SUPERIOR SATURDAY

GARTH NIX

ILLUSTRATED BY TIM STEVERTS

To all the patient readers and publishing folk who have been waiting for me to finish this book. And, as always, to Anna, Thomas and Edward, and all my family and friends.

Contents

Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Also By Garth Nix Copyright About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Saturday, self-styled Superior Sorcerer of the House, stood in her private viewing chamber at the very apex of her dominion, atop the tower that she had been building for almost ten thousand years. This clear crystal-walled room was always at the top, the builders lifting it higher and higher as new levels were slotted in below.

Saturday looked down through the rain-washed glass, at the multitude of fuzzy green spots of light below. It looked like the tower, which was thousands of feet high, had suffered a vast, vertical infestation of green glow-worms, but the spots of light actually came from the green-shaded lamps that sat on every desk in the Upper House, in exactly the same position, just as each desk was set exactly in the middle of an open cube of wrought red iron, with a grille floor and no ceiling.

These cubes—the basic building blocks of Saturday’s tower—ran on vertical and horizontal rails, ascending, descending or moving sideways according to the merits of the Denizens who worked at the desks.

Each cube was dragged into place by a series of chains that were driven by mighty steam engines, deep below the tower. The actual work of building the rails and fuelling the engines was done by bronze automatons and a small number of luckless Denizens who had failed Saturday in some way. Even lower in status were the grease monkeys, Piper’s children who oiled and maintained the miles and miles of dangerous, fast-moving machinery.

Superior Saturday looked down upon her domain, but the sight of her mighty tower and the tens of thousands of sorcerers within it did not quicken her pulse. Eventually, though she fought against the urge, she stopped looking down and started looking up.

At first she saw only cloud, but then came a glimmer of green light, a darker, more mysterious green than the glow of her lamps. The clouds parted slightly to show the emerald ceiling of the Upper House, which was also the floor of the Incomparable Gardens. Saturday grimaced, an ugly look on her otherwise extraordinarily beautiful face. For ten thousand years she had been building her tower in order to reach and invade the Incomparable Gardens. Yet no matter how high she built, the Gardens moved further away, and Lord Sunday taunted her by making sure she was the only one to see it. If any of her Denizens looked up, the clouds would close again.

Saturday curled her lip and looked away, but her new view offered no solace. Far off, on the edge of the Upper House, there was a dark, vertical shadow that stretched from the ground to the clouds. Close up, it too would shine green, for it was a vast tree, one of the four Drasil trees that supported the Incomparable Gardens above.

The Drasil trees were the reason Saturday could never build her tower high enough, because the trees grew faster than she could build, and lifted the Gardens as they grew.

She had tried to destroy or stunt the Drasils with sorcery, poison and brute force, but none of her schemes had affected the trees in the slightest. She had sent Artful Loungers and Sorcerous Supernumeraries to climb the trunks and infiltrate the domain of Lord Sunday, but they had never made it further than halfway up, defeated by the huge defensive insects that lived in tunnels within the bark of the great trees. Even flying was out of the question. High above the clouds, the Drasils’ branches spread everywhere, and the trees’ limbs were predatory, vicious and very fast.

This had been the situation for millennia, with Saturday building, the Drasils growing, and Sunday remaining aloof and mighty above, secure in the Incomparable Gardens.

But all that had changed with a sneeze on the surface of a distant dead star. The Architect’s Will had finally been released and had selected a Rightful Heir. Now that Heir was gathering the Keys from the disloyal Trustees. Arthur, his name was—a mortal whose success and speed had surprised not only Saturday.

Not that Arthur’s triumphs mattered too much to Saturday, given that she had been planning for the execution of the Will and the arrival of an Heir almost since the moment the Architect disappeared. She was not just a Trustee, with the power the Architect’s Key gave her; she was also an enormously powerful and learned sorcerer in her own right. Apart from the Old One and the Architect, she was the most ancient entity in the Universe. Therein lay the canker in her heart. She was the first Denizen the Architect had made and she felt she should have been supreme over all others, including the Architect’s children (an experiment she had decried at the time). It was not Sunday who should dwell in the Incomparable Gardens, but Saturday. Everything she did was directed to remedying this injustice.

A muffled cough behind her recalled Saturday to present events. She turned, her cloak of starshine and moonshade billowing up around her shapely legs. Apart from the cloak, which was an ancient thing of sorcery, Saturday wore a robe of spun gold scattered with tiny sapphires, and high-heeled shoes that were made of steel and had vicious points. Her long electric-blue hair was loose on her shoulders and restrained at the brow by a gold circlet on which sorcerous words looped and writhed, spelled out in shifting diamonds.

“I beg your pardon, Majesty,” said a tall, impeccably-dressed Denizen. He knelt as she turned around, his swallow-tailed coat falling on his impossibly shiny boot heels.

“You are the candidate to be my new Dusk,” said Saturday.

The Denizen bowed his head still lower, indicating agreement.

“The former Dusk was your brother? Turned out of the same mould?”

“Yes, Majesty, the elder of us by a moment.”

“Good,” said Saturday. “He served me well, and was at least partially successful in his last assignment, though he met his end. Has Noon acquainted you with all the matters at hand?”

“I believe so, Majesty,” said the new Saturday’s Dusk.

Saturday flicked a finger and her Dusk stood up. Though he was easily seven feet tall, his mistress was at least a foot taller, even without her steel shoes. In any case, he kept his head bowed, not daring to look her in the eye.

“Tell me then,” she said. “Do all my enterprises conjoin for the final victory?”

“We believe so,” said Dusk. “Though the House does not crumble as swiftly as was hoped at one time, it does fall, and our new offensive should accelerate matters. At present our reports show that Nothing has impinged greatly into the Far Reaches and across large areas of the Border Sea, and though it is not related to our activities, there has been some considerable damage to the mountain defences of the Great Maze. It is now almost certainly beyond the power of Dame Primus, as the Will calls itself, and its cat’s-paw, Arthur, to prevent the destruction.”

“Good,” said Saturday. “What of the effect upon the trees?”

“As the Nothing spreads, the deeper roots of the Drasil are severed. This has already slowed their growth by some six per cent. However, they still lift the Gardens faster than we can build. Projections indicate that when the entirety of the Far Reaches and the Lower House has been devoured by Nothing, we will be able to build faster than the trees can grow and can reach the target position in days. If more of the House falls, it will be a matter of hours.”

“Excellent!” cried Saturday, a smile rippling across her shining, blue-painted lips. “I trust the Front Door remains closed and the elevators secured? I want no interference from Primus or the Piper.”

“The Front Door remains shut, though the Lieutenant Keeper has petitioned the Court of Days for it to be reopened. So if Lord Sunday—”

“Sunday immures himself in the Gardens,” Saturday interrupted. “He cares not for anything else. He will not interfere—at least not until it is too late for him to do anything.”

“As you say, Majesty,” said Dusk diplomatically. “All elevator entrances into the Upper House have been sealed and are guarded, but it is believed that renegade operators have opened some services in other parts of the House.”

“Let them run about the ruins,” said Saturday. “The sorceries against the Improbable Stair and the Fifth Key remain constant?”

“Four shifts of nine hundred sorcerers each maintain the wards. Twenty-eight hundred executive-level sorcerers wait at ready desks, should they need to counter any workings of the Keys held by the Pretender or a sorcerous attack from the Piper.”

“The Piper!” Saturday spat. “If only I had managed to finish him centuries ago! At least he blames his brother. What is the latest news of the Piper? Have we got rid of his blasted Rats?”

Dusk proceeded with caution. “We are not absolutely clear on what the Piper is doing. His forces have withdrawn from the Great Maze, presumably to the worldlet he made for his New Nithlings. But we have not yet located that worldlet, nor do we know if he masses his forces there against us or against Dame Primus.”

“Our defences will hold as well against the Piper as they will against the Pretender,” Saturday stated confidently. “They cannot enter via elevator, Stair, Front Door or by use of the Fifth Key. There is no other way.”

Saturday’s Dusk did not speak, but the faintest frown line appeared on his forehead, just for a moment, before he smoothed it away.

“And the Rats?” prompted Saturday.

“None has been spotted in five days. We have lost fourteen lower-level clerks and some Piper’s children to the Rat-catcher automatons, and there have been requests that they be recalled.”

“No,” said Saturday. “Keep them at it. I do not want those creatures sneaking about here.”

“Speaking of Piper’s children, we employ a large number of them as grease monkeys and chain-hands, but there was a report that some of Sir Thursday’s Piper’s children were turned against him by the Piper. We would not want our Piper’s children to be similarly turned against us.”

“Yes,” said Saturday. “He has power over his creations and they must answer to his pipe. It is not an eventuality that should arise, if he is kept out of the Upper House, and we need those children to maintain our building speed. However, we should be prepared. Tell Noon to detail a suitable number of Sorcerous Supernumeraries to shadow the Piper’s children—and slay them, if I so command.”

“Very good, Majesty,” said Dusk. “There is one other matter…”

“Yes?”

“The Pretender, this Arthur Penhaligon. We have just had a report that he has returned to the Secondary Realms, to Earth. Do we implement the contingency plan?”

Saturday smiled.

“Yes, at once. Do we know if he has a Key with him?”

“We do not know, Majesty, but circumstance suggests he has at least the Fifth Key.”

“I wonder if that will protect him? It will be interesting to see. Tell Pravuil to act at once.”

“Ahem…” Dusk coughed. “I regret to say that it is not yet Saturday on Earth, Majesty. It is some forty minutes short of Friday’s midnight, and the House and that Secondary Realm are in close temporal step.”

Saturday hesitated, weighing up the situation. The Accord between the Trustees was effectively broken, but the Treaty still existed and there could be sorcerous implications if she or her agents acted outside their allotted span of power in the Secondary Realms.

“Then Pravuil must strike as the twelfth chime of midnight fades,” she instructed. “In the first second of Saturday. No later. See to it at once.”

“Yes, Majesty,” replied the new Dusk. After an elegant bow, he retreated to the silver spiral stair that led down to the desk cube immediately beneath the viewing chamber.

As soon as he was gone, Superior Saturday’s gaze was once again drawn to the sky, the parting clouds, and another infuriating but tantalising glimpse of the underside of the Incomparable Gardens.

CHAPTER ONE

It was dark outside the small private hospital, the street lights out and the houses across the road shut up tight. Only the faintest glowing lines around some windows indicated that there were probably people inside and that the city still had power. There were other lights in the sky, but these were the navigation lights of helicopters, tiny pinprick red dots circling high above. Occasionally a searchlight flickered down from one of the helicopters, closely followed by the harsh clatter of machine-gun fire.

Inside the hospital, a flash of light suddenly lit up the empty swimming pool, accompanied by a thunderclap that rattled every window and drowned the distant sounds of the choppers and gunfire. As the light from the flash slowly faded, a slow, regular drumbeat echoed through the halls.

In the front office, a tired woman clad in a crumpled blue hospital uniform looked away from the videoscreen that was carrying the latest very bad news and jumped up to flick on the corridor lights. Then she grabbed her mop and bucket and ran. The thunderclap and drumming announced the arrival of Doctor Friday, and Doctor Friday always wanted the floors cleaned ahead of her, so she could see her reflection in the glossy surface of the freshly-washed linoleum.

The cleaner ran through the wards, turning on lights as she passed. Just before the pool room, she glanced at her watch. It was 11:15 on Friday night. Doctor Friday had never come so late before, but her servants sometimes did. In any case, the cleaner was not allowed to leave until the day was completely done. Not that there was anywhere to go, with the new quarantine in force and helicopters shooting anyone who ventured out on to the streets. The news was now also full of talk of a “last-resort solution” to the “plague nexus” that existed in the city.

Outside the pool room, the cleaner stopped to take a deep breath. Then she bent her head, dipped her mop and pushed it and the bucket through the doors, reaching up to flick the light switch without looking, as she had done so many times, on so many Fridays past. She had learned long ago not to look up, because then she might meet Friday’s gaze or be dazzled by her mirror.

But it wasn’t Friday or her minions who were emerging from the dark portal in the empty swimming pool and climbing up the ramp.

The cleaner stared at their bare feet and the blue hospital nightgowns. She dropped her mop, looked up and screamed.

“They’re coming back! But they never come back!”

The sleepers that she had seen enter the pool only that morning, led by Doctor Friday herself, were shambling their way up, arms outstretched in front of them in the classic pose of sleepwalkers seen so often in films and television.

But this time Doctor Friday wasn’t there, and neither were any of her ridiculously tall and good-looking assistants.

Then the cleaner saw the girl, the one who had been awake that morning. She was shepherding the very first sleeper, a woman at the head of the line, steering her to the centre of the ramp. The sleepers weren’t as obedient as they had been going out, or as deeply asleep.

“Hi!” called the girl. “Remember me?”

The cleaner nodded dumbly.

“My name’s Leaf. What’s yours?”

“Vess,” whispered the cleaner.

“Give us a hand then, Vess! We’ve got to get everyone into bed, at least for tonight.”

“What…what about Doctor Friday?”

“She’s gone,” said Leaf. “Defeated by Arthur!”

She gestured behind her and the cleaner saw a handsome young boy of a similar age to Leaf. His skin was almost glowing with good health, his hair was shiny and his teeth were very white. But that was not the most striking thing about him. He held a light in his hand, a brilliant star that the cleaner recognised as Friday’s mirror.

“Sir!” said the cleaner, and she went down on one knee and bent her head. Leaf frowned and looked back at Arthur, and in that moment saw him anew.

“What?” asked Arthur. “Hey, keep them walking or we’ll get a pile-up back here.”

“Sorry,” said Leaf. She hastily pulled the leading sleeper—her own Aunt Mango—out of the line and held on to her arm. “It’s…well, I just realised you look…you don’t look the same as you used to.”

Arthur looked down at himself and then up again, his face showing puzzlement.

“You used to be a bit shorter than me,” said Leaf. “You’ve grown at least three or four inches and got…um…better looking.”

“Have I?” muttered Arthur. Only a few weeks ago he would have been delighted to hear he was getting taller. Now it sent an unpleasant shiver through him. He glanced at the crocodile ring on his finger, the one that indicated just how far his blood and bone had been contaminated by sorcery. But before he could gauge how much of the ring had turned from silver to gold, he forced himself to look away. He didn’t want to confirm right then and there if his transformation into a Denizen had gone beyond the point of no return. In his heart, he knew the answer without even looking at the ring.

“Never mind that now,” continued Arthur. “We’d better get everyone settled down. What’s your name again? Vess, we’ll need your help getting all these sleepers back into bed, please. There’s about two thousand of them, and we’ve only got Martine and Harrison to help.”

“Martine and Harrison?” yelped Vess. “I haven’t seen them in…I thought they were dead!”

“Martine and Harrison have been…looking after sleepers at Lady Friday’s retreat,” Arthur reported. “Hey! Leaf, they’re running into the door!”

Leaf gently spun her aunt around to face the wall and sprinted ahead to guide the leading sleepers through the door, pressing down the catch to keep it open. Then she took a small silver cone from her belt and held it to her mouth. The cone was one of the tools Friday’s servants used to direct the sleepers. It amplified and changed Leaf’s speech, and Vess shivered as she caught the echo of Lady Friday’s voice.

“Walk to an empty bed and stand next to it,” ordered Leaf. “Walk to an empty bed and stand next to it.”

The sleepers obeyed, though they tended to bunch at a bed and bump against one another before one firmly established himself or herself next to the bedhead. Only then would the others shamble off. Leaf ran back to her aunt, who was turning in circles trying to obey the command to find a bed.

Arthur stayed back at the pool, repeating Leaf’s instruction to the sleepers as they came through. He didn’t need a silver cone to be obeyed, probably because he held the Fifth Key, or because the sleepers responded to the power in his voice, feeling the authority of his position as the Rightful Heir of the Architect.

In outward appearance he looked just like a boy, but Arthur had wrested five Keys from five of the faithless Trustees. Now he ruled over the majority of the House, the epicentre of the Universe. In the process he felt he had grown much older, even if little time had actually passed. He also knew that he was becoming less human.

The sleepers kept coming through, emerging out of the dark floor of the pool that was in fact a passage to another Secondary Realm, the secret retreat of Lady Friday, where she had been stealing humans’ memories, leaving them as mindless husks. The sleepers who were being returned had narrowly avoided that fate. They would wake in due course, knowing nothing of their ordeal.

Martine, one of Lady Friday’s human staff, emerged and nodded at Arthur before starting up the ramp. She had an expression on her face that Arthur guessed was equal parts fear and excitement. Martine had been forced to stay and work in Friday’s retreat for more than thirty years.

She would find the contemporary world a very strange place, Arthur thought. A world that was getting stranger by the day—not least because the appearance of Denizens and Nithlings from the House had a bad effect upon the Secondary Realms like Earth, disrupting the environment on many different levels, including the spontaneous generation of new and deadly viruses.

Arthur thought about that as he watched the sleepers march, occasionally intervening to keep them moving. His presence now with the Fifth Key would undoubtedly destabilise something on Earth, maybe even create something really bad like the Sleepy Plague. He would not be able to linger, and perhaps should not even stay long enough to go home and check up on his family. But he desperately wanted to see if his sister Michaeli and brother Eric were all right, and also to find some clue to where his mother Emily might be or who might have taken her, if Sneezer was correct and she was no longer on Earth at all.

A ringing phone interrupted his thoughts. It got louder and louder, closer and closer. Arthur scowled. He didn’t have a mobile phone, but the old-fashioned ring tone was coming from the pocket of his paper suit…

He sighed, put the Fifth Key in his pocket and rummaged around to see what else was in there. When his fingers closed on a small cold tube he knew hadn’t been there before, he pulled it out and found a full-sized, antique candlestick-style phone with a separate earpiece that could neither have fitted into his pocket in the first place or come out of it if it had. It was, in other words, a perfectly normal manifestation of a House telephone, behaving according to its own magical rules.

“Yes?” said Arthur.

“Stand by,” said a voice that sounded much more like a human telephone operator than a Denizen. “Thru-connecting now, sir.”

“Who’s that?” asked someone else. A familiar, masculine voice—again not a Denizen.

“Erazmuz!?” asked Arthur in surprise. Erazmuz was his oldest half-brother, a major in the army. How could he be calling on a House telephone?

“Arthur? How come the screen’s off? Never mind. Is Emily home?”

“Uh, no,” said Arthur. “I’m not—”

“Eric? Michaeli?”

Erazmuz was talking really fast, not letting Arthur get a word in, so he couldn’t tell him that he wasn’t home, even if it was the number that Erazmuz had dialled.

“No, they’re not—”

“That’s…”

Erazmuz’s voice trailed away for a second, then he came back, talking faster than ever.

“OK…you’ve got to grab any bottled water and food, like tins or packaged stuff, and an opener, get warm clothes and head down to the cellar as soon as you can, but no more than ten minutes from now. Ten minutes maximum, OK? Shut it up tight and stay down there. Do you know where Emily and the others are?”

“No! What’s going on?”

“General Pravuil has just flown in and he’s ordered the launch of four micronukes at what’s left of East Area Hospital at 12:01. If you get to the cellar, you should be OK, just don’t come out till I get there. I’ll be with the clean-up—”

“What!” exclaimed Arthur. “Nukes! I can’t believe you—the army—is going to nuke part of the city? There must be thousands of people—”

“Arthur! I shouldn’t even be talking to you! Don’t waste time!”

There was a clear sound of desperation in Erazmuz’s voice.

“We can’t stop it; the general’s got every clearance—the hospital’s been declared a viral plague nexus under the Creighton Act. Get water and food and some blankets and get down to the cellar now!”

The line went dead. The phone started to fade in Arthur’s hand, becoming insubstantial, its sharp edges turning foggy and cold.

“Hold on,” ordered Arthur. He tightened his grip. “I want to make a call.”

The telephone solidified again. There was a sound like a distant choir singing, followed by some indistinct shouting. Then a light, silvery voice said, “Oh, get off, do. This is our exchange—we don’t care what Saturday says. Operator here.”

“This is Lord Arthur. I need to speak to Dr Scamandros urgently, please. I’m not sure where he is—probably the Lower House.”

“Ooh, Lord Arthur. It’s a bit tricky right now. I’ll do my best. Please hold.”

Arthur lowered the phone for a second and looked around. He couldn’t see a clock and he had no idea what time of day it was. Nor did he know how close this private hospital was to the big East Area Hospital—it could be next door for all he knew. Leaf, Martine and Vess were in the other rooms, settling down sleepers, so there wasn’t anyone to ask. Many more of the old folk continued to shamble past.

Arthur ran up the ramp, narrowly missing slowly-swinging elbows and widely-planted feet. He kept the earpiece to his head, but he couldn’t hear anything now, not even the shouting in the background.

“Leaf! Leaf! What time is it?” he shouted in the general direction of the door. Then he raised the telephone and, hardly lowering his voice, insisted, “I must speak to Dr Scamandros! Quickly, please!”

CHAPTER TWO

Leaf came running back as Arthur ran forward and the two nearly collided at the door. In recovering, they turned several sleepers around. It took a moment to get them sorted out, with Arthur still trying to hold the phone.

“What time is it?” Arthur asked again.

“Time? I wouldn’t have a clue,” puffed Leaf. “It’s night-time outside.”

“Ask Vess, quickly. The army is going to nuke East Area Hospital at 12:01 Saturday morning!”

“What!?” shrieked Leaf.

“I can probably do something,” said Arthur hastily. “I have to check with Dr Scamandros. Find out how close to East Area we are!”

Leaf turned and ran. Arthur pressed his ear harder against the phone, thinking he heard something. But the only sound was the shuffle of the sleepers as they slowly passed by him. The telephone itself was silent.

“Come on, come on,” whispered Arthur anxiously, half into the telephone, half out into the air. He had an idea about something he could do, but he needed to check with Scamandros about exactly how to do it and what could go wrong.

No answer came from the phone, but Leaf came running back.

“It’s ten minutes to midnight on Friday night!” she shouted. “We’re less than half a mile away from East Area. This even used to be part of the big hospital years ago!”

She skidded to a halt next to Arthur and gulped down several panicked breaths.

“What are you going to do? We’ve only got ten minutes!”

“Hello!” Arthur shouted into the telephone. “Hello! I have to speak to Dr Scamandros now!”

There was no answer. Arthur gripped the phone even tighter, willing it to connect, but that didn’t help.

“Probably nine minutes now,” said Leaf. “You’ve got to do something, Arthur!”

Arthur glanced at the crocodile ring very quickly. Leaf saw him look.

“Maybe Scamandros is wrong about the sorcerous contamination,” she said. “Or the ring doesn’t measure very well.”

“It’s OK, Leaf,” said Arthur slowly. “I’ve been thinking about all that anyway. You know why the Will chose me to be the Rightful Heir, how it tricked Mister Monday? I was going to die…but getting the First Key saved me—”

“Sure, I remember,” said Leaf hastily. “Now we’re all going to die unless you do something!”

“I am going to do something,” said Arthur. “That’s what I’m explaining to you. I’ve worked out that I was going to die anyway, so everything I’ve done—everything I do from now on—is a kind of bonus anyway. Even if I turn into a Denizen, I’ll still be alive and at least I can help other people—”

“Arthur, I understand!” Leaf interrupted. “Just do something, please! We can talk afterwards!”

“OK,” said Arthur. He dropped the telephone. As it fell, it turned into a shower of tiny motes of light that faded and were gone before they hit the floor.

Arthur took a deep breath and for a moment marvelled at just how deeply he could breathe now, his asthma gone with his old human self, all earthly frailties being left behind in his transition to a new immortal form. Then he took the mirror that was the Fifth Key out of his pocket and held it up in front of his face. An intense light shone around it in a fierce corona, but Arthur looked directly at the mirror without difficulty, seeing only the reflection of his own changing face, his more regular nose, his whiter teeth and his silkier hair.

Leaf shielded her eyes with her arm, and even the sleepwalkers turned their heads away and screwed their eyes shut tighter as they kept shuffling forward.

I really hope this works, thought Arthur. It has to work. Only I wish I could have checked with Dr Scamandros, because I don’t really know what…

Arthur grimaced, banished his fearful inner voice and focused on what he wanted the Fifth Key to do. Because it seemed easier and somehow made it sound more like it would happen, he spoke aloud to the Key.

“Fifth Key of the Architect! I, Arthur Penhaligon, Rightful Heir of the Architect, um…I desire you to shield this city inside a bubble that keeps it separate from the Earth, a bubble that will protect the city and keep everyone in it safe from all harm, and…well…that’s it…thanks.”

The mirror flashed and this time Arthur did have to blink. When he opened his eyes, he felt momentarily unsteady on his feet and had to raise his arms like a tightrope-walker to regain his balance. In that instant he saw that everyone else had stopped moving. Leaf and the line of sleepers were still, as if they had been snap-frozen. Many of the sleepers had one foot slightly off the ground, a position that no one could possibly keep up in normal circumstances.

It was also newly quiet. Arthur couldn’t hear the helicopters or gunfire or any other noise. It was like being in a waxwork museum after closing time, surrounded by posed statues.

Arthur slipped the mirror into his pocket and ran his fingers through his hair—which had got considerably longer than he cared for, though it somehow stayed out of his face.

“Leaf?” he said tentatively, walking over to tap his friend lightly on the shoulder. “Leaf? Are you OK?”

Leaf didn’t move. Arthur looked at her face. Her eyes were open but her pupils didn’t move when he waved his finger back and forth. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

Arthur felt a sudden panic rise in him.

I’ve killed them, he thought. I was trying to save them, but I killed them…

He touched Leaf on the shoulder again, and though a faint nimbus of red light sprang up around his fingers, she still didn’t move or react in any way.

Arthur stepped back and looked around. There was a faint red glow around each of the sleepers too, and when he walked over and touched them, this light also grew momentarily brighter. Arthur didn’t know what the glow meant, but he found it slightly comforting, as it suggested some sorcerous effect was active and he hadn’t just killed everyone.

But I don’t even know if I have protected us from the nukes, Arthur thought. What time is it?

He turned and ran down the hall, through the next two wards and out into the lobby. From there it took him a minute to find the office and a clock. It had stopped at exactly 11:57, the second hand quivering on the twelve. The clock also had a faint red sheen, and there were ghostly scarlet shadows behind the second and hour hands.

Arthur ran outside. The front doors slammed shut behind him with a sound all too like the trump of doom. He slid to a halt just before he fell down the wheelchair ramp, because everywhere he looked was tinted red. It was like looking at the world through red sunglasses on an overcast day, because the night sky had been replaced by a solid red that was buzzing and shifting and hard to look at, like a traffic light viewed far too close.

“I guess I’ve done something,” Arthur said to himself. “I just don’t know exactly what…”

He walked a little further, out into the car park. Something caught his eye, up in the sky, a small silhouette. He peered at it for a few seconds before he worked out that it was a helicopter gunship. But it wasn’t moving. It was like a model stuck on a piece of wire, just hanging there in the red-washed sky.

Stuck in a moment of time.

That’s why everyone is frozen in place, Arthur thought. I’ve stopped time…that’s how the Key is keeping everyone in the city safe…

If time was only frozen or slowed inside a bubble around the city, it could start again, or be started again by some other power. Which meant that the nuclear strike on East Area Hospital would still happen. He hadn’t saved the city from the attack. He’d just postponed it…

“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” whispered Arthur. He looked along the empty street, all strange and red-hued, and wondered if he should run over to his home and see if his family was all right. Maybe he could carry them down into the cellar…but if he did that, he might be wasting time better spent in learning how to protect everyone else. He couldn’t carry everyone in danger to safety.

He’d gained a breathing space for the city, and he could extend it by going back to the House. If he left now, he should be able to return to almost exactly the same time, even if he spent days or even weeks in the House.

Should is not the same as definitely, thought Arthur grimly. I wish I understood the time relativities better. I wish I knew more about how to use the Keys. I wish I’d never, ever got involved in all—

Arthur stopped himself.

“If I wasn’t involved, I’d be dead,” he said aloud. “I just have to get on with it.”

Getting on with it, Arthur thought, included facing up to things. He held his hand up close to his face and looked at the crocodile ring. Even in the weird red light he could see it clearly. The diamond eyes of the crocodile looked baleful, as dark as dried black blood rather then their usual pink. The ten marked sections of its body, each inscribed with a roman numeral, recorded the degree of sorcerous contamination in his blood and bone. If more than six sections had turned from silver to gold, Arthur would be permanently tainted with sorcery and irretrievably destined to become a Denizen.

Arthur slowly turned the ring around, to see how far the gold transformation had progressed, counting in his head. One, two, three, four, five…he knew it had gone that far already. He turned the ring again, and saw the gold had completely filled the fifth segment and had flooded over, almost completely across the sixth segment.

I am…I am going to be a Denizen.

Arthur took a deep, shuddering breath and looked again, but there was no change in the ring. It was six parts gold. He was sixty per cent immortal.

“No turning back now,” said Arthur to the red world around him. “Time to get back to work.”

He looked away from the ring and lowered his hand. Bending his head for a moment, he drew out the Fifth Key from his pocket and raised it high. According to Dame Primus, the mirror of Lady Friday could take him to anywhere he had previously seen within the House, if there was a reflective surface there.

Arthur pictured the throne room in the Lower House, the big audience chamber where he had met Dame Primus and everyone before he was drafted into the Army of the Architect. It was the place he could most easily visualise in Monday’s Dayroom, because it didn’t have much detail and was so over the top in decoration—including floors of reflective marble.

“Fifth Key, take me to the throne room in Monday’s Dayroom.”

The Fifth Key shivered in Arthur’s hand and a beam of white light sprang from it, banishing the red. The light formed a perfect, upright rectangle, exactly like a door.

Arthur walked into the rectangle of light and disappeared from his own city, from his Earth, perhaps never to return.

CHAPTER THREE

The throne room was empty. Otherwise it looked the same as it had when Arthur had last been there: like one enormous, ritzy, poorly-conceived hotel bathroom. It was about as large as a big city theatre, and the walls, floor and ceiling were all lined with gold-veined white marble that was polished to a highly reflective sheen.

The vast, red-iron round table was still in the middle of the chamber, with the hundred tall-backed white chairs around it. On the other side, Arthur’s own high throne of gilded iron sat next to the rainbow chair of Dame Primus.

“Hello!” Arthur called out. “Anyone here?”

His voice filled the empty space and the echoes were the only answer. Arthur sighed and strode over to the door, his footsteps setting up another echo behind him, so it sounded like he was being followed by many small, close companions.

The corridor outside was still crowded with thousands of bundles of paper, each tied with a red ribbon and stacked like bricks. Unlike last time, there were no Commissionaire Sergeants standing at attention in the gaps between the piles of paperwork.

“Hello!” Arthur shouted again. He ran down the corridor, pausing several times to see if there were doors leading out. Eventually he came to the end of the corridor, where he found a door propped half open and partially covered in bundles of paper. He could only see it because one of the piles had collapsed.

There were still no Denizens. Arthur rushed through the half-open door and along another empty corridor, pushing doors open as he passed them without encountering anyone else.

“Hello! Anyone here!” he shouted every few yards, but no answer came.

Finally he came to a pair of tall, arched doors of dark oak. They were barred, but he easily lifted the bar—not even pausing to marvel that he had grown so strong that he could move a piece of timber that must weigh several hundred pounds. Once the bar was up, the door was easily pushed open.

This particular door led outside. Arthur had expected to see the lake and the rim of the crater that surrounded the Dayroom, and the ceiling of the Lower House above. Instead he saw a vast, arching wave of Nothing that rose way above him, a wave that had already eaten up everything but the small villa behind him. He felt like he was on a small hilltop, the last piece of dry land ahead of a tsunami—but the wave was coming, climbing high, and it would soon crash down to destroy even this last refuge.

Arthur turned to run, his heart suddenly hammering in fear, his mouth dry as dust. But after that first panicked step, he stopped and turned back. The wave of Nothing was coming down and he didn’t have time to run. He doubted the Fifth Key could protect him from such a vast influx of Nothing. At least not unless he actively directed its power.

I have to do something, thought Arthur, and he acted with the speed of that thought.

Even as the wave of Nothing crashed down upon him, he raised the mirror and held it high, pushing it towards the dark, falling sky.

“Stop!” he shouted, his voice raw with power, every part of his mind focused on stopping the tsunami of Nothing. “Stop! By the Keys I hold, I order the Nothing to stop! House, you must hold against the Void!”

Blinding light shone from the mirror, hot white beams that set the air on fire as they shot out and up, striking the onrush of Nothing, splashing across the face of the darkness, small marks of brilliance upon the Void.

Arthur felt a terrible pain blossom in his heart. The pain spread, racing down his arms and legs. Awful cracking sounds came from his joints, and he had to screw his eyes shut and scream as his teeth rearranged themselves into a more perfect order in his jaw. Then his jaw itself moved and he felt the plates of bone in his skull shift and change.

But still he kept holding the mirror up above his head, even as he fell to his knees. He used the pain, channelling it to fuel his concentration, directing his will against the rush of Nothing.

Finally it was too much. Arthur could neither bear the pain nor continue the effort. He fell forwards on his face, his screams becoming dull sobs. His strength used up, he dropped the Fifth Key on the narrow band of grass that was all that remained of the lawns that had once surrounded the Dayroom villa.

He lay there, partially stunned, awaiting annihilation, knowing that he had failed and that when he died, the rest of the Universe would follow. All he loved would be destroyed, back on Earth, in the House and in the worlds beyond.

A minute passed, and then another, and the annihilation didn’t happen. As the pain in his bones ebbed, Arthur groaned and rolled over. He would face the Nothing, rather than be snuffed out by it while he lay defeated upon the grass.

The first thing he saw was not incipient destruction, but a delicate tracery of glowing golden lines, like a web or a mesh net of light thrown against the sky. It was holding back the great mass of threatening darkness, but Arthur could feel the pressure of the Nothing, could feel the infinite Void pushing against his restraints. He knew that it would soon overcome his net of light and once again advance.

Arthur picked up the mirror and staggered to his feet. The ground felt further away than normal and he lost his balance for a moment, swaying on the spot. The sensation passed as he shook his head and he ran back to the open doors. There was a telephone in the library, he knew, and he needed to call and find out where in the House was safe, instead of going somewhere that might have already succumbed to Nothing. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he used the Fifth Key to take him straight into the Void, though it probably would have the advantage of being quick…

Or maybe the Key would protect me for a little while, Arthur thought with sudden nausea. Long enough to feel the Nothing dissolve my flesh…

He hurried along the main corridor until he saw a door he recognised. Darting through it, he leaped up the steps four at a time, bouncing off the walls as he tried to take the turns in the staircase too fast.

At the top, he sprinted down another long corridor, this one also narrowed by piles of records, many of them written on papyrus or cured hides instead of paper. Pausing to shift a six-foot-high stone tablet that had fallen and blocked the way, Arthur didn’t bother with the handle of the door at the end, but kicked it open and stumbled into the library beyond.

The room was empty, and not just of Denizens. The books were gone from the shelves, as were the comfortable leather armchairs and the carpet. Even the scarlet bell rope that Sneezer had pulled to reveal the heptagonal room which housed the grandfather clocks of Seven Dials was missing, though the room was presumably still there, behind the bookcase.

The telephone that had stood on a side table was also missing.

Arthur’s shoulder slumped. He could feel the pressure outside, like a sinus pain across his forehead. He knew it was the weight of Nothing striving to break the bonds he had placed upon it. The weight was there in his mind, making him weary, almost too weary to think straight.

“Telephone,” mumbled Arthur, holding out his right hand, while he cradled the Fifth Key in his left. “I need a telephone, please. Now.”

Without further ado, a telephone appeared in his hand. Arthur set it down on the floor and sat next to it, lifting the earpiece and bending to speak into the receiver. He could hear crackling and buzzing, and in the distance someone was singing something that sounded rather like “Raindrops keep falling on my head”, but the words were “Line-drops are lining up tonight”.

“Hello, it’s Lord Arthur. I need to speak to Dame Primus. Or Sneezer. Or anyone really.”

The singing abruptly stopped, replaced by a thin, soft voice that sounded like paper rustling.

“Ah, where are you calling from? This line doesn’t appear to be technically, um, attached to anything.”

“The Lower House,” said Arthur. “Please, I think I’m about to be engulfed by Nothing and I need to work out where to go.”

“Easier said than done,” replied the voice. “Have you ever tried connecting a non-existent line to a switchboard that isn’t there any more?”

“No,” said Arthur. Somewhere outside he heard a twanging sound, like a guitar string snapping. He felt it too, a sudden lurch in his stomach. His net, his defence against the Void, was breaking. “Please hurry!”

“I can get Dr Scamandros—will he do?” asked the operator. “You wanted him before, it says here—”

“Where is he?” gabbled Arthur.

“The Deep Coal Cellar, which is kind of odd,” said the operator. “Since nothing else in the Lower House is still connected…but metaphysical diversion was never my strong suit. Shall I put you through? Hello…hello…are you there, Lord Arthur?”

Arthur dropped the phone and stood up, not waiting to hear more. He raised the mirror that was the Fifth Key and concentrated upon it, desiring to see out of the reflective surface of a pool of water in the Deep Coal Cellar—if there was such a pool of water, and a source of light.

He was distracted for an instant by the sight of his own face, which was both familiar and strange. Familiar, because it was in essence much the same as it had been at any other time he’d looked in a mirror, and strange because there were numerous small changes. His cheekbones had become a little more pronounced, the shape of his head was a bit different, his ears had got smaller…

“The Deep Coal Cellar!” snapped Arthur at the mirror, both to distract himself and get on with his urgent task: finding somewhere to escape to before Nothing destroyed Monday’s Dayroom.

His image wavered and was replaced by a badly-lit scene that showed an oil lamp perched on a very thick, leather-bound book the size of several house bricks, which was set atop a somewhat collapsed pyramid made from small pieces of coal. The lamplight was dim, but Arthur could perceive someone on the far side of the pyramid who was raising a fishing pole over his head, ready to cast. Arthur saw only the caster’s hands and two mustard yellow cuffs, which he immediately recognised.

“Fifth Key,” Arthur commanded, “take me to the Deep Coal Cellar, next to Dr Scamandros.”

As before, a door of pure white light appeared. As Arthur stepped through it, he felt his defensive net tear asunder behind him and the onrush of the great wave of Nothing.

A scant few seconds after his escape, the last surviving remnants of the Lower House ceased to exist.

CHAPTER FOUR

Arthur appeared next to a pyramid of coal, stepping out of the air and frightening the life out of a short, bald Denizen in a yellow greatcoat, who dropped his fishing pole, jumped back, and pulled a smoking bronze ball that looked like a medieval hand grenade out of one of his voluminous pockets.

“Dr Scamandros!” exclaimed Arthur. “It’s me!”

“Lord Arthur!”

The tattooed trumpets on Dr Scamandros’s forehead blew apart into clouds of confetti. He tried to pinch out the fuse on the smoking ball, but a flame ran around his fingers and continued on its way. Even more smoke boiled out of the infernal device.

“Scamand—” Arthur started to say, but Scamandros interrupted him, lobbing the ball behind a particularly large pyramid of coal some thirty feet distant.

“One moment, Lord Arthur.”

There was a deafening crack and a fierce rush of air, closely followed by a great gout of smoke and coal dust that spiralled up into the air. Moments later, a hail of coal came down, some fist-sized pieces striking the ground uncomfortably close to the sorcerer and the boy.

“I do beg your pardon, Lord Arthur,” said Dr Scamandros. Puffing slightly, he went down on one knee, clouds of disturbed coal dust billowing up almost as high as his shoulders. “Welcome.”

“Please, do get up,” said Arthur. He leaned forward and helped the Denizen rise. Dr Scamandros was amazingly heavy, or possibly all the things he had in the pockets of his yellow greatcoat were amazingly heavy.

“What’s going on?” Arthur asked. “I came back to Monday’s Dayroom but there was this…this huge wave of Nothing! I only just managed to hold it off long enough to escape.”

“I fear that I lack exact knowledge of what has occurred,” replied Scamandros. The tattoos on his face became a herd of confused donkeys that ran in a circle from his chin to the bridge of his nose and back again, and kicked their heels at each other. “I have been here since we parted company at Lady Friday’s retreat, a matter of some days. Dame Primus wished me to investigate some unusual phenomena, including the sudden growth of flowers and a powerful aroma of rose oil. It has been quite a restful interlude in some ways, though I have to say that attar of roses is no longer…”

The Denizen noticed Arthur’s frown and got back to the question.

“Ahem, that is to say, just under an hour ago, I felt a tremor underfoot, followed a moment later by a sudden onslaught of Nothing that annihilated at least a third of the Cellar before its advance slowed. Fortunately it was not the third I happened to be located in at the time. I immediately attempted to telephone Dame Primus at the Citadel, but found all lines severed. Similarly, I was unable to summon an elevator. The few short experiments I have conducted suggest the following.”

He held out three blackened fingers, closing them into his fist one by one.

“Item One. The defences against the Void in the Far Reaches must have suddenly collapsed, allowing a huge surge of Nothing to smash through.

“Item Two. If you encountered a wave of Nothing as high as Monday’s Dayroom, then it is likely that the entire Far Reaches and all of the Lower House have been destroyed. But there is a brighter note, which I shall label as Item Three.

“Item Three. If you got an operator on the line, the bulwark between the Lower and Middle House must have held. Or be holding, though everything below it has been lost.”

“Everything? But here…where we are right now,” said Arthur. “This is part of the Lower House, how come it’s not…uh…gone?”

“The Old One’s prison is very strong,” said Scamandros. He pointed to his left. Arthur looked and saw in the distance the faint sheen of blue light that he knew came from the clock face where the Old One was chained. “The Architect had to make it particularly resistant, to keep the Old One in check. Being of such adamant stuff, it has held against the initial inrush of Nothing. But now it is but a small islet, lost in the Void. We are entirely surrounded and totally cut off from the rest of the House. It is very interesting, but I have to confess I’m relieved you’re here, Lord Arthur. Without you, I fear that—”

Scamandros paused. The tattooed donkeys hung their heads and slowly became tumbledown stone cairns, memorial markers for the fallen.

“I fear that I would find the current situation, interesting as it is, likely to be fatal in a relatively short space of time, given that Nothing is eating this small refuge at a rate of approximately a yard an hour.”

“What? You were just saying this area is adamant and strong and all that!” protested Arthur. He peered into the darkness, but he couldn’t tell whether he was looking at advancing Nothing or just couldn’t see very far because the only immediate light came from the feeble lantern on the coal pile.

“Oh, the area immediately adjacent to the clock is doubtless proof against the Void,” said Scamandros. “But before your arrival I was weighing up the relative…er…benefits of being throttled by the Old One as opposed to being dissolved by Nothing.”

“The Old One wouldn’t throttle you…oh…I guess he might,” said Arthur. “He does hate Denizens…” Arthur stopped talking and looked over at the blue glow, thoughts of his very first encounter with the Old One going through his mind. He could well remember the feel of the prison chain around his neck. “I hope he’ll still talk to me. Since I’m here, I want to ask him some questions.”

Dr Scamandros peered owlishly at Arthur, with his half-moon spectacles glinting on his forehead, helping him focus his invisible third and fourth eyes.

“It is true that the Old One has a fondness for mortals. But I think you are no longer mortal. What does my…your ring indicate?”

Arthur looked. The gold had washed well into the seventh segment.

“About seventy-five per cent contaminated,” he said quietly. “I hope the Old One can recognise the quarter-part of humanity inside me.”

“Perhaps it would be best to simply depart,” said Scamandros nervously. “Though I should say that the ring has a margin—”

“I do need to at least try to get some answers from him,” said Arthur distractedly. “If I keep my distance it should be OK. Then we’d better get up to the Citadel and find out what’s happening from Dame Primus. Oh, and I need to ask you about something I’ve done back on Earth…”

Quickly Arthur described what he’d done with the Key, and the strangely red-lit environment of what appeared to be a town frozen in time.

“I cannot be entirely sure, Lord Arthur, without proper investigation,” said Scamandros. “But as you suspected, you may have separated your entire world from the general procession of time in the Secondary Realms, or have temporally dislocated just a portion of it, around your town. In either case, the cessation will slowly erode. In due course the march of time will resume its normal beat, and everything that was to happen will occur unless you return and prevent it before the erosion of the cessation, which you should be able to do given the elasticity of time between the House and the Secondary Realms. I’m sure Sneezer could tell you more, using the Seven Dials.”

“But the Seven Dials must have been destroyed,” said Arthur. “With Monday’s Dayroom.” He stopped and slapped the side of his head. “And all the records stored in the Lower House. They must have been destroyed too! Doesn’t that mean that whatever those records were about in the Secondary Realms will also be destroyed? My record was there!”

Scamandros shook his head.

“The Seven Dials will have moved to safety of its own accord, hopefully to some part of the House we control. As for the records, only dead observations are held in the Lower House. Admittedly their destruction will create holes in the past, but that is of no great concern. Monday must have been given your record temporarily, I presume by the Will, but it would normally have been held in the Upper House, as an active record.”

“Sneezer gave it to me after I defeated Monday, but I left it behind,” said Arthur. “So Dame Primus has probably got it.”

“Unless it has returned to the Upper House. Such documents cannot be long held out of their proper place.”

“But then Saturday can change my record and that would change me!” exclaimed Arthur. “She could destroy it…me…both!”

Scamandros shook his head again. A tattoo of a red-capped judge with a beaked nose appeared on his left cheek and also shook his head.

“No—even if Saturday knows where it is, she could not change or destroy it. Not once you had even a single Key.”

“I feel like my head is going to explode.” Arthur massaged his temples with his knuckles and sighed. “There’s just too much…What are you doing?”

Scamandros paused in the act of removing a very large hand-drill from inside his coat and a shining ten-inch-long drill bit from an external pocket.

“If I bore a hole in your skull just here,” said Scamandros, tapping the side of his forehead, “it will relieve the pressure. I expect it is a side effect of your transformation into a higher Denizen—”

“I didn’t mean my head was actually going to explode,” said Arthur. “So you can put that drill away. I meant that I have too much to do, too much information to deal with. Too many problems!”

“Perhaps I can assist in some other fashion?” asked Scamandros as he stowed his tools away.

“No,” sighed Arthur. “Wait here. I’m going to talk to the Old One.”

“Um, Lord Arthur, I trust that I can move a little in that direction?” Scamandros pointed at a pile of coal a few yards away and added, “As I observe that the front half of yonder pyramid has ceased to exist…”

“Of course you can move!” snapped Arthur. He felt a peculiar rage rising in him, something he’d never felt before, an irritation at having to deal with lesser Denizens and inferior beings. For a moment he even felt like striking Scamandros, or forcing the Denizen to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness.

Then the feeling was past, replaced by a deep sense of mortification and shame. Arthur liked Scamandros and he did not like the way he had just felt towards the sorcerer, the proud anger that had fizzed up inside him, like a shaken bottle of pop ready to explode. He stopped and took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was just a boy who had a very tough job to do, and that he would need all the help he could get, from willing friends, not fearful servants.

I’m not going to become like one of the Trustees, thought Arthur firmly. At the back of his head, another little thought lay under that. Or like Dame Primus…

“Sorry, I’m sorry, Dr Scamandros. I didn’t mean to shout. I just…I’m a bit…um…anyway, do whatever you need to do to keep away from the Nothing. We’ll get out of here soon.”

Dr Scamandros bowed low as Arthur walked away, and another baseball-sized grenade fell out of an inner pocket and immediately began to smoke. The Denizen tut-tutted, pinched the burning fuse out and slipped it up his sleeve, which did not look like a secure place for it go. However, it did not immediately fall out.

Arthur walked on, weaving between the pyramids of coal and splashing through the puddles of dirty coal-dust-tainted water. He remembered that he had been very cold when he’d last visited the Deep Coal Cellar, but it felt quite pleasant now to him, almost warm. Perhaps a side effect of the Nothing that now surrounded the place, he thought.

There were other changes too. As he drew closer to the blue illumination spread by the clock, Arthur noticed that many of the pyramids now sprouted flowers. Climbing roses twined up through the coal, and between the puddles there were clumps of bluebells.

The bluebells spread as the ground climbed a little higher and got drier, the flowers now growing out of stone slates rather than a bed of coal dust, which was equally impossible, but did not bother Arthur. He was fairly used to the House. Flowers growing out of coal and stone were far from the strangest things he had seen.

At the last pyramid he stopped, as he had done all that time ago, when he had first cautiously approached the Old One’s prison. The shimmering blue light was less annoying that it had been then and he could see more clearly this time, even without calling on the Fifth Key to shed some kinder illumination.

Arthur saw a markedly different landscape from what it had been. Between him and the clock-prison was a solid carpet of bluebells, interspersed with clumps of tall yellow-green stalks that burst out at the top in profuse, pale white flowers that were shaped a little like very elongated daffodils, but at the same time looked too alien to have come from the Earth he knew.

The raised circular platform of stone, the clock face, was significantly smaller, as if it had been shrunk. It had been at least sixty feet in diameter, the length of the drive at Arthur’s own home. Now it was half that, and the Roman numerals that had stood upright around the rim were smaller and tarnished, much of their blue glow gone. Some of them were bent over at forty-five degrees or more, and the numbers and most of the rim were wreathed in climbing red and pink roses.

The metal hands had shrunk with the clock face, to remain in proportion. Long, shining blue-steel chains still ran from the ends of the hands back through the central pivot, fastened at the other end to the manacles locked on the wrists of the Old One.

The Old One himself was not as Arthur had last seen him. He still looked like a giant barbarian hero, eight feet tall and heavily-muscled, but his formerly old, almost-translucent skin was now sun-dark and supple. His once-stubbled head now sported a fine crop of clean white hair that was tied back behind his neck. He no longer wore just a loincloth, but had on a sleeveless leather jerkin and a pair of scarlet leggings that came down to just below his knees.

Where he once looked like a fallen, fading ancient of eighty or ninety, the Old One now looked like a super-fit sixty-year-old hero who could easily take on and defeat any number of lesser, younger foes.

The giant was sitting on the rim of the clock between the numbers three and four, slowly plucking the petals from a rose. He was half-turned away from Arthur, so the boy couldn’t see the Old One’s eyes—or, if it was soon after they had been torn from their sockets by the puppets within the clock, the empty, oozing sockets.

Thinking that was something he definitely did not want to see, Arthur craned his neck to check the position of the clock hands. The hour hand was at nine and the minute hand at five, which relieved him on three counts. The Old One’s eyes would have had plenty of time to grow back and his chains would be fairly tight, keeping him close to the clock. Perhaps most importantly, it also meant the torturer puppets would not be emerging for several hours.

Arthur stepped out and crossed the field of bluebells. Chains rattled as he approached and the Old One stood to watch him. Arthur stopped thirty or forty feet from the clock. While the face had shrunk, he couldn’t be sure the chains had as well, so he erred on the side of caution.

“Greetings, Old One!” he called.

“Greetings, boy,” rumbled the Old One. “Or perhaps I can call you boy no longer. Arthur is your name, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Come sit with me. We will drink wine and talk.”

“Do you promise you won’t hurt me?” asked Arthur.

“You will be safe from all harm for the space of a quarter hour, as measured by this clock,” replied the Old One. “You are mortal enough that I would not slay you like a wandering cockroach, or a Denizen of the House.”

“Thanks,” said Arthur. “I think.”

He approached cautiously, but the Old One sat down again and, doubling over his chain, swept a space next to him clear of the thorny roses, to make a seat for Arthur.

Arthur perched gingerly next to him.

“Wine,” said the Old One, holding out his hand.

A small stoneware jug flew up out of the ground without parting the bluebells. He caught it and tipped it up above his mouth, pouring out a long draught of resin-scented wine. Arthur could smell it very strongly, and once again it made him feel slightly ill.

“You called the wine with a poem last time,” Arthur said hesitantly. He was thinking of the questions he wanted to ask, and wasn’t sure how to start.

“It is the power of my will that shapes Nothing,” replied the Old One. “It is true that many lesser beings need to sharpen their thoughts with speech or song when they deal with Nothing. I do not need to do so, though on occasion it may amuse me to essay some rhyme or poesy.”

“I wanted to ask you some questions,” said Arthur. “And to tell you something.”

“Ask away,” said the Old One. “I shall answer if I choose. As for the telling, if I do not like what I hear, it shall not make me stray from my promise. Whatever your speech, you may still have safe passage hence. If you do not overstay your allotted time.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and proffered the jug. Arthur quickly shook his head, so the ancient drank again.

“You probably know more than anyone about the Architect,” said Arthur. “So I wanted to ask you what happened to her? And what is the Will exactly, and what is it…she…going to do? I mean, I’m supposed to be the Rightful Heir and all, and I thought that meant that I was going to end up in charge of everything, whether I wanted to or not. Only now I’m not so sure.”

“I knew the Architect long ago,” said the Old One slowly. He drank a series of smaller mouthfuls before speaking again. “Yet not so well as I thought or I would not have suffered here so long. I do not know what happened to her, save that it must have been at least in part of her own choosing. As for the Will, it is an expression of her power, set up to achieve some end. If you are the Rightful Heir, I would suggest the question you need ask is this: what exactly are you to inherit and from whom?”

Arthur frowned.

“I don’t want to be the Heir. I just want to get my old life back and make sure everyone is safe,” he said. “But I can’t get everything sorted out without using the Keys, and that’s turning me into a Denizen. Scamandros made me a ring that says I’m six…more than six parts in ten…sorcerously contaminated, and it’s irreversible. So I will become a Denizen, right?”

“Your body is assuming an immortal form—that is evident,” said the Old One. “But not everything of immortal flesh is a Denizen. Remember, the Architect did not make the mortals of Earth. She made the stuff of life and sowed it across all creation. You mortals arose from the possibility she made, and though she always liked to think so, are consequently not of her direct design. There is more to you, and all mortals, than the simple flesh you inhabit.”

“But can I become a normal boy again?”

“I do not know.” The Old One drained the last of the wine from the jug, then threw it far past the light of the clock. The sound of its shattering came faint and distant from the darkness, reassurance that there was still solid ground out there—at least for a little while longer. “In general, one cannot go back. But in going forward, you may achieve some of what you desired of the past. If you can survive, anything may happen.” The Old One plucked another rose, careless of its thorns, and held it beneath his nose. “Perhaps you will even be given flowers. The clock ticks, Arthur. Your time is almost sped.”

“I have so many questions,” said Arthur. “Can you give me another ten—”

The Old One put down his rose and looked at the boy with his fierce blue eyes, a gaze that would make the most superior Denizen quail and tremble.

“Never mind,” gulped Arthur. “I just wanted to tell you that if I do end up in charge of everything, I’ll do my best to set you free. It isn’t right that the puppets should torture you.”

The Old One blinked and took up the rose again.

“I honour you for that. But look—the puppets are no more. As the House has weakened, I have grown stronger. An hour ago the clock shivered and I felt Nothing draw close. The puppets felt it too and, as is their duty, came forth before their time, to prevent a rescue or an attempted escape. I fought with them, broke them and cast them down.

“I am still chained, but as the House falls, my strength will grow and my prison will weaken. In time, I will be free, or so these flowers promise me. I have been stripping the petals to throw upon my enemies. The puppets do not like it, for they know the flowers are a harbinger of change. Go, I grant you the time to look upon them!”

Arthur stood up nervously and looked across the clock face, but he didn’t move. He didn’t really want to go anywhere near the trapdoors on either side of the central pivot of the clock.

“Hurry,” urged the Old One.

Arthur walked closer. The trapdoors were smashed in, splintered stubs of timber hanging from the thick iron hinges. Something rustled from inside and Arthur looked down into a deep narrow chamber that was piled high with rose petals. The puppet woodchopper was there, still with its green cap on, the feather bent in half. But its limbs were broken and all it could do was wriggle on the rose petals, gnash its teeth and hiss.

Arthur shuddered and retreated to the rim, almost backing into the Old One.

“I hope…I hope we will not be enemies,” said Arthur.

The Old One inclined his head, but did not speak. Arthur jumped down from the clock face and hurried away, his mind churning with fears and facts and suppositions. He had hoped the Old One could help him make sense of his situation, make matters clearer.

But he had only made it worse.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Lord Arthur, I am vastly relieved to see you,” called out Scamandros as he saw Arthur hurrying back. “I trust the Old One answered your questions?”

“Not exactly,” said Arthur. “Not even close really. Is the Nothing still advancing?”

In answer, Scamandros cast out a lure with his fishing rod. The lure, a lobster-like crustacean four or five inches long, disappeared into darkness. Scamandros wound the line back in, counting marks on the woven thread as he did so. There was no lure on the end.

“Six…seven…eight. The speed of encroachment has increased, Lord Arthur.”

“Where was Dame Primus when you last were in touch? And Suzy?”

“They were both in the Citadel,” said Scamandros. “It has become the general headquarters of your forces throughout the House, Lord Arthur.”

“Could be tricky to get there,” said Arthur. “Using the Fifth Key, I mean, since they secured the Citadel against Lady Friday. I suppose we could take the Improbable Stair—” Scamandros began to shake his head and Arthur stopped himself. “Oh yeah, you can’t go on the Stair. Oh well…there was a mirror in Sir Thursday’s…in my quarters. I guess I can try that, and if it doesn’t work then we’ll have to think of somewhere else, in the Middle House or wherever, and try to take an elevator from there.”

He took out the Fifth Key and held it up for a moment in front of his face, then dropped it to his side.

“Uh, if I can make a door, how do I take you with me?”

Dr Scamandros held up his hand and wiggled his fingers.

“If you allow me to hold on to your coat-tails, I shall be carried through, Lord Arthur.”

“Hold on then,” said Arthur. “We’ll give it a try.”

He looked into the mirror and tried to remember what his quarters in Thursday’s Citadel had looked like. He remembered the big four-poster bed with the carved battle scenes on the posts, and then there was the wardrobe, the chair he’d been shaved in and, yes, there was a tall, bronze-framed mirror in the corner. If he thought of that mirror like a window, then looking through it he would be able to see the bed, and the door, and the painting on the wall…

Slowly he began to see the room, though much of it was clouded and fuzzy. It took him a few seconds to work out that the bronze mirror was partially covered with a cloth. But he could see enough of the chamber, he was sure, for the Key to open a door there.

“Fifth Key, take me…us…to my room in the Citadel of the Great Maze!”

It was not so easy to go through the door of white light this time, nor was the transfer so immediate. Arthur felt himself held back not just by his coat-tails, but by a force that pushed against his entire body and tried to throw him back. He struggled against it, with mind and body, but it was like walking against a very powerful wind. Then all of a sudden it was gone. He fell into his room in the Citadel and Dr Scamandros fell over his legs. Both of them tumbled across the floor and Arthur hit his head against the carved battle scenes on the left-hand post of the huge bed.

“Ow!” he exclaimed. He felt his head, but there was no blood, and after a moment the sharp pain reduced to a dull ache.

“I do beg your pardon, Lord Arthur,” said Dr Scamandros as he got to his feet. “Most clumsy of me. That was fascinating—quite a different experience than a Transfer Plate. I am enormously grateful to you for saving me from the Deep Coal Cellar.”

Arthur stood, using the bedpost to haul himself upright. As he did so, the sleeves of his paper coat rode up. He slid them back down and for the first time noticed that they finished well short of his wrists. His trousers were also now ridiculously short, real ankle-freezers.

“I’d better get changed,” Arthur said. He started towards the walk-in wardrobe, hesitated, and went back to the door, throwing it open to shout, “Sentry!”

A startled Denizen in the uniform of a Horde Troop Sergeant hurtled into the room and stood quivering at attention, his lightning tulwar crackling as he saluted with it. Arthur heard the crash of at least a dozen boots out of sight down the corridor, evidence of more troopers suddenly coming from rest to parade-ground attention.

“Lord Arthur! Guard present, sir!”

Arthur was already in the wardrobe, taking off his paper clothes and quickly putting on the plainest uniform he could find, which happened to be the sand-coloured tunic and matching pale yellow leather breeches of a Borderer on desert duty, though this particular tunic had gold braid stitched across the shoulders and the leather breeches had gold stripes down each leg. Both tunic and breeches were much softer and more comfortable than anything a regular Borderer would ever be lucky enough to wear. They fitted perfectly after a moment, shifting and altering themselves from Sir Thursday’s size to Arthur’s new height and musculature.

“Thank you!” Arthur called out to the sergeant. “We’ll go down to the operations room in a minute. Is Dame Primus here? And Suzy Turquoise Blue?

“Dame Primus is in the operations room, sir!” boomed the Troop Sergeant. He appeared to be under the impression that Arthur was either deaf or much further away than he actually was. “General Turquoise Blue is somewhere in the Citadel.”

“General Turquoise Blue?” asked Arthur. “I didn’t make Suzy a general, did I? I remember her talking about it, but I don’t remember actually…”

“She probably just put on the uniform,” said Dr Scamandros. “No one would question her.”

Arthur frowned, but the frown quickly gave way to laughter.

“That sounds like Suzy,” he said. “I bet she did it to get a better grade of tea or something. Or to annoy Dame Primus.”

He picked up a pair of armoured sandals, looked at them for a moment, then dropped them back on the shelf and chose a pair of plain, but glossy black boots instead.

“It’s good to have you back, sir,” said the Troop Sergeant as Arthur strode out of the wardrobe.

“Thank you again, sergeant,” said Arthur. “Let’s get to the operations room. I need to find out exactly what’s going on.”

There were at least twenty guards in the corridor, who formed up around Arthur as soon as he appeared. As they all marched together to the operations room, Arthur asked the guard commander to also send a messenger to find Suzy.

The operations room had grown larger in the few days of House time that had passed since Arthur had been there last. It was still a large domed chamber, but the walls had been pushed back to make it twice the size it had been before. It was now as big as his school gym, and in addition to all the soldiers in the various uniforms of the Regiment, the Horde, the Legion, the Moderately Honourable Artillery Company and the Borderers, there were also numerous Denizens in civilian attire, many of them with their coats off and the sleeves of their white shirts covered with green ink-protectors up to the elbow.

Besides the central map table, which was also much longer and broader than it had been, there were now rows and rows of narrow, student-style desks for the civilians, who were all busy talking on old-fashioned phones or scribbling down messages. Every few seconds one would push his or her chair back and race across the room with a message slip, going either to Marshals Dawn, Noon or Dusk, or to Dame Primus, who loomed over the map table, looking intently at various details, while many Denizens babbled out messages around her, often at the same time.

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