Syren by Angie Sage Read Free Book Online Page A

houses, which hugged the fringes of the Port. He watched until Wolf Boy turned a corner and disappeared into the shadows. Then, under the somewhat disconcerting gaze of the silent crowd of grubby toddlers and young children, he told his dragon, “Go up.”
    Spit Fyre, who—despite what Barney Pot thought—was very careful of small children, cautiously beat his wings, and Septimus slowly saw the ground below loosen its hold once more.
    They were on their way.

6
J IM K NEE
    L ike a spider returned to its web, Merrin was back in his secret space.

    He had discovered it by accident a few days earlier when, sauntering down the Long Walk on his way to the Manuscriptorium, he had seen Sarah Heap hurrying toward him. Merrin had panicked; he was caught in a particularly open part of the Long Walk with no shadows to lurk in and no doors or curtains to slip behind. Merrin never thought well in a panic, so all he did was press himself against the ancient paneling and hope that, by some miracle, Sarah Heap did not notice him. But, to Merrin’s amazement, anotherkind of miracle happened—the paneling behind him swung open and he fell backward into an empty space.
    Merrin had sat, winded, deep in layers of dust and watched Sarah Heap hurry by with never a glance at the dark gap in the panels. Once she was safely past, he had inspected his hiding place. It was the size of a tiny room and contained nothing more than a broken-down old chair and a pile of blankets heaped in the corner. Half afraid of what they might conceal, Merrin prodded the blankets with his foot—they promptly fell to dust. Coughing, Merrin had rushed out of the cupboard only to see Sarah Heap heading back toward him. He dived back into the concealed room and, desperately trying to stifle the coughs, crammed his knuckles into his mouth. Merrin need not have worried, for Sarah had other things on her mind right then, and the sound of muffled choking noises coming from inside the wall did not even intrude on her anxious thoughts.
    Since then, Merrin had paid quite a few visits to what he thought of as his secret space. He had stocked it with essentials: water, candles and licorice snakes, plus a few Banana Bears that were new at Ma Custard’s and, if chewed at the same time as a licorice snake, tasted rather interesting.Whenever he could, Merrin sat quietly in the room listening and watching, a spider in the center of its web, waiting for a young, innocent fly to wander by—and eventually one had indeed wandered by in the form of Barney Pot.
    Merrin had been an efficient spider and now he was back in his den, excitedly clutching the spoils of his very first ambush. He struck the flint of his tinderbox and, with the spark, lit the candles that he had “borrowed” from the Manuscriptorium. Gingerly he closed the section of paneling that faced the Long Walk, taking care to wedge the catch open. Ever since his nurse—on the orders of DomDaniel—locked him in a dark cupboard whenever he did not do what he was told, Merrin had a fear of being trapped in dark spaces, and the one drawback of his den was that he could not figure out how to open the door from the inside.
    After testing the door thirteen times to make sure it still opened, Merrin settled himself on some cushions that he had taken from a storage cupboard in the Palace attic. Then he bit off the head of a brand-new licorice snake, stuffed a Banana Bear into his mouth and sighed happily. Life was good.
    Merrin inspected the small gold bottle, which was still warm from Barney’s hand. He smiled; he’d done well. Hecould tell the bottle was pure gold just by how heavy it was and by the deep untarnished sheen that glowed almost orange in the candlelight. He looked at the silver stopper and wondered what the strange little pictogram was on the top. The bottle looked like a scent bottle, and he reckoned the symbol was the name of the scent. He’d seen some similar ones in the window of a little jewelry shop near