The Dark Flight Down by Marcus Sedgwick Page B

you know. I won’t have time for breakfast before lunch and you know that I get a headache if I don’t get enough rest between meals. You’re trying to kill me too! Well, I won’t have it.”
    The emperor got to his feet.
    “Come, Maxim! We shall walk back, though you know how my feet ache. If I faint on the way you’ll have to carry me.”
    He scurried away down the hall, and Maxim followed.
    “Keep up, Maxim, keep up,” Frederick was saying. “Oh, and one more thing. Have that brat thrown into the river. He’s dirty and probably spreading disease. You have no thought for my welfare! None at all! He’s only some street brat on the make, you know. Honestly! There’s thousands of them just like him out there! This whole city is like a scabrous beggar holding out its hands for a penny. Well, I won’t have it. Throw him in the river and then get me my breakfast. Maxim!”
    He had reached the end of the hall and disappeared round a corner.
    “Sire,” Maxim called, hurrying after him. “Coming, sire.”
    Boy had jolted upright. He tried to sit up and in doing so fell off his table.
    Guards hurried over to where he lay writhing on the floor.
    “Right,” said one of the courtiers, “you heard His Majesty. In the river with him.”
    With that, several hands clutched at Boy’s clothes. Once again he was thrown over someone’s shoulder.
    “No!” he cried. “No!”
    As he made to scream again, a rolled-up handkerchief was shoved into his mouth.
    “Get on with it,” someone said. “We’ve got enough to do today as it is.”

4
    Boy struggled, but four pairs of hands held him firmly, so firmly that there was no chance of escape.
    He spat the handkerchief from his mouth.
    “You can’t do this!” he yelled as he tried to kick out at the men carrying him. “I’ve done nothing! You can’t do this!”
    The men did not reply, but one of them struck Boy across the back of his head with an open hand.
    “Little brat!” he said, to his companions.
    They were hurrying down a narrow dark passage, the rough-cut stone floor sloping away before them.
    “Would be easier just to chuck him down there,” one of them muttered.
    “Where?”
    “You know where I mean.”
    “And save some other poor soul,” said another voice.
    “You heard what he said,” said the second voice. “Put him in the river and get back to work.”
    There was no more talk after that.
    The men renewed their pace; Boy doubled his efforts to break free and was cuffed around the head again, and punched in the ribs this time too. Now he heard the sound of water rushing past somewhere nearby.
    “Right, then, let’s be done with it.”
    Boy knew they were standing by an underground quay. He could hear and smell the running water, and knew he was once more at the edge of the subterranean water-world of canals and catacombs through which he had been relentlessly pursued by Valerian in the Dead Days before the end of the year. So there was at least one connection from the palace to that cold, damp hidden city beneath the City itself.
    “Right!” shouted one of the men. “On three . . .”
    Boy had given up trying to plead, but tried to wriggle and kick harder than ever. He was helpless, and he knew that as soon as he hit the water he would sink like a stone.
    “One!” the man shouted.
    “Two!”
    There was another shout from behind them.
    “Hold!”
    Boy already recognized that commanding voice: Maxim.
    Two of the men hesitated. The third had already begun to swing Boy’s knees out, and lost his grip. Boy’s bottom half sank under the water. The two holding him by the shoulders nearly overbalanced and followed him into the water.
    Maxim ran over to the men. With his help, Boy was easily retrieved from the under-river.
    The men stood back from where Boy now lay on the quayside.
    “Sire?” one of them said, looking up at Maxim.
    Boy could sense the basis of the relationship between the men and Maxim. It was something he knew well from life