“Chateau de Squatcherd...” The Rat King’s gnarled claw, delivering the glowing flask into her hand... “Great year!”

“Boss – why not just do this ourselves...?”

“Because, Pinky, revenge is a dish best served wid cheese!”

Pinky blinked the memory away within her white hood. She was back in the onion tower of Nonsuch. The flask was still in her hand, glowing, putrescent, green.

Scratchfella was growing agitated. “Come on, Pinky! What’s the hold up! Make the swap, already!”

“But... Scratchfella – the Elixir! – t’ain’t the same colour!”

It was true. Elixir was supposed to be blue. But this...

Scratchfella’s hairs were on end! “I tells you: these walls have ears! We won’t be alone for long!”

The hexagonal plinth lay before them. The locked door had proved little obstacle for hoods with prehensile tails, another of evolution’s many gracious gifts. Sadly, the same could not be said of the haphazard web of red threads, sickly purple in the submarine light of deadly status. Pinky’s overdeveloped ears could hear the liquid hot mercury bubbling through the pipes in the floor. The Alchemist had not been bluffing.

Pinky swallowed. She was small, smaller than Scratchfella certainly, but, right now, she wished she were slighter still – there was precious little room for error between those cowberry cords!

“Pinky! He’s on his way up! I can smell him a mile off! We must have triggered an alarm on our way in or somethink!”

“Alright! Alright! I’m going, already!”

Transferring the verdigris vial to her tail – additional ballast that left all paws free – Pinky took her first steps into the web. A cat’s cradle of deadly triangles and trapezoids, an unfortunate surfeit of imperfect rhombi choices, lay in wait before her.

No choice at all.

For a rat, the answer was always down.

Rats have a saying, a saying Pinky’s rather more diminutive mother – a truebred rodent through and through – had never let her forget: ‘where the head goes, the body may follow.’ It was almost literally true. A rat’s ribcage is collapsible, folding out like the struts of a hirsute umbrella, and thus would Pinky find passage through tessellations that would have seen even the finest human contortionist screamed in scalding metal. Pancaking her belly to the floor, and propelling herself with rowing movements in her long toes, Pinky inched beneath the first diagonal...

Time was not on their side: the Alchemist would be here soon. Pinky picked up the pace, toe-rowing her way across the floor at an admirable lick as Scratchfella hopped from foot to foot at the door and glanced constantly at the stairwell.

She reached the podium, adhering her way up to the lip. But the job was not finished! Far from it! Now came the most dangerous part of all: for if the green flask in Pinky’s paw differed in weight by so much as a grainsweight from its glowing blue twin on the podium, the trap would be sprung, and this temple to eternal life would swiftly become a domicile of doom!

There had been no way to measure it in advance – Pinky would have to guestimate on the fly! She grimaced from blue to green, and licked her long teeth with an even longer tongue.

Oh, they had practised alright! The King had made sure of that! A simple set of scales, and Fawke’s powder had been put to good use: her last few attempts had been bang on175 (she tried not to think about the two hundred and thirteen previous).

She hefted the green glass in her hand. The flasks were the same shape; were they the same volume? Were the liquids equally dense? Deciding, she tipped the flask in her hand, pouring a green snifter to the floor, where it smoked and hissed with noxious intent.

She moved her vial next to its twin, and flexed her fingers around it – four of them and a thumb – like the humans, only ridged for grip, and not exactly opposable. Her other paw, she closed around the Elixir. The stone plate beneath the vial was a weighted trigger – she would have to roll one on, and the other off, without ever changing the pressure. This, they had practised on the scales – a more fragile balance than the stone plate, but that thought was doing little for Pinky’s nerves.

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Scratchfella, beside the door, gazed longingly and molinaed his own fingers together in anticipation...

Pinky licked her lips, ceased to breathe, and...

Rolled!

She closed her eyes, her fur prickling at impending heat...

But nothing happened.

She opened. The vial and the plate had not moved. Green it was. And in her hand, the blue of the Elixir.

More importantly, the room was not full of scalding mercury.

Pinky grinned and coiled her tail forward over her shoulder to curl about the Elixir... which was when it snagged a single transverse thread behind her ear...

Several things happened at once. The door began to grind closed—Scratchfella yelped, and threw himself into the breech to hold it open! There came a rushing, gurgling, glopping sound... and steam began to rise from the floor! There were no obvious pipes or openings on the walls: the steaming mercury, alchemically heated far beyond the boiling point of water, simply seeped up between the tiles, silvered and glassy, globular, quickly spreading and melding into a solid mirror of bubbling silvery reflection!

Pinky yelped and leapt upon the pedestal, nearly knocking the green flask flying!

Scatchfella was losing the battle with the door – the threshold had a high lip which was currently keeping him above the rising plane of liquid metal death, but that would not be so for long!

“Pinky!” yelled Scratchfella, “we are LEAVING!”

Pinky coughed and retched – the fumes were horrific, even for one raised in the sewers! There was no time left for subtlety – in a moment of intense clarity, she snatched up the Chateau de Squatcherd (her life would be worth little if the King’s prize creation were drowned in molten metal) and hurled herself into the newly merciful cat’s cradle of wires between her and the door. What had previously been impediment was now salvation... but swimming through the tangle with two glass flasks in her five limbs was a horribly disabled scrabble!

The mercury was now cresting the sill of the door... Scratchfella thrust his feet into both sides of the frame and spread-rodented himself up out of danger! Pinky reached the final wall of threads, yanked them down to form a thicker twine, perched upon them, hunched, strigiform, and leapt...

She barrelled into Scratchfella, knocking him through the door, (which slammed shut behind them with an almighty clang!) rolled, flasks clutched in tail and arm and blessedly too centrifugal to spill, and skidded, sliding across the floor towards the stairs, to come to rest...

At the feet of a pair of black slippers, artfully embroidered with cute little runes, and a hem of most cardinal scarlet.

In the space of a rat’s heartbeat (4 times faster than a human’s), the blue was up a white sleeve, green from tail to hand, and tail whipped back out of sight. From within the white hood, Pinky glimpsed carefully up at the scowling face of the Alchemist.

“So!” triumphed the Alchemist!

Pinky glanced across at Scratchfella. The big rat wasn’t even moving: he must have hit his head hard on landing. Overpowering the Alchemist was not an option without Scratchfella’s help, but at least their white robes were still in place...

Not that fighting would have done much good. The King’s plan was all, and the Alchemist had his own part to play, a part that required the Red Hood’s complete and total ignorance.

In an instant of absolute folly, or perhaps genius, Pinky lowered her brow, and raised the green flask to the Alchemist’s gaze...

The Alchemist grinned. “As I suspected...”

The game was up, then.

The Alchemist took the Chateau from her outstretched hand. “It is time!”

Pinky blinked... did he mean...?

“Rise! Most tardy, yet welcome, of acolytes!”

Pinky did as she was bid. Scratchfella groaned and sat up.

“So! The elders have spoken! How thoughtful of you to retrieve the Elixir for me! Truly, thou hast spared my lumbars the most chronic of agonies!”

The Alchemist held the Chateau up to the light. Pinky barely dared to breathe... how could he not notice? But the King had been adamant...

“Strange! I could have sworn it was blue earlier!” said the Alchemist.

Rats really don’t sweat, but Pinky was having a go anyway...

“But... Elixir will as Elixir does! You have our gratitude!” The Alchemist dropped a single gold coin176 into each of their palms, the donor’s robed and profiled likeness stamped upon the surface. “Now, go! And tell the elders of our success! And speak you this: Donn’s portal shall soon forever be sealed!”

Pinky nodded quickly, bowed, and grabbed the still dazed Scratchfella before shoving him down the stairs.

She needn’t have worried. The Alchemist had eyes only for the Elixir. The green uplit his grinning visage with a sickly hue. “I know exactly where to put you! But first... my staff!”