Tunnels 01, Tunnels

being played on a strangled zither. Somewhere a baby was wailing persistently and dogs were barking. As they strode quickly past the badly deteriorated facades, Will caught whiffs of charcoal and tobacco smoke and, through the open doorways, glimpsed people huddled at tables. Men is shirtsleeves hung out of windows, staring at the ground listlessly as they smoked their pipes. There was an open channel in the middle of the alley, down which a sluggish trickle of sewage ran through vegetable waste and other filth and detritus. Will nearly blundered into it, but stepped sharply to the edge of the alleyway to avoid it.
    "No! Watch yourself!" Cal warned quickly. "Keep away from the sides!"
    As they hurried along Will hardly let himself blink as he feasted his eyes on everything he saw around him. He was murmuring, "Just fantastic," over and over again to himself, living history, when his attention was caught by something else. There were people in the narrow passageways that branched off on either side. Mysterious shadowy outlines were stirring within them, and he heard hushed voices, snatches of hysterical muttering, and even, at one point, the far-off sound of someone screaming in agony.
    From one of these passageways a dark figure lurched. It was a man with a black shawl over his head, which he hoisted up to reveal his gnarled face. It was covered with a sickly layer of sweat, and his skin was the color of old bone. He grabbed at Will's arm with his hand, his rheumy yellow eyes looking deep into the startled boy's.
    "Ah, what is it you're after, my sweet thing?" he wheezed asthmatically, his lopsided smile revealing a row of jagged brown stumps for teeth. Bartleby snarled as Cal hurriedly pushed himself between Will and the man, yanking Will from the man's grasp and not letting go of him through several twists and turns of the alley until at last they were out and back onto a well-lit street again. Will breathed a sigh of relief.
    "What was that place?"
    "The rookeries. It's where the paupers live. And you only saw the outskirts -- you really wouldn't want to find yourself in the middle of it," Cal said, dashing ahead so quickly that Will had to work to keep up. He was still feeling the aftereffects of the ordeal in the Hold; his chest ached and his legs were leaden. But he wasn't about to let Cal see any weakness, and forced himself on.
    While the cat bounded ahead into the distance, Will doggedly followed Cal's lead as he leaped over the larger pools of water and skirted around the occasional gushing downpour. Falling from the shadows of the cavern roof above, these torrents seemed to spring from nowhere, like upturned geysers.
    They wound their way through a series of broad streets jam-packed with narrow terraced houses until, in the distance, Will spotted the lights of a tavern at the apex of a sharp corner where two roads met. People thronged outside it in various states of intoxication, laughing raucously and shouting, and from somewhere a woman's voice was singing shrilly. As he got closer, Will could make out the painted sign, THE BUTTOCK & FILE, with a picture of the weirdest-looking locomotive he had ever seen, which had, it appeared, an archetypal devil as its driver, scarlet-skinned and replete with horns, trident, and arrow-tipped tail.
    The frontage and even the windows of the tavern were painted black and covered in a film of gray soot. People were so tightly packed in that they were overflowing onto the sidewalk outside. To a man, they were drinking from dented pewter tankards, while a number smoke either long clay pipes or turnip-shaped objects, which Will didn't recognize but which reeked of chronically soiled diapers.
    As he stuck close behind Cal, they passed a top-hatted man standing at a small folding table. He was calling, "Find the painted lady? Find the painted lady!" to a couple of interested onlookers as he deftly cut a pack of cards using only a single hand. "My good sir," the man proclaimed as one of the onlookers stepped up and slapped a coin down on the green baize of the table. The cards were dealt, and Will was sorry not to see the outcome of the game, but there was absolutely no way he was going to become separated from his brother as they pushed deeper into the midst of the throng. Surrounded by all these people he felt very vulnerable, and was just debating whether he could persuade Cal to take him home when a friendly voice boomed out.
    "Cal! Bring Wil over here!"
    There was an