Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
They passed a knot of townsfolk. Ward couldn't help but stare. Their clothes – flowing dresses, dungarees, baggy pants – were made of a patchwork of multi-coloured fabrics, they wore no shoes, and their hair hung lankly down their backs. They jangled and clinked as they walked, for they were adorned with countless trinkets: of copper, bone, shell, and gemstones, most marked with symbols, some of which Ward knew, others he had seen only in forbidden books, others he had never seen at all. A cloud of smoke surrounded them, for they all puffed slowly on bacci, and Ward caught a whiff of the not-quite-blackleaf scent he had smelled earlier. They moved languidly. One would occasionally mumble something in a lethargic tone, which would set the others off giggling like babies.
Slops nodded to them and mumbled a greeting as they passed. Ward looked back at them as he walked on, until the entire group had disappeared into a shop that sold pastries.
"Are they sorcerers?" he said.
"Who?"
Ward jerked a thumb back at the pastry shop.
"Them? Croakers."
"Croakers?" Ward said.
"What?"
"What are Croakers?"
"People from Croakumshire."
"Your pere's from Croakumshire."
"Yeh."
"Why doesn't he look like that?"
"Used to. Back in the day. We've got some argotypes at home you've just got to see."
Mr Slooper favoured natty suits and scuffed shoes. He adorned himself with no trinkets whatsoever. Nor did he smoke. Both he and Mrs Slooper were firmly against it. Anyway (Slops had confided to Ward) they were too poor to afford it. Ward tried to imagine Mr Slooper as a Croaker.
"What're your mere and pere here for?" he said.
"Meeting," Slops said.
"About what?"
"Best not to ask." He turned to Ward, raised his eyebrows, and turned back.
They passed a blacksmith, a cartwright, a saloon, a saddlery, and a general store, then a whole row of shops that sold the kinds of things the Croakers had been wearing, along with some apparatus that looked as if they belonged in an alchemist's workshop: chiefly glass flasks of various sizes, from which protruded pipes or hoses.
It was as he gazed into one of the shop windows that he caught the reflection of the street behind him and realised he was being watched. He spun around. The man, old and ragged, who he was certain had been standing under the eaves of the shops on the other side of the road watching him, was in fact paying him no mind at all, merely shuffling away down the road with his chin buried in the collar of his coat. He didn't look up as he shuffled on, and soon vanished into an alley.
Ward thought briefly of telling Slops, then changed his mind. Even if the old man had been watching him, what was wrong with that? He had been staring at the Croakers himself only moments before. Nevertheless, he felt uneasy. There was something unsettling about Croakumshire. He wondered what it would be like at night. What things crept down out of those high misty hills? He recalled old faerie stories of goblins that dwelt in logs, and eerie lights that lured travellers into fens, monstrosities that crept into cavities in old houses and lurked there for years working subtle mischief on the inhabitants, night ghasts, spectral horses, and creatures so rare and strange they did not even have names. If such things existed, Ward reasoned, they would surely live in Croakumshire.
Slops turned into an alley and Ward followed. It was so narrow they had to walk single-file. Almost immediately they came upon a man leading a fat drass, and had to press themselves up against the wall and hold their breath so it could squeeze past. The drass stunk. The man, so dirty he looked like something that had been dug out of the earth – a potato perhaps – nodded at the boys and said something in an unintelligible dialect.
Beyond the first bend in the alley they came to a flight of vertiginous stairs, worn by thousands of feet, and slippery with damp from the fog that seemed to hang perpetually over the valley. Occasionally a small, grimy window peered out into the alley, the glass in the panes too thick and opaque to see through. The sounds of the street below soon faded away to nothing. Now there was only the sounds of their own footsteps, and the tempus-like drip of water.
At intervals they came to landings where other alleys intersected theirs. Slops took none of these turnings. Ward knew instinctively that they were heading for the strange, high house on the top of the hill. It had not seemed so distant from the street below, but as the stairs climbed on and on he wondered if they would ever reach it. He didn't look back down the way they had come for fear he would grow dizzy, so the only mark of their progress was the approaching ceiling of cloud, still far above their heads. Ward's ears began to pop with the altitude. The muscles in the backs of his legs burned. Slops seemed tireless. Apart from the drass man they had passed several people early in their climb, but the higher they went the fewer they passed, and now they saw nobody at all.
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