After beating away at least a dozen more gobbets of Nothing, Arthur noticed that there were fewer of them, but the ones that were still attacking were larger. They were combining . . . becoming a Nithling.
Which worried him a lot, particularly when no more gobbets came hurtling up out of the darkness.Did thatmean he was out of their reach, or that they had combined into something that was somewhere nearby, flying up with him?
Something touched his leg. Arthur flinched and cried out, till he realised it was just his useless lantern, brushing against his knee. He opened his hand and let it fall, the glass sending one last reflection back before it disappeared into darkness.
A second later, there was the sound of broken glass and an angry cry, partly muffled by rain and Arthur’s beating wings.
‘Ow!’
‘Suzy!’ Arthur called again. But as he called out, and relief rose in his heart, a nasty thought crept into his mind. Maybe there was some sort of Nithling that could imitate people?What if there was one that could take the shape of people it had dissolved or eaten? He had a vague half-memory of someone talking about that, or maybe he had read it in the Atlas . . .
‘Suzy?’ he repeated, looking down. ‘Is that you?’
‘’Course it’s me!’ came the retort. Arthur still couldn’t see her, but she sounded closer. ‘Almost took my eye out, you idiot! There’s enough rubbish in this hole without you chucking some more down.’
That did sound like the sort of thing Suzy would say, Arthur thought. But what if the Nithling had absorbed her mind and memories, and had got all her vocabulary and word choices and everything?
He wished he could see her, but at the same time was afraid that he would see the distorted man-shape with the insectlike wings beating in a frenzy as it tried to catch up.
‘What happened?’ Arthur asked. He caught a glimpse of something below, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. ‘The Nithling –’ ‘Missed me,’ called out Suzy. ‘Close-run thing. Bit off my right clog. I was kicking it in the teeth, so I s’pose that’s fair.’
Arthur relaxed. It had to be Suzy, narrowly escaped.
But if it’s Suzy, why aren’t her wings glowing like mine?
‘Better dim your wings!’ Suzy called out, almost exactly as Arthur thought this. ‘The light’s making Nothing come together into gobbets. Once there’s enough of them around, they’ll make a Nithling.’
‘How do I know you’re really Suzy?’ Arthur called in return, a slight edge of panic in his voice.
‘What are you talking about?’ came the exasperated reply. ‘Who else would I be? Shade your light!’
‘Don’t listen to her!’ called another voice, one that also sounded like Suzy, but huskier. ‘Keep your light up, it’s the only thing protecting you from the Nithlings!’
‘Tarnation!’ said the first Suzy voice. ‘The thing that got my clog has patterned itself on me. Must have found a bit of toenail or skin.’
‘Don’t listen, Arthur!’ came the other Suzy voice. ‘I’m the real Suzy! Keep your light on, I’m catching up!’
Arthur stared down at the darkness. If only he could see the speakers, he was sure he’d be able to tell which one was the real Suzy. But there was nothing . . .
‘Arthur, tell your stupid wings to dim, and look out! That Nithling will get above you and swoop down at your face. It’s blind, but it smells the power behind the light!’
Arthur blinked. That voice came from the left, and was accompanied by a faint sparkle of light, like a single distant star seen on a cloudy night.
‘That’s a lie! The light protects you!’ screamed the second Suzy voice, from off to the right, and closer.
‘Wings, please dim your light,’ said Arthur softly, and he raised the remnant of his copper tube and held it out like a sword before his face.
He was only just in time, as a nightmarish thing crashed into the tube, hurtling Arthur in a series of backwards somersaults, his wings thrashing to right themselves. The pipe was torn from Arthur’s grasp as it stuck like a harpoon into the Nithling’s breast. The creature plummeted past him and into the depths, shrieking.
Mid-somersault, Arthur caught a horrific vision of a figure the size and general shape of Suzy, but made from scales and patchwork crocodile hide. One of its fifteen-foot dragonfly wings beat so fast it blurred, while the other hung limp and useless with Arthur’s pipe stuck into the chest muscles that powered it.
‘How could you telllllll . . .?’
Suzy’s fingernail, thought Arthur. That faint sparkle of light.
Arthur’s wings got him upright and level again, and resumed their steady, air-eating pace. They did not brighten, keeping the light at about the same level as that shed by a couple of birthday cake candles, so Arthur could hardly see his own hands.
‘That was close,’ said Suzy.
‘Very,’ said Arthur. ‘I know it’s you, Suzy, but can you just brighten up your wings for a second so I can be sure? I’d hate to burn you into cinders with my power by mistake.’
He said the second sentence louder than the first, in case it was another Nithling. It might get scared off.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Suzy. Then she added in a louder voice, ‘Anything to avoid being incisorated.’
Light bloomed a mere twenty feet below Arthur’s feet, and he saw Suzy looking up at him. She winked, lifted her hands above her head, and pushed her palms together to make herself into an arrow shape. In response, her wings beat faster. She leaned to the left and rapidly drew up level with Arthur, a few feet to the side.
‘Incisorated?’ asked Arthur.
‘Dunno,’ said Suzy with a shrug. ‘It sounds scarier, though, don’t it? Incinerated is what they do with dead papers out on the Waste Waste, back home in the Lower House. That wouldn’t scare me, not up here. Where’s your incinerator?’
‘I wish I was back home,’ said Arthur.
‘So do I,’ replied Suzy briefly. ‘Wish I had one, let alone being there. Keep an eye out for more Nithlings. Too many gobbets flitting about below. They seem to be attracted to the wings. I’d wondered why no one ever used them here.’
‘What?’ asked Arthur. ‘You knew no one ever used wings here?’
‘Sure,’ said Suzy. ‘I just thought they were dumb plodders. Look, there’s the train!’
She pointed. Arthur squinted into the dark and for a moment thought he saw a tiny spray of what might be sparks somewhere in the distance. Then he was plunged into a thick cloud, and even his wings couldn’t keep all the moisture from him.
‘An hour or so of cloud and then into the smoke next,’ said Suzy cheerfully. ‘Worse than Dame Primus’s cigars. Old bat won’t give me one, neither.’
‘Smoking will kill you with throat or lung or mouth cancer or heart disease,’ said Arthur, an asthmatic and the son of a doctor. ‘Not to mention years of bad breath, yellow teeth, brown fingernails, lungs full of tar so you cough like a cat throwing up hairballs, only the sputum is worse than hairballs.’
‘Well, you might be right about the yellow teeth and the fingernails, but smoking won’t kill you in the House,’ said Suzy. ‘Unless you nick one of Dame Primus’s cigars.’
‘Well, smoking will kill you back in my home,’ said Arthur. ‘Where I intend to be again as soon as possible. Where I should be . . . where I would be now, if it wasn’t for the Morrow Days and the bits of the Will and everything.’
‘It could be worse,’ said Suzy.
‘How?’
‘You could have theWill stuck down your gob. It used to throb in my throat and make me feel like I’d got a bit of rice pudding stuck halfway down. Horrible, it was.’
‘And we’re going to get another piece of it. If we can find it.’
‘It might be a better bit. Nicer.We’ll find it. Has to be in the Grim’s Treasure Tower, doesn’t it?’
‘Why?’ asked Arthur gloomily.
‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Grim Tuesday’s famous for stuffing ’is tower full of the best things ever made and the most valuable loot from the Secondary Realms. ’Course theWill will be in there somewhere.’
‘It can’t be as easy as that,’ said Arthur.
‘Well, we do have to get in there,’ said Suzy. ‘Through the windvane and all. Might be a bit tricky, even with the stickit fingers. Then there’ll be guards and so forth, I s’pose.’
‘Right,’ said Arthur heavily.
‘And traps.’
‘Great.’
‘And there’s an eel of a chance Grim Tuesday’ll be there himself, though, if that is his train going down the Pit, he should be on that.’
‘Good.’
‘Probably. Though sometimes it’s only one of the Grotesques takes the train – look out!’
ELEVEN
ARTHUR LEANED DESPERATELY to the right as something plummeted past him. Once again he hardly had time to register what it was, beyond a jumbled snapshot of teeth, claws and tiny, useless wings fluttering madly.
‘What was that?!’
‘Dunno,’ said Suzy. ‘Who knows how the gobbets decide what to make when they come together? Bad news for down below.’
‘What?’
‘A Nithling’ll probably survive the fall. It’ll just be really cross. Look out!’
Arthur flipped his legs forward and threw himself back, tumbling end over end as something that looked like a cross between a boa constrictor and a weasel fell hissing past, its jaws almost close enough to close on Arthur’s hand.
It fell still closer to Suzy, but she whacked it with her copper pipe. Arthur was surprised to hear the clear ringing tone of metal striking metal and to see that none of the pipe dissolved.
‘Ouch!’ exclaimed Suzy. ‘Jarred my hand!’
‘Was . . . was that a Nithling?’ Arthur asked as he regained his flying equilibrium. He kept looking nervously in all directions, though, ready to lean or tumble or do whatever it took to avoid whatever came flying up or falling down next.
‘Who knows?’ said Suzy. ‘Most shaped-up Nithlings are some sort of flesh, but whatever that was, it was made of metal. It bent my pipe.’
‘How long till we hit the ceiling?’ asked Arthur.
Suzy frowned.
‘Hard to say.We haven’t even got to the smoky upper air yet. Maybe an hour or two.’
Suzy had hardly finished speaking before they broke through the cloud and entered the layer of smog. Arthur had been out of it long enough that he could smell it clearly, many revolting odours combining to create something sharp and acidic in the choking smoke, with overtones of ozone, like from an electric appliance burning out.
Fortunately, the spell the Lieutenant Keeper had taught him was still going strong. Suzy, having been in the House long enough to be almost a Denizen, was unaffected, though she did wrinkle her nose.
The next hour passed uneventfully enough. There were still gobbets of Nothing flying around, and once a Nithling fell just close enough to glimpse and cause Arthur a momentary panic.
Otherwise Arthur’s wings continued their steady beat and they climbed up through the smoggy darkness. It was impossible to tell where they were, relative to the edges of the Pit or the ceiling of the Far Reaches.
After a while, Suzy pulled a fob watch out of her apron pocket, opened it, and peered at the face.
‘I reckon we must be getting close,’ she said, closing the watch with a practised one-handed snap. ‘Try and lie on your back. That’ll slow the wings down so we don’t crash into the ceiling too hard. Once we hit, use the spell to fully wake your stickit fingers and hold on to the ceiling. Then pull your string and lose the wings and we’ll go hand over hand to the Treasure Tower.’
‘Which direction will it be in?’ asked Arthur as he kicked and threw himself backwards. Unfortunately he just did a somersault, confusing him and not slowing his wings for more than a second.
‘Mmm,’ replied Suzy evasively. She’d managed to lie on her back by folding her legs up and holding her feet against her face, which was a gymnastic manoeuvre Arthur couldn’t hope to match. He drew his knees up instead and tried to keep them against his chest while he threw himself backwards with rather less vigour.
That sort of worked. Arthur’s wings slowed as they tried to work out the best way to keep ascending.
‘How will we know where to crawl across the ceiling?’ asked Arthur again. ‘I mean, it could be miles away, in any direction, couldn’t it?Without the light from our wings. In the dark and the smog, with no landmarks.’
‘We’ll work it out,’ said Suzy.
‘And we’re just going to hang by three little woollen finger puppets to the ceiling with a . . . a . . . a thousand-mile or whatever it is drop straight down beneath us?’
‘Don’t worry, Arthur,’ said Suzy. ‘Stickit fingers don’t come off until you tell them to.’
Arthur drew in an angry breath to answer, but before he could, he suddenly saw the ceiling. The breath left himas he frantically raised his arms and legs and braced for the impact.
He’d expected to hit solid stone, but what he hit was a deep layer of soot. He drove in at least a foot, and soot exploded all around him, smothering him in fine particles. There was so much soot his wings couldn’t brush it away from him, and they flapped harder and harder to keep ascending.
Arthur scrabbled against the ceiling, finally getting his hands and legs braced against the solid stone beneath the soot, as his wings beat furiously in their efforts to push him through this barrier.