The only thing that was not altered was the intense darkness of his eyes.
‘Bind him with the chains,’ instructed Lord Sunday. ‘Be careful. He is very strong.’
Six
‘ARE YOU SURE this is safe?’ asked Giac. He was holding on nervously to Suzy’s shoulder as they descended on the South-West Big Chain. While the grease monkeys regularly used the various moving chains to go between floors of the tower, Sorcerous Supernumeraries usually took the elevator, so this was a new experience for Giac.
The South-West Big Chain was like a greatly oversize motorcycle chain that ran the thousands of feet from the unseen nether regions of Saturday’s tower to a vast bronze guide wheel that was situated near the top. The Chain ran in a broad shaft, going up one side and down the other. Each link was six feet tall and six feet wide, and had a flat space in the middle where the grease monkeys stood, sat, or even slept as the Chain rattled up or down.
‘Course it’s safe,’ said Suzy. ‘Provided you don’t fall off.’
‘Oh,’ said Giac. He peered a little towards the edge and gulped. ‘Where are we going? And whose side am I on again?’
‘We’re going to the elevator control floors,’ said Suzy. ‘And you’re on Lord Arthur’s side. Unless we meet up with the Piper’s forces first. Then we tell ’em that we’re on the Piper’s side, though we’ll still really be on Arthur’s side. It’d be a thingummy, a rose of war.’
‘A subterfuge,’ suggested Part Six of the Will, who was lurking inside Giac’s partially furled umbrella so that only the top part of his beak was visible, and that only on close inspection. ‘A legitimate ruse.’
‘But will Lord Arthur want me?’ asked Giac anxiously. ‘You said that I can decide to change sides, but the other side has to take me on. Will Lord Arthur take me on?’
‘As it ’appens, I am Arthur’s right-hand man,’ said Suzy. ‘Or left-hand girl, I can’t remember where I stood last time. Anyhow, me and Arthur is like two fingers of a gauntlet. Or at least the thumb and the little finger. I mean, I’m his top General and all. So if I say you’re in, you’re in.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Giac.
‘None of that,’ admonished Suzy. ‘Call me Suzy.’
‘As you command, Lady Suzy,’ said Giac. ‘Oh, the floor below is manned!’
They had been passing floor after empty floor as the Chain descended, the desks abandoned by sorcerers who had been drafted to fight the Piper below or join the invasion of the Incomparable Gardens above. Suzy had begun to think they might be lucky and find that the floor they needed, where the desks that controlled the elevators were located, was also abandoned. But they were now passing floors that were still fully staffed with thousands of sorcerers at their desks, their blue umbrellas now furled at their sides, since the ten-thousand-year rain had stopped. Fortunately they were intent on their work, and the few that glanced across did not find the sight of what appeared to be a grease monkey and a Sorcerous Supernumerary on the passing Chain to be of any interest.
‘Do you have a plan, Lady Suzy?’ asked the Will. ‘As to how we will activate the elevators?’
‘Course I do,’ snorted Suzy.
‘Good,’ said the Will.
There was silence as they descended several more floors, then the raven poked its head out of Giac’s umbrella a little more, so that one sharp eye stared up at Suzy.
‘As we will shortly arrive at our destination, would you like to share this plan?’ the Will asked.
‘I’m thinking,’ said Suzy. She certainly looked thoughtful, staring at each passing floor, and hardly blinking. ‘Will, I’ve seen you turn into a ball – can you turn into anything else?’
‘Within certain limits, I can change my outward form.’
‘Could you turn into a message capsule?’ asked Suzy. ‘What colour umbrellas do they have on floor 6879?’
‘Green,’ said Giac.
‘And if they got promoted to the next level?’
‘Blue,’ said Giac dreamily. ‘Beautiful shades and patterns of blue. We’re going past the blue floors now.’
‘So you’ll need to be a blue capsule,’ Suzy told the Will. ‘I’ll come out and say there’s going to be a mass promotion of a bunch of sorcerers and I’ve come to check out the offices for such a big move. They’ll all be looking at me . . . and you, who’ll be the message capsule. I’ll walk around measuring and so on, and then . . . and then . . . I’ll put you down on a desk, Will, and when they’re not looking at you, you slither down and use the desk to open an elevator—’
‘That’s not much of a plan,’ interrupted the Will. ‘Even I could do better than that.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Giac. ‘What do I do?’
‘You follow me around,’ said Suzy. ‘Like the Sorcerous Supernumeraries always follow the grease monkeys. Maybe if we need a distraction, you do something.’
‘We’re almost there,’ said the Will. ‘And I really think this is a rotten plan . . .’
‘Three floors to go,’ Giac announced.
‘Rotten!’ exclaimed the Will, but nonetheless it flew to Suzy’s hand and transformed into a blue message capsule. Only close examination would show that it was made of tiny, squirming letters of blue type rather than the usual glazed bronze.
‘Two floors.’
‘Get ready to step off the Chain,’ Suzy said. She took Giac’s hand, ready to drag him off if he faltered.
A foot above the next floor, she stepped down off the Chain. Giac followed, but got his umbrella caught in his legs and almost knocked both of them over. They staggered forward, Suzy brandishing the blue message capsule above her head.
All the nearer sorcerers looked across from their desks, their eyes intent on the capsule. Some kept up their two-handed writing, but most stopped. A second later, whispers began to cross the floor, and Suzy saw a ripple of movement spread out from the Chain shaft through the open offices as sorcerers all the way to the far western side of the tower turned to look.
‘Grease monkey . . .’
‘Blue capsule . . .’
‘Promotion . . .’
‘Promotion . . .’
‘Promotion . . .’
‘Mass promotion message!’ shouted Suzy. ‘A dozen sorcerers going up to blue, special wartime rules. I’ve got twelve gangs coming up in fifteen minutes, but first I need to measure where the offices are going up.’
She raised the blue capsule above her head and waved it around a few times, then sauntered through the closest offices. The sorcerers there stared at her, the mirrors they were supposed to watch forgotten, the spells they were meant to be inscribing temporarily abandoned.
Suzy walked farther in, towards the nearest bank of elevators. She could see the iron grille doors of the closest elevator, but there was only empty space behind it, rather than the usual wood-and-glass door of a House elevator.
As Suzy and Giac passed by the closer desks, the muttering behind them changed. The whispers grew louder and sounded angry.
‘Not me . . .’
‘Where’s the brat going?
’ ‘It can’t be them . . .’
Suzy sped up a little and drew the message capsule close so she could whisper.
‘I forgot to ask . . . Will any desk do?’
‘Close to the elevators,’ replied the Will very softly. ‘As soon as I’m done, we’ll have to run.’
Suzy changed direction, the movement eliciting a gasp of expectation from the sorcerers ahead of her, and a groan of disappointment from the ones behind.
‘They’re getting ready to throw things at the chosen ones,’ muttered Giac, looming close behind Suzy’s shoulder. ‘And at us, of course.’
Suzy didn’t answer. She’d fixed her eye on a desk immediately in front of the closest elevator. The sorcerer there was watching her, like all the others, but she thought he looked just a shade shorter than his neighbours, which probably meant he had been recently promoted to the green levels. Choosing him for an
other promotion would likely create the biggest possible uproar.
As she got closer, the noise behind her increased, and the tone of it sounded considerably uglier. Suzy ignored it and stopped in front of the desk with the slightly shorter Denizen. He looked up at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise.
‘Yes?’
‘You are Mmmph Bltthh?’ asked Suzy, turning her head so as to make her garbled words even harder to figure out. As she spoke, she put the message capsule on the desk.
‘I am Sorcerer Seventh Class Xagis,’ said the Denizen.
‘Right,’ said Suzy. ‘Then it’s you and two more desks in that direction and three in that direction.’
‘I’m getting promoted?’ asked Xagis in disbelief. ‘Again?’
‘Yep,’ said Suzy. ‘You are – ow!’
A flying inkwell bounced off her shoulder. Suzy ducked a more deadly letter-opener and ran around to the far side of the desk. Xagis was already crouching underneath it. Giac, on the other hand, was capering up and down and pointing out towards the exterior of the building.
‘Invaders!’ he shouted. ‘Newniths!’
Suzy grinned at him and gave him the thumbs-up, thinking he was making a diversion. She glanced over the top of the desk, was almost hit by a small tin of chalk that exploded open and powdered Xagis with chalk dust, and saw that the Will had grown little legs and scurried into a drawer of the desk, where it was working away at something.
‘Lots of Newniths!’ shrieked Giac.
‘Prepare to repel the enemy!’ shouted someone else. The missiles stopped hitting the desk. Suzy took another look and saw the Denizens were all getting out from behind their desks and grabbing their umbrellas. Giac was still jumping up and down and pointing. Suzy looked where he indicated, and saw that his diversion was not just a thing of words and invention. There were Newniths coming onto the floor – leather-winged Newniths, flying in on the western side of the tower. They wore flexible plates of dull red armour on their arms and legs, breastplates of the same metal, and closed golden helmets that had narrow eye-slits and crosshatched mouth-holes. Wielding electrically charged two-handed swords, they were more warlike and threatening than any Newniths Suzy had seen before, more than living up to her threatening description of them to Giac.
Xagis took his umbrella and rushed to join the ranks of sorcerers that were forming to oppose the Newniths. There were at least fifty of the invaders already on the western edge of the tower, and they had hacked off the heads of the closest sorcerers, who had not been quick enough to get out from their desks or grab their umbrellas. But the Denizens were beginning to fight back, bolts of fire from their umbrellas sizzling across the Newniths’ armour. Suzy saw winged Denizens appear behind the attackers too, swooping down at the hovering Newniths that were waiting their turn to come in, an aerial battle commencing.
Suzy looked across at the elevator bank. There was still no sign of an actual elevator behind the grille door.
‘How long?’ she whispered to the desk. Part Six of the Will had disappeared completely into the drawer, and she couldn’t see it.
There was no answer.
‘How long?’ Suzy repeated, much louder this time. There was a lot of noise now, with the Newniths and Denizens shouting and screaming, the zing of fire bolts, the squeal of umbrella spikes on armour, the clash and thud of the two-handed swords striking through desks, umbrellas, and Denizens.
‘Done,’ said the Will. It came out of the drawer and jumped to her shoulder, becoming a raven once more. Which was unfortunate, as Xagis and a couple of the nearer Denizens happened to be looking back at that moment.
‘Treachery!’ shouted Xagis. He raised his umbrella, which spat a bolt of fire at Suzy. She dodged, but it would have hit her if Giac hadn’t sprung forward and opened his own black umbrella, the fire bolt splashing harmlessly across the stretched fabric.
‘To the elevator!’ shouted the Will. It launched itself off Suzy’s shoulder, bounced off the ceiling, and ricocheted into Xagis, turning into something resembling a bowling ball just before it hit.
Suzy and Giac slowly walked backwards towards the elevator, with Giac holding his umbrella open in front of them both. The Will bounced off the floor and ceiling to cover their retreat, knocking more Denizens over like bowling pins. But there were many more rushing over to the elevators, hundreds of sorcerers baying, ‘Treachery!’ with those closest and with a clear line of sight shooting out fire bolts from their umbrellas.
Suzy and Giac got to the grille door at the same time the Sorcerous Supernumerary’s umbrella collapsed, burning shreds of material hanging from its steel and ivory bones. Suzy wrenched open the grille and the door behind, but a fire bolt caught both of them as they dove in, and they rolled around on the floor, shrieking and smoking, until the Will flew in, slammed the door shut, and turned itself into a blanket that smothered the flames.
‘Ow! Ow! Double ow!’ said Suzy as she slowly got to her feet. She was about to add another ‘ow’ when the door shook, and through the window she saw the face of a Denizen, who was trying to slide the outer grille door open again.
‘Where’s the operator?’ shouted Suzy. She looked around wildly, but apart from herself, Giac, and Part Six of the Will, the elevator was empty. There was no operator, and the small bandstand in the corner was also vacant.
Suzy looked at the tall panel of buttons to the right of the door. There were hundreds of small brass buttons, arranged in rows of twelve that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, some four or five feet above Suzy’s head. From Suzy’s waist down, these brass buttons were green, blackened, and covered in a rather nasty-looking verdigris. Some of the buttons in the middle were also affected by this blight, and were generally dull. Only the top rows, above Suzy’s head, were bright and shiny, the way they were meant to be.
‘Giac, hold the door shut!’ ordered Suzy. She looked up at the Will, who was flapping near the ceiling. ‘Which button’s for the Great Maze?’
‘This one,’ said the raven, hitting a button a foot above Suzy’s head with its beak.
‘I hope,’ it added as the elevator fell away and the window in the door instantly clouded over, becoming uniformly grey.
Seven
AFTER HER DECONTAMINATION, Leaf was given new clothes to put on. Scratchy underwear and a desert-patterned camouflage tracksuit weren’t what she would have chosen, but it didn’t really matter, since she was going to wear a protective suit over the top. Unlike the military or FBA suits, it was bright yellow and had EVACUEE printed on the front and back. Ellen showed her how to put the suit on, which was to step backwards into the connected over-boots and then pull up the front inner toothless zip and pull down the outer zip, before folding over the big Velcro tabs. The gas mask was next. It was a simpler version of the military ones, without a radio or other electronics, and it smelled rubbery and disgusting. Ellen demonstrated how to put it on and clear it, closing the intake valves and breathing out hard.
Leaf was trying it for herself for the third time when Ellen got a call from outside.
‘Roger,’ said Ellen. Then to Leaf, ‘Okay, you’re good to go. Major Penhaligon is waiting for you outside.’
Leaf turned to go back out the way she had come in, but Ellen tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to another air lock–style door.
‘One way in, one way out,’ she said. ‘I’ll probably see you later for your next decontamination.’
‘Ugh.’ Leaf grimaced at the thought of being scrubbed again.
‘At least your hair is cut now,’ said Ellen. ‘And you might have to wait next time, as I expect we’ll be busy getting refugees ready to ship out very soon. I bet you’ll be happy to get out of that suit by then. Even decontamination will be welcome.’
‘I guess,’ said Leaf. Her own voice sounded strange and dull, heard through the suit’s hood and the side panels of the mask. ‘Thanks, Ellen.’
‘Just doing my job,’ said the woman. ‘Good luck.’
Leaf w
aved and went into the air lock. She had to wait while it buzzed and hummed, before the outer door opened to let her into a pressurised tunnel of clear plastic that led to another portable air lock structure. This one took several minutes to cycle through, the progress of pressure equalisation and door opening being indicated by a row of tiny LEDs that slowly changed from red to green, a process that Leaf found weirdly mesmerising.
Major Penhaligon was waiting outside the final air lock. Chen was with him, and another soldier whose name tag read WILLIAMS, who was carrying a large medical backpack marked with a red cross.
‘Miss Leaf?’ asked Major Penhaligon.
‘Yes.’
‘We have a vehicle waiting. Follow me, please.’
Leaf followed the three soldiers down the road, to a waiting personnel carrier. The back ramp was down, and they trudged up and sat on the benches inside, the soldiers on the left and Leaf on the right. She felt a bit like it was an audition.
The ramp closed after them, and the personnel carrier rumbled off. Leaf couldn’t see the driver as the front compartment was separate and sealed.
‘Your supposed hospital is here, right?’ asked Major Penhaligon. He stretched out to show a folded map to Leaf. It was a detailed aerial and satellite composite map, and Leaf was easily able to pick out the large white building that was Friday’s hospital. It had been circled in red pencil with a question mark, and unlike nearly all the other buildings did not have its name or other information printed on the map.
Ominously, there was also a shaded circle drawn on the map. Centred on East Area Hospital, it was labelled INITIAL KILL ZONE and its outer circumference ran across the front of Friday’s building.
‘That’s it,’ confirmed Leaf, tapping the map.