Arthur undid the ties on the tent door and rolled them back. It was light outside, the pseudo-sunlight cast by the bright elevator shafts. Arthur blinked, stepped out of the tent, and looked around.
He’d learned not to expect anything like a normal room, but he was still surprised and couldn’t help gawping and craning his head.
Monday’s Antechamber was an enormous veranda built two-thirds of the way up a mountain. Or actually, a volcano. Arthur could see the lip of the crater several hundred yards up the slope.
The veranda was two or three hundred yards wide, extending straight out from the side of the volcano. Something was supporting it underneath, columns or beams or perhaps unseen magic. It wasn’t clear what the veranda itself was made out of. It was so crowded with waiting petitioners, who had brought tents and carpets and rugs and straw mats and all manner of furnishings to make themselves more comfortable. Which was quite reasonable, since they might be waiting for centuries.
There was talking, laughter, and just plain noise everywhere, even above Arthur’s head, where large numbers of winged Denizens were swooping back and forth. They were an odd sight in their Victorian-era clothes, combined with sweeping wings. Though some of them flew very high, Arthur noted that none of them went near the mouth of the volcano.
All around, the place looked rather like a carnival. Unlike the Atrium, where everyone was at least pretending to be busy, the House Denizens here had an excuse to wait or amuse themselves however they wanted, provided they kept their waiting tickets. So just in Arthur’s immediate sight, there were people – Arthur felt he had to call them people, even if they weren’t – reading, playing board games or cards, practising fencing, juggling, writing, doing strange calisthenics, drinking tea, eating cakes and scones, staring at him . . .
Arthur stared back at the last fellow. There was something familiar about the way he stood, though he didn’t think he’d seen him before. He was well-dressed, in matching pale pink coat, waistcoat, and pantaloons, and had long, drooping mustachios.
Seeing Arthur meet his gaze, this pink-clad person ducked his head and scuttled back into the crowd. It was this scuttle that gave him away.
‘Pravuil!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘I think that was Pravuil! From the Coal Cellar!’
‘A spy!’ growled the Will. ‘Quickly! Turn right and head for the crimson tent with the golden ball atop the central pole. You see it?’
Arthur nodded as he set off at a quick walk.
‘Pravuil said he was working for Dusk,’ muttered Arthur as he made his way through the crowd, Suzy following close behind.
‘He may be,’ growled the Will. ‘But we must be careful. Go into the crimson tent, turn to the left, and follow the passage around to the back door, go out. We will come out in a passage between stacked crates.’
The tent was dark inside and hung with many curtains or dividers. Arthur turned left and followed the side of the tent around. He saw a knife glittering in Suzy’s hand and wondered where she had got it.
‘I hope you won’t need that!’ he whispered over his shoulder as they walked around. It was a big tent, perhaps as big as a circus big top, though it hadn’t looked that large from the outside.
Suzy looked at the knife in her hand.
‘It’s for cutting through the tent side if we need to,’ she explained. ‘Quickest way out. No point using one on a Denizen. It’d hurt them, but no more than that.’
‘Quiet,’ said the Will. But it spoke much more loudly than anyone else, making Arthur wonder why it bothered with the warning. Or perhaps as a jade frog the Will couldn’t hear itself properly.
As the Will had said, there was a narrow laneway past the back door of the tent, between two huge and precarious-looking stacks of wooden crates. Each one was about the size of an old-fashioned tea chest and there were thousands of them, piled up very dangerously in rows twenty to thirty feet high. Upon closer examination, Arthur saw that they were tea chests and had stenciled inscriptions like BEST CEYLON and HIGH GROWN DIMBOLA. Many of them had inscriptions that he couldn’t read at first, until he touched the Key in his sleeve. Then the letters blurred from their odd symbols into English letters. They spelled things like TERZIKON MARILOR BLACKWATER and OGGDRIGGLY NO. 3, which Arthur was fairly sure had never been written on tea chests from his own world. At least not tea chests filled with tea.
‘Loot from the Secondary Realms,’ said the Will disapprovingly. ‘More evidence of Mister Monday’s interference!’
At the end of the passage through the stacked tea chests, there was the side of the volcano. Blank grey stone, solidified lava. Arthur reached it, touched its cool, smooth surface, and said, ‘What now?’
‘Now you hand over the Key or I will visit whatever torments I can upon you, and many more upon your friends,’ declared a familiar voice from above, as a shadow of wide-swept wings fell upon Arthur’s face.
Twenty-two
AS ARTHURWHIPPED the Key out of the pocket in his sleeve, Suzy closed in on him, and they put their backs against the stony side of the volcano.
Monday’s Noon spread his wings wider and dropped to the ground. As he landed, crates were pushed aside farther back, starting a landslide all the way along the makeshift passage. Dozens of metal Commissionaires and Commissionaire Sergeants bulled their way through the piled-up mess of crates and broken bits of plywood, to form a wedge behind Noon.
Noon raised his hand and a flaming sword appeared in his fist. It crackled and spat, and the flames lengthened. He smiled his bright smile and held out his left hand. ‘The Key,’ he said. ‘Or I shall burn the Ink-Filler.’
‘It is a trap! What do we do now?’ whispered Arthur, ducking his chin down to talk to the Will.
‘All three of you need to step forward a little,’ replied a voice that was not the Will’s. Arthur looked over his shoulder and was surprised to see that a doorway had formed in the lava wall. A dark, shadowed doorway. He could just make out the face of Dusk within it.
Arthur and Suzy stepped forward a pace.
‘And be more trusting,’ added Dusk as he stepped out of the doorway, followed by several of his Midnight Visitors. ‘Go through the doorway, Arthur. You too, Miss Blue.’
Noon’s smile had slipped as Dusk appeared and moved in front of Arthur. Now it became a frown as Dusk drew a sword of his own out of the air. Dusk’s sword had a blade of darkest night, sprinkled with stars.
‘What is this, Dusk?’ Noon stormed. ‘I am to have the Key!’
‘No, brother,’ answered Dusk gently. ‘We will let them go on their way.’
‘Traitor!’ hissed Noon. ‘Step aside!’
‘No,’ replied Dusk. ‘I am loyal to the Architect and Her Will.’
Noon screamed and threw his flaming sword straight at Suzy. Arthur saw it and tried to raise the Key to intercept it, but he was too slow. The Key was only halfway up and the sword’s point was a few inches from Suzy’s throat when Dusk’s dark blade batted it away. The sword ricocheted off the volcano and returned to Noon’s hand, setting several tea chests alight from its flaming passage.
‘Charge!’ roared Noon, and he ran forward, once again cutting at Suzy. Dusk parried this attack, and he and Noon exchanged a series of blows almost too fast to follow. A thin line of Midnight Visitors rushed to meet the charge of the Commissionaires. Whips flashed with sonic booms as batons and swords crackled with lightning. Tea chests exploded into matchsticks and burst into flame. Smoke began to spread.
‘We have to help them,’ shouted Arthur, brandishing the Key. Noon and Dusk were evenly matched, but there were far fewer Midnight Visitors than Commissionaires.
‘No,’ boomed the Will. ‘We must go through the weirdway. There’s no time!’
Arthur hesitated. At that moment, Dusk ducked under a cut and gripped his brother’s arm. Before Noon could break free, he was spun into a somersault and hurled up into the air.
‘Go!’ shouted Dusk as his black wings burst out of his back and he launched himself up
into the sky. ‘We will hold Noon as long as we can!’
Still Arthur hesitated. He saw Noon streak up like a rocket, then turn and plunge to meet Dusk’s ascent. Fire and night met with a terrible shriek as the two tumbled down, trading lightning-fast blows and parries as they fell.
The Will shouted, ‘Get in the –’
Noon and Dusk struck the ground like a shooting star, right in the middle of the melee. The force of the impact rocked the entire veranda. Arthur and Suzy were hurled into each other, and it knocked down most of the Commissionaires and the Midnight Visitors – and all of the remaining tea chests.
As Arthur struggled to his feet, he saw Noon burst out of the debris, rage distorting his handsome face. He turned towards Arthur and leaped forward, only to fall as Dusk grabbed his ankle. Then both were on their feet and fighting again.
‘Slay the girl!’ screamed Noon to his minions as they began to clamber out of the splintered piles of wood and burning wreckage. ‘Close the weirdway!’
Four Commissionaire Sergeants smashed their way through the thin line of Midnight Visitors and rushed towards Arthur and Suzy.
This time, Arthur didn’t wait. He turned and plunged into the dark doorway, once again dragging Suzy by the hand.
The red glow of fire streamed in behind Arthur, followed by the rattling boom of a Visitor’s whip. Then the doorway snapped shut, and everything was suddenly quiet and dark save for the glow of the Key in Arthur’s hand, which revealed the sides and roof of an upwards-sloping tunnel that was not made of lava. Arthur let go of Suzy and led the way at a swift walk, though he didn’t like the feel of the ground underfoot. It rippled and moved, like walking on a trampoline, and the walls of the tunnel were soft as well.
Suzy saw him slide his finger along the wall for the third time and whispered, ‘Weirdways are all like this. This is a big one, though. Often you have to crawl. And if they close down, you get squelched, cause they’re made with Nothing. Or through Nothing.’
‘Weirdways exploit the interstices of Nothing in the structure of the House,’ said the Will. ‘There is little danger provided a weirdway is well made. Now, Arthur. When we come out you must get as close to Mister Monday as possible and then, holding your own Key, recite this incantation: ‘Minute by minute, hour by hour, two hands as one, together the power.’ Quite simple, really. The Hour Hand will fly to you. You must catch it and then immediately prick your right thumb with the Hour Hand and prick your left thumb with the Minute Hand and smear a drop of blood from your left hand on the Hour Hand and from your right thumb on the Minute Hand. Then hold both Keys together and recite another very simple incantation: “I, Arthur, anointed Heir to the Kingdom, claim this Key and with it the Mastery of the Lower House. I claim it by blood and bone and contest, out of truth, in testament, and against all trouble.” Got that?’
‘No,’ said Arthur, shaking his head. ‘Which thumb for which hand? And what if Mister Monday is holding on to the Hour Hand?’
‘Oh, he won’t be,’ said the Will breezily. ‘He’ll be asleep, or in a steam bath. The Dayroom is full of steaming pools. Let me go over what you need to do –’ ‘Hang on!’ said Arthur. ‘What if Mister Monday isn’t asleep or in a steam bath? What do I do?’
‘We shall improvise,’ said the Will. ‘I shall instruct you as required.’
Silence greeted this remark. Even the Will seemed to recognise ‘we shall improvise’ wasn’t a big help to Arthur.
‘I reckon you can take on Mister Monday,’ said Suzy, punching Arthur on the arm quite hard, obviously in an effort to bolster his confidence. ‘He’ll probably be flat out snoring anyway.’
‘There’s no choice,’ said Arthur. He was thinking once more of the plague. Of the cure. Of his parents. ‘I have to go through with it.’
I will improvise, he thought grimly. I will do whatever it takes. I will keep on fighting and thinking and trying, no matter what.
‘Excellent!’ said the Will and it went over what it had said before. Arthur repeated the instructions. After four repetitions, he was reasonably sure that he could remember what to do. But he couldn’t help thinking about everything that might go wrong. Starting with Mister Monday ready and waiting at the other end of the weirdway. Surely Noon would have warned him? Or had Dusk stopped him in time?
‘Are you ready?’ the Will asked. ‘The weirdway is narrowing. We are about to emerge into Monday’s Dayroom.’
‘Can we lose the hair first?’ asked Suzy.
‘If you must,’ sighed the Will. It waited as they all recited the spell and various heads of hair and beards fell to the floor. ‘Are you ready now?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, and Suzy nodded in agreement.
‘We’re ready.’
The weirdway was indeed getting much narrower.
Arthur had to duck his head and then get down on all fours and crawl the last few yards. He couldn’t see an exit as such, but there was a circular patch of darkness ahead that was not lit up by the Key’s glow. When Arthur touched it, his hand disappeared. It was similar to Monday’s Postern in the wall around the House, as manifested in Arthur’s world.
‘That is the door,’ said the Will. ‘Go through, but not too quickly. The ledge is narrow on the other side.’
Arthur crawled through carefully and stopped so suddenly that Suzy ran into his feet.
It was a very narrow ledge he’d come out on. It was not much wider than he was and only extended for about ten feet to either side. Worse than that, it was quite a long way up the crater wall. Arthur looked down and, through billowing clouds of steam, saw a bubbling lake, lit deep within by red and yellow plumes of molten magma. The whole crater was a steaming lake, and Arthur could see nowhere to go and no way to get down off this ledge unless they flew, and Suzy was the only one with wings.
Nevertheless, he knew that first appearances in the House could be misleading. So he crawled to the side and let Suzy emerge. They both huddled on the ledge, staring down into the turbulent waters, watching the great billows of steam that rose up as lava poured out deep below.
Above them, the golden net that prevented flying visitors gleamed, picking up and reflecting the light from the elevators that surrounded the volcano. For the first time, Arthur wondered where those elevators went to. He had always thought Monday’s Dayroom must be at the top of the House. But of course, this was only the Lower House, and there were the regions governed by the Morrow Days above. Or so he presumed.
Arthur shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about stuff like that. He had to concentrate on the immediate problem. It was hard to think because it was much, much hotter than it had been and he was sweating furiously under his heavy coat.
‘There’s something in the middle,’ said Suzy, who had continued to stare down. ‘Look, there!’
She pointed as the steam clouds momentarily parted. There, right in the middle of the bubbling lake, was an island and a sprawling building. A low, spread-out, L-shaped house complex with red-tiled roofs that looked kind of familiar to Arthur. He was sure he’d seen it before somewhere. In a book. A Roman villa.
‘Monday’s Dayroom,’ said the Will. ‘There is a fine bridge to it from the other side. But we will have to cross by the spiderwire. It may be a little difficult to see at first. Look by your left foot, Arthur.’
Arthur looked down. At first he couldn’t see a thing, then he caught the faintest shine of some gossamer thread. He reached down and touched it. It was a taut wire, about as thick as his finger, but almost completely translucent. Arthur plucked it and it emitted a soft harmonic note.
‘Uh, how do we use this?’
‘It will stick to the soles of your feet,’ said the Will. ‘You simply walk down it to Monday’s Dayroom.’
‘I think I’ll fly,’ said Suzy.
‘No, you –’ snapped the Will. ‘No. Close to the island, fliers attract targeted bursts of steam that will strip the flesh from your bones. The only way down is by spiderwire, and there is no time to
procrastinate. Arthur, step on.’
‘What happens if I lose my balance?’ asked Arthur. ‘I mean, my soles might stick, but I’ll be hanging upside down.’
‘Then you will have to walk the whole way upside down,’ said the Will. ‘Hurry! It is easier than it sounds.’
‘What would you know? You’re a frog,’ muttered Suzy. ‘You haven’t even got soles.’
‘Shhh,’ said Arthur. He stood up, carefully stowed the Key in his sleeve pocket, and tied a handkerchief around the sleeve so it couldn’t fall out. Then he spread his arms out for balance, took a deep breath of the humid air, and slid one foot out along the spiderwire.
Twenty-three
IT WAS EASIER than it looked. Arthur slid one foot after the other along the spiderwire. It felt rock-solid under his feet, and he had no trouble with balance. At least he had no trouble with balance as long as he didn’t look down. As soon as he glanced towards his feet, he started to shake and quiver, and that became a general wavering that threatened to send him upside down. But if he looked up and ahead, it stopped again.
Suzy came next, moving quickly. She had no trouble at all and didn’t even need to extend her arms, because her wings spread out and easily kept her upright.
Soon she was right behind Arthur and he was all too conscious of his own slow progress.
‘Is this perhaps the time to mention that the spiderwire is impermanent?’ asked the Will after Arthur had slowly shuffled along another twenty yards.
‘No,’ said Arthur. He made himself go faster and tried not to look down. ‘What do you mean impermanent?’
‘It will disappear in a few minutes.’
Arthur started a peculiar running motion. It was very odd to not be able to pick up his feet. It also made balancing more difficult and, though Arthur was making faster progress, he also picked up a wobble that got worse and worse.