Tunnels 01, Tunnels

immediate lull in the chatter around them, and in the silence all heads turned toward Will. Uncle Tam emerged from a group of people and extravagantly waved over the two boys. The faces in the crowd outside the tavern were varied: curious, grinning, blank -- but for the most part sneering with unbridled hostility. Tam seemed not the slightest bit bothered by this. He threw his thick arms around the boys' shouders and turned his head to face the crowd, staring back at them in mute defiance.
    The cacophony continued inside the tavern, only serving to make the yawning silence outside, and the rising tension that accompanied it, even more intense. This horrible hush filled Will's ears, crashing and swelling and drowning everything out.
    Then an earsplitting belch, the longest and loudest Will had ever heard, ripped from someone in the crowd. As the last echoes rang back from the neighborhood buildings, the spell was broken, and the whole crowd exploded into peals of harsh laughter, intermingled with cheers and the random wolf whistle.
    It wasn't long before all this merriment subsided and people settled down again, the chatter resuming as a small man was widely congratulated and patted on the back so forcibly that he had to cover his drink with his hand to prevent it from slopping onto the pavement.
    Still acutely self-conscious, Will kept his head bowed. He couldn't help noticing when Bartleby, stretched out under the bench where the men sat, jerked suddenly, as if some parasite or other had bitten him. Doubling up, the cat began to lick his nether regions with a hind leg pointing heavenward, looking remarkably like a badly plucked turkey.
    "Now that you've met the great unwashed," Uncle Tam said, his eyes briefly flicking back over the crowd, "let me introduce you to royalty, the creme de la creme. This is Joe Waites," he said, maneuvering Will face to face with a wizened old man. His head was topped with a tightly fitting skullcap that seemed to compress the upper half of his face, making his eyes bulge out and hoisting his cheeks up into an involuntary grin. A solitary tooth protruded from his top jaw like an ivory tusk. He proffered his hand to Will, who shook it reluctantly, somewhat surprised to find it warm and dry.
    "And this" -- Tam inclined his head to a dapper man sporting a tawdry checkered three-piece suit and black-rimmed glasses -- "is Jesse Shingles." The man bowed gracefully and then chuckled, raising his thick eyebrows.
    "And, not least, the one and only Imago Freebone." A man with long, dank hair plaited into a biker's ponytail shot out a mittened hand, his voluminous leather coat flapping open to reveal his immense deep-chested barrel of a body. Will was so intimidated by the sheer mass of the man, he almost took a step back.
    "Deeply pleased to meet such a hallowed legend, we being such 'umble personages," Imago said, bending his bulk forward and tugging a nonexistent forelock with his other hand.
    "Uh... hello," Will said, uncertain what to make of him.
    "Knock it off," Tam warned with a grimace.
    Imago straightened up, offering his hand again, and in a normal voice said, "Will, very good to meet you." Will shook it again. "I shouldn't tease," Imago added earnestly. "We all know what you've been through, only too well." His eyes were warm and sympathetic as he continued to clasp Will's hand between both of his, finally releasing it with a comforting squeeze. "I've had the pleasure of the Dark Light myself several times, courtesy of our dear friends," he said.
    "Yeah, gives you the most god-awful heartburn," Jesse Shingles said with a smirk.
    Will was more than a little daunted by Uncle Tam's associates and their strange appearances, but, looking around, it struck him that they weren't that different from most of the revelers outside the tavern.
    "I got you both a quart of New London," Tam handed the two tankards to the boys. "Go easy on it, Will, you won't have tasted anything like that before."
    "Why? What's in it?" Will asked, eyeing with suspicion the grayish liquid with a thin froth on top.
    "Ya don't wanta know, my boy, really, ya don't," Tam said, and his friends laughed; Joe Waites made peculiar noises, while Imago threw back his head and gave an extravagant but completely silent laugh, his great shoulders heaving violently. Under the bench, Bartleby grunted and noisily licked his chops.
    "So you've been to your first service," Uncle Tam asked. "What did you make of it?"
    "It was, um...