Ten
ARTHUR RETREATED UNTIL his back was up against the door. He pushed on it with his shoulder, but it didn’t move. Without taking his eyes off the creature, he reached behind to frantically twist the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn either. There was no escape that way.
Quickly Arthur looked from side to side, seeking some other way out. But the misshapen creatures had spread out to cover the neighbouring buildings, and the one-eyed horror was limping up the steps. It drooled as it came and licked its lips, its one eye looking hungrily at the boy.
‘Get back!’ shouted Arthur. He pulled out the Key, got it tangled in his shirt for a heart-stopping moment, then held it ready like a dagger.
The one-eyed creature hissed when it saw the Key. It turned its head and its misshapen mouth quivered. It stopped its advance and called out to its companions, who had been spreading out down the street. Arthur wished he didn’t understand its guttural speech, but he did.
‘Treasure! Danger! Come and help me!’
All of the creatures stopped and turned back towards Arthur. The one-eyed one hissed again and began to slink forward, much more carefully this time, its eye focused not on Arthur, but on the Key. The clock hand was glowing again, Arthur saw, light gathering at the point. The Key was gathering its power as the creature gathered its allies.
The one-eyed creature suddenly crouched and Arthur knew it was about to spring. He pointed the Key at it and shouted, a wild cry that wasn’t a word at all, but a mixture of anger and fear.
A stream of what looked like molten gold shot out of the Key, meeting the creature’s leap head-on. The thing squealed and hissed like a steam train coming to an emergency stop, twisted aside, and fell back to the street. It lay there, twitching and groaning, with smoke rising from a hole in its chest. But there were many more of its kind behind it, and, though they had slowed down after seeing the fate of their forerunner, Arthur knew they would get him if they all rushed him at once. He would take out as many as he could, he thought, and pointed the Key at the closest one.
‘Hey! Idiot! Up here!’
Something soft hit Arthur on the back of the head. He looked up. A small, grimy face looked down at him over the gutter of the roof, several stories up. Hanging beneath that face and a thin, ragged-clad arm was a rope made of knotted pieces of material. The end of it had just struck him.
‘Climb, stupid!’
Afterwards Arthur was never quite sure how he managed to put the Key through his belt, jump about eight feet off the ground, and climb most of the way up a four storey building all before the creatures could get halfway up the front steps.
‘Hurry! Faster! Nithlings can climb!’
Arthur glanced behind as he frantically pulled himself up, hands leaping to each knot with a speed that would have surprised any gym teacher. If only Mister Weightman could see me now, Arthur thought.
The creatures could climb. One of them was already on the rope, swarming up even faster than Arthur. Another one was swarming straight up the brick wall. It seemed to be able to stick its narrow fingers in the thinnest of gaps, but it was slower.
Arthur made it to the top and swung himself over. He saw a flash of steel and the rope went flying away, cut through at the top. A cry of pain indicated that the creature climbing it had fallen too.
‘Quick! Grab a piece of tile and throw!’
Arthur saw a pile of broken tiles, grabbed a jagged piece, and leaned over the gutter to let it fly. His rescuer was throwing too, with considerably greater accuracy. Arthur glanced at him . . . no . . . her, out of the corner of his eye as he took another shard and shot it down at the second climber.
He saw a girl about his own age, perhaps younger, though she was dressed as a boy, in the same old-fashioned clothes everyone else wore in this place. A crushed and battered top hat. A coat several sizes too large, mostly dark blue but patched with black. Knee-length breeches striped in several shades of grey, and very odd mismatched long socks or stockings that ended in one ankle-high and one shin-high boot. She had on several shirts of various sizes and colours and a mulberry-coloured waistcoat that looked, if not new, better kept than the rest of the ensemble.
‘Who are you?’ asked Arthur.
‘Suzy Turquoise Blue,’ replied the girl, throwing one last complete tile with satisfaction. ‘Got it!’
With a drawn-out scream, the climbing creature fell back to the street, landing on another one that had started up.
‘Come on! We’ve got to get out of here before the Commissionaires lumber into view!’
‘The who?’
‘Commissionaires! Hear the whistles? They’ll sort out the Nithlings and then they’ll want to arrest you for sure. Come on!’
‘Hold on!’ said Arthur. The whistles were much closer now. ‘Thanks for helping me and everything, but why shouldn’t I just talk to the . . . the Commissionaires? And who . . . what are Nithlings?’
‘You are an idiot, ain’t you?’ Suzy said, with a roll of her eyes. ‘There’s no time for quizzing.’
‘Why should I go with you?’ asked Arthur stubbornly. He didn’t move.
Suzy opened her mouth, but it was another voice that came out, clearly not her own. It was much deeper, and there was a rasp to it as well. It sounded a lot like Sneezer when he had fought with Mister Monday back at the oval, on that Monday that seemed so long ago.
‘The Will has found a way and you are part of the way. This is not the time for whims and obstinacy. Follow Suzy Blue.’
‘Right,’ said Arthur, shaken by the sudden deep voice coming from the girl. ‘Lead on.’
Suzy spun on her heel, coattails flying, and scampered up the roof. It was steep, but the tiles were rough and stepped, so it wasn’t too hard to climb. Arthur followed more slowly.
The ridge of the roof was flat, though only a foot wide. Suzy ran along it to a chimney stack, which she skirted around, hanging on to the chimney pot and leaning out in a way that made Arthur’s stomach do little flips. It was a long way to the ground.
He got to the chimney and started around it. Suzy was on the other side, looking down at an open balcony thrusting out of the next building. It was about ten feet away and six feet below them.
‘You’re joking! We’re not –’
Suzy jumped as Arthur spoke, landing perfectly on the balcony in a nimble crouch. She didn’t wait to see what Arthur did, but was up in a flash and working on the door, either picking the lock or forcing it open.
Arthur looked down. The street was very far away, and for a moment he was terribly afraid he’d fall. But that fear disappeared as he was distracted by what he saw. There was a full-scale battle in progress below. The whistles had stopped but were replaced by shouts and cries, howls and screams, yelling and a low rumble like constant thunder.
The creatures who’d appeared from the black vapour – the Nithlings – were bottled up in the middle of the street, completely surrounded by a well-disciplined band of large, burly men who wore shining top hats and blue coats, many of the coats adorned with gold sergeant’s stripes on their sleeves. They must be the Commissionaires, Arthur realised. The Sergeants were well over eight feet tall. The ordinary Commissionaires were shorter, around seven feet tall, and they were less fluid in their movements. The Sergeants used sabres that flickered with internal light, and the ordinary Commissionaires wielded wooden truncheons that flashed with tiny bolts of lightning and boomed with thunder as they struck their targets.
Not that the Nithlings were an easy mark. They bit and scratched and wrestled, and every now and then a Commissionaire would reel back through the ranks, blood streaming from his wounds. At least Arthur presumed it was blood. The Sergeants had bright blue blood, and the ordinary Commissionaires’ blood was silver, and it flowed like mercury, thick and slow.
‘Come on!’ shrieked Suzy.
Arthur tore his gaze away from the battle and focused on the balcony. He could do it, he knew. If it wasn’t such a long way to fall, he wouldn’t thin
k twice about it. But it was a long way to fall . . .
‘Hurry!’
Arthur crouched, ready to jump. Then he remembered the Key and drew it out. The last thing he needed was to spear himself with that when he landed.
With the Key in his hand, he felt suddenly more confident. He crouched again, then leaped far into space, and drifted down like a feather to land on the balcony, hardly needing to bend his knees. Suzy Blue was already gone, the door banging behind her. Arthur got up and followed, once more tucking the Key through his belt with his shirt over it.
The room behind the balcony was set up like an old-fashioned office, which didn’t surprise Arthur much. There were low, wide desks of polished wood with green leather tops, all strewn with papers. There were bookcases laden with more papers as well as books. What appeared to be gas lanterns burned in each corner, and under one of these lights, on a small table, Arthur saw his first sign of any food at all in the city, a bronze hot-water urn with many taps and spigots, a silver teapot, and several china cups.
There were also people at work. They looked up as Suzy and Arthur ran past, but they didn’t say anything or try to stop them. Even when Arthur knocked a large pile of parchments off one corner of a desk as he zoomed past, the man behind it remained silent and kept scratching away with his quill – though he did look up and frown.
Suzy bounded out of the office and down the central stairs. At the bottom, she turned away from the main door, went through a narrow hall, opened the door of what appeared to be a broom closet, and went in. Arthur followed her and discovered it was really a broom closet. Or a mop closet, to be strictly accurate, as there were several mops sitting in buckets. It smelled dank and musty.
‘Shut the door!’ whispered Suzy.
Arthur shut the door, and with it went the light.
‘What are we doing here?’
‘Hiding. The Commissionaires will go through every house in Lost Street after the Nithlings. We’ll wait ’em out here.’
‘But they’ll find us for sure!’ protested Arthur. ‘This is a pathetic hiding –’
‘You’ve got Monday’s Key, ain’t you?’ asked Suzy. ‘Half of it, anyway. Or so I’ve been told.’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Arthur.
‘Well, use it!’
‘Use it how?’ asked Arthur.
‘I don’t know,’ said Suzy. ‘It is a Key, so why not lock the door?’
Arthur took out the Key. It glowed in the dark, this time with a faintly green phosphorescence. He’d used it to lock the library doors on the Fetchers, and to release the straps in the ambulance, but he didn’t really know what else he was supposed to do with it.
‘How exactly do I –?’
‘Shhh!’ ordered Suzy urgently. Then in that weird deep voice, she added, ‘Touch the door handle and tell it to lock.’
Arthur touched the Key to the curved iron handle and whispered, ‘Lock!’
At the same time he heard the crash of boots in the corridor outside. His heart hammered in his chest almost as loud as the footsteps that came towards their hiding place. Then the handle rattled once . . . twice . . . but did not turn.
‘Locked, Sergeant!’ bellowed a deep voice. It sounded a bit weird, as if the speaker had a metal funnel stuck on his mouth. Sort of tinny, Arthur thought. The footsteps retreated, and a few seconds later Arthur heard several heavyset people going up the stairs.
He opened his mouth to whisper something to Suzy, but she held up her hand – mostly covered by a moth-eaten woollen glove – and shook her head.
Several minutes passed. They stood silently in the closet, listening to the footsteps and occasional shouts. Then there was a clattering on the stairs, a sudden rush, and the handle was tried again.
‘Locked, Sergeant!’ boomed the same voice. Then the footsteps went away and Arthur heard the front door slam.
‘They do near everything twice,’ said Suzy. ‘At least the metal ones do, the ordinary Commissionaires. They’re pretty stupid. Sergeants are a different trouble. They’re not Made, and most of ’em have fallen from up above and been demoted to Commissionaire Sergeants as a punishment. Come on – we should be able to sneak out now. Unlock the door.’
Arthur touched the door with the Key and said, ‘Open.’
The door sprang open with sudden violence, slamming against the wall. Suzy stepped out first. Arthur was following when her surprised cry gave him just enough warning to whip the Key behind his back.
‘Oh! Sergeant!’
A Commissionaire Sergeant stood in the hall, all eight feet of him, though on closer examination a foot of that was from his top hat. He had a waxed moustache, which he was stroking, and a very sharp, long nose under piercing blue eyes. The gold stripes on his blue sleeves gleamed in the gaslight.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. His voice was deep, but not tinny like the other Commissionaire. He pulled a notebook out of his coat pocket, flipped it open, and took a pencil stub out from a thin sleeve on the side of the notebook. ‘I wondered why that closet would be locked. What have we here? Your names, numbers, rank, and business.’
‘Suzy Turquoise Blue, 182367542 and a half in precedence, Ink-Filler Sixth Class, on ink-filling business.’
Halfway through her answer, Suzy’s voice changed into the very deep, scratchy tone Arthur had heard before.
The Sergeant’s pencil stopped.
‘Your voice. What’s happened to it?’
‘I’ve got a bit of a frog in my throat,’ said Suzy, still in the same deep voice.
‘A frog? Where’d you get that?’ asked the Sergeant enviously.
‘Present,’ said Suzy in her normal voice. ‘Floated in nice as you like, ’ardly damaged. Might even last a year if I’m lucky.’
‘I’ve never had a frog in the throat,’ said the Sergeant sadly. ‘Had a small nose tickle once. Confiscated it from a Porter who had it from a Flotsam Raker. Went for a twelvemonth before it wore out. Very distinctive. Not as flamboyant as a sneeze, but very nice . . . Where was I? Who’s this other lad?’
‘Ah, I’m –’
‘He’s one of our lot,’ interrupted Suzy. ‘Arthur Night Black. Got dropped on his head in a pool of Nothing down below a couple of hundred years ago and hasn’t been right since. Always getting lost. That’s why we was in that closet. I was looking for him –’
‘Papers!’ ordered the Sergeant, looking at Arthur.
‘He’s lost them,’ said Suzy quickly. ‘Got frightened by the Nithlings, wriggled out of his coat, and went hiding. Expect the Nithlings et ’em right up.’
‘Ate them up,’ corrected the Sergeant. He peered down at Suzy. ‘Now I haven’t got anything against you Ink-Fillers, but orders is orders. I’ll have to take him to the Inquiry Clerk.’
‘Inquiries!’ Suzy snorted. ‘He could be there for years. They’ll dock his pay – and him with a new coat to get and all. Can’t we sort this out gentlemanly-like? You ain’t written anything yet, have you?’
The Sergeant frowned, then slowly pushed the pencil back into its sleeve and folded his notebook.
‘What do you suggest, Miss Blue?’
‘This frog,’ said Suzy. ‘You want it?’
The Sergeant hesitated.
‘Free gift,’ said Suzy. ‘And it’s not as if you’ll get cribbed for it. When was the last General Inspection?’
‘Ten thousand years and more,’ said the Sergeant softly. ‘But I’ve made mistakes before. I wasn’t always a Commissionaire. Once I was . . .’
‘Go on,’ said Suzy, her voice even deeper and more authoritative. ‘Take a look.’
She held her hand in front of her mouth and spat into her palm.
‘Gross!’ exclaimed Arthur, for it wasn’t spit that came out, but a small and very beautiful emerald-green frog. It sat in Suzy’s hand and emitted a deep, poignant call.
‘Give it a try,’ encouraged Suzy. She took a rather dirty handkerchief from her pocket and gave the frog a quick polish. It didn’t seem to mind. r />
The Sergeant was quite mesmerised by the frog. He looked around, then reached out and picked it up. He stared at it in his hand, then gulped it down as if he were eating a mint.
His mouth closed, and he froze in place.
‘That’s him sorted,’ said Suzy in her normal voice. ‘And me free, so no hard feelings, Arthur, but I was impressed on this duty and I ’ave a very urgent ointment –’
She dashed away on the last word, but the Sergeant’s hand shot out and grabbed her coattails. Suzy tried to shuck off her coat, but couldn’t manage it before the Sergeant transferred his grip to her neck.
‘Ow! Ow! Leave off!’
‘The Will has need of you, Suzy Blue,’ said the Sergeant, but once again it was not his voice, but the deep voice that had previously come out of Suzy. ‘There may be rewards.’
Suzy stopped struggling.
‘Rewards? Only may be don’t sound so certain . . .’
Arthur stepped forward. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, or what the Will wants with me, but it is very important that I find out what’s going on. I think . . . I think a lot of people might die if I don’t. So I need your help, Suzy.’
Arthur spoke with passion. He could feel the fear and tension trapped inside him, like steam in a kettle. Back in his world, in his town, the quarantine zone would be expanding. The hospitals would be crowded, possibly overflowing, already unable to cope. Arthur could almost see his mother and her team in the lab, working feverishly . . . feverishly . . . perhaps they were already sniffling, sneezing with the colds that marked the onset of the plague . . .
‘People? Die?’ asked Suzy. ‘You mean you really are from outside the House? From the Secondary Realms?’
‘I’m from outside the House,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t know what you mean about the Secondary Realms.’
‘You’re a mortal?’ asked Suzy. ‘A real live mortal?’
‘I suppose so,’ confirmed Arthur.
‘So am I, sort of, or I used to be,’ said Suzy. She hesitated, then said, ‘Will you help me get back? Help all of us get back?’
‘Who?’ asked Arthur. ‘Everyone in the city?’