Spearing, who was sitting opposite him, “We’ve had people watching the paths.  No sign of him.”

Another silence, this one heavy with possibilities.  Erda knew that most of them were thinking of the same thing she had at first- kidnapping Ballantine and holding him hostage until he agreed to make some changes to how Dovecote Gardens was run.  Of course, logic told her that things like that had to be kept as a last resort, no matter how appealing they sounded.  We’ll see.

“I have some ideas,” she told the others, “Maybe you do as well.  Let’s talk.”

(To be continued)