Syren

The low, slanting rays from the rising sun shone straight down through the stern hatch, half-blinding Septimus, Beetle and Wolf Boy as they ran up the steps to the open doors. They emerged, blinking in the daylight, and were met with a scene of chaos. Milo and his battered crew were desperately piling spars, sails, barrels and anything heavy they could drag on top of the doors to the cargo hold. Lucy and Snorri were throwing on a heavy coil of rope and Ullr, fur on end, was following Snorri like an anxious orange shadow. Nicko and the bosun were nailing a large plank across the doors, but each stroke of their hammers was met with an answering thud from below and a corresponding upward movement.



From the edge of the scrimmage, Jenna spotted Septimus, Beetle and Wolf Boy making their way forward. She left the barrel she was helping to drag across the doors and ran to join them.



"Where were you?" she gasped. "There's something really big down there - bigger than those three you chucked in. It - it's trying to get out. And Milo...oh, I know he makes a fuss about stuff, but this time it's for real. Look at him!"



Milo looked desperate. Velvet slippers abandoned, his nightgown as grubby as any deckhand's, he and Nicko were frantically dragging another plank across the doors.



"Get a move on!" he was yelling to the bosun.



The bosun shouted something back.



"You won't have a ship to leave if you don't nail these doors shut right now!" Milo bellowed.



Wolf Boy rushed forward to help. Beetle and Septimus went to follow, but Jenna stopped them. "Wait. Sep, there's something I meant to tell you," she said. "And Beetle should know too."



"What, Jen?"



"Well, while you were at that pigeon place, Milo had something put in the cargo hold."



"Milo was always having something put in the cargo hold," said Septimus.



"Yes, I know. But he told me not to tell you about this. I was going to anyway, as I don't see what right he has to go around telling me what to do or what not to do. It was a massive chest, and he said we had to go to the Manuscriptorium about it when we got home."



"The Manuscriptorium?" asked Beetle. "Why?"



"I don't know. He started on about something else, so I didn't ask. You know what he's like."



"Did you see inside the chest?" asked Septimus.



"There wasn't much to see. Just tons of little lead tubes lined up in trays."



"Lead tubes?" asked Beetle. "How many exactly?"



"I don't know," said Jenna impatiently.



"You must have some idea. Ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand - how many?"



"Well...thousands, I suppose. Gosh, Beetle, you're worse than Jillie Djinn."



"Thousands?"



"Yes, thousands. Look, what does it matter how many?" Jenna sounded exasperated.



"Surely, what matters is what was hiding underneath the tubes."



"I think," said Beetle slowly, "that what matters is what was hiding in the tubes - don't you, Sep?"



"Yes," replied Septimus, "I think that matters quite a bit."



"In the tubes?" Jenna asked.



"What do you mean, how could anything -  ohmygoshwhat's that!"



Another tremendous thud shook the ship - but this time it was accompanied by a loud splintering noise from the cargo-hold doors. Nicko and the bosun's plank were tossed aside like matchsticks. Someone screamed - and it wasn't Lucy Gringe. And then it began - slowly, steadily, relentlessly, the two doors rose from the deck, sending everything piled on top of them tumbling - spars falling, barrels rolling and people flying like ninepins.



Milo was thrown into a tangle of ropes hanging from a broken spar and pinned there by the plank. Wolf Boy was sent flying by a barrel of tar, and Snorri and Ullr narrowly missed being squashed by one of the lifeboats.



The hatch doors had now reached a point of no return. They wavered for a moment, and then suddenly, with a thunderous crash, they smashed down onto the deck, shattering the debris into smithereens and leaving the cargo hold wide open. Everyone scattered, but the sight that came next stopped all in their tracks.



As if on an invisible moving platform, Theodophilus Fortitude Fry and the Crowe twins were rising from the cargo hold. Some of the more superstitious crew members threw themselves to the ground, thinking that Fry and his henchmen were miraculously flying, but others who looked more closely could see that they were balancing on something more solid than air. Once again Jenna was reminded of the traveling circus at the Spring Equinox Fair. This time it was the acrobatic clowns who had formed a human pyramid and then fallen over spectacularly. But the sight that followed swept all thoughts of acrobatic clowns from Jenna's mind. Fry and the Crowes were standing - wobbling would be a more accurate description - not on the shoulders of clowns but on the raised shields of four armored warriors.



"Warrior jinn," said Beetle. "Thought it might be."



"What do you mean?" asked Jenna.



"The lead tubes you saw are classic jinn multiple storage units."



"They're what?"



"They've got jinn in them," Beetle simplified.



"What -  one in each tube?" Jenna's math was not great, but even she could work out that that was an awful lot of jinn.



"Yeah. They don't usually share."



"Share?"



"Twin jinn are extremely rare."



"Oh, so that's just fine then. Oh, my gosh, look at them. They...they're scary."



Everyone on deck had fallen silent, mesmerized by the sight of the warrior jinn rising through the hatch, their shields held straight-armed above their helmeted heads, bearing their cargo of Fry and the Crowes. Leaving it a little late, the cargo half jumped, half fell onto the deck. The four jinn rose higher until they, in turn, sprang off another line of rising shields. They landed on the deck with a synchronized thud, and the entire ship's company gasped.



The hair on the back of Wolf Boy's neck stood on end. There was something inhuman, almost mechanical, about the warriors. They stood at least seven feet tall and were clad from head to toe in ancient leather armor, dull black apart from their silver-winged helmets, which caught the rays of the rising sun and glinted as though struck by fire. The jinn stood poised at the ready, short swords drawn, eyes staring blankly forward. And if they were not frightening enough, behind them another two ranks of four were already rising from the hold.



From the safety of his impressive armed guard, Theodophilus Fortitude Fry surveyed the dumbstruck gathering on deck.



"Well, well," he said. "So someone let you out, did they? I suppose it was these pesky kids." He stared pointedly at Wolf Boy and Lucy. "Yer brought yer little friends along, have yer?" Skipper Fry eyeballed Septimus, Jenna and Beetle. "If any of yer the ones that pushed us in, yer did us a favor. We was goin' down there anyway. And now we got what we came for and there ain't nothin' yer can do about it. Enjoy the show, kiddywinks. Have fun and" - he stared pointedly at Jim Knee - "wear all the silly hats yer can while yer got the chance, because if yer plannin' on goin' back to the Castle, yer won't find it much fun there." He laughed. "We know who y'are and we don't ever forget a face - do we?"



"No, Skip," chorused the Crowes, "we don't."



But Skipper Fry's speech did not have the effect he had hoped - no one, apart from Jim Knee, who did not like being insulted, was really listening. They were transfixed by what was going on behind him. A set of eight warrior jinn had now stepped on deck and every minute even more were appearing - three ranks of four now, filling the entire area of the open hold. As they too stepped on deck, the next line of twelve shields could be seen below.



"Beetle," whispered Septimus as he watched the jinn step onto the deck, "this is Manuscriptorium stuff. Is there any way of stopping them?"



"Not unless you know the Awake."



"Milo!" said Septimus. "He must know it. You don't acquire a whole ton of jinn without knowing how to Awaken them, do you?"



"Well, you wouldn't," said Jenna.



"Oh, surely even Milo's not that stupid."



Jenna shrugged.



"I'll go ask him," said Septimus.



"Be careful, Sep," said Jenna anxiously.



"Yep." Septimus quickly did a SafeShield UnSeen and disappeared into the crush of debris and crew.



Milo was still desperately trying to untangle himself from the rigging when Septimus reached him. Septimus was about to appear, when to his astonishment Milo suddenly yelled, "Grub!" in his ear.



Septimus jumped - but not half as much as Skipper Fry. Fry swung around to see where the shout had come from and his eyes lit up with malice at the sight of the trapped Milo. He swaggered up to him and - by standing on the end of the plank - was able to stare Milo straight in the eye. "Sir to you, boy," he growled.



"Don't you dare call me that ever again - you hear that, Grub?" Milo snarled. Skipper Fry laughed, too triumphant to notice an annoying twitch beginning in his left eyebrow. "With five thousand men at my command, I'll call you what I like, boy. Got that?"



Milo fumed. He was outnumbered on board his own ship, just as he had been nearly ten years ago, when the notorious pirate Deakin Lee and his first mate, the vicious Grub, had captured his ship. He could not believe it.



"Yer bin double-crossed good, boy," Skipper Fry said with a grin. "Them monkeys yer sent to fetch the consignment - yer should a paid 'em more. Everyone has his price."



"You'd know all about that," said Milo, struggling to free himself from the rigging, but only succeeding in entangling himself further.



Skipper Fry eyeballed Milo. "Yer know what, Banda -  I never forgot. I were two whole weeks in that boat what yer and that ungrateful turncoat crew a mine cast me off in. All I had ter eat were a dead seagull. Drank rainwater outta me own boots."



"I should have let your crew throw you overboard like they wanted to," snapped Milo recklessly. "Grub."



"Well yer didn't, did yer?" Skipper Fry snarled, eyebrow twitching fast. "So now it's payback time. Kill him!" he shouted at the first four warrior jinn. "Kill!"



The jinn stepped forward, leveling their swords at Milo. Septimus went cold. The warrior jinn had no hands - their weapons were part of their bodies. The leather cuffs of their tunics seamlessly gave way to a short sword at the end of their right arms and a rectangular shield at the end of their left.



From the raised deck at the stern of the Cerys, Jenna saw the jinn pointing their swords at her father. "No!" she yelled. "No!" She rushed down, but the deck below was packed with the crush of crew backing away from the encroaching jinn. Jenna quickly became trapped in the throng, and so she did not see the strange sight of the collapsed rigging suddenly taking on a life of its own - unwrapping itself from Milo and transferring its attentions to Skipper Fry, leaving him trussed up like a fly in a spider's web.



Skipper Fry saw the warrior jinn approaching with their short, razor-sharp swords pointing straight at him, their blank eyes staring right through him, and he suddenly realized that it didn't matter to the jinn who was stuck in the rigging. Milo Banda or Theodophilus Fortitude Fry - it was all the same to them.



It was not, however, all the same to Skipper Fry. "Get me out of here, you idiots!" he screamed at the Crowes.



The Crowes did not move.



Fry's voice rose to a wild shriek. "Stop, stop! Oh, what are the words?" Fear temporarily loaned Skipper Fry an adequate number of brain cells and, with the four swords at his throat, he remembered the Reverse.



Milo, meanwhile, was being dragged through the crowded deck by an invisible force that smelled strongly of peppermint. Somewhere in the crowd Jenna found him.



"Ouch!" yelped the invisible force. "My foot."



"Sorry, Sep," said Jenna.



Septimus let go of his UnSeen before anyone else stood on him. Milo looked relieved at the sight of Septimus; being grabbed by something invisible had been a disconcerting experience. "Thank you, Septimus," he said. "You saved my life."



They escorted Milo up to the small section of raised deck at the stern of the ship, and Septimus got straight to the point. "What's the Awake?"



"Huh?" asked Milo, still a little disconcerted.



"The Awake," Septimus repeated impatiently. "It's your chest, they're your jinn, so you know the Awake. Tell us the Awake and we can stop them."



Another batch of twelve jinn stepped on deck, and Milo saw the dark tide of warriors move closer. He shielded his eyes from the daggers of light glancing off the winged helmets, and he knew that the ship was no longer his to command. But he said nothing.



"Mr. Banda, please," said Beetle. "Tell us the Awake."



While Septimus had been rescuing Milo, Beetle had gathered everyone together on the raised deck (where they had discovered Jim Knee dozing in a corner). Milo now found himself under the expectant gaze of not only Septimus and Beetle but also Jenna, Nicko, Snorri, Ullr, Lucy, Wolf Boy - and the rudely awoken Jim Knee. Milo gulped. "I don't know the Awake."



Beetle was aghast. "You take something like this on board and you don't know its Codes?"



Milo collected himself. "Security measure, apparently. The chest always travels separately from the Codes. I was to collect them from the Manuscriptorium when I got back. There's a ghost there who keeps the Codes. A Mr. - "



"Tertius Fume," said Septimus.



Milo looked surprised. "How do you know?"



Septimus didn't answer the question. "Grub's right," he said. "You've been double-crossed."



A long line of rats appeared from the stern hatch below and headed for the side. Milo watched them go. "The time has come," he said, "to abandon ship."



At that the Cerys gave a loud creak. Something shifted, and Milo knew that his beautiful ship was no longer earth-bound, weighed down on land. Now she was back in her element, rising with the tide.



A muted cheer rose from the crew.



Milo hesitated. It was a cruel coincidence that the sea had returned his ship to him at the very moment it was being overrun. But as the first rank of warrior jinn took another step nearer the ship's ladder, threatening to cut off their escape route, Milo knew it was now - or possibly never.



"Abandon ship!" he shouted.