Something terrible must be about to happen, Param realized. Rigg is coming back to save me.
She held out her hand and clasped his.
And suddenly the mice were gone.
Rigg pulled her to her feet, then jumped off the table. “Come on,” he said. There were several mice in the room.
“They can see us,” said Param.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Rigg. “We have to get outside, to the flyer.” He took her hand again and began drawing her after him, out into a corridor. “We should never have let ourselves spend so much time in these underground rooms. It’s devilishly hard getting in and out.”
They turned a corner and there was Mouse-Breeder, coming down a flight of stairs.
Rigg squeezed her hand and she saw him give her a warning glance.
“Mouse-Breeder!” Rigg called out. “I hope there isn’t a rule against running in the library!”
“None that I know of,” he said cheerfully. “Where are you headed?”
“Up for sunlight!” said Rigg. “I had a sudden need for air, and my sister decided to join me.”
“Have fun,” said Mouse-Breeder.
They ran past him up the stairs.
“He doesn’t know.”
“It’s six months ago,” said Rigg. “But the moment he runs into one of us in this time, he’ll realize that he saw us running because we came from the future.”
“What does it matter?” said Param. “Wherever we go, whatever we do, they can use their time machine to send something to kill us—a sword in the heart, poison into our bodies, we’ll never be safe.”
“Stop talking and run again,” said Rigg. “And don’t worry, they won’t do it.”
“How do you know?” asked Param.
“Because there is no machine,” said Rigg.
“But . . .”
“Run,” said Rigg.
She was utterly out of breath, her lungs on fire and her legs leaden with exhaustion when they reached the surface and came out into sunlight.
There was Umbo, watching intently. And suddenly a flyer appeared behind him, and Loaf and Olivenko stood beside it.
They must have transported Rigg back in time the way they used to do it, when they worked together. Rigg must have found a path that would take him to the exact time he wanted to reach. Then Umbo must have slowed time down so he could take hold of that path. Umbo waited here so that he could bring them back into the present when Rigg returned to the out-of-doors with Param in tow.
By the time Rigg and Param reached the flyer, Olivenko and Loaf were already inside it. Umbo waited till they arrived. Then he reached out and took, not her hand, but Rigg’s, and drew them up the ramp into the flyer.
“Good work,” said Loaf.
“Rigg and Umbo just saved you from a terrible death,” said Olivenko.
The flyer took off.
“What, the mice were going to attack me?” asked Param, incredulous.
“Not by nibbling you to death, no,” said Olivenko.