The Purple Emperor

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

Henry had an unhappy decision to make. He didn't fancy getting stuck head first down a narrow drain, especially one that people had peed in… and worse. But if he went down feet first and didn't get stuck, he was going to have to negotiate backwards all the way to the main sewers with nothing better to guide him than touchy Flapwazzle, who might, or might not, decide to go off on his own at any time. So which was it to be – head first or feet first into the dark?

'Hurry up!' called Flapwazzle, who had already plunged into the pipe. 'I can't hang about all day – it's smelly down here.'

Henry took his second deep breath of the afternoon and plunged head first through the opening left by the uprooted flagstone.

He got stuck almost at once.

'Push hard,' suggested Flapwazzle.

Henry was loath to take the advice. He could still wriggle backwards and return to the comparatively fresh air of the cell, but each time he pushed forwards, he jammed solid. Pushing harder might get him stuck completely. Even a few feet in, the smell was appalling. He could think of absolutely nothing worse than starving to death while stuck in this ghastly puke-pong of a drain.

'Stop holding your breath!' Flapwazzle advised. 'You're all swole up – no wonder you get stuck.'

'It's my shoulders!' Henry hissed into the foul-smelling darkness. 'It's my shoulders that are stuck. They're not all swole – swollen up.' All the same he released his breath and tried, tentatively, to push forward again. There was a tiny movement, then he stopped.

Somewhere deep in his heart he knew he wasn't pushing hard enough; or at least wasn't pushing as hard as he could. He was terrified of getting stuck fast, but on the other hand the endolg was quite right: there was absolutely no point in wriggling back to rot in a gloomy cell at the mercy of the lunatic Queen.

The thought of the cell gave him an idea. 'I'll just go back and get the taper,' he said. 'We could do with a bit of light down here.'

'Bring a flame into the sewers and you'll set off the methane,' said Flapwazzle calmly. 'Probably take out half the palace.'

'All right,' Henry said sourly. Since he couldn't put off the moment any longer, he pushed forward with all his strength. And was stuck fast, stuck for ever, doomed, choking on the fumes, already dying in the darkness, before he suddenly shot forward like a cork popped from a bottle and found he had actually enough room to work his elbows and propel himself slowly forward.

'Gets wider down here,' said Flapwazzle's voice encouragingly.

'Glad to hear it,' Henry muttered. 'Any idea where we're going?' He'd only moved a yard or two and already it was so dark he could almost touch it.

'Just follow my voice,' said Flapwazzle. 'I'll keep talking.'

Henry frowned. 'Can you see in the dark?'

'No, but I can whistle,' Flapwazzle said bewildering-ly. 'It'll be all right in the main tunnels. There's a luminous fungus grows on the crust of you know what. It's dim, but your eyes get used to it.'

'How do you know all this?'

'Been down here before.'

Henry wondered why, but before he could ask, Flapwazzle said, 'Here we are. Corner coming up, Henry.'

Henry had already discovered it by crawling into a wall. He rubbed his head. There was a faint glow to his right. He crawled quickly towards it and fell nearly four feet into a main tunnel just as Flapwazzle said, 'Careful!'

He fell face down in water – at least he hoped it was water – and scrambled to his feet, coughing and spitting wildly. The endolg was right: the tunnel was huge and he had no trouble standing upright. Flapwazzle was also right about the fungus. It grew in bilious green patches on the roof, casting an eerie glow that allowed him to see a yard or two ahead.

'Where are you?' he asked, and listened to his words echo far into the distance.

'Ahead and a little to your right,' Flapwazzle said. 'I'm floating. Try not to step on me.'

Henry peered into the gloom. There was something dark floating on the water that might have been Flapwazzle or might have been something a lot less edifying. 'Are you sure you can find our way out of here?'

'Fairly sure. I've a good memory for maps. Thing is, there are lots of ways out of sewers – garderobes, privies, drains. And if you miss them all, you just follow the flow and you come out in the river. The whole system drains into the river. Which would probably be our best bet for getting away from the plud. You can swim, can't you?'

'Not very well,' Henry said.

'Mmm,' said Flapwazzle thoughtfully. 'That could be a problem before we reach the river.'

There was something in his tone that stopped Henry dead. 'Why before we reach the river?'

'They flush the system every sixteen hours. Seven billion gallons of recycled water under pressure. Even strong swimmers don't usually survive that. In fact, I can't remember hearing anybody's ever survived that.'

'Yes, but if it's only once in sixteen hours, we've lots of time to get out before it happens,' Henry protested.

'Depends when they last did it,' said the endolg.