He could see the head of the alley and the milling crowds of Cheapside. Nobody had followed him and he was just starting to relax when a broad form silhouetted at the junction. The man looked huge, but the other three who joined him looked larger still. Together they began to saunter down the alley.
There was a chance they weren't looking for him, but Pyrgus wasn't about to bet his life on it. He began to wonder if Seething Lane was such a good idea. There was no way he could get past the four men and back to Cheapside. But if he made a break south, he was running towards a dead end. Not so long ago the lane led into Wildmoor Broads, but since Chalkhill and Brimstone built their new glue factory there was no way through.
A thought occurred to Pyrgus. In all the best adventure stories, heroes trapped in doorways pushed the door and found it open. Then they went inside, charmed the pretty young daughter of the household and persuaded her to hide them until the danger was over. Maybe he should try that now. He pushed the door and found it closed.
Shoulder to shoulder, the four men filled the entire width of Seething Lane. Their movements appeared casual, but they were carefully checking every doorway they passed. In minutes they would be checking his. Pyrgus knocked softly, silently praying the pretty young daughter of the household had good ears. After a moment, he knocked again more loudly. The four men were so close now he could hear their breathing, which meant they could hear his knocking. They quickened their pace. Pyrgus kicked the door violently. When it failed to splinter he turned and ran.
'That's him!' one of the big men shouted. All four broke into a lumbering run.
Pyrgus was fast, but that just meant he reached the dead end quicker. Since Chalkhill and Brimstone built their smelly factory, Seething Lane ended in high metal gates, lavishly decorated with fierce warning notices about guards and lethal force. Why they needed that sort of security in a grotty glue factory Pyrgus had no idea, but Chalkhill and Brimstone were both Faeries of the Night, a notoriously suspicious breed. Besides which, they made a great fuss about the secret process that produced their glue. He grabbed the gates and found them locked. Behind him the running footsteps drew closer.
There was a speakhorn fastened to the gate above the lock, but Pyrgus knew better than to get into conversation with some gluehouse guard. Without bothering to glance behind, he jumped on to the gate. The combat shirt and breeches he was wearing underneath his jerkin made him look like some great, green insect as he climbed.
Despite the fierce notices, the only thing on the other side of the gate was a spacious sweep of cobbled yard surrounded by the factory buildings. Although the place was new – opened no more than a month or two ago – it somehow managed to look old. Grime clung to every surface. Beyond the office buildings he could see the squat glue-oven chimneys belching foul black smoke. Chalkhill and Brimstone Miracle Glue would glue anything to anything.
It would be only a matter of time before his pursuers reached the gate. He didn't think they'd climb over, but they might bribe a guard to let them in. In any case, he couldn't afford to hang around. He was about to make a dash across the yard when a fat rat darted from one of the buildings. It had got no more than six feet when a cobblestone exploded.
Pyrgus froze as chips of stone and bits of rat rained down on him. Chalkhill and Brimstone had laid mines around their factory? He shivered. He'd been about to run across those cobbles.
What were Chalkhill and Brimstone trying to hide? A minefield was more than Faerie-of-the-Night suspicion, way more than anything you'd do to protect a formula for glue. What was going on in the factory?
A uniformed guard emerged from a doorway, fastening his trousers. Pyrgus was in plain sight and too terrified to move, but the man was looking towards the crater in the courtyard where the mine had exploded. All the same, it was only a matter of seconds before he'd look in Pyrgus's direction. Where to go? What to do? With Hairstreak's men in Seething Lane, he could hardly climb back over the gate. But if he tried to cross those cobbles he risked blowing himself to rat-sized bits.
The speakhorn blared suddenly.
'Coming,' the guard shouted sourly, but without turning round. He reached the crater and stared down into it as if he hoped to find some clue as to what had triggered the mine. He was moving without any great haste.
There was no way Pyrgus could stay standing where he was. Once the guard turned, he'd be spotted. He wasn't sure which would be worse: Chalkhill and Brimstone's fury at finding someone trespassing in their factory or Hairstreak's men exacting rough justice for the missing phoenix.
The speakhorn sounded again, louder this time. 'All right! All right!' the guard called out impatiently.
A scary thought occurred to Pyrgus. Not every cobble was a mine. The rat had run at least two yards before it got blown up. If he ran too, he might get lucky.
Or he might not.
Another scary thought occurred to Pyrgus. Suppose he didn't run. Suppose he jumped. Suppose he bounded like a kangaroo. That way he wouldn't touch so many cobbles and so cut down his chances of triggering a mine.
He glanced around and estimated he was about thirty feet from the nearest doorway. If he covered six feet with each leap, he'd touch down on just five cobbles altogether. How many cobbles were mined? There was no way he could know, but surely it wasn't likely Chalkhill and Brimstone had booby-trapped one cobble in five.
Or was it?
No, of course it wasn't. If he only touched five cobbles altogether, he had a chance – a very good chance, a very, very good chance – of reaching the doorway in one piece. The rat must have crossed at least ten cobbles before it got blown up. And even then it probably wasn't a very lucky rat. A lucky rat could have crossed fifteen, twenty, maybe even thirty cobbles safely. Pyrgus had to ask himself, was he a lucky rat? He also had to ask himself, would the door he was aiming for be locked?
The speakhorn blared and kept on blaring. It was the perfect time to move – the noise would cover any sound he made. Pyrgus leaped.
The world went into slo-mo so he watched with terrified fascination as his leading foot approached a cobble, then gently touched the cobble, then slammed down hard on the cobble. He winced, but the cobble failed to explode.
Then he bounded off again and watched with horror as his foot landed full force on a second cobble… which also somehow failed to explode. In the middle of his third leap he saw the cobblestone beneath him was a different colour from the others and closed his eyes as he approached it. He landed, stumbled, trod on three more cobbles – three! – but somehow bounded off again.
Then the slo-mo stopped, everything blurred and seconds later he was standing in the doorway. The guard was headed for the gate, amazingly not caring where he stepped on the cobbles, his muttered complaints suddenly audible as the speakhorn silenced.
Pyrgus pushed the door. It opened.
He was in an empty whitewashed corridor. There were doors along the right-hand side and, with the first one he tried, his luck changed massively. He found himself staring into a cupboard lined with uniform white coats, the sort issued to glue-factory workers. He noticed that the coats were tagged and suddenly realised why the guard could walk safely through the minefield. The tags had to stop the mines exploding. It was the only thing that made sense – there would have to be something so the ordinary factory workers wouldn't get killed. He grabbed one of the coats and shrugged into it.