Nage ignored him. Going to a slender walnut-veneer cabinet that stood against the wall, he opened its glass door and slid out a shelf that had a telephone perched on it. Picking up the earpiece, he spoke into the receiver.
‘Get me Thursday’s Noon. Urgent military business.’
There was a crackling whisper from the phone.
‘Colonel Nage at the Boundary Fort.’
There were more crackling whispers, then a booming voice filled the whole room.
‘Marshal Noon here! Nage, is it? What do you want?’
Nage quickly repeated what he’d said to General Lepter. Before he could finish, Noon’s strident voice cut him off.
‘You have your orders, Nage! Follow them, and don’t go outside your chain of command again! Put Pravuil on the line.’
Nage stepped back, letting the earpiece of the phone hang down. Pravuil slid past him and picked it up. This time, Noon’s voice did not fill the room. He spoke quietly to Pravuil for a minute. Pravuil whispered back, then there was a very loud click as the major hung up the phone.
‘I am to return to the Citadel at once,’ said Pravuil. ‘You are ready to fulfil your orders, Colonel?’
‘I am,’ confirmed Nage. He took out his watch and looked at it again. ‘The Nithlings will not take long to get through the tunnel, Major. You may not get clear.’
‘I have two mounts waiting,’ said Pravuil. He tapped the Ephemeris in its canvas pouch at his side. ‘And there is a tile six miles away that will take me halfway to the Citadel at dusk.’
‘Go, then,’ said Nage, not attempting to hide his disdain for an officer leaving imminent battle. He waited until Pravuil had left his office, then snapped a series of commands at Lieutenant Corbie and the orderly who stepped in from outside.
‘Corbie! Assemble your men and leave the fort immediately. You are to harass and skirmish with the enemy as they leave the Goldgate, and attempt to lure them out onto those wildlife-heavy tiles, away from the fort. Do you have communication figures for anyone outside the fort?’
‘I only have my immediate superior, Captain Ferouk. He’s at the white keep, not GHQ.’
Nage rummaged in the drawer of his desk and handed him two lead soldiers, one in a bright scarlet uniform, the other in a subdued blue. The scarlet-clad figure had a tall hat adorned with feathers, the blue-uniformed one wore a flat leather cap.
‘Friends of mine. Colonel Repton of the Regiment and Major Scaratt of the Artillery. Both are at GHQ and may be able to help you if everything goes as badly as I suspect it may. Now get going!’
Corbie saluted, spun on his heel, and marched away. The orderly stepped forward as the Borderer left. He had a long trumpet by his side, a bronze instrument at least four feet long.
‘Sound the general alert,’ said Nage. ‘And officer assembly.’
The orderly raised the trumpet to his lips, pointing it at the wall. His cheeks puffed up and he blew, but no sound came from the trumpet’s bell. It wasn’t until a second later that its peal reached in from outside, echoing here as it echoed in all parts of the fort, no matter how distant.
The trumpeter blew two different calls twice. When the last peals faded, he lowered his instrument and stood at attention.
‘How long have we served together, Hopell?’ asked Nage.
‘Eight thousand four hundred and twenty-six years, sir,’ said Hopell. ‘That’s time in the Legion. Not counting recruit school.’
‘How many of our recruit class still live?’
‘All but six, I think. Ropresh came good from that Nothing wound in the end, so he doesn’t count. Light duties only, of course, with his leg melted off –’ ‘Do you think we will fight as well knowing that there is a much greater chance than usual that we will get killed?’
‘What do you mean, sir?’ asked Hopell. ‘We are Legionaries of the Glorious Army of the House. We are prepared to die if we must.’
‘Are we?’ Nage didn’t sound so sure. ‘We’re prepared to get hurt, certainly, but not many of us get killed – and we always win. I fear that is soon to change. When the four gates open, there will be a battle for the fort, and we will be fighting organised, disciplined Nithlings for the first time. Nithlings who must be led by someone … or something … intelligent.’
‘We are Legionaries,’ said Hopell stolidly. ‘We will fight to the end.’
‘Yes,’ said Nage, ‘we will. But it may not be an end we like.’
Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door, the beat of a dozen or more officers marching down the corridor, called to the colonel by the trumpet signal.
‘Do not speak of my doubts,’ said Nage quickly. ‘It was a moment of uncertainty, no more. We will fight and we will win. The Nithlings will fail before the fort, as they will be defeated elsewhere in the Great Maze by our Glorious Army.’
‘Yes, sir!’ shouted Hopell. He saluted as the first of the officers marched in, several others hard at their heels.
‘Gather round,’ said Nage quickly. ‘We don’t have much time, and we must organise a defence. I have received and confirmed an order to open all four gates – yes, all four gates. Shortly after that happens, I expect the fort to be attacked by several hundred thousand organised Nithlings. We must hold out for twelve hours, when we are ordered to shut the gates again. Whatever else happens – no matter what casualties we suffer – the switch room must be held and the gates must be closed on time.’
‘Surely it’s not that bad, sir,’ suggested one of the centurions, with a little giggle. He was a recent replacement who had spent the last thousand years at GHQ. His cuirass was bare of gallantry medals but had several stars awarded for efficiency in managing House paperwork. ‘Once they come out the Goldgate, they will have to climb up the ramps under a rain of power-spears and firewash from the engines on the bastions, get through the fort’s own gates … we’ll easily hold them. They will not stay organised anyway. Nithlings always run wild –’
‘I am glad of your confidence, Centurion,’ interrupted Nage. ‘You may have the honour of commanding the Forlorn Hope I am placing at the base of the ramp.’
The centurion’s bracer clash acknowledging this order was less strident than it should have been, quiet enough that the chime of the colonel’s watch was louder.
‘Twenty minutes. I shall take five to outline my plans and then you will return to your units. I will command from the switch room myself. Our battle cry will be –’ The colonel hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Death and the Legion!’
His words were echoed immediately by the gathered officers, their shout making the teacups on the colonel’s sideboard rattle.
‘Death and the Legion!’
One
‘HURRY UP!’ ARTHUR Penhaligon called out. ‘We have to get to the Front Door before Dame Primus shows up and tries to talk me out of going home.’
‘Okay, okay,’ grumbled Leaf. ‘I just stopped to look at the view.’
‘No time,’ said Arthur. He continued to lead the way up Doorstop Hill, moving as quickly as his crab-armoured leg would allow him. His broken bone was still not fully healed. Leaf started after him, with a glance over her shoulder. They’d run straight out of the elevator that had taken them down … or across … or sideways … from Port Wednesday on the flooded shores of the Border Sea. She hadn’t had any time to look at anything in the Lower House.
‘There’s the Front Door!’ Arthur pointed up ahead to the huge, freestanding door on the crest of the hill, supported by two white stone gateposts that were about thirty feet apart and forty feet high.
‘That’s a door?’ asked Leaf. ‘Must be tough to push it open.’
‘It doesn’t exactly open,’ said Arthur. ‘You just walk in. Don’t look at the patterns on it for too long, though.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’ll go crazy,’ said Arthur. ‘Or get stuck looking.’
‘You know I’m going to have to look now,’ said Leaf. ‘If you hadn’t said anything I probably wouldn’t have bothered.’
Arthur shook his head. ‘You can’t help it. Just don’t look too long.’
‘Which side do we go to?’ Leaf asked when they were only a few yards away. ‘And do we knock?’
‘It doesn’t matter which side,’ said Arthur. He tried to look away from the wrought-iron curlicues and patterns on the door but couldn’t quite manage it. After a second, the shapes shivered and began to change, each image fixing itself in his head before it morphed into something else.
Arthur shut his eyes and reached out blindly towards Leaf, planning to tug her elbow or the back of her shirt. But she was much closer than he had thought and his questing fingers poked her in the face.
‘Ow! Uh … thanks.’
Arthur turned his head away from the door and opened his eyes.
‘I guess I was getting hooked,’ Leaf said as she rubbed her nose. She kept her eyes averted from the door, instead looking up at the high domed ceiling of silvery metal that reached its apex several hundred feet directly above them. It was night in the Lower House, the only light provided by the strange clouds of glowing purple or orange that drifted across the silver surface.
As Leaf looked up, a beam of light shot down, marking the path of an elevator from another part of the House.
It was quickly followed by another two beams striking down from above.
‘So do we knock?’ Leaf asked again.
‘Not yet,’ Arthur replied. He looked across at the fading trail of the elevator beams as he spoke, acutely aware that they had probably delivered Dame Primus and her entourage, come to give him a hard time – though he had half-expected she would already be ahead of him, having used a Transfer Plate. ‘We wait for the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door first.’
Dame Primus would want him to stay, or at least hand over the Third Key, which was supposedly needed to keep the Border Sea in check. But Arthur didn’t want to part with the only weapon he had. He had finally accepted that he must go up against the Morrow Days, that avoidance was not an option. The whole gang of Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday, and Lord Sunday would not leave him alone. They would interfere with destructive results in his world or any other world, they would hurt and kill whoever they wanted, they would do whatever they thought would help them retain their Keys and their authority over the House. The only way to stop the Morrow Days was to defeat them.
Arthur knew he had to fight, but he wanted to do it on his own terms. Right now, he wanted to check up on his family and make sure everything was all right back in his own world. Then he’d return to the House and do whatever had to be done to release the Fourth Part of the Will from Sir Thursday and claim the Fourth Key.
They waited in front of the Door for a few minutes, looking at the spires, towers, and roofs of the city below. When Arthur had first seen it, the city had been cloaked in fog, but there was no fog now, and he could dimly make out a few Denizens wandering about the streets. As he watched, a large group came out of one of the closer buildings, milled around for a few seconds, then headed towards the new-mown slopes of Doorstop Hill.
‘Maybe we should knock,’ he said. ‘Here comes Dame Primus and the whole crew.’
He took a step towards the Door and, still averting his eyes, rapped smartly on the strange surface. It didn’t feel like wood or iron, or in fact like anything solid at all. His fist sank into it as if he’d knocked on something with the consistency of jelly, and at the same time he felt a tingling through his knuckles that travelled up into his wrist and elbow.
But it did make a knocking sound – a hollow, sustained noise that Arthur could hear echoing inside the Door with several seconds’ delay, as if the sound had travelled a long way before coming back.
The knock was followed a moment later by a voice Arthur now knew quite well. The Lieutenant Keeper’s speech was deep and slow and solid, but this time strangely distant.
‘One moment, one moment. There is trouble at the crossroads.’
Arthur could see Dame Primus leading a pack of Denizens, already at the foot of the hill. She was hard to miss, being seven-and-a-half feet tall and wearing a long-trained dress of pale-green that fluoresced with shimmers of blue. With her were Monday’s Noon (who used to be Dusk) and a black-clad Denizen he didn’t recognise at first until he realised it was the new Monday’s Dusk (who used to be Noon). Following them was a whole host of clerks, Commissionaire Sergeants, Midnight Visitors, and other Denizens.
‘Arthur!’ shouted Dame Primus as she lifted her skirts and began to climb the hill. ‘Wait! There is something you must know!’
‘Hurry up, hurry up!’ muttered Arthur to the Door. He really didn’t feel like arguing with Dame Primus.
‘I thought you said they were on your side,’ said Leaf. ‘Who’s the tall woman in the cool clothes?’
‘They are on my side,’ said Arthur. ‘That’s Dame Primus. She’s the Will. The first two parts anyway. Probably three parts by now, since the Carp has probably just caught up with her. I guess that would explain the green dress. And she is taller, and her eyes have gotten kind of bulbous –’ ‘Arthur! You should not be here!’
Arthur spun around. The Lieutenant Keeper had emerged from the Front Door. He didn’t look as calm and collected as he usually did. His long white hair was a mess; his blue coat was splashed with mud and a darker blue that might be Denizen blood. Instead of his usual shiny knee boots he was wearing sodden thigh-high waders. His sword was na**d in his hand, the blade shimmering with an icy, pale-blue light that hurt Arthur’s eyes and made Leaf look away and shield her face.