Traitor's Tail: Platinum Pie Rats Book 1

'It is not always the most likely hero (nor the most liked hero) that saves the day.

Sometimes it takes a villain to get the job done.'

Hook Hand Horace

from My Life as a Famous Pie Rat –

the Battles, the Victories, the Pies!

Published by Fact or Fiction Press

Prologue

The full moon hung low in the eastern sky, its silvery light illuminating the rugged clifftops and windswept waves of an island in slumber.

To the west, the approaching storm-front rumbled over the ocean with unrestrained fury.

Time was running out.

Lightning split the sky, chasing away the moon shadows before plunging the world back into an eerie half-light.

Scrambling up a rocky path cut into the cliff face, the thief moved with purpose and determination. With a final burst of energy, they reached the top of the cliff and hauled themselves onto level ground.

A moment later they were racing along a row of pandanus trees with a lone house in sight and the golden beam of the lighthouse rotating in the distance.

A beacon or a warning?

Another flash of lightning and the vine-covered walls of the house grew clearer. The thief saw exactly what they were looking for.

First floor. Third window.

The vines created a natural ladder, and the thief was at the window in seconds. A broken latch. An owner too busy to fix it. The perfect entry point.

They swung their body into the large room, gently closing the window behind them.

Disturb nothing. Leave no clues.

Navigating around furniture and display cabinets, they entered a long, narrow hallway. At the far end of the hallway stood a heavy oak door.

Heart pounding, they tiptoed closer.

Lightning flashed through windows. Thunder rumbled overhead, rattling picture frames, and promising a rainstorm to remember.

A rough anchor was scratched into the wood of the door. The handiwork of a bored child.

But to the thief, the anchor marked a threshold. With their next step, there would be no turning back.

Only look forward.

Reaching out, they turned the handle.

The door opened easily, as the thief knew it would. An unlocked door promised nothing to a thief.

Unless you know what to look for.

The room was plain. No furniture. No window coverings. It stood empty at the end of the hallway. Waiting for something … or someone.

Moonlight shone through two large windows overlooking an apple tree in an unkempt garden.

In the ghostly light, the thief spotted a single painting hanging on the far wall.

Five faces stared back from the canvas.

Closing the door, they approached the painting, almost expecting one of the faces to speak.

It was a family portrait, freshly painted judging by the scent of linseed oil that hung in the air. Each member of the family wore a matching anchor pendant which seemed to glow in the darkness.

A roguish-looking grandfather stood behind two parents. The father had a smudge of grease on his sleeve. A leaf was stuck to the mother’s skirt. The details told a story. Inventor and gardener. Their son was almost fully grown – handsome, confident and strong. His younger sister had a natural beauty, but her awkward smile betrayed her nervousness. She was hiding something.

The thief’s attention lingered on her face before a clap of thunder jolted them back to the present.

Reaching up, they ran their finger along the underside of the gilded picture frame until they located a small lever.

With a soft click, the painting swung away from the wall, revealing a square metal safe.

The thief took out a strange brass key with teeth on four sides. It was new, shiny – unused. The locksmith had claimed he was the best. The thief hoped he was right.

A large keyhole was visible beside a round dial – an added layer of security. Both key and code were needed to unlock the door.

A four-number combination.

A four-sided key.

One chance to get it right.

If the thief’s information was correct, the combination had never been spoken, never written down. It was not an important date or someone’s birthday, but a sequence of random numbers – the hardest combination to guess.

And yet, somehow, the thief had figured it out.

7 … 2 … 5 … 9 …

The thief turned the dial, pausing on each number, before moving to the next.

With the numbers complete, they held the key to the lock.

And stopped.

Cocking their head to one side, they listened.

They could still hear the thunder and the constant roar of the waves, but there was something else. Something much closer.

The shuffle of feet.

The creak of a floorboard.

The click of a key in a lock.

The sounds meant one thing: the owner was home early. In seconds they would walk up the stairs and the thief would be discovered.

Refusing to give in, the thief thrust the key into the safe and gave it a twist.

The moment of truth.

A heartbeat later, the door released, swinging open on well-oiled hinges.

Letting out a shaky breath, the thief stared down at the contents of the safe. There were four items. A thin, black cord of a golden anchor pendant circled around a small diamond ring. And lying beside a thick book, was a tiny wooden box marked with an anchor.

With the sound of footsteps moving up the stairs, the thief grabbed the box and slipped it into their pocket.

Reaching into a second pocket, they produced an identical-looking box and returned it to the safe.

Silently, the thief closed the safe, moved the painting back into position and crept towards the closest window.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Lanternlight poured through the gap under the door.

The thief froze mid-step, terrified the owner would burst through the door and discover their crime.

But the light dimmed, and the footsteps grew fainter as the owner moved to another part of the house.

Not wasting another precious moment, the thief threw open the window and scrambled down the vine.

The last thing they heard as they landed on soft ground was the sound of rain peppering the rooftiles. And as they dashed through the shadows towards the village dock, the heavens opened and the rain fell in torrents, washing away any trace they had ever been there.

The perfect theft.

Almost …

What the thief failed to notice as they crept through the house were two eyes watching them from the apple tree.

Eyes that saw everything.

Chapter 1

The Good Ship Apple Pie with Mice Cream

‘SURRENDER SCURVY PIE-HATER OR FACE THE RATH OF THE MIGHTY HOOK!’

The words were delivered with such power that Dart almost believed they had come from a ferocious warrior and not from his Uncle Horace, who, at a-quarter-of-a-foot-nothing in height, was about as threatening as a new-born lamb.

Attempting to appear even more terrifying, Horace scraped his golden hook down the length of his scissor sword, creating an ear splitting SCREEEECH.

Even from high up in the crow’s nest, Dart was forced to cover his ears to block out the terrible sound.

‘Do you hear that?’ Horace roared at the cowering mouse in front of him. ‘That is the sound of your defeat! And by defeat, I mean total and utter annihilation …’

Dart stopped listening around that point. He had heard enough of his uncle’s rants to last him a lifetime. No doubt the words ROTTEN PIES were shouted, along with the phrase SHIVER ME SAUSAGE ROLLS or something as equally as ridiculous. As much as Dart loved his uncle, the constant gasbagging drove him crazy. To preserve his sanity, he shuffled to the opposite side of the crow’s nest to watch the other rat-vs-mouse battle taking place.

Pinned against the starboard side bulwark (a low wooden rail resembling the crust of a pie), Anna ‘Bravetail’ Winterbottom was fending off an attack from a rosy-cheeked mouse by swinging her sword in wild circles. To her opponent’s annoyance, Anna’s green-handled scissor sword was clutched tightly in her tail.

‘Show off,’ Dart muttered under his breath.

Anna, like her older brother Whisker, had been born with an extraordinary tail. Where Whisker’s tail mirrored his emotions and was often hard to control, Anna’s tail worked like a third arm.

She had kept her gift a secret for most of her life. But since becoming a Pie Rat apprentice, there was no holding back.

‘Not fair!’ squeaked Emmie Silver Scoop, unsuccessfully trying to land a blow with her two silver ice-cream scoops. ‘This is supposed to be paw-to-paw combat. Not paw-to-magical-tails combat!’

‘Hang in there, Emmie,’ panted her twin brother, Eaton (AKA the Extraordinary Eaton), staggering across the deck in a top hat and cape, which, though not technically a pirate uniform, looked great on the amateur illusionist. His battle wand (a thin metal contraption with an igniting tip) was barely producing a spark.

‘Phooey to cheap gunpowder,’ he muttered.

Horace chased after him, blustering, ‘No one escapes the hook of awesomeness! No one defeats the defender of pies. And don’t you dare disappear in a puff of smoke …’

Emmie shot a quick glance over her shoulder and winced. ‘Poor Eaton. And I thought I had it bad. Forget sword fighting. I think Horace is trying to talk you to death!’

‘Argh! Rotten pies to insolent apprentices,’ Horace scoffed. ‘In a real fight, no one would zip their lips or offer to sharpen your sword.’

Dart shook his head. In a real fight, I would be down there fighting, not stuck in a crow’s nest, bored out of my brain.

He guessed he had been on lookout duty for seven or eight hours. Although it felt like an entire week. Dart had been blessed with his mother’s good looks but cursed with his father’s impatience. He wore a frown for half the time and scowled for the rest.

‘This is such a waste of time,’ he grumbled to himself. ‘Freeforian ships never get attacked.’

His dark, brooding eyes fixed on Anna, and he felt his frustration growing. Her one stint in the crow’s nest had been for a measly thirty minutes. And that was only because Rat Bait had suggested it was the best place to watch the sunrise.

It pays to be the Admiral’s granddaughter, Dart thought angrily.

It was obvious who the star apprentice was. Anna even dressed the part. While Dart wore a plain black pirate shirt, practical pants and simple black headscarf, Anna dressed in the same green velvet as the admiral. Her figure-hugging jacket and elaborate feather hat screamed ‘FUTURE CAPTAIN!’ Adding to her regal look was the gold anchor pendant she wore around her neck. Worn by every living Winterbottom, the anchor was her ticket to fame and fortune.

The scowl on Dart’s face deepened as he recalled the latest newspaper headline.

FREEFORIA’S FAVOURITE DAUGHTER SETS SAIL ON HER NEXT BIG ADVENTURE.

Anna ‘Bravetail’ Winterbottom, great-granddaughter of the legendary Anso Winterbottom, is destined for greatness after recently being crowned Miss Freeforia and topping her class at Seven Seas Academy. Will her four-week training voyage see this talented individual go from apprentice to captain in record time? In a poll conducted by the Freeforian Gazette, 92% of our readers say yes!

‘Tabloid trash,’ Dart fumed. ‘Ninety-two percent of your readers can’t read!’

To be fair, Dart did get a mention in the article, but only as the wayward son of the local bookseller, who, according to the journalist, needed to Grow up and stop running through aisles of the West Freeforian Library.

Of the four new apprentices aboard the Good Ship Apple Pie with Mice Cream (Horace’s new nickname for the ship), Dart was the only one not to have been part of the legendary Battle of Freeforia. Dart’s father, Pencil Leg Pete, the former quartermaster of the Apple Pie, had married Horace’s sister, Athena, soon after the victory. It was not long before their young son, D’Artagnan, was clambering over piles of books in his parents’ new bookstore, Fact or Fiction.

Eaton and Emmie had been frequent visitors to Fact or Fiction with their guardian, Mr Tribble, as had Anna and the rest of her famous family. But conversations often turned to the ‘good old days,’ and Dart, feeling like an outsider, made himself scarce whenever they were around.

He shared his parents’ love of books, although it was not always the stories that excited him. Never one to keep still, Dart discovered from a young age that a pile of books was just as good as a rock-climbing wall, staircase or a balance beam. And with the sheer number of books in Fact or Fiction, Dart had everything he needed to make his own elaborate obstacle courses.

Sneaking silently downstairs in the middle of the night, Dart would often turn an entire section of the bookshop into a parkour training circuit before his parents woke up and opened the store. After infuriating his parents on more than one occasion (twenty-six occasions to be precise), Dart was banned from Fact or Fiction and turned his attention to the enormous library in the heart of West Freeforia.

As far as he knew, Dart was the only rat who had run the 400 metre hurdles inside a library using piles of sporting books for the hurdles. He was about to turn the course into a steeplechase by flooding the reading pit when the librarian arrived and confiscated his library card.

In recent times, Dart had taken to running along the windswept clifftops near the lighthouse, where there were plenty of natural obstacles and little chance of anyone yelling at him.

Now, stuck in the crow’s nest of Freeforia’s most famous sailing ship, his feet were itching to run. He had already plotted the perfect pirate parkour course across the deck. Although he doubted Admiral Rat Bait would let him stack three barrels of gunpowder next to a ring of fire and a smoking cannon.

Returning his attention to the battle below, Dart watched as Anna slipped in a patch of half-melted ice cream, which Emmie had not-so-accidently dropped on the deck during afternoon tea.

‘Hey!’ Anna yelled, tumbling backwards. ‘The food fight is tomorrow afternoon!’

‘Call it an appetiser!’ Emmie squeaked, raising her ice-cream scoops in victory. ‘You fight dirty, and I’ll fight creamy!’

Emmie’s celebrations were short lived.

Attempting to keep her balance, Anna swung her tail, which still held her scissor sword, wildly through the air.

Emmie threw herself to the deck as the sword swept over her head, clipping her baggy chef’s hat, and sending it flying into Horace’s face.

Choking on a mouthful of fabric, Horace tried to bat the hat away with his hook but managed to skewer it instead. In his haste to dislodge the white fabric, he trod on the end of Eaton’s cape, who stumbled into Anna and the three of them landed in a heap on top of Emmie.

In the mayhem, Anna lost her grip on her scissor sword, and it spun out of her tail, slicing off several of Horace’s whiskers before bouncing off the giant knife mast with a metallic CHING!

Dart felt the vibrations from up in the crow’s nest.

‘Yikes,’ Horace muttered, wiggling his remaining whiskers. ‘That was close.’

‘Too close!’ Emmie squeaked. ‘I can’t breathe under here. Now get off me, you clumsy buffoons!’

Dart rolled his eyes. If this is the crew I have to fight alongside, then Ratbeard help me!

The stamp of feet drowned out the annoyed grunts of the rodent-pancake stack.

Fingers tapping restlessly on the rim of the crow’s nest, Dart watched Admiral Rat Bait storm out of the navigation room.

Anna’s grandfather was the head of the Freeforian Freedom Fighters, a band of former pirates who served as the island’s navy. He had volunteered to be the captain on his granddaughter’s training voyage, requesting the use of the Apple Pie, the ship currently captained by Whisker Winterbottom.

If Rat Bait was protective of his grandson’s ship, then he was even more protective of his granddaughter.

The old admiral usually walked with a slight limp, but today his strides were strong and purposeful. His snug velvet admiral’s jacket stretched to bursting point as he took in huge, heaving breaths.

This should be entertaining, Dart thought. Someone is about to scrub the deck.

‘What be the meaning o’ this?’ Rat Bait roared in this thick pirate accent.

‘I er … was just giving the apprentices some wrestling practice, sir,’ Horace said, clambering off the pile.

Rat Bait shook his head. ‘I’m not talkin’ ‘bout yer tomfoolery, Horace. I’m takin’ ‘bout him! Our useless lookout.’

He pointed a wrinkly finger at Dart and then thrust it out to sea.

Confused, Dart turned to see where Rat Bait was pointing.

To the west of the Apple Pie, a turquoise stretch of water led to the cliffs of the Crumbling Rock Islands, now bathed in afternoon sunlight. But it was not the stunning scenery that had caught Rat Bat’s eye. Approaching from the south, with its oars lowered and its sail raised, was an enormous Viking longship.

Dart’s smug expression dissolved into a look of horror.

‘Flaming rat’s tails!’ he gasped. ‘Where did that come from?’