Ross awoke to a bright day, but he did not feel cheery. Accidentally, he'd left his window open when he'd crawled back into his bedroom at nearly 2:40 in the morning. He was cold, and the dampness outside seemed to have crept inside as well. His head was congested with mucus and his throat felt sore from the drainage that had been traveling down it during the time he slept. The absolute worst place he felt he could be was school—and that was exactly where he had to go. He was sleepy and groggy, but Mrs. Muddlegub, who had been the one to come into his room and wake him, was certain that once he ate breakfast and took some medicine, he'd be just fine. Vaguely, Ross began to recall the past night's events. He remembered how he'd sneaked out of his window and down to the Westminster Underground station, where Giant had scared him horribly. Ross also recalled (with a wince at the memory) the fact that he'd ripped a hole in his pants when he'd attempted to ascend the flower lattice back up to his window ledge. Mrs. Muddlegub, who took care of the laundry, would certainly find reason to comment on it. All of these things tangled through the boy's mind as he sat slumped over on the edge of his mattress.

"Get moving now, or you'll miss your breakfast!" cried the housekeeper, poking her head into the room. Ross hadn't realized how much time he'd wasted. "A good spoon of cold syrup," added Mrs. Muddlegub, "and you'll be feeling top-shape in no time at all." She gave a good shake of her head, smiled benevolently at Ross, and gently closed the door.

Grudgingly, the boy stood. His head spun, but he managed to dress himself properly enough. In a corner, he spotted the torn pants he'd been wearing the night before. Rather than be asked questions about them, he bunched up the dark slacks and stuffed them into his wastebasket. Ross wasn't an expert liar, and the last thing he wanted was to be grilled with questions from Mrs. Muddlegub—or worse: his uncle.

School carried on in its usual manner, except that Ross had the added fear of embarrassing himself with his cold. He prayed during moments when his nose began to drip or when he felt an itch in his throat that the irritations wouldn't turn into anything worse. His goal throughout his classes was not to listen to the teacher or to learn anything but merely to keep his cold symptoms at bay. For the most part, he managed that. None of his flare-ups turned into anything worse, which relieved him greatly.

Toward the end of the day, when the afternoon sun was shining hard through the room windows and the drowsy students were counting the minutes until their dismissal, Ross found his mind wandering to thoughts of the stone that Giant had given to him for safekeeping. The rock was, at that moment, sitting in a box on the dresser in his bedroom. Last night he had placed it there before getting into bed; it had seemed the safest spot for hiding something. Now that Ross was awake and thinking about it, though, he wondered if that had been such a wise idea. What if Mrs. Muddlegub was dusting and came across the box? What if she got curious and looked inside? What if she found the stone, took it for herself, and gave Ross no chance of ever getting it back? Well . . . Ross didn't really believe that Mrs. Muddlegub would steal something from his room. Or did he? Now that he thought about her, it did seem that she'd looked a bit strangely at him when he was eating his breakfast. She'd watched him almost anxiously, he believed—as if she was just waiting for him to leave the flat so she could race upstairs and . . . No. Certainly not. Ross was letting his imagination go unruly again. What was happening to him? He was such a reasonable boy, sometimes to the point where he was negatively affected by his sensibility, but still. It was better to be rational than irrational, right? His sickness was cluttering his brain with odd thoughts. He needed to be home, in his room, where he could relax and really ponder current events. And if, when he got home, the stone was missing from its place, he'd know that Mrs. Muddlegub was a . . .

No. There he went again. Stop it! Ross told himself angrily. Stop it stop it stop it! You're starting to lose it!

"Is it clear, Roscoe?" said a voice above.

Looking up, Ross saw his teacher's large eyes staring down at him. She held a textbook in her arms, and she was raising her eyebrows as if expecting an answer from him. As was probably obvious from his facial expression, Ross hadn't a clue what she'd been talking about for the past half an hour. "Er . . . yes ma'am," he mumbled. "Very clear."

The teacher sighed. She shook her head and said in aggravation, "You're absolutely wrong. Silty water is certainly not clear. It's laden with particles of earth and rocks that are all washing around inside of it. Maybe if you'd been listening to me, you would have learned something. I think that today your head is full of silt."

Weasly sniggers echoed around Ross. He didn't care, really. He wasn't embarrassed. Similar comments were aimed at him every day, although they were usually from the other students. "Yes ma'am," was all he replied, and his mind immediately returned to its former thoughts.

Soon after, the bell was ringing and classes were ended for the day. Ross was out the door faster than anyone else, despite the lethargy due to his cold. He wanted to get home as soon as possible, although the actual walk seemed to take longer than any other day he'd done it. Because Ross was anxious to get back to the flat, time moved slower. When he slipped his tube pass into the ticket machine, pulled it back out, and moved through the turnstile, an eerie chill rippled through him. He felt almost as if he was being watched. The boy looked around quickly but saw only busy people hurrying around him, making their way to or from the Underground trains. Ross tried to brush away the odd feelings that were crawling over him like spindly little spiders. Nobody was watching him. Everything was in his imagination. He kept on his way, picking up his pace as he hurried down the passage toward the train he had to take.

The tube ride went smoothly enough, although Ross couldn't shake the uncanny feeling that someone, somewhere, was unsettlingly aware of his presence. The train rumbled along the tracks through dark tunnels. Ross stared blankly across the car at the windows on the other side, where his reflection gazed dully back at him. As uncomfortable as he was, there wasn't any reason for him to look nervous. When the time came for him to switch lines, Ross rose from his seat and moved toward the doors. For the last few feet of the ride, he held tightly onto the bar above his head, and then the car slid open and he was out in the crowds of people who were hastening to get wherever they needed to be. There were businessmen and smartly-dressed women, students and teenagers, old women and adults with children. The Underground was one of the places in London where people of all sorts could be seen. Now more than before, Ross was aware of all the strangers surrounding him. Any one of them could be more devious than they appeared. Giant had said that the spies were normal people—if there really were spies. Ross still wasn't certain what he believed in. Sometimes he was angry for his silly thoughts, and other times he really wondered if there were truths he didn't even know about. Some of what Giant said sounded possible. There were so many things Ross was unaware of. Maybe the fact that there were inconspicuous spies searching for the treasure of an eccentric boy wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded.

Someone bumped into Ross just as he was coming down the stairs to the platform of the train he needed to catch. Spinning, the boy saw no one. That was no ordinary bump, thought Ross to himself nervously. He was certain he'd felt a hand slide into his jacket pocket. Was it looking for something?

"Watch yourself!" snarled a man as he caught himself from tripping over Ross, who had stopped still in the middle of the flow of people. Ross shivered at the eerie look about the man. Had he been the one trying to reach into his pocket?

Some strange urge to call out in panic swept over Ross, but he managed to suppress it. The last thing he needed to do was draw more attention to himself. Besides, if the man actually had tried to feel inside his pocket, he hadn't found anything more than a peppermint wrapper. Ross didn't carry things of value in his pockets. What was more, if it had, for some reason, been Giant's stone that the thief was after, the thing was safely stored in a box on Ross's dresser . . . if Mrs. Muddlegub hadn't found it.

Shaking his head sharply, Ross tried to loosen the thoughts that were strangling his mind and gluing his feet to the ground. What was going on? Quickly, before he could grow any more upset over such absurd ideas, he jogged toward his train. He found a seat, took it, and sighed in relief as the doors slid shut.

That evening, Ross considered his day. What a real comfort it had been to bound into his room and discover that the stone was still safe in its box. The housekeeper had not taken it. Nobody had even touched it, as far as Ross could tell. So he was confident and satisfied. He ate dinner in a calm manner (forcing himself not to turn and glance at Mrs. Muddlegub to see whether she had a devious twinkle in her eyes). He readied himself for bed quite coolly. He even watched the stained-glass colors powdering his floor in a sedate way until he finally felt himself drifting into a fuzzy, dream-less sleep. Ross's body relaxed. The boy was entirely at ease. No nightmare set his nerves on call.

Something sharp pulled at thoughts barely recognizable, spinning in darkness. Ross was quickly coming out of his sleep. In the corners of his mind were memories of outside forces, and suddenly his eyes blinked open to jerk him back into wakefulness. How much time had passed? What had caused him to wake up? He wanted to hit something, he was so aggravated. He didn't have to go to the bathroom; he wasn't thirsty. The room around him was completely dark and silent. So what in the world had given him reason to open his eyes? What had pulled him unwillingly out of the peaceful sanctuary of sleep?

Finding nothing to cause him disturbance, Ross decided to try to fall back into sleep. He turned over and promptly gasped in shock, for there, standing at the foot of his bed, was a figure shrouded in gloom. Ross didn't have time to cry out, because the thing stepped around to the side of the bed and let his face come under the light of the window. Colors splashed across Giant's freckled nose.

"Where in heck did you come from?" Ross gulped.

Giant grinned, and in the reds and greens swarming across his features, he resembled a cunning little imp. "Bloody amazing, isn't it? Better than knocking at your window, right?"

Ross was irritated and still jolted at the fact that he'd awakened to find Giant in his room. "Stop! It's not funny. How did you get in here?"

"Shhh!" warned Giant, whispering even though his previous words had been spoken above an average level. He sauntered back and forth in front of Ross's bed, his hands in his pockets. "Don't want to wake up the man next door, do you? Now listen, vizier. We've got work to do tonight. What I've heard is this. In a pub down near Earl's Court, there's a bloke who's probably, right as we speak, getting ready to sell a piece of my treasure to a pirate. See, he's a spy, and he found it . . . or maybe he's always had it. I don't honestly know where or how he got the thing, or even if it's a he. For all I know it could be Queen Margaret of Scotland that's trying to sell off part of what's rightfully mine. My point is that I've come across this bit of information that the piece the spy has is going to be sold to someone else—a pirate, more likely than not—tonight, and at a pub called The King's Head. So we've got to get it."

Ross's mouth was hanging partially open and his eyebrows were raised in disbelief. "No," he said flatly. "No, no, no. I can't go. I mean, how do you plan on going about getting the piece back?"

"That's where you come in," said Giant slyly, stopping in his pacing.

"How?"

"I don't know. You're the vizier. It's your job to figure the small details."

Fluffing his pillow, Ross turned over and adamantly lay down. "They sound like some pretty big details to me." He closed his eyes, expecting to hear a retort from Giant.

For some moments, though, only quiet could be heard. Ross, having his back to the boy, wondered what Giant was doing. Was he making nasty faces or gestures at Ross's back? Was he trying to cry glass tears again, like he'd been doing on that rainy day in the park? Was he even there anymore at all? It was silent for such a long while that Ross began to wonder if maybe he hadn't dreamed up the whole conversation he'd just had. Curious, he very slowly rolled onto his stomach, then peeked out at his room. Giant was still there; Ross hadn't conjured him from some piece of half-awake imagination. But the strange boy had moved. He was now in front of the window, seated on Ross's cushioned window seat, touching his fingers to the angular shapes of colored glass.

"Fascinating," Giant said quietly without turning. It was as if he knew Ross was looking at him. "This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."

"Shut up," ordered Ross, surprised at the bitterness in his own voice. Rather than act shocked at his friend's harshness, Giant only lowered his fingers from the window. While Ross waited for him to make a reply, the self-proclaimed ruler of the Royal Empire of the Boggy Highlands continued to stare at the night-draped city through colored glass; he appeared more interested in what lay outside than in the room surrounding him. Ross watched Giant for some moments. The strange boy's frail frame was outlined in indigo moonlight, and his disheveled, shaggy orange hair seemed to be strung with yellow-green cobwebs. He wore a white T-shirt and long, baggy pants that hung a bit too far down around his waist. If Giant had come from outside, Ross was certain he'd been cold out there. London nights were no place to venture into without at least a long-sleeved jacket.

Guilt swept over Ross. Looking at the boy seated at his window, he wondered at how inconsistent Giant was. One moment, the boy was coming up with incredible stories and trying to get others to take part in them, and the next second he was entirely silent and contemplative. Where did this boy come from? Who was he?

Slowly, Ross slid out of bed and moved to the window seat. He crouched on the bench next to Giant and looked seriously at him. "I don't know what I think," he said in honesty, his voice soft against the sharp quiet. "I was sure everything was lies at first. But then . . . I keep getting these strange thoughts. I don't know why. The only thing I can think of is that you aren't lying. You aren't, are you?"

Giant chewed on his lower lip. He turned away from the window to look at his friend, his eyes dark downward slants in his small, oval face. So much was meant in the question he'd just been asked, and he knew it. Ross wanted affirmation, among other things. He was doubting much of what he'd been told, but he desperately wanted to believe in all of it. Giant felt how anxiously Ross waited for an answer, and he saw the fervency in his friend's large, light eyes. "My empire is in a big mess, Roscoe. If you won't help me, who will?"

"You didn't answer my—"

"Are you going to help me or aren't you? If you can't even trust me, I don't think I want your bloody help." Giant had grown quickly agitated. He stood up and made ready to open the window panel.

Ross couldn't stand seeing the frown on his friend's face; to see it was worse than being kicked in the stomach. "All right!" he hurriedly said. Maybe it was the late time, but Ross didn't want to upset Giant. He grabbed hold of the boy's arm before he could slip out through the open window. "Wait! I believe you, all right? I'll . . . I'll go. Where did you say it was? Earl's Court?" Ross cringed at Giant's nod. Scratching his head, he reluctantly went on to say, "Fine. I guess that's just fine. That's practically halfway across the city. How are we going to get there?"

Shrugging, Giant replied, "It's only 10:15; the tube isn't shut down until later."

Resigned, Ross quickly threw on warmer clothing (offering a large, dark-colored sweater to his grateful friend) and a pair of shoes. Then, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he slipped through his bedroom window and followed Giant out into the star-lit night.