Fury coursed through his blood and muscle, and the yellow wind flinched before it. Arthur sprang back, just as the black cutlass swept down — into the dirt.
"What!" roared Feverfew. He twisted around, his cutlass sweeping at Arthur's knees.
Arthur sprang over the black blade, cutting back with his own two-handed stroke, his sword once again severing the pirate's neck. This time, as the pirate's head bounced on the ground, Arthur tried to kick Feverfew in the chest, only to find his foot suddenly wrapped in paper and deflected towards a tree.
Arthur hit the tree and staggered back, badly off balance made worse because his crab armour was trying to keep his leg straight.
The boy teetered backwards as Feverfew's head shrieked into the air and then plummeted once again towards the stump of his neck.
It never got there. Suzy suddenly leapt across and smashed Feverfew's head to the ground with a broken branch. As it started to rise again, Leaf darted out of the ranks of pirates and, in true soccer striker-style, kicked the head as hard as she could out towards the bubbling, Nothing-laden waters of the Hot Lake.
Everyone, including the pirates, watched as Feverfew's head splashed down. Ripples spread around its impact point, but still everyone kept watching to see if it would rise again.
Arthur was staring too, when he was suddenly gripped from behind by two paper-shrouded, slithery hands that began to tighten around his neck. He just managed to get three of his fingers under those grasping hands, but he couldn't get them off, or stop them from slowly strangling him to death.
To make things even worse, Feverfew's head rose back out of the boiling mud. All the flesh, illusory and real, had been stripped from it, and it was now just a yellow-tinged skull, its teeth chattering, a sorcerous tongue of blue smoke flickering as Feverfew shouted his last words before tumbling back down into the muddy depths, to be totally destroyed by Nothing.
"Let Nothing remain!"
The hands around Arthur's neck suddenly fell away. The boy staggered forward, his crab-armoured leg failing to bend at the knee, and was caught by Jebenezer, who twirled him into a sudden and unwelcome dance.
"You did it! You slew Feverfew! And I saw it happen!"
"Stop! The pirates!"
Jebenezer paused in mid-twirl, sending Arthur cannoning into Suzy and Leaf, who were shaking hands. They caught Arthur and turned him so that he could see Feverfew's pirates running into the trees, throwing away their weapons as they ran.
"You don't have to worry about the pirates," said Leaf. "They're a gutless bunch. Feverfew could make them brave, but without him, they're hopeless."
"I just about had heart failure when I saw you with them," said Arthur. "What were you doing?"
"How about 'thanks for the great kick”?" said Leaf crossly. "I was staying alive, what do you think? Feverfew said he only enslaved Denizens. Or Piper's children at a pinch, because they're as hardy as Denizens and a sight cleverer. First off he was going to throw me over the side, till I told him he could get a ransom for me."
"From who?"
"From you, of course," said Leaf. "When he heard that, he got all interested."
"And you told him whatever he wanted to know!"
"Duh! I didn't have any choice! He could read my mind for starters."
"Sorry! Sorry!" said Arthur. "Let's start again. Thank you for that wonderful kick. Thank you, Suzy, for an equally fantastic smash with the stick."
"That's better," said Leaf. "You can make the thanks official by getting me out of here and back home where I now fully realise I belong!"
"Good idea," said Suzy. She pointed up at the sky. "If we can get out."
Arthur looked up. The sun was wobbling in the sky and there were strange, streaky black clouds spreading out from it.
"Uh-oh. They're cracks!"
"This worldlet is collapsing," said the Carp, once more being carried by Jebenezer. "But we must believe in a way out, for then we shall find one."
"The augury puzzle," snapped Arthur. He turned around to look for Feverfew's body. "It must be on Feverfew somewhere. We grab that, find someone who can use it among the slaves, take a ship —" He stopped talking. Where Feverfew's body had been there was just a big dark stain on the ground and long, thin, useless strips of curling paper.
The ground rumbled under Arthur's feet. Branches dropped from the trees and the Hot Lake bubbled more ominously. Mud began to spread beyond its shores, oozing oilily across the yellow earth.
"How long have we got?" Arthur asked the Carp. "And can you do anything to stop it or slow it down?"
"I have no power over such structures as this. I estimate the worldlet will last between six and twelve hours. Perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more. It depends on the nature of the eventual demise. Slow dissolution by intruding Nothing, or cataclysmic rupture into the Void."
"How were you going to get out, Arthur?" asked Leaf.
"By submersible," said Arthur. "One run by the Raised Rats. But it can only fit half a dozen Denizens, and —"
As he spoke, he got out the box and opened it to check the bottle. But the bottle was gone, in its place a pile of green glass dust and a tiny fragment of cork.
"— they're not going to be picking anyone up anyway. They've already left. Or been destroyed."
"So we're stuck here, which means we're dead," said Leaf.
"How about the Improbable Stair?" asked Suzy. "We did it before, Arthur. It ain't so bad. You lead the way and we all troop along behind."
"I can't get onto the Stair without a Key," said Arthur. "But maybe the Will can —" "Not in this form," said the Carp.
"At least we destroyed Feverfew," said Suzy philosophically. "Even if it's one of those whatchamacallit victories where you win and croak before you get all the loot and everything."
"A pyrrhic victory," said Leaf. "Great. There has to be some other way out of here. We need to try and think outside the square. Or laterally. Or with different hats. Beyond the normal... only I guess that is normal here..."
"There might be a way out," said Arthur slowly. "We have to get everyone to the harbour. Onto the Moth."
"But it's an old tub," protested Leaf. "If you think you can get a ship out, we should take the Mantis!"
Arthur shook his head.
"We can't get a ship out. The Rats were sure Feverfew's Gore-Draken augury puzzle was the only way to find a gate in or out, and I bet that's true. But there might be a way out using the Moth, because part of the Moth's insides are actually somewhere else, inside the House."
"What?" asked Leaf and Suzy at the same time.
"I'll explain when we get there," said Arthur. "Jebenezer, you'd better send someone back to the cavern and order the Followers to the harbour before they start spreading out everywhere. Oh, and did anyone stick those two Denizen's heads back... oh, good... will they be all right?"
"They will survive," said the Carp. "But they will suffer for many months, and they will not be able to drink for a year."
"Good," said Arthur absently. "Let's go! Carp, I presume you can free the slaves held down at the town?"
"Now that Feverfew is gone, I can loose their shackles even from here," said the Carp. It swelled up like a blowfish, flared as bright as the sun for an instant, then flashed around its jar in its usual shape at immense speed for several seconds. "There, it is done!"
By the time they reached the town, it was a shambles. The suddenly freed slaves had turned on any pirates still left. The most recent slaves, the crews of the Moth and the Flying Mantis, had re-formed under their officers and mates and were busy restocking their ships with supplies and the choicest pieces of salvage from the vast selection in Feverfew's warehouses. The slaves who had been there longer mainly sat around, waiting to be told what to do by somebody.