Old Kingdom 04: Across the Wall by Garth Nix Page B

Ripton somewhere up above him, coughing and swearing. But Nick wasn’t listening for Ripton. All his senses were attuned to what might be happening lower down. Would the creature come through the fire and swarm up the shaft?
    The smoke did begin to thin a little as Nick climbed, but it was still thick enough for him to smash his head into Ripton’s boots after he had climbed up about forty feet. The sudden shout it provoked confirmed that Ripton had been thinking about where the creature was as well.
    ‘Sorry!’ Nick gasped. ‘I don’t think it’s following us.’
    ‘There’s a door here. I’m standing on the edge of it, but I can’t slide the bloody thing— Got it!’
    Light spilled into the shaft as smoke wafted out of it. Hard white gaslight. Ripton stepped through, then turned to help Nick pull himself up and over. They were in a long whitewashed room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves and shelves of packaged food of all varieties. Tins and boxes and packets and sacks and bottles and puncheons and jars.
    There was a door at the other end. It was open, and a white-clad cook’s assistant was staring at them openmouthed.
    ‘Fire!’ shouted Nick, waving his arms to clear the smoke that was billowing out fast from behind him. He started to walk forward, continuing to half shout, his voice raspy and dulled by smoke. ‘Fire in the cellars! Everyone needs to get out, to the … Which field is closest, with hay?’
    ‘The home meadow,’ croaked Ripton. He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘The home meadow.’
    ‘Tell the staff to evacuate the house and assemble on the home meadow,’ Nick ordered in his most commanding manner. ‘I will tell the guests.’
    ‘Yes, sir!’ stammered the cook’s assistant. There was still a lot of smoke coming out, even though Ripton had managed to close the door to the dumbwaiter. ‘Cook will be angry!’
    ‘Hurry up!’ said Nick. He strode past the assistant and along a short corridor, to find himself in the main kitchen, where half-a-dozen immaculately white-clad men were engaged in an orderly but complex dance around a number of counters and stove tops, directed by the rapid snap of commands from a small, thin man with the tallest and whitest hat.
    ‘Fire!’ roared Nick. ‘Get out to the home meadow! Fire!’
    He repeated this as he strode through the kitchen and out the swinging doors immediately after a waiter who showed the excellence of his training by hardly looking behind him for more than a second.
    As Nick had thought, the dinner guests were making so much noise of their own that they would never have heard any kind of commotion deep in the earth under their feet. Even when he burst out of the servants’ corridor and jumped onto an empty chair that was probably his near the head of the table, only five or six of the forty guests looked around.
    Then Ripton fired two rapid shots into the ceiling.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I do beg your pardon!’ shouted Nick. ‘There is a fire in the house! Please get up at once and follow Mr. Ripton here to the home meadow!’
    Silence met this announcement for perhaps half a second; then Nick was assaulted with questions, comments, and laughter. It was such a babble that he could hardly make out any one coherent stream of words; but clearly half the guests thought this was some game of Dorrance’s; a quarter of them wanted to go and get their jewels, favorite coats, or lapdogs; and the last quarter intended to keep eating and drinking whether the house burned down around them or not.
    ‘This isn’t a joke!’ Nick screamed, his voice barely penetrating the hubbub. ‘If you don’t go now, you’ll be dead in fifteen minutes! Men have already died!’
    Perhaps ten of the guests heard him. Six of them pushed their chairs back and stood. Their movement caused a momentary lull, and Nick tried again.
    ‘I’m Nicholas Sayre,’ he said, pointing at his burnt hair and blackened dress shirt, and his bloodied cuffs.