Arthur’s hand fell to the pouch at his waist as he thought this, and he saw Lord Sunday’s eyes follow the movement. Instantly, Arthur lifted his hand to scratch his nose, the chain clanking as he moved. But it was too late. Sunday’s attention was on the pouch. The Trustee lifted his hand slightly, and Arthur’s belt broke apart, the pouches sailing across the intervening space to land at Sunday’s feet. Waterless soap, a cleaning cloth and brush, several nuts and bolts, and the all-important silver bag fell out.
Sunday gestured again, and the silver bag spewed out it contents: The Compleat Atlas of the House, the yellow elephant toy, and the Mariner’s medal. The Atlas disappeared as it touched the grass. Arthur jumped as it reappeared a moment later inside the front of his coveralls.
‘Like the Keys, the Atlas must be given freely,’ said Sunday. ‘I hope you will do so before too much time passes. As for your sentimental possessions, I do not care to give you the comfort of them. Noon, take these things and throw them from the hill.’
Arthur could only watch as the slightly taller of the two green Denizens scooped up the elephant and the medal and threw them away. The items separated as they flew through the air, the elephant on a high arc that ended suddenly as it landed in the high branches of a tree, the medal going lower and farther, travelling several hundred yards before it disappeared below the level of the terrace.
Arthur watched every moment of the medal’s fall, and with it the loss of his only hope of escape.
‘I have a garden to tend,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘I will return in a few hours, when I trust you will have thought further about my offer.’
He stepped off the horizontal clock face and walked away, but not to the dragonfly’s rope ladder. Instead, Arthur watched him cross to the rear of the terrace, where a line of steps wound up the hill. The two Denizens followed. All three were on the steps when a bright blue-and-red bird shot past Arthur and flew in front of Lord Sunday, hovering in place, its wings beating so fast they were a blur. Sunday held out a finger, the bird hopped onto it and was carried to his shoulder, where it spoke into his ear in a high-pitched voice that Arthur could almost hear, but not well enough to make out more than a few key words.
‘Saturday . . . not . . . Drasils wilting . . . more . . .’
The bird finished talking. Sunday nodded once, and it flew away, back down the hill. Sunday turned around and looked at Arthur.
‘It seems you are not the only recalcitrant who cannot acknowledge the realities of their position,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘As always, it is left to me to personally take charge of matters.’
With that, he handed the silver net to Sunday’s Noon, who held it with both hands. It obviously took a lot of effort to keep it relatively still as the Keys jumped around inside, straining to reach Arthur.
‘Distance will make them less restive,’ said Sunday. He placed his hand just above his breastbone, touching the Key that hung from a chain around his neck, hidden inside his shirt, and closed his eyes for a moment in concentration. ‘They will be completely quiescent when they are locked away. I have opened the cage, but it will soon close, so attend to that at once. Dawn, come with me.’
Sunday retraced his steps back down to the clock terrace, with Sunday’s Dawn following, and climbed back up the ladder to the dragonfly. But Arthur didn’t watch Sunday climb, and only saw the dragonfly depart from the corner of his eye. He was intent upon Sunday’s Noon, and watched him as he carefully carried the silver net and the Keys away, up the steps that led to the next terrace and out of Arthur’s sight.
A few minutes later, the dragonfly was away, turning to climb up and over the hill. Arthur was alone, chained to the clock. He could see only as far as the nearest hundred-foot-high hedge below the hill, and the slope of the terrace behind him.
The clock ticked – a sound like the sharp stroke of an axe on very hard wood. The minute hand swept forward, and the chain on Arthur’s left wrist rattled as it too moved.
Arthur bit his lip and tried to think. The medal was gone, but there had to be something else he could do. There was the chance that Dame Primus or Dr Scamandros might be able to rescue him, but even as he thought that, he dismissed it. His only real chance would be if he could do something himself. He had to regain the Keys, or free Part Seven of the Will, or somehow retrieve the Mariner’s medal.
The clock ticked again, the hand moved, and the chain rattled. Arthur stood up and looked around him. He couldn’t see where the medal had landed. The only thing he could see was his yellow elephant, stuck in the upper branches of a tall tree that reached up from the next terrace farther down the hill. The elephant looked like a strange fruit, the bright yellow a stark contrast against the tree’s pale green leaves.
I wish you could help me, thought Arthur. Elephant, you were always there to help me out when I was little, even if it was only in my imagination . . .
Arthur looked away from Elephant, down at the clock face, and then at the green grass of the terrace.
The Old One conjured stuff out of Nothing when I first met him, Arthur thought. He said I’d need a Key to do it, but that was ages ago, before my transformation. I might be able to make things from Nothing here.
He laid his hand on the clock. He couldn’t feel any interstices of Nothing lurking somewhere underneath, as was usual in other parts of the House, and it was likely the Incomparable Gardens was completely armoured against the Void, but it was worth a try. Anything was worth a try.
‘A telephone, connected to the Citadel in the Great Maze,’ said Arthur firmly. At the same time he visualised the telephone Dame Primus had given him long ago, in the red box. He tried to picture it in his head as solidly as possible, but he felt none of the symptoms of House sorcery. Though these aches and pains were always unpleasant and sometimes extraordinarily intense, he would have welcomed them if it meant his attempts to make a telephone from Nothing were successful.
‘A telephone, connected to other parts of the House!’ he said again, snapping his words as if he spoke to some recalcitrant servant. But still he felt no sorcery, and no telephone appeared.
Arthur tried to call up the rage he’d felt in his house, when he’d smashed the table, hoping that energy might somehow fuel his attempt to draw something out of Nothing. But he didn’t feel angry, and he couldn’t recapture the emotion. He just felt drained and defeated and small. All of his triumphant, powerful feelings were completely gone, lost the moment he was chained by Lord Sunday and his servants.
‘Maybe a telephone is too tricky,’ Arthur said to himself. ‘Or the connections are difficult . . . but what else could help now?’
He thought about bolt cutters, or a hacksaw, but they would be useless against the sorcerous metal of the manacles. In fact, apart from the Mariner’s harpoon or the Keys, Arthur couldn’t think of anything that would have any effect upon his bonds.
What I really need is some way to get the medal back. It’s only down the slope. I need a retriever dog, or something . . . a smart animal who will do what it’s told. I wish Elephant was real, just like I thought he was when I was four . . .
Arthur smiled to himself, remembering how real Elephant had been, and the conversations he’d had with Emily, recounting what Elephant had done that day, sometimes adopting Elephant’s voice and manipulating his trunk to make him talk.
A sudden jab of pain ran through Arthur’s joints from ankle to shoulder, and something touched his arm. He yelped and sprang to his feet, thinking of a puppet woodcutter and his axe, or, even worse, the old woman puppet with her corkscrew. But the trapdoor was shut, and the touch, when it came again to his knee, was light, a gentle tap that came from the trunk of a small yellow elephant whose twinkling, jet-black eyes looked up at Arthur with wisdom and affection.
Arthur crouched down and cradled his lifelong friend, biting his lip to hold back the sobs that were so near to breaking out. Elephant waited patiently, till Arthur had composed himself enough to sit back. The boy looked up at the tree, where th
e toy had lodged. It was gone, and the elephant next to him was definitely a living, breathing version of his childhood companion.
I’ve made a Nithling, thought Arthur, and he supposed he should be afraid of what he’d done. But he wasn’t. He was happy. He was no longer alone, and, even better than that, now he had an ally.
‘I’m so glad to see you, Elephant,’ he said. ‘I need your help really badly. There’s a silver medal, about this big, somewhere down the slope of the hill in that direction. I need you to go and get it, please, and bring it back to me. But be careful. Even the plants can be dangerous – we have many enemies here.’
Elephant nodded sagely and raised his trunk to blow a soft trumpet blast of affirmation. Then he jumped down from the clock face and strode off through the grass, towards the edge of the terrace.
Twelve
FORTUNATELY FOR ALL concerned, the tile did take Suzy, Dusk, Giac, Part Six of the Will, and two score artillerists to a position adjacent the Citadel. There they met one of the rearguard guides, who led them quickly past a gaping hole of Nothing that was slowly and inexorably spreading like ink across blotting paper, and on to the Citadel itself, through the abandoned trenches and fire-wash blackened ground left by the Newniths’ siege.
The great fortress was strangely quiet, its buildings abandoned. A winding column of black smoke rose from the lakeside bastion, which had been set on fire to destroy the last of the stores that could not be taken up to the Middle House.
The guide took them to the central keep by the shortest path, one that would normally be blocked by sealed gates, portcullises, and heavy doors. But all the Citadel’s portals and defences were open now, and the few sentries remaining left their posts to join the party as they passed, though they kept a wary eye out to the rear, watching for any of the old-fashioned type of free-willed Nithling that might try to follow, as many of these creatures were beginning to emerge from the pools and pockets of Nothing that were bubbling up all around the Citadel.
The soldiers who had already departed for the Middle House had left a lot of nonessential items behind, for there were packs, bags, chests, and boxes pushed to the sides of many of the rooms and corridors. Along the way, Suzy snagged a Regimental Brigadier General’s coat for herself, and a Horde staff officer’s blue tunic with chain mail epaulets and a curious hat called a shako for Giac, who adopted both with enthusiasm.
The elevator in Sir Thursday’s study had been expanded to its maximum size, about a hundred feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet long, with a tall arched ceiling some sixteen feet high. Even before Dusk and Suzy and their troops arrived, it was packed with the rearguard, including a dozen Not-Horses, a wagon loaded with Nothing-powder, and more than a hundred soldiers from the Legion, the Horde, the Borderers, and the Regiment, with various officers and NCOs from the different units all trying to assert their authority in order to ensure their soldiers had the best and most comfortable placements.
This bickering ceased when Dusk arrived and took charge. Suzy left him to his organising, and wove her way through the crush to join three Piper’s children who were sitting on a barrel. They were wearing the peculiar mishmash of uniforms favoured by herself and adopted by the irregulars who’d now formed Suzy’s Raiders. Suzy knew these three, though not well, since she hadn’t had much time to meet all the other Piper’s children in the Army.
‘Have a biscuit, General,’ said one of the children, reaching into the barrel, which was stuffed to the brim with biscuits. Since neither Denizens nor Piper’s children needed to eat, but liked to do so anyway, it was surprising that the barrel was marked ESSENTIAL GOODS FOR EVACUATION.
Suzy took the raisin-filled biscuit with glee and, between mouthfuls, introduced everyone.
‘Bren, Shan, Athan. This ’ere’s Colonel Giac,’ she said. ‘He’s my new aide-de-camp.’
‘Colonel?’ Giac beamed, repeating his new rank to himself with great satisfaction.
‘And the bird is Part Six of the Will,’ added Suzy. She swallowed and said, ‘Who’ll be joining up with Dame Primus soon, I expect, so don’t tell ’im nothing about you know what.’
‘What?’ asked the raven.
‘It don’t concern you or Dame Primus,’ said Suzy. ‘Or anyone but us Piper’s children.’
Part Six of the Will looked at her with one beady eye.
‘I will be charitable and presume you have good intentions,’ it said. ‘But you be careful, Suzy Blue.’
‘Anyhow, what’s the news?’ asked Suzy.
Athan shrugged. ‘The Maze is falling apart, we’re all off to the Middle House, Sir Thursday’s snuffed it. Don’t know anything else.’
Suzy was about to ask another question when the elevator juddered into movement and everybody stumbled into everyone else, which was very painful in the case of the Denizens who got trodden on by the Not-Horses’ steel-clad toes.
‘We’re away,’ said an artillerist in the crowd as the elevator began to accelerate upward. She sounded relieved, and there was a general lessening of tension among all the Denizens, and a sudden rise in the volume and extent of conversation.
Unlike Suzy’s elevator descent from the Upper House, the ascent to the Middle House was quite a steady and civilised journey. It was much slower, taking several hours, but there were raisin-filled biscuits, and though the bandstand was empty to begin with, various soldiers produced instruments and soon there was a scratch quartet of musicians playing typically soothing elevator music not very well.
Suzy, in her usual fashion, did not dwell on the bad news or think much about what lay ahead. Instead she set her Piper’s children to looking around the transported stores, to see if there was anything that they might want to ‘borrow,’ as she put it. But there was nothing of any great interest to Suzy, though she did procure a savage-sword for herself and got Giac a brassbound shooting stick that he said would be a fine replacement for his umbrella. He even thought it would be easier to cast spells with it and, in his newfound confidence, was going to give it a try before Part Six of the Will dissuaded him.
Their arrival was also smooth, with hardly a bump and the merest chime to announce the fact. The doors slid open and at once Marshal Dusk strode out, with Suzy, the raven, Giac, and the Piper’s children close behind.
Suzy recognised the courtyard the elevator had appeared in. It was the central bailey in front of the main keep of Binding Junction, the fortress on the Top Shelf of the Middle House. Suzy shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked around. It was very hot and bright on the Top Shelf, a consequence of there being two suns in the sky above, one smaller than the other.
The courtyard had been empty when Suzy had last passed through, but now it was full of Army wagons, all carefully lined up against the walls. The curious scaly-leaved trees were gone, not even their stumps visible. Soldiers were everywhere, moving about purposefully, either because they genuinely had work to do or wanted to appear as if they did. There were a few High Guild Bookbinders wandering about as well in their velvet robes, carrying papers and pots of glue, or their long needle-like spears.
Marshal Dusk was met by several officers. After speaking briefly to them, he beckoned to Suzy.
‘Dame Primus wishes to see you immediately, General Turquoise Blue,’ he said. ‘She is on the battlements, surveying the camp.’
‘Guess you’d better come too—’ Suzy began to say to Part Six of the Will, but it was already in flight, flapping up to the top of the keep, several hundred feet above them. Even at that distance, Suzy recognised the very tall and formidable figure who was looking down, straight at her.
Dame Primus raised her arm as the raven alighted on her hand. There was a flash of light, a disturbing sound like the hum of a giant cymbal lightly struck, and the raven disappeared.
‘Pity,’ muttered Suzy. ‘It was the best part so far, if you ask me. ’Ope it has some effect on old grizzleguts.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Marshal Dusk.
‘Nuffin’,’
said Suzy. ‘Just thinking aloud. Guess we’d better go up. Don’t s’pose you’ve got a decent pair of spare wings? Or a couple of pairs? I’ve only got some mangy grease monkey pinions, and I don’t trust ’em.’
‘Wings are strictly rationed for the moment,’ said Dusk. ‘On the direct orders of Dame Primus. We will need every pair if we are to assault the Upper House, and the Incomparable Gardens thereafter. The stairs are over there.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Suzy. She looked back at Athan, winked, and touched the side of her nose. The Piper’s child grinned and he, Shan, and Bren melted back into the crowd, towards the line of quartermaster’s wagons.
‘Come on, then, Giac,’ said Suzy. ‘Last one to the top is a rotten sorcerer.’
She started off at a run, but paused after a few steps when Giac didn’t immediately follow. He was looking puzzled.
‘Come on!’
‘But I already am a rotten sorcerer,’ he said.
‘No, it means . . . it’s a joke,’ Suzy started to explain. ‘Oh, never mind. I’m just saying race you to the top. For fun, and also because it will annoy Dame Primus.’
‘Annoy Dame Primus?’ asked Giac worriedly. ‘Is that a good idea?’
‘Well, no,’ said Suzy. ‘It’s a stupid idea, that’s part of the . . .’
She stopped talking and took Giac by the hand.
‘Never mind. We’ll just walk fast. I can’t expect you to take in everything at once. You remind me of Arthur.’
‘I do?’ asked Giac. One of his rare smiles passed across his face.
‘Yep,’ said Suzy. ‘I expect we’ll have to go and get him out of trouble as well, soon as we see what Dame Primus wants.’
The battlements were crowded. Marshal Noon, Marshal Dawn, and Friday’s Dawn were there, accompanied by numerous senior officers, their telescopes, aides, and telephone operators. But even amid the throng, Dame Primus was easy to spot. She stood head and shoulders above even the tallest Denizen, and was now perhaps nine feet tall or even taller. She wore her armoured coat of gold scales, with its spiked pauldrons that threatened the safety of any neighbour when she turned around. In addition to her grey wings that were a legacy of Part Five of the Will, she now also had a plume of glossy raven feathers that appeared to grow directly from her head, testament to the recent absorption of Part Six.