That was King Rat’s blood. Saul would not listen to it. I amwhat I do, he thought, furiously.

There was a long silence between the two of them.

‘You know what?’ said Saul finally. ‘I think you should come too.I think you will.’

Squadrons of rats spread out across London. Saul harangued them infoetid alleys, behind great plastic bins. He raged to them about thePiper, told them that their day had come.

The massed ranks of the rats stood quivering, inspired. Theirnoses twitched; they could smell victory. Saul’s words broke overthem like tides, swept them up. He communicated with them by histone; they knew they were being commanded, and after centuries offurtive skulking they became brave, puffed up with millennialfervour.

Saul ordered them to prepare. He ordered them to search out thePiper, to bring Saul information, to find his friends. He describedthem, the black man and the short woman being kept hostage by thePiper. The rats did not care about the people being held. Theyrepresented nothing except a task set by Saul.

‘You are rats,’ Saul told them, sticking out his lower lip andjerking his head back like Mussolini. They gazed at him, a shiftingmass of followers, peering out from all the nooks and crannies of thebuilding site which they had congregated. ‘You’re the sneakers, thecreepers, the rat-burglars. Don’t come to me afraid of being seen,don’t come to me with fears of the Piper’s revenge. Why will he seeyou? You’re rats… if he sees you you’re a failure to your species.Stay hidden creep in the spaces in between, and find him, and tell mewhere he is.’

The rats were inspired. They longed to follow him. He dismissedthem with a wave and they scattered hr short-lived bravado.

Saul knew that beyond the range of his voice, the rats’ fear wouldquickly return. He knew that they would hesitate. He knew they wouldslow down as they scaled walls, look around anxiously for him toshout them on, and that they would fail. He knew: they would slinkback to the sewers and hide until he found them and urged them outagain.

But maybe one would be brave or lucky. Maybe one of his rats wouldscale the walls that divided the Piper’s sanctuary from the outside,and pick a way through the barbed wire, scamper along the pipes andthe cables, cross the wasteland, and find him.

Somewhere, squeezed into the air-conditioning housing on the topof a financial building in the heart of the City, or in abitumen-sealed hole under a sub-urban railway bridge, or in a roomwith no windows in an empty hospital beyond Neasden, or in the hightech vaults of a bank to the west of Hammersmith, or in the atticabove a bingo hall in Tooting, the Piper was holding Natasha andFabian, waiting out the week before Junglist Terror.

Saul suspected that the Piper would avoid the gaze of rats andspiders and birds. He was not afraid of his adversaries, but therewas no point advertising his presence. He had issued his challenge,had told them the night that they would die. The Piper had issuedthem with invitations to their own executions.

It might be that he was only concerned with Saul, with thehalf-and-half, the rat-man he could not control, but he must suspectthat Anansi would be there, too, and King Rat, and Loplop. They werenot brave or proud. They were not ashamed to turn down challenges.But they knew that Saul was the only thing that the Piper could notcontrol, that Saul was the only chance they had, and they knew theymust be there to help him. If he did not survive, they could not.

The rats spread throughout London.

Saul was alone amidst the rubble and the scaffolding.

He stood in the centre of a wide ruined landscape, a blitzedcorner of London that hid behind hoardings, in easy earshot ofEdgware Road. A forty-foot by forty-foot square, carpeted in crushedbrick and old stone and surrounded by the backs of buildings. On oneedge of the square a rough wooden fence hid the street that flankedthe site, and above the fence towered the old brick walls of ancientshops and houses. Saul looked up at them. On that side the windowswere surrounded by large wooden frames, rotting but ornate, designedto be seen.

On all other sides the walls that enclosed him were vulnerable.They constituted the buildings’ underbellies, soft underneath theaesthetic carapace. Out of sight of their facades, he was ringed bygreat flat expanses of brick, windows that spilt at random downfeatureless walls. Seen from behind, caught unawares, thefunctionality of the city was exposed.

This point of view was dangerous for the observer, as well as forthe city. It was only when it was seen from these angles that hecould believe London had been built brick by brick, not born out ofits own mind. But the city did not like to be found out. Evens as hesaw it clearly for the product it was, Saul felt it square upagainst him. The city and he faced each other. He saw London from anangle against which it had no front, at a time when its guard wasdown.

He had felt this before, when he had left King Rat, when he hadknown that he had slipped the city’s bonds; and he had known thenthat he had made off it an enemy. The windows which loomed overreminded him of that.

In the corner of the square lurked obscure building machines,piles of materials and pickaxes, bags of cement covered with blueplastic sheeting. The looked defensive and overwhelmed. Just in frontthem stood the remnants of the building that had been pulled down.All that remained was a section of its front, a veneer one brickdeep, with gaping, glassless holes where windows had been. It seemedmiraculous that it could stand. Saul walked over the broken groundtowards it.

There were lights on in a few of the rooms that overlooked himand, as he walked silently, Saul even caught sight of movement hereand there. He was not afraid. He did not believe that anyone wouldsee him; he had rat blood in his veins. And if they did, they mightbe surprised to see a man striding by lamplight in the forbiddenspace of a nascent building, but who would they tell? And if someonewere, unbelievably, to call the police, Saul could simply climb andbe gone. He had rat blood in his veins. Tell the police to callRentokil, he thought. They might have a better chance.

He stood under the free-standing facade. He stretched his arms up,prepared to scramble over the city himself, to join his emissaries intheir search. He did not believe that he would find Fabian or Natashaor the Piper, but he could not fail to look for them. To acquiesce inthe Piper’s plans would be to abrogate his own power, to becomecollaborator. If he were to meet the Piper on the ground the Piperhad specified, he would be dragged there, he would be unwilling. Hewould be angry.

He heard a noise above him. A figure swung into view in one of theempty window-frames. Saul was still. It was King Rat.

Saul was not surprised. King Rat followed him often, waited untilthe rats had left, then poured scorn on his efforts, ridiculed him inagonized contumely, incoherent with rage at the behaviour of the ratswho had once obeyed him.

King Rat grasped his small perch with his right hand. He crouched,his left arm dangling down between his legs, his head lowered towardshis knees. Seeing him, Saul thought of a comic-book hero Batman orDaredevil. Silhouetted in the ruined window, King Rat looked like ascene-setting frame at the start of an epic graphic novel.

‘What do you want?’ Saul said finally.

In a sinewy sliding movement King Rat emerged, from the window andlanded at Saul’s feet. He bent his knees on landing, then rose slowlyjust before him.

His face twisted.

‘So what silly buggers are you playing now, cove?’

‘Fuck off,’ said Saul and turned away.