Chapter 3
Kat! Help!” Dunstana shouts instinctively.
“What did you do?” Kat shouts back, equally instinctively.
“I don’t know, all I did was sit down! It was an accident!”
The Sisters Darkstone watch in amazement as one of the cave walls slowly and loudly begins to rise up from the ground and disappear into the ceiling, revealing a hidden passage that extends down into darkness.
“Well,” Kat says when the rumbling stops. “How about that?” She looks over her shoulder back to her sister. “Nice work.”
“Come on, Kat!” Dunstana says, leaping up from the stone, nearly forgetting to put her boot back on in her excitement. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
The new passageway is narrow enough that Kat can touch both walls at once.
The ceiling is low, but thankfully not low enough to pose a risk to her head. There is only one obvious way forward, which disappears around a corner.
There is nothing else to do but go forward.
So Kat and Dunstana make their way forward, around the corner and into a large, square room.
There are long-abandoned stools and tables scattered around the room and piles of broken barrels and shattered crates in the corners. On one wall is a hallway blocked by a cave-in, on the opposite wall is a door that is still closed and locked.
Opposite the entrance where Dunstana and Kat stand is a stairway that disappears down into the darkness.
Kat approaches the locked door. Before she goes through the effort of picking the lock, she looks to see if she could just smash it off. Despite the lock’s obvious age, it’s still solid and still made of metal. It won’t go without a fight.
Kat consigns herself to that fight, cracks her knuckles and kneels down to get to work.
Remembering something she read in one of the many adventuring manuals she has read, Kat takes out one of her daggers and starts poking at the lock’s keyhole, probing, twisting, tapping and generally finagling, hoping to hear the sweet, sweet click of the lock coming unlocked.
Once Kat has been at work on the lock for a while, Dunstana begins tugging on her vest. She tries to ignore it. That only makes the little pirate more insistent.
Vexed by her sister and unable to concentrate, Kat turns towards Dunstana. “What?” she asks, irritable at having her concentration broken
“There’s rats,” Dunstana answers fearfully, pointing.
Sure enough, the room has suddenly filled with the skittering and scurrying of many, many little feet and the light of many, many angry little eyes reflecting the lantern’s light.
“Oh dear,” Kat curses.
As the swarm of rats approaches, Dunstana begins going to town with her wooden sword and cork gun.
There isn’t enough space in the room for Kat to draw her bow and even if there were, it’s too dark for her to aim. She doesn’t want to risk hitting Dunstana, so she decides to make do with her second dagger. As she slides the blade free, a particularly mangy rat sets its sights on her.
“Oh dear,” Kat repeats as the rat leaps at her.
She rolls to the side and out of the path of the rat’s gaping mouth.
Instead of biting off her nose, the rat bites down onto the dagger she left stuck into the lock on the door. The rat’s weight shifts the dagger in the lock and the lock opens with an audible click.
The rat falls the floor with an audible thud.
Kat’s boot gives it an audible punt.
Kat glances over at Dunstana, who is doing pretty well for herself. She has trounced most of the rats into retreating, though one still stubbornly clings to her sword by the teeth.
Kat approaches her sister, grabs the rat by the tail, wrests it from the wood of Dunstana’s sword and flings it into the shadows.
That seems to be the last one.
Dunstana looks up at her. “Did we win?”
Kat is about to answer when the sound of skittering resumes once more. It sounds like there are less feet moving through the gloom, but those feet are significantly larger. A pair of huge, angry, red eyes appears in the shadows.
These eyes are attached to the biggest, meanest, ugliest rat Kat has ever seen. It’s almost as big as Dunstana.
It is a distinct possibility, Kat decides, that this nasty fellow is the Powers’ chosen Right Honourable King of All Rats.
He certainly looks the part. The tuft of white fur on his head even looks like a crown.
“Eww,” Kat says as the rat approaches.
She doesn’t really like rats. And this nasty thing is the worst one she’s ever seen.
The giant rat squeals at her as he charges. Kat wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he’s even uglier angry.
The Rat King leaps at Kat.
She sidesteps and takes a swing at him, not doing any real damage, but at least giving him a haircut. The Rat King lands, wheels around and leaps again. Kat ducks and the Rat King goes sailing over her head.
She shivers in disgust as she feels his claws graze through her hair.
She turns around in preparation for the Rat King’s next attack. As it turns out, that attack is to bounce off the wall and back at Kat.
He comes flying at Kat like some kind of horrible, mangy, squealing cannonball with horrible, mangy claws.
Horrible, mangy claws that are soon digging into Kat’s arm. She squeals in mixed fear and disgust.
The Rat King squeals in rage and hunger and begins climbing up Kat’s arm.
“No,” Kat says, frantically flailing her arm in a vain attempt to dislodge the Rat King. “Nonononononononono!”
She can’t stop its inexorable advance up her arm and terrifyingly closer to her face.
“Nonono!”
“Don’t worry, Kat!” she hears her sister say as she panics around the room. “I’ll save you!”
She is not reassured by this.
As eager as Dunstana is, her aim could use some practice.
As Kat continues to pry herself free of the Rat King’s clutches, something collides with the side of her head. “Gah!” she exclaims at the sudden impact.
“Sorry!” Dunstana calls. From the corner of her eye, Kat sees her reloading her cork gun.
“Aim harder!” Kat urges her sister.
“Stop moving!” Dunstana counters, aiming a second shot.
Kat does her best to stand still to let her sister save her from the Rat King.
This requires her to suppress every instinct to panic, freak out and generally make a scene as the horrible, monstrous, horrible rodent inches its way closer and closer to face-biting distance.
By now, he’s almost at her shoulder. She turns her head to look at Dunstana.
“Shoot quickly, please,” she pleads.
Dunstana takes a deep breath and steadies her hand. She has one eye shut tight and the other eye stares intently down the barrel of her cork gun. For what feels like the next five years, she takes aim.
“Not fast enough!” Kat informs her as the Rat King continues forwards and upwards.
Finally, Dunstana pulls the trigger.
There’s a pop as a cork comes sailing through the air. Kat holds her breath, partly out of anxiety and partly to make the Rat King easier to hit. She can barely bring herself to look, but when she does, she sees the cork catch the Rat King in the snout.
His grip on Kat loosens, but he doesn’t fall. Kat decides to give him a hand.
A fist, technically.
She clenches her free hand and swings at the Rat King, knocking him from his perch on her arm and sending him hurtling through the air and onto the ground.
Though she is now free from the Rat King’s vile clutches, Kat is left with an arm covered in scratch marks and stinking of Rat King. There’s not going to be enough soap in all Realmgard to get rid of the rat-stench that’s settled on her.
“Kat,” Dunstana calls, bringing her back to the task at hand. “Help.”
Kat turns towards her sister.
Dunstana is being backed towards the wall of the room as the Rat King advances on her, periodically snapping at her with his maw, making the little pirate jump and squeal in fear.
And just like that, Kat decides, it is on.
The Rat King made her mad when he decided to try to eat her face, but now that he’s trying to eat her sister, the Rat King has crossed a line.
There is nothing in Realmgard that Kat is going to let eat her sister.
As soon as she’s close enough — which, given the length of Kat’s legs, doesn’t take very long – she boots the Rat King into the nearest wall.
As she stands over the dazed creature, Kat reaches into her Adventuring Belt for a length of rope. Hastily, she ties one end around the Rat King and the other end around one of her arrows.
The Rat King squeals frantically and struggles vainly to free himself.
Keeping the filthy, flailing Rat King as far away from her face as possible, Kat nocks the arrow on her bow. She pulls back the string, aims her rat-arrow towards the dark recesses of the hallway they had entered from and lets fly.
The arrow goes sailing off into the darkness; half a heartbeat later, the rope goes taut, carrying the Rat King off into the gloom.
There’s a faint, distant thud signifying his defeat.
Kat and Dunstana both breathe a sigh of relief.
Chapter 5
Dunstana appears at Kat’s side. She still seems a little shaken from the scare the Rat King has given her but she isn’t harmed in any significant way.
“Did we win now?” she asks.
Kat nods and lowers her bow. “I think so. Should we go take a look at that door?”
Dunstana eagerly runs to the newly-unlocked door, hands Kat her dagger and throws aside the old lock. The door opens into a room that looks like a study or an office. There is a large desk with an ornate chair in the centre of the room.
Two of the walls are lined with bookshelves to the ceiling. The wall the desk faces houses a stone fireplace, blackened by the ashes of long-extinguished fires.
Above the mantel is an old painting. It’s battered, worn and faded, but it isn’t all that hard to tell that the painting is of a dapper man in pirate clothes not unlike Dunstana’s. He has a moustache that curls at the ends and a smallish Dragon perched on his shoulder. His stained, faded face smiles down at Kat and Dunstana.
Kat has no idea who he is. She looks down at her sister.
“Friend of yours?” she asks.
Dunstana’s brain is crammed full of the names, dates and deeds of every even remotely notable pirate in Realmgard’s history, thanks to her long years of studying the Big Book of Pirates. If the guy in the painting is anyone important, she probably knows him —
“He looks kinda familiar, I guess. But I’m not sure who that is,” Dunstana says as she shrugs in reply.
— or not.
Ignoring the painting, Kat sets about searching the study. The first thing she notices is the dust – and there’s a lot of dust. The bookcases are mostly empty and what books are left all but disintegrate at Kat’s touch.
When it becomes clear that there isn’t anything to be found on the bookshelves, she turns her attention to the desk, where she finds even more dust and one more book.
Curiously, Kat brushes the dust off the cracked leather cover of the book. The book identifies itself as:
The Journals, Memoirs, Records, and Assorted Marginalia of Captain Jonathan Fryte, Esq., Having been Set Down in Writing by the Man Himself for Perpetuity, Volume 1.
That’s certainly an interesting find.
From what Kat can remember, Captain Fryte had lived about a hundred years ago and was one of the most successful and famous pirates of his day.
And ever, for that matter.
They say he gathered up one of the largest and most legendary hoards of gold in history and hid it away somewhere in secret before he was caught and hanged for piracy.
Dunstana probably knows the whole story better than she does, but he’s still famous enough that Kat, who was never cared about pirates, knows who he is and about his treasure.
Kat looks up at the painting by the fireplace again.
If the book is Captain Fryte’s journal, then the painting is probably a picture of the Captain himself. Logically, this means that this cave is probably Captain Fryte’s hideout, which in turn probably means that at least some of his treasure was hidden here and probably still is.
Kat smiles. That is good news. Hopefully, today will end better than it started.
Dunstana can see her smiling. “What? What is it?”
Kat turns to her sister. “I think I’ve figured out where we are,” she says.
Dunstana turns in a slow circle as she looks around. “It’s a cave, Kat,” she notes. “Can’t you tell?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kat answers. “I think I know who this used to belong to.”
“Who?” Dunstana asks eagerly.
“I think this all belonged to Captain Fryte,” Kat says.
Dunstana’s eyes widen in excitement. “Really? Does that mean his treasure’s here? He had a lot of treasure, Kat!”
Kat stares down at her sister. “If you’re that excited about Captain Fryte, how come you couldn’t tell that was him in the painting?”
“He doesn’t look like that in my Big Book of Pirates,” Dunstana mutters defensively. “His moustache is different. And his hat, too.”
After a moment of thought, Kat picks up the Captain’s journal. If it doesn’t turn out to be helpful, the Admiral might probably find it interesting, along with more than a few other members of the family.
Kat grabs Dunstana before she can get too far away in her excitement and tucks the journal into her backpack.
The only path remaining is the stairway descending into the darkness. The stairs are wide and shallow, slowly taking them down deeper into the cave. The passage is deep enough that, even with the lantern, they can’t see the bottom.
Dunstana hops down the first stair. The tiles give way beneath her feet.
Click.
That’s a sound Kat’s far too familiar with — the telltale sign that a trap has just been triggered. She is not looking forward to what comes next.
“Oh dear.”
Beneath their feet, the stairs recede into the floor, becoming something between a slide and a sheer drop. The two sisters try to scramble back towards solid ground, but the slope is too steep, its surface too slick.
And gravity is a harsh mistress.
“Oh dear,” Kat repeats as she starts sliding.
She loses her footing. She can see Dunstana sliding down in front of her. Unlike her, though, Dunstana actually seems to be having fun, giggling happily on the way down.
It isn’t long before they stop, skidding to a halt on flat, solid ground.
“Awesome!” Dunstana exclaims, still giggling. “Let’s go again!”
As Kat picks herself up, she appreciates that things could have ended up a lot worse.
Honestly, as traps go, this one had been pretty mild.
A good trap would have made spikes shoot up out of the floor, or the walls close in around them, or boiling, molten something pour down from the ceiling.
This one has just left them inconvenienced.
Miraculously, Dunstana’s lantern is still burning. Kat scoops it up and surveys their immediate surroundings. On closer inspection, the trap is better than she’d assumed. It’s a good thing they came to a stop when they did.
The platform they find themselves on isn’t very big and surrounded by a pit on three sides. Down in the pit, Kat can see a thicket of metal spikes glistening in the lantern’s light. She can’t see an obvious way forward.
Dunstana has regained her feet and overcome her giggles.
“Where do we go now?” she asks, moving to Kat’s side.
Kat aims the lantern towards the far side of the pit. She can see a second platform, parallel to their own. On the platform, she sees a door and something that looks like a switch or lever beside it.
The way forward has presented itself.
That’s good news.
The bad news is that the gap between the two platforms is too wide to jump across and the prospect of turning into a pincushion is enough to stop Kat from risking it.
She turns to Dunstana. “Any ideas?”
Dunstana sits down and pensively scrutinises the far platform. After several minutes of this, her face lights up with revelation. She excitedly leaps to her feet.
“You can just throw me across!” she says suddenly and with shocking eagerness.
Kat blinks in bemusement at her sister.
“Throw me across,” she repeats. “You’ve thrown me at least this far before. Throw me to the other side, then I’ll pull that lever and that’ll probably make a path for you to walk along.”
“You were a lot smaller back then.” Kat isn’t at all sold on this plan. “You’ve gotten big. Do you really want me to throw across a pit of spikes?”
Dunstana nods.
“And you don’t see how this could backfire?” Kat asks.
Dunstana shakes her head.
“Not even a little?”
“Nope. You throw me across, I pull the lever. Easy.”
“If I miss and you go into the pit, Mom and the Admiral will kill me,” Kat points out.
They probably won’t just kill her. If Kat lets anything happen to Dunstana, the Admiral will roll her up in a carpet, fill the carpet with scorpions, several breeds of horrible, poisonous snakes, and probably also a tiger, stuff the carpet into an iron box, then toss the box in the sea.
Then he’ll fish her out of the depths so he could do it again.
“You won’t miss, though,” Dunstana insists. “You can throw me at least twice this far. Besides, what else can we do?”
Kat sighs wearily and buries her face into her palm.
Against her better judgment, she relents.
She has one condition.
“Do not tell Mom about this,” she commands. “And especially don’t tell the Admiral.” Even in the best possible scenario, the Admiral will be murderously furious if he ever finds out about this.
“I won’t,” Dunstana promises.
Kat sighs again and consigns herself to Dunstana’s lunatic plan.
She’s already starting to think of new identities to assume to escape her father’s vengeance.
Meanwhile, back at Darkstone Manor, Admiral Dorian sets down his Porthaven Times with a worried grumble.
The grim shadow passes over his face as a sense of foreboding — and a sudden urge to acquire a tiger and an iron box — fills his heart.
He glances towards the window and wonders just what it is Kat and Dunstana have gotten themselves into.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Estelle asks as she cleans up the remains of breakfast.
“Honestly,” Dorian says with a sigh. “I don’t know. But I’m getting the feeling that Kat’s going to get a talking-to when she gets back.”
“Kat wouldn’t do anything to put Dunstana in danger,” Estelle insists. “It’s probably just gas, dear.”
“Maybe,” Dorian concedes, reaching for his newspaper again. “But if it turns out Kat’s gotten up to something, there’s going to be trouble.”
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