Read Online Saving Thanehaven by Catherine Jinks - Free Book Online Page B

of his van. Because his van’s not a part of this game.”
    Noble frowns, still desperately confused. “What’s a van?” he says.
    “This is.” Rufus raps his knuckle on the side of the smaller carriage. “The AV has permission to look absolutely everywhere, but he doesn’t normally monitor himself. That’s why we’ll be safe in here.” Rufus bends down to pull at a silver handle that’s attached to the base of a corrugated door on the back of the van. The door promptly rolls open, lifting like a skirt to reveal stacks of wooden crates in a small, dingy, windowless box. “Perfect,” he mutters. “Just what we need.”
    “You mean they’re full of weapons?” Noble queries, eyeing the crates.
    “No, but we can hunker down behind ’em so no one will see us. The AV certainly won’t. He’ll be toobusy up front, behind the wheel.” Rufus leaps into the van, then beckons to Noble. “Come on! In you go!”
    Noble is so preoccupied that he automatically does as he’s told. “If the other Noble came here to replace me,” he says, “does that mean the false princess came here to replace the real princess?”
    “Yup,” Rufus replies.
    “Then we have to help her!” Even as Noble speaks, Rufus tugs on the door. It slides shut again, sealing them both inside the stuffy compartment. “We can’t stay here!” Noble insists. “We have to save Lorellina from that false princess!”
    “I’m working on it.”
    “How?” Without waiting for an answer, Noble continues. “Perhaps there’s some way of freeing all those gargoyles, and making them fight for us—”
    “Listen.” Rufus cuts in. “The way things are now, we don’t stand a chance against that AV. Believe me; I know. Even if you manage to get rid of your next replacement, more of them will just keep coming and coming.” Rufus edges away from the door, until his dark silhouette vanishes behind a stack of crates. “The same goes for Lord Harrowmage.
And
for Princess Lorellina. And for Doddypoll, too. It’s a losing battle.”
    “But—”
    “That’s why we need reinforcements. From
outside
this program. We need an army that can’t be replicated.” There’s a long pause as Noble ponders. Atlast, Rufus inquires in hushed tones, “Are you going to come and hide with me, or what?”
    Noble, however, is still turning things over in his head. “You’re saying that we need reinforcements from a place
beyond
Thanehaven?”
    “Yes. You’ve nailed it.” Rufus sounds quite pleased. “See, the AV has special powers because he’s been sent by the Colonel. And the Colonel runs this whole show. He’s totally in charge.”
    “The Colonel?”
    “Look …” Somewhere behind his shield of wooden crates, Rufus heaves an impatient sigh. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Come over here and I’ll explain. If I don’t keep my voice down, the AV will hear us talking when he comes back.”
    “He’s coming back?” says Noble.
    “Of course! When he can’t find me out there, he’ll go searching somewhere else. And that’s when we’ll recruit our reinforcements.”
    Noble grunts. Though still feeling dazed, he gropes his way through the dimness and squirms into the narrow slot that Rufus is occupying, between the crates and the wall. It’s quite a squeeze for someone of Noble’s dimensions. What’s more, it’s so dark behind the crates that he can only just make out the glint of Rufus’s eyeballs.
    “Okay. It’s like this,” Rufus whispers. “The world that you know—everything you’ve seen outside this van—is called
Thanehaven Slayer
. It’s a program that’sbeen loaded into a computer by an operating system.” When Noble doesn’t respond, Rufus adds, “But that won’t mean anything to you, so just imagine a big country full of little fiefdoms. Fiefdoms like Thanehaven. And they all have their own low-grade bosses running them, like Lord Harrowmage. Plus there’s a big boss called the Colonel, who runs the whole