Arthur groaned and put the mirror back in his pouch. The horde of insect warriors was approaching at a steady pace and had neither slowed nor speeded its advance. The forward ranks hadn’t aimed their weapons either, but he suspected he was probably in range. Arthur looked at the hole in his arm. It was neatly cauterised, but he could see right through from one side to the other. Only his sorcerously altered body allowed him to cope with such a wound. It felt about as painful as a paper cut to him now.
But he knew he could not survive a hundred – or a thousand – such wounds. He also knew that the rage he was barely keeping inside him would come out long before then, and that he would use the Keys to wreak destruction such as even these warring aliens had never imagined.
I have to get out of here, thought Arthur. Before I do something terrible…
He jumped back down and tried to visualise the Improbable Stair. That could be its first step there, the pale blue sandbag that was the firing step of the trench. It just had to turn white and luminous, and that would be the way in.
“White and luminous,” said Arthur. “The way into the Improbable Stair.”
Ahead of him, the clicking noise suddenly increased in volume and tempo. The soldier insects were beginning their charge.
“White! Luminous! Stair!” shouted Arthur.
A squealing zing went over his head, but he didn’t turn or look. All his attention was on that one pale blue sandbag, which was slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to turn white.
CHAPTER TWO
Suzy Turquoise Blue, sometime Ink-Filler Sixth Class, Monday’s Tierce and General of the Army of Lord Arthur, waggled her left foot just enough to start her spinning in an anticlockwise direction. She’d been slowly turning clockwise for the past hour and she felt like a change. She could introduce that motion with only a slight movement of her foot, which was fortunate since it was the only part of her that wasn’t tightly wrapped in the inch-thick scarlet rope that suspended her from a crane that had been swung out some 16,000 feet up on the eastern side of Superior Saturday’s tower.
“Stop that!” called a Sorcerous Supernumerary, who sat at the base of the crane. He was reading a large leatherbound book and dangling his legs over the edge of the tower. “Prisoners are not to spin anticlockwise!”
“Sez who?” asked Suzy.
“The manual says so,” replied the Supernumerary rather stiffly, tapping the book he held. “I just read that bit. Prisoners are not to spin anticlockwise, for the prevention of sorcerous eddies.”
“Better wind me in then,” said Suzy. “Else I’ll keep spinning.”
She had been hanging there for more than six hours, ever since being captured by the Artful Loungers near the Rain Reservoir, where Arthur had gone down the plughole in search of Part Six of the Will. Since being a prisoner was a definite improvement over being dead, which was what she thought was going to happen when the Loungers had attacked, Suzy was quite cheerful.
“It says here, Prisoners are to be left dangling in the wind and rain at all times, unless ordered otherwise by Suitable Authority,” said the Supernumerary.
“It’s stopped raining,” said Suzy. “It’s not all that windy either. It’s quite nice in fact. Besides, aren’t you a Suitable Authority?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” grumbled the Supernumerary. “You know quite well I wouldn’t be here if everyone else wasn’t up top, fighting Sunday. Or down below, fighting the Piper.”
And that’s only the half of it, thought Suzy with a smile that would have annoyed the Supernumerary if he’d seen it. Superior Saturday is fighting Lord Sunday up above in the Incomparable Gardens; the Piper is fighting Superior Saturday’s forces in the lower portions of the Upper House; Dame Primus is trying to hold back the Nothing that is eroding the House, while also preparing to attack Superior Saturday; Arthur hopefully by now has got Part Six of the Will and will be trying to obtain the Sixth Key…
It’s all like a very complicated game, thought Suzy as she spun back towards the Supernumerary. I wonder if anyone really knows what’s going on.
Thinking about games gave her an idea. Artful Loungers were too crazed and dangerous to try to trick, but this Sorcerous Supernumerary was more like a normal Denizen.
“You know, if you wind me in, we could play chess,” said Suzy. She pointed her toe at the chess set that was on top of the closer desk. It looked to be a very fine one, with ivory pieces that had ruby-chip eyes.
“That’s one of Noon’s sets,” said the Supernumerary. “We can’t touch that! Besides, I failed chess.”
“We could play draughts. We oughter play something until my rescuers show up and chuck you off the building,” said Suzy.
“What?” asked the Supernumerary. He looked around nervously. Unlike most of Saturday’s tower, the prison section at level 61620 (that was really floor 1620, which was quite high enough) was a solid buttress attached to the main building, rather like a shelf that was put on as an afterthought. It was not made up of open iron-framed office cubes, but was a broad and elegant veranda of teak decking that ran alongside the tower for a hundred feet. The outer edge was lined with a dozen cranes that were mounted so that they could pivot and swing their hooks out over the edge, to suspend prisoners some 16,000 feet above the ground.
Currently, only one of the cranes had a dangling prisoner. The Internal Auditors who usually ran the prison level had all left to join Saturday’s assault upon the Incomparable Gardens and had presumably dispatched all their prisoners before their departure. Now only Suzy was there, guarded by two Sorcerous Supernumeraries. One was reading the manual, and another was prowling back and forth in front of the single, large leather-padded door that led back into the tower proper. As she paced, she muttered to herself about awesome responsibilities and the inevitability of things going wrong. This Supernumerary had not once looked over at Suzy, almost as if she wanted to deny the existence of her prisoner.
“What do you mean, rescuers?” the Supernumerary with the manual asked. “And why would they chuck me off the tower?”
“I’m a Piper’s child, right?” asked Suzy. “Who’s attacking the tower?”
“The Piper,” said the Supernumerary. “Oh…I see. But he’ll never get this far.”
“Dunno about that,” said Suzy. “I mean, Saturday’s nicked off with all the best fighters, ain’t she? I mean, she’s all right, she’ll be living it up in the Incomparable Gardens, with her Artful Loungers and Internal Auditors and all. It’s you poor blokes I feel sorry for.”
“We always get the worst jobs,” admitted the Sorcerous Supernumerary. “You know what the higher-ups call us? Maggots, that’s what. At least that’s what one called me once…”
“Wot’s your actual name then?” asked Suzy. “I’m Suzy Turquoise Blue.”
“Giac,” replied the Supernumerary. He looked over the edge and sighed. “I was enjoying being up this high till you said I might get chucked off.”
“Course, you might not get thrown off,” Suzy said thoughtfully.
“I bet I would,” said Giac. “Bound to be. Just my luck.”
“They might just cut your head off,” said Suzy. “The Newniths, I mean. The Piper’s soldiers. Big, ugly brutes they are, with charged battle-axes and the like. I’m glad I’m on the same side as them, is all I can say.”
“They’ll never get this far,” repeated Giac uneasily.
“Might as well ’ave a bit of fun before whatever happens happens,” said Suzy. “Tell you what – why don’t you bring me in, we’ll play draughts, and then when the Newniths show up, I’ll get them to just take you prisoner. Instead of cutting your head off.”
“I have to do what the manual says,” replied Giac gloomily. “Besides, one of the Internal Auditors might come back. They’d do worse than cut my head off.”
“Worse?” asked Suzy. “Like what?”
“Encystment,” said Giac with a shudder. He turned a page in the manual and stared at it, then sighed and shut the book.
“It’s so nice up here,” he said. “Particularly without the rain. I really do think ten thousand years of rain is a bit much. My socks might even dry if it stays fine.”
“Be even better with a game of draughts,” said Suzy. “You don’t have to untie me. Just swing me in and I’ll call out the moves. Then, if one of your lot shows up, you can swing me out again and they’ll be none the wiser.”
“I suppose I could…” Giac put the book down and peered at the workings of the crane. “I wonder if it’s this wheel…or perhaps this lever?”
“No! Not the lever!” shouted Suzy.
Giac withdrew his hand, which had been just about to pull the lever that would release the hook and send Suzy plummeting down to certain death.
“Must be the wheel, then,” he said. He started to turn it and the crane responded, rotating on its pivot until Suzy was brought back to dangle above the floor of the veranda.
“Good work,” said Suzy. “I s’pose you still don’t want to touch Noon’s set?”
Giac nodded.
“Well, get a piece of paper and draw us up a draughtboard.”
As Giac got some paper and a quill pen out of the closer desk, Suzy spun herself slightly away from the Denizen so that he couldn’t see her as she wriggled two fingers under the rope around her waist, feeling inside one of the pockets of her utility belt. She could only reach one pocket and she knew there was nothing as useful as a knife in there. Still, ever optimistic, she thought there might be something. It was an effort, but she did manage to get a grip on a cake of best-quality waterless soap. Slowly she drew it up into her hand.
Bloomin’ soap, she thought. What am I going to do with that?
“This will serve,” said Giac. He set out a sheet of thick paper on the floor near Suzy’s feet and quickly drew up the board. “I’ll rip up some more paper to make the draughts. Do you want to be blue or white?”
“Blue,” said Suzy. As she rotated around again she manoeuvred her hand so that she could push the soap between two strands of rope. Being waterless soap, it was quite slippery and she thought she might be able to make it shoot out, if she could just get a good grip and snap her fingers in the right way. “What’s your friend doing?”
“Hmmm? Aranj?” asked Giac. He looked around at the other Sorcerous Supernumerary, who had stopped pacing by the door and was now sitting down with her legs pulled up and her face on her knees, appearing rather like a crushed black spider. “She’s gone into a slough of despond. It couldn’t have helped to have you talking about our heads getting cut off.”
“What’s a sluff of despond?” asked Suzy.
“Acute misery,” replied Giac as he tore up a blue sheet of paper, “resulting in withdrawal from the world. Happens to a lot of us Sorcerous Supernumeraries. Had a bout of it myself a thousand years ago. Not too serious, mind – it only lasted twenty or thirty years. I suppose I should be suffering now, but you were right about the draughts. I’m looking forward to our—”
At that moment, Suzy forced her fingers together with a snap and the soap shot out. It struck Giac in the side of the head, but with very little force.
“Ow!” he said. He looked around wildly, but Suzy was still all tied up and slowly spinning in place. “Who did that?”
“Dunno,” said Suzy. “It just came out of nowhere.”
Giac picked up the soap and looked at it.
“Grease monkey soap,” he said. “Probably thought it was funny to drop this over the side, somewhere up top. Oh, well. Let’s get started.”
“You can go first,” said Suzy.
Giac nodded and set out the paper draughts on the makeshift board. He’d only just laid them all down when a breeze blew in, picked them up and lofted them over the edge of the veranda to spin and twinkle away.
“We’d better use Noon’s board and the pawns for draughts,” said Suzy. “Tell you what – if you don’t want to touch it, how about you cut me down and I’ll do all the moves? That way you can say you never went near it.”
“I don’t know…” said Giac. He looked longingly at the board. “I would so love to play a game. It’s been such a long time since I played anything.”
“You get me down and we’ll play draughts until someone shows up. If it’s your lot, you just say I escaped a minute ago. If it’s the Piper’s Newniths, you can change sides.”
“Change sides?” asked Giac. “Um, how could I do that?”
“Well, you just stop obeying Superior Saturday and start obeying the Piper…or someone else. Lord Arthur, for example.”
“Just like that?” asked Giac wonderingly. “And it would work?”
“Well, I s’pose it would,” said Suzy. “As long as you didn’t run into Saturday herself. Or one of her superior Denizens, like Noon.”
“But they’ve gone up top,” said Giac, pointing. “Invading the Incomparable Gardens. I could change sides now.”
“First things first,” said Suzy. “It’s one thing to change sides; it’s something else to have the other side accept you.”
The half smile that had begun to form on Giac’s face crumpled. “I knew it couldn’t be easy as that.”
“Course you will get accepted if you let me go,” said Suzy. “That’s the first thing. So it’s still pretty easy.”