DROWNED

WEDNESDAY

To Anna, Thomas and Edward, and toall my friends and family.

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PRAISE

OTHER WORKS

BACK AD

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PROLOGUE

A three-masted square-rigger with iridescent green sails that shone by day or night, the Flying Mantis was a fast and lucky ship. She sailed the Border Sea of the House, which meant she could also sail any ocean, sea, lake, river or other navigable stretch of liquid on any of the millions of worlds of the Secondary Realms.

On this voyage, the Flying Mantis was cleaving through the deep blue waters of the Border Sea, heading for Port Wednesday. Her holds were stuffed with goods bought beyond the House and illnesses salvaged from the Border Sea’s grasping waters. There were valuables under her hatches: tea and wine and coffee and spices, treats for the Denizens of the House. But her strongroom held the real treasure: coughs and sniffles and ugly rashes and strange stuttering diseases, all fixed into pills, snuff or whalebone charms.

With such rich cargo, the crew was nervous and the lookouts red-eyed and anxious. The Border Sea was no longer safe, not since the unfortunate transformation of Lady Wednesday several thousand years before and the consequent flooding of the Sea’s old shore. Wednesday’s Noon and Dusk had been missing ever since, along with many of Wednesday’s other servants, who used to police the Border Sea.

Now the waters swarmed with unlicensed salvagers and traders, some of whom would happily turn to a bit of casual piracy. To make matters worse, there were full-time pirates around as well. Human ones, who had somehow got through the Line of Storms and into the Border Sea from some earthly ocean.

These pirates were still mortal (unlike the Denizens) but they had managed to learn some House sorcery and were foolish enough to dabble in the use of Nothing. This made them dangerous, and if they had the numbers, their human ferocity and reckless use of Nothing-fuelled magic would usually defeat their more cautious Denizen foes.

The Flying Mantis had lookouts in the fighting tops of each of its three masts, one in the forepeak, and several on the quarterdeck. It was their task to watch for pirates, strange weather and the worst of all things—the emergence of Drowned Wednesday, as Lady Wednesday was now known.

Most of the ships that now sailed the Border Sea had incompetent lookouts and inferior crews. After the Deluge, when the Border Sea swept over nine-tenths of Wednesday’s shore-based wharves, warehouses, counting rooms and offices, more than a thousand of the higher rooms had been rapidly converted into ships. All these ships were crewed by former stevedores, clerks, rackers, counters, tally-hands, sweepers and managers. Though they’d had several thousand years of practice, these Denizens were still poor sailors.

But not the crew of the Flying Mantis. She was one of Wednesday’s original forty-nine ships, commissioned and built to the Architect’s design. Her crew members were nautical Denizens, themselves made expressly to sail the Border Sea and beyond. Her Captain was none other than Heraclius Swell, 15,287th in precedence within the House.

So when the mizzentop lookout shouted, “Something big … err … not that big … closing off the port bow … underwater!” both Captain and crew reacted as well-trained professionals of long experience.

“All hands!” roared the mate who had the watch. “Beat to quarters!”

His cry was taken up by the lookouts and the sailors on deck, followed only seconds later by the sharp rattle of a drum as the ship’s boy abandoned his boot polish and the Captain’s boots to take up his sticks.

Denizens burst out from below decks. Some leapt to the rigging to climb aloft, ready to work the sails. Some stood by the armoury to receive their crossbows and cutlasses. Others raced to load and run out the guns, though the Flying Mantis only had eight working cannons of its usual complement of sixteen. Guns and gunpowder that worked in the House were very hard to come by, and always contained dangerous specks of Nothing. Since the toppling of Grim Tuesday fourteen months before, powder was in very short supply. Some said it was no longer being made, and some said it was being stockpiled for war by the mysterious Lord Arthur, who now ruled both the Lower House and the Far Reaches.

Captain Swell climbed on to the quarterdeck as the cannons rumbled out on the main deck, their red wooden wheels squealing in complaint. He was a very tall Denizen, even in stockinged feet, who always wore the full dress coat of an admiral from a small country on a small world in a remote corner of the Secondary Realms. It was turquoise blue, nipped in very tightly at the waist, and had enormous quantities of gold braid on the shoulders and cuffs. Consequently Captain Swell shone even more brightly than the green sails of his ship.

“What occurs, Mister Pannikin?” Swell asked his First Mate, a Denizen as tall as he was, but considerably less handsome. At some time Pannikin had lost all his hair and one ear to a Nothing-laced explosion, and his bare skull was ridged with scars. He sometimes wore a purple woollen cap, but the crew claimed that made him look even worse.

“Mysterious submersible approaching the port bow,” reported Pannikin, handing his spyglass to the Captain. “About forty feet long by my reckoning, and coursing very fast. Maybe fifty knots.”

“I see,” said the Captain, who had clapped the telescope to his eye. “I think it must be … yes. Milady has sent us a messenger. Stand the men down, Mister Pannikin, and prepare a side-party to welcome our illustrious visitor. Oh, and tell Albert to bring me my boots.”

Mister Pannikin roared orders as Captain Swell refocused his telescope on the shape in the water. Through the powerful lens, he could clearly see a dull golden cigar-shape surging under the water towards the ship. For a second it was unclear what propelled it so quickly. Then its huge yellow-gold wings suddenly exploded ahead and pushed back, sending the creature rocketing forward, the water behind it exploding into froth.

“She’ll broach any moment,” muttered one of the crewmen to his mate at the wheel behind the Captain. “Mark my words.”

He was right. The creature’s wings broke the surface and gathered air instead of water. With a great flexing leap and a swirl of sea, the monster catapulted itself up higher than the Flying Mantis’s maintop. Shedding water like rain, it circled the ship, slowly descending towards the quarterdeck.

At first it looked like a golden winged shark, all sleek motion and a fearsome, toothy maw. But as it circled, it shrank. Its cigar-shaped body bulged and changed, and the golden sheen ebbed away before other advancing colours. It became roughly human-shaped, though still with golden wings.

Then, as its wings stopped flapping and it stepped the final foot down to the deck, it assumed the shape of a very beautiful woman, though even the ship’s boy knew she was really a Denizen of high rank. She wore a riding habit of peach velvet with ruby buttons, and sharkskin riding boots complete with gilt spurs. Her straw-coloured hair was restrained by a hairnet of silver wire, and she tapped her thigh nervously with a riding crop made from the elongated tail of an albino alligator.

“Captain Swell.”

“Wednesday’s Dawn,” replied the Captain, bending his head as he pushed one stockinged foot forward. Albert, arriving a little too late, slid along the deck and hastily tried to put the proffered foot into the boot he held.

“Not now!” hissed Pannikin, dragging the lad back by the scruff of his neck.

The Captain and Wednesday’s Dawn ignored the boy and the First Mate. They turned together to the rail and looked out at the ocean, continuing to talk while hardly looking at each other.

“I trust you have had a profitable voyage to date, Captain?”

“Well enough, Miss Dawn. May I inquire as to the happy chance that has led you to grace my vessel with your presence?”

“You may indeed, Captain. I am here upon the express command of our mistress, bearing an urgent dispatch, which I am pleased to deliver.”

Dawn reached into her sleeve, which was tight enough to hold no possibility of storage, and pulled out a large thick envelope of buff paper, sealed with a knob of blue sealing wax half an inch thick.

Captain Swell took the envelope slowly, broke the seal with deliberation, and unfolded it to read the letter written on the inside. The crew was quiet as he read, the only sounds the slap of the sea against the hull, the creak of the timbers, the momentary flap of a sail, and the faint whistle of the wind in the rigging.

Everyone knew what the letter must be. Orders from Drowned Wednesday. That meant trouble, particularly as they had been spared direct orders from Wednesday for several thousand years. They were almost certainly no longer going home to Port Wednesday and the few days’ liberty they usually received while their precious cargo was sold.

Captain Swell finished the letter, shook the envelope, and picked up the two additional documents that fell out of it like doves from a conjurer’s hat.

“We are instructed to sail to a landlocked part of the Secondary Realms,” the Captain said to Wednesday’s Dawn, the hint of a question in his voice.

“Our mistress will ensure the Sea extends there for the time it takes for your passenger to embark,” replied Dawn.

“We must cross the Line of Storms both ways,” added the Captain. “With a mortal passenger.”

“You must,” agreed Dawn. She tapped one of the documents with her riding crop. “That is a Permission that will allow a mortal to pass the Line.”

“This mortal is to be treated as a personal guest of milady?”

“He is.”

“This passenger’s name will be required for my manifest.”

“Unnecessary,” Dawn snapped. She looked the Captain directly in the eyes. “He is a confidential guest. You have a description, a location and specific sailing instructions drawn up personally by me. I suggest you get on with it. Unless of course you wish to challenge these orders? I could arrange an audience with Lady Wednesday if you choose.”

The crew members all held their breath. If the Captain chose to see Drowned Wednesday, they’d all have to go as well, and not one of them was ready for that fate.

Captain Swell hesitated for a moment. Then he slowly saluted.

“As ever, I am at Milady Wednesday’s command. Good day, Miss Dawn.”

“Good day to you, Captain.” Dawn’s wings stirred at her back, sending a sudden breeze around the quarterdeck. “Good luck.”

“We’ll need it,” whispered the helmsman to his mate as Dawn stepped up to the rail and launched herself in a long arcing dive that ended several hundred yards away in the sea, as she transformed back into a golden winged shark.

“Mister Pannikin!” roared the Captain, though the First Mate was only a few feet away. “Stand by to make sail!”

He glanced down at the complex sailing instructions that Dawn had given him, noting the known landmarks of the Border Sea they must sight, and the auguries and incantations required to sail the ship to the required place and time in the Secondary Realms. As was the case with all of Drowned Wednesday’s regular merchant marine, the Captain was himself a Sorcerer-Navigator, as were his officers.

“Mmm… Bethesda Hospital … room 206 … two minutes past the hour of seven in the evening. On Wednesday, of course,” muttered the Captain, reading aloud to himself. “House time, as per line four, corresponds with the date and year in local reckoning in the boxed corner, and where … odd name for a town … never heard of that country … what will these mortals think of next … and the world…”

He flipped the parchment over.

“Hmmph. I might have known!”

The Captain looked up and across at his running, climbing, swinging, rolling, swaying, sail-unfurling and rope-hauling crew. They all stopped as one and looked at him.

“We sail to Earth!” shouted Captain Swell.

CHAPTER ONE

“What time is it?” Arthur asked after the nurse had left, wheeling away the drip he didn’t need any more. His adopted mother was standing in the way of the clock. Emily had told him she’d only pop in for a minute and wouldn’t sit down, but she’d already been there fifteen minutes. Arthur knew that meant she was worried about him, even though he was already off the oxygen and his broken leg, though sore, was quite bearable.

“Four-thirty. Five minutes since you asked me last time,” Emily replied. “Why are you so concerned about the time? And what’s wrong with your own watch?”

“It’s going backwards,” said Arthur, careful not to answer Emily’s other question. He couldn’t tell her the real reason he kept asking the time. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—believe the real reasons.

She’d think he was mad if he told her about the House, that strange building which contained vast areas and was the epicentre of the Universe as well. Even if he could take her to the House, she wouldn’t be able to see it.

Arthur knew he would be going back to the House sooner rather than later. That morning he’d found an invitation under the pillow of his hospital bed, signed Lady Wednesday. Transportation has been arranged, it had read. Arthur couldn’t help feeling it was much more sinister than the simple word ‘transportation’ suggested. Perhaps he was going to be taken, as a prisoner. Or transported like a parcel…

He’d been expecting something to happen all day. He couldn’t believe it was already half past four on Wednesday afternoon and there was still no sign of weird creatures or strange events. Lady Wednesday only had dominion over her namesake day in the Secondary Realms, so whatever she planned to do to him had to happen before midnight. Seven and a half hours away…

Every time a nurse or a visitor came through the door, Arthur jumped, expecting it to be some dangerous servant of Wednesday’s. As the hours ticked by, he’d become more and more nervous.

The suspense was worse than the pain in his broken leg. The bone was set and wrapped in one of the new ultratech casts, a leg sheath that looked like the armour of a space marine, extending from knee to ankle. It was super strong, super lightweight, and had what the doctor called “nanonic healing enhancers”—whatever they were. Regardless of their name, they worked, and had already reduced the swelling. The cast was so advanced it would literally fall off his leg and turn into dust when its work was done.

His asthma was also under control, at least for the moment, though Arthur was annoyed that it had come back in the first place. He’d thought it had been almost completely cured as a side effect of wielding the First Key.

Then Dame Primus had used the Second Key to remove all the effects of the First Key upon him, reversing both his botched attempt to heal his broken leg and the Key’s beneficial effect on his asthma. But Arthur had to admit it was better to have a treatable broken leg and his familiar, manageable asthma, than to have a magically twisted-up, inoperable leg and no asthma.

I’m lucky to have survived at all, Arthur thought. He shivered as he remembered the descent into Grim Tuesday’s Pit.

“You’re trembling,” said Emily. “Are you cold? Or is it the pain?”

“No, I’m fine,” said Arthur hastily. “My leg’s sore but it’s OK, really. How’s Dad?”

Emily looked at him carefully. Arthur could see her evaluating whether he was fit enough to be told the bad news. It was bound to be bad news. Arthur had defeated Grim Tuesday, but not before the Trustee’s minions had managed to interfere with the Penhaligon family finances … as well as causing minor economic upheaval for the world at large.

“Bob has been sorting things out all afternoon,” Emily said at last. “I expect there’ll be a lot more sorting to do. Right now it looks like we’ll keep the house, but we’ll have to rent it out and move somewhere smaller for a year or so. Bob will also have to go back on tour with the band. It’s just one of those things. At least we didn’t have all our money in those two banks that failed yesterday. A lot of people will be hurt by that.”

“What about those signs about the shopping mall being built across the street?”

“They were gone by the time I got home last night, though Bob said he saw them too,” said Emily. “It’s quite strange. When I asked Mrs Haskell in number ten about it, she said that some fast-talking estate agent had made them to agree to sell their house. They signed a contract and everything. But fortunately there was a loophole and they’ve managed to get out of it. They didn’t really want to sell. So I guess there’ll be no shopping mall, even if the other neighbours who sold don’t change their minds. The Haskell place is right in the middle, and of course, we won’t be selling either.”

“And Michaeli’s course? Has the university still got no money?”

“That’s a bit more complicated. It seems they had a lot of money with one of the failed banks, which has been lost. But it’s possible the government will step in and ensure no courses are cancelled. If Michaeli’s degree is discontinued, she’ll have to go somewhere else. She was accepted by three … no, four other places. She’ll be OK.”

“But she’ll have to leave home.”

Arthur left another sentence unsaid.

And it’s my fault. I should have been quicker to deal with the Grotesques…

“Well, I don’t think she’ll be too concerned about that. How we’ll pay for it is a different matter. But you don’t need to worry about all of this, Arthur. You always want to take too much on. It’s not your responsibility. Just concentrate on getting better. Your father and I will make sure everything will be—”

Emily was cut off by a sudden alert from the hospital pager she always wore. It jangled a few times, then a line of text ran around the rim. Emily frowned as she read the scrolling message.

“I have to go, Arthur.”

“It’s OK, Mum, you go,” said Arthur. He was used to Emily having to deal with gigantic medical emergencies. She was one of the most important medical researchers in the country. The sudden attack and then abrupt cessation of the Sleepy Plague had given her a great deal of extra work.

Emily gave her son a hurried kiss on the cheek and a good luck rap of her knuckles on the foot of the bed. Then she was gone.

Arthur wondered if he’d ever be able to tell her that the Sleepy Plague had come from Mister Monday’s Fetchers, and had been cured by the Nightsweeper, a magical intervention he’d brought back from the House. Though he had brought back the cure, he still felt responsible for the plague in the first place.

He looked at his watch. It was still going backwards.

A knock on the door made him sit up again. He was as ready as he could be. He had the Atlas in his pyjama pocket, and he’d twisted numerous strands of dental floss together so he could hang the Captain’s medallion around his neck. His dressing gown was on the chair next to the bed, along with his Immaterial Boots, which had disguised themselves as slippers. He could only tell what they really were because they felt slightly electric and tingly when he picked them up.

The knock was repeated. Arthur didn’t answer. He knew that Fetchers—the creatures who had pursued him on Monday—couldn’t cross a threshold without permission. So he wasn’t going to say a word—just in case.

He lay there silently, watching the door. It slowly opened a crack. Arthur reached across to the bedside table and picked up a paper packet of salt he’d kept from his lunch, ready to tear it open and throw it if a Fetcher peered around.

But it wasn’t a dog-faced, bowler-hatted creature. It was Leaf, his friend from school, who had helped save him from a Scoucher the day before, and who had been injured herself.

“Arthur?”

“Leaf! Come in!”

Leaf closed the door behind her. She was wearing her normal clothes: boots, jeans and a T-shirt with an obscure band logo. But her right arm was bound from elbow to wrist in white bandages.

“How’s your arm?”

“Sore. But not too bad. The doctor couldn’t figure out what made the cuts. I told him I never saw what the guy hit me with.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t believe the true story,” said Arthur, thinking about the shape-changing Scoucher and its long, razor-tendrilled arms.

“What is the true story?” asked Leaf. She sat down on the visitor’s chair and looked intently at Arthur, making him uncomfortable. “I mean, all I know is that last week you were involved in some weird stuff with dog-faced guys, and it got even weirder this week, when you suddenly appeared in my living room on Monday with a kind of history girl who had … wings. You ran up the bedroom stairs and vanished. Then yesterday, you came racing into my yard with a monster chasing after you, which could easily have killed me, only it got … destroyed … by one of my dad’s old silver medals. Then you had to run off again. Then today I hear you’re in the next ward with a broken leg. What’s going on?”

Arthur opened his mouth, then hesitated. It would be a great relief to tell Leaf everything. At least she could see the Denizens of the House, when no one else could. Perhaps, as she’d claimed, it was because her great-grandmother had possessed second sight. But telling Leaf everything might also put her in danger.

“Come on, Arthur! I need to know,” urged Leaf. “What if one of those Scoucher things comes back to finish me off? Or something else. Like one of those dog-faces. I’ve got a couple of Dad’s medals for the Scouchers, but what do I do about the dog-faces?”

“Fetchers,” Arthur said slowly. He held up the paper sachet. “The dog-faces are called Fetchers. Throw salt on them.”

“That’s a good start,” said Leaf. “Fetchers. Where do they come from? What do they want?”

“They’re servants,” Arthur explained. He started to talk faster and faster. It was such a relief to tell somebody about what had happened. “Creatures made from Nothing. The ones you saw were in the service of Mister Monday. He is … was one of the seven Trustees of the House—”

“Hang on!” Leaf interrupted. “Slow down. Start at the beginning.”

Arthur took a deep breath, as deep as his lungs allowed, and started at the beginning. He told Leaf about his encounter with Mister Monday and Sneezer. About Monday’s Noon pursuing him through the school library with his flaming sword. He told her how he got into the House the first time, and how he met Suzy Turquoise Blue and the First Part of the Will, and the three of them together had ultimately defeated Mister Monday. How he’d brought back the Nightsweeper to cure the Sleepy Plague, and how he’d thought he would be left alone till he grew up, only to have that hope dashed by Grim Tuesday’s Grotesques, whose appearance had led to his return to the House, his descent into the Pit, and his eventual triumph over Grim Tuesday.

Leaf occasionally asked a question, but most of the time she just sat there, taking in everything Arthur had to say. Finally, he showed her the cardboard invitation from Lady Wednesday. She took it and read it several times.

“I wish I had adventures like you do,” Leaf said as she traced her finger over the writing on the invitation.

“They didn’t feel like adventures,” said Arthur. “I was too scared most of the time to actually enjoy anything or get excited about it. Weren’t you scared by the Scoucher?”

“Sure,” Leaf said, with a glance at her bandaged arm. “But we survived, didn’t we? That makes it an adventure. If you get killed it’s a tragedy.”

“I could do without any more adventures for a while.” Arthur thought Leaf would agree with him if she’d had the same experiences. They sounded much more exciting and safer just as stories. “I really just want to be left alone!”

“They’re not going to leave you alone, though.” Leaf held up Wednesday’s invitation, then flipped it over to Arthur, who put it back in his pocket. “Are they?”

“No,” Arthur agreed, resignation all through his voice. “The Morrow Days aren’t going to leave me alone.”

“So what are you going to do to them?” said Leaf.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, since they won’t leave you alone, you’d better get in first. You know, attack is the best form of defence.”

“I suppose…” said Arthur. “You mean I shouldn’t wait for whatever Wednesday is going to do, but go back into the House now?”

“Yeah, why not? Get together with your friend Suzy, and the Will, and work out some plan to deal with Wednesday before she deals with you.”

“It’s a good idea,” admitted Arthur. “The only thing is, I don’t know how to get back into the House. I can’t open the Atlas because I’ve used up all the power I had from holding on to the Keys. And in case you haven’t noticed, I do have a broken leg. Though I suppose…”

“What?”

“I could phone Dame Primus if I had my phone box, because it’ll probably be reconnected now that Grim Tuesday’s bills have been paid.”

“Where’s the phone box? What’s it look like?”

“It’s at home,” said Arthur. “In my bedroom. It’s just a velvet-lined wooden box about this big.” He held his hands apart.

“Maybe I could get it for you,” said Leaf. “If they ever let me out of this hospital. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Quarantine this, quarantine that…”

“Maybe,” said Arthur. “Or maybe I could … what’s that smell?”

Leaf sniffed the air and looked around. As she looked, the pages of the calendar on the wall started to flutter.

“I don’t know. I think the air-conditioning just came on. Feel the breeze.”

Arthur held up his hands to feel the air. There was a definite rush of cold coming from somewhere, and a kind of salty odour, like when they stayed at the beach and the surf was big…

“It smells kind of damp,” said Leaf.

Arthur struggled up to a sitting position, reached over and grabbed his slippers and dressing gown, and hurriedly put them on.

“Leaf!” he cried. “Get out! That’s not the air-conditioning!”

“Sure isn’t,” Leaf agreed. The wind was getting stronger every second. “Something weird’s going on.”

“Yes, it is … get out while you can!”

“I want to see what happens.” Leaf backed up to the bed and leaned against it. “Hey! There’s water coming in under the wall!”

Sure enough, a thin film of frothy water was slowly spreading across the floor, like the leading wash of a wave across the sand. It ran almost to the bed, then ebbed back.

“I can hear something,” said Leaf. “Kind of like a train.”

Arthur heard it too. A distant thunder that got louder and louder.

“That’s not a train! Grab hold of the bed!”

Leaf grabbed the rail at the end of the bed as Arthur gripped the headboard. Both turned to look at the far wall just as it disappeared, replaced by a thundering grey-blue wave that crashed down upon them. Tons of sea water smashed everything else in the room to bits, but the bed itself was carried away by the wave.

Dazed, drenched and desperate, Arthur and Leaf hung on.

CHAPTER TWO

The hospital room vanished in an instant, replaced by the savage fury of a storm at sea. The bed, submerged to within an inch of the mattress-top, had become a makeshift raft. Picked up by the first great wave, the raft rode the crest for a few seconds, then fell off the back, sliding down and down into the trough behind.

Leaf cried out something, two words lost in the thunder of the waves and the howl of the wind. Arthur couldn’t hear her, and he could barely see her through the spray that made it difficult to tell where the sea ended and the air began.

He felt her grip, though, as she clawed herself fully on to the bed and grabbed his foot. Both of them would have been washed off then, if Arthur hadn’t managed to get his arms wedged through the bars of the headboard.

Fear lent her strength, and Leaf managed to crawl up to the headboard railings. She leaned over Arthur and screamed, “What do we do now?”

She didn’t sound like she was enjoying this adventure.

“Hold on!” Arthur shouted, looking past her at the towering, office-block-high wall of water that was falling towards them. If it broke over the bed, they would be smashed down and pushed deep into the sea, never to surface.

The crest of the wave curled high above them, blotting out the dim, grey light of the sky. Arthur and Leaf stared up, not breathing, eyes fixed on the curving water.

The wave didn’t break. The bed rode up the face of the wave like a fisherman’s float. As it neared the top, it tipped up almost vertically and started to roll over, until Arthur and Leaf threw their weight against the curl.

They were just in time. The bed didn’t roll. It levelled out as they made it to the crest of the second wave. They balanced there for a few seconds, then the bed started its downward slide once more. Down into another sickeningly deep trough in front of another giant, blue-black, white-topped cliff of moving water.

But the third wave was different.

There was a ship surfing down it. A hundred-and-sixty-foot-long, three-masted sailing ship with sails that glowed a spectral green.

“A ship!” yelled Leaf, hope in her voice. That hope rapidly fled as the bed continued to run down into the trough at alarming speed, and the ship surfed down the opposite side even faster still.

“It’s going to hit us! We have to jump!”

“No!” shouted Arthur. If they left their makeshift raft he felt sure they’d drown. “Wait!”

A few seconds later, waiting seemed like a very bad decision. The ship didn’t waver in its course, a great wooden missile coming at them so fast that it would run right over them and the crew probably wouldn’t even notice.

Arthur shut his eyes when it got within the last twenty yards. The last thing he saw was the ship’s bow plunging down into the sea, then rising up again in a great spray of froth and spray, the bowsprit like a spear rising from the water.

Arthur opened his eyes when he didn’t feel the shocking impact of a ship ramming them. The ship had turned just enough at the last instant to meet the bed in the very bottom of the trough between the waves. Both had lost speed, so that the bed would be right next to the ship for a matter of seconds. It was an act of tremendous seamanship by the Captain and crew, particularly in the middle of such a mighty swell.

Through the blowing spray, Arthur saw two looped ropes like lassos come down. One loop fell over Leaf. The other, clearly aimed for Arthur, fell over the left bedpost instead. He scrambled for it and started to lift it off. But before he got it clear, both ropes went taut. Leaf went up like a rocket, up towards the ship.

The other rope tipped the bed over.

Arthur lost his grip and tumbled into the sea. He went down several feet, his breath knocked out of him. Through the veil of water and spray, he saw Leaf and the bed spinning up to the ship’s rail high above. The bed went up several yards, then the rope came free and it fell back down.

He kicked as best he could with one immobilised leg, and struck out with his arms, desperate to get back to the surface and the ship. But by the time his head broke free of the sea and he got a half-breath of spray-soaked air, the vessel was already at least fifty yards away, surfing diagonally up the wave ahead, moving faster than the swell. New sails unfurled and billowed out as he watched, accelerating its passage.

The bed was much closer, perhaps only ten yards away. It was his only chance now. Arthur started to swim furiously towards it. He could feel his lungs tightening, an asthma attack closing in on him. He would only be able to swim for a few minutes at most. Panicked, he threw all his energy into getting back to the bed, as it started its rise up the front of the following wave.

He just made it, grabbing a trailing blanket that had twisted through the bars at the end of the bed. Arthur frantically pulled himself along that, hoping it wouldn’t come loose.

After a struggle that used up all his remaining strength, he managed to haul himself up on to the mattress and once again wedge his arms through the bars.

He shivered there, feeling his breath getting more restricted as his asthma got worse. That meant that wherever he was, it wasn’t the House. This sea was somewhere in the Secondary Realms.

Wherever it is, I’m probably going to die here, Arthur thought, his mind numbed by cold, shock and lack of breath.

But he wasn’t going to go easily. He freed his right hand and pressed it against his chest. Perhaps there was some shred of remnant power from the First Key in his hand, or even of the Second Key.

“Breathe,” whispered Arthur. “Free up. Let me breathe.”

At the same time, he tried to stop the panic that was coursing through his body. Over and over, inside his head, he told himself to be calm. Slow down. Take it easy.

Whether it was some remaining power in his hand or his efforts to stay calm, Arthur found that while he still couldn’t breathe properly, it didn’t get any worse. He started to take stock of his situation.

I’m kind of OK on the bed, he thought. It floats. Even wet blankets will help me stay warm.

He looked up at the wave the bed was riding up. Maybe he’d got a bit used to these enormous waves or just couldn’t get any more terrified, but it did seem a bit smaller and less curling at the top than the first few. It still scared him, but it felt like less of a threat.

He thought about what else he might have. He was wearing hospital pyjamas and a dressing gown, which weren’t much good for anything. The cast on his leg looked like it might be disintegrating already, and he could feel a dull, throbbing ache deep in the bone. His Immaterial Boots kept his feet warm, but he couldn’t think of anything else they could be used for. Other than that, he had—

The Atlas! And the Mariner’s whalebone disc!

Arthur’s hand flashed to his pyjama pocket and then to the multiple strands of floss he’d woven into a string for the whalebone disc. The Atlas was still in his pocket. The Captain’s medallion, as he’d come to think of it, was still around his neck.

But what use were they?

Arthur wedged his good leg through the bars and curled up as much as he could into a ball. Then he gingerly let go with his hands and got out the Atlas, keeping it close to his chest to make sure that it couldn’t get washed away. But as he’d half-expected, it wouldn’t open. He slowly put it back in his pocket.

The Captain’s whalebone disc, on the other hand, might work. Tom Shelvocke was the Mariner after all, son of the Old One and the Architect (by adoption), a man who had sailed thousands of seas on many different worlds. He’d told Suzy Turquoise Blue to warn Arthur to keep it by him. Perhaps it might summon help or even communicate with the Captain.

Arthur pulled the disc out from under his pyjama top and looked at the constellation of stars on one side, and then at the Viking ship on the other. They both looked like simple carvings, but Arthur thought there had to be some kind of magic contained in them. Because it seemed more likely to be of immediate help, Arthur concentrated on the ship side and tried to will a message to the Captain.

Please help me, I’m adrift on a bed in the middle of a storm at sea, he thought over and over again, even whispering the words aloud, as if the charm could hear him.

“Please help me, I’m adrift on a hospital bed in the middle of a storm at sea. Please help me, I’m adrift on a hospital bed in the middle of a storm at sea. Please help me, I’m adrift on a hospital bed in the middle of a storm at sea…”

It became a chant. Just saying the words made Arthur feel a little better.

He kept up the chant for several minutes, but had to give up as his lungs closed down and he could only just get enough breath to stay semiconscious. He lay next to the headboard, curled up as much as he could with one leg straight and the other thrust through the bars. He was completely sodden, and the sea continually sloshed over him, so he had to keep his head up to get a breath.

But the waves were definitely getting smaller and the wind less ferocious. Arthur didn’t get a bucketful of spray in his eyes and mouth whenever he turned to face the wind.

If I can keep breathing, there’s some hope, Arthur thought.

That thought had hardly crossed his mind when he felt an electric thrill pass through his whole body, and his stomach flip-flopped as if he’d dropped a thousand feet in an aircraft. All the water around him suddenly looked crisper, clearer and a more vivid blue. The sky turned a charming shade of eggshell blue and looked closer than it had before.

Best of all, Arthur’s lungs were suddenly clear. He could breathe without difficulty.

He was in the House. Arthur could feel it through his whole body. Even the ache in his broken leg subsided to little more than an occasional twinge.

Hang on, he thought. That was too easy. Wasn’t it?

This thought was interrupted by what sounded like an explosion, far too close for comfort. For a moment Arthur thought he was being shot at by a full broadside of cannons from a ship like the one that had taken Leaf. Then it came again and Arthur recognised it as thunder.

As the bed reached the top of another wave, he saw the lightning—lightning that stretched in a line all the way across the horizon. Vicious forks of white-hot plasma that ran in near-continuous streams between sea and sky, constant thunder echoing every flash and bolt.

The bed was being taken straight towards the lightning storm. Every wave that it rode up carried it forward. There was no way to turn it, stop it or avoid the collision.

To make matters as bad as they could possibly be, the bed was made of metal. It had to be the biggest lightning conductor for miles. And any lightning that hit would go through Arthur on its way to connect with the steel frame.

For a few seconds, Arthur’s mind was paralysed by fear. There seemed to be nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing, except get fried by a thousand bolts of lightning all coming down at once.

He fought back the fear. He tried to think. There had to be something. Perhaps he could swim away … but there was no way he was strong enough to swim against the direction of the swell. It would be better to die instantly by lightning than to drown.

Arthur looked at the line of lightning again. Even in only a few minutes he’d got much closer, so close he had to shield his eyes from the blinding bolts.

But wait, thought Arthur. The ship that took Leaf went in this direction. It must have gone through the lightning storm. I just have to get through. Maybe Lady Wednesday’s invitation will protect me…

Arthur checked his pocket. But there was only the Atlas.

Where could the invitation be?

The pillows were long gone, lost overboard, but the sheets were partially tucked in. Arthur dived under the drenched linen, his hands desperately groping into every corner as he tried to find the square of cardboard that might just save him.

The bed rose up the face of a wave, but did not reach the crest. Instead, bed, wave and boy rushed towards the blinding, deafening barrier of thunder and lightning that was the Line of Storms. The defensive inner boundary of the Border Sea, which no mortal could cross without permission.

The penalty for trying was a sudden, incendiary death.

CHAPTER THREE

Arthur never saw the lightning or heard the water boiling where the bolts struck, the noise lost in the constant boom of thunder. He was under the sheet, a soggy piece of cardboard clutched in one trembling hand. He didn’t even know if it was the invitation from Drowned Wednesday, his medical chart from the end of the bed, or a brochure about the hospital telephones.

But since he was still alive a minute after the blinding glow beyond the sheets faded, he guessed it must be the invitation in his hand.

Arthur slowly pulled his head out from under the sheet. As he blinked up at the clear blue sky, he instinctively took another deep breath. A long, clear, unrestricted breath.

As the bed moved in the mysterious current, the swell it was riding subsided to a mere ten or twelve feet, with a much longer interval between waves. The wind dropped and there was no blowing spray. It also felt much warmer, though Arthur couldn’t see a sun. He couldn’t see any clouds or lightning either, which was a plus. Just a brilliant blue sky that was so even and perfect that he supposed it must be a painted ceiling, like in the other parts of the House.

Arthur took several more deep breaths, revelling in the rush of oxygen through his body. Then he took stock of his situation once more. The one thing he had learned about the House was that you couldn’t take anything for granted. This warm, rolling sea might turn into something else at any moment.

Arthur tucked the Captain’s disc back under his pyjama top and slid Lady Wednesday’s sodden and barely legible invitation next to the Atlas in his pocket. Then he braced his cast against the headboard, stood up and looked around.

There was nothing to see, except the sea. The bed rode too low in the water. Even standing up, Arthur’s view was blocked by the next wave. What he could see was much closer and immediately obvious.

The bed was sinking. Even in this calmer ocean, the mattress was now totally submerged, losing its buoyancy as it absorbed more and more water, the steel frame dragging it down.

It wasn’t going to sink in the next five minutes, but it was going to sink.

Arthur sighed and sat back down, water splashing almost up to his waist. He looked at the cast on his leg and wondered if he should take it off. It was very lightweight and it hadn’t dragged him down before, but that had been a truly panic-driven swim and it would be hard to swim any real distance with it on. But if he took it off, his leg might snap apart again or hurt so much that he couldn’t swim anyway.

He decided to leave the cast on and got out the Captain’s disc again. This time he just held it in his hand and tried to visualise the ship with the glowing green sails coming back to pick him up.

He hoped that was a good thing to visualise. At the back of his mind was a nagging worry that Leaf hadn’t been actually rescued but had gone from one trouble to another. What would the Denizens do to her? They would have been after him, not her. He hoped that since Lady Wednesday had sent him an invitation instead of an attack squad, she might be at least kind of friendly. But maybe that was just a sneaky plan to get him where she wanted. In which case, Drowned Wednesday might take out her bad feelings on Leaf…

If Leaf survived that line of lightning, Arthur thought guiltily. Surely that ship would have had some protection…

The bed gurgled under his feet and sank a bit more, reminding Arthur of his immediate problem.

“A ship!” he called out. “I need a ship! Or a boat! A better raft! Anything!”

His voice sounded alone and empty, lost amid the waves. He was answered only by the sloshing of the sea under, through and around the mattress.

“Land would do,” said Arthur. He said this directly to the Captain’s disc, but once again it didn’t appear to do anything. It was just a carving of a boat on a piece of whalebone.

No land came in sight. Though he still couldn’t see any sun, it got warmer and then positively hot. Even the sea water now constantly washing over Arthur didn’t cool him down. It was tepid and very salty, as he found when he tasted some on the end of his finger. He was getting very thirsty, and had started to remember all kinds of terrible stories about people dying of thirst at sea. Or going crazy from thirst first and hurling themselves into the water or attacking their friends and trying to drink their blood…

Arthur shook his head several times. It looked like he was already starting to go crazy, thinking of stuff like that. Particularly since he knew he couldn’t die of thirst in the House. He might feel like he was, and of course he could still go crazy…

Better to think of something positive to do. Like send a signal or catch a fish. If there were any fish in this strange sea within the House. Of course, if there were fish, there might also be sharks. A shark would have no trouble pulling him off the bed. It hardly qualified as a raft any more, it had sunk down so far.

Arthur shook his head again to try and clear away the negative thoughts.

Stop thinking about sharks! he told himself.

Just at that moment, he saw something in the water not far away. A dark, mostly submerged shape. A shadow largely under the surface.

Arthur yelped and tried to stand up against the headboard, hopping as his immobilised leg got caught under a fold of sheet. This violent action changed the balance of the bed, and one corner went down several feet, releasing a huge air bubble.

This downward progress halted for a few seconds as air bubbles continued to pop to the surface, then the bed sank like the Titanic, one end briefly sticking straight up before it subsided beneath the waves. Arthur let go of it just in time and pushed himself away. He thrashed out a rough backstroke for a few yards to make sure he wouldn’t be sucked down, then trod water with one leg and his arms circling, as he frantically looked around for the dark shadow again.

There it was, only a few yards away! Arthur braced himself for the shock of a shark’s attack, his body rigid. His head sank under the water as he stopped moving, then broke free again as he instinctively struggled to swim again.

The dark shape didn’t attack. It didn’t even move. Arthur stared at it and saw that it wasn’t a shark. He swam closer to confirm that it was, in fact, a dark green ball about six feet in diameter. It had an irregular surface rather like matted weeds and was floating quite deep, so that only a curve fourteen inches or so high rode above the sea.

Arthur splashed over to it. On closer inspection, it was clearly a buoy or some floating marker, totally covered in green weeds. Arthur reached out to touch it. A huge strand of green weeds came away in his hand, revealing a bright red surface beneath.

Arthur touched that. It felt slightly sticky, and some of the red stuff came away on his hand. It was like chewing gum, impossible to get off. Arthur crossly wiped his hands but that only smeared it across his fingers, and his head dipped under. His broken leg wasn’t weighed down that much by the cast, but he couldn’t bend his knee and he couldn’t tread water well enough just with one leg to really try and clean his hands, since he had to make swimming motions as well.

Arthur started to clear the weeds away with one hand. While doing that, he noticed that the buoy didn’t move far with the swell. Each time one of the bigger waves came past, it swept Arthur five or six yards away and he had to swim back. The buoy didn’t move anywhere near as much.

It had to be fixed to something. Arthur duck-dived down and, sure enough, a barnacle-encrusted chain led down from the buoy, down through the sunlit water and into the dark depths.

He resumed cleaning the weeds away with new enthusiasm and so got a lot more of the sticky stuff on his hands. It was tar, or something like tar, though it didn’t smell.

The buoy has to mark something, Arthur thought. It must be used by someone, who’ll come past. I might even be able to climb up on it.

When the buoy was almost clean it rode much higher in the water. Arthur had hoped he might find some handles on it, or projections he could hold on to, because he was getting very tired. But there weren’t any. The only part of the buoy that was of any interest was a small brass ring right near the top. Arthur could only just reach it.

The ring was about the size of the top joint of Arthur’s little finger, far too small for him to hold on. It also felt a bit loose. Arthur gave it a pull, hoping that it might come out and he could somehow make the hole bigger to create a handhold.

It came out with a very loud popping sound, followed immediately afterwards by a ten-foot-high shower of sparks and a loud ticking noise as if a large and noisy clock had started up deep within the ball.

Arthur started frantically backstroking away from it, his body almost reacting faster than his brain, which had rapidly processed the fact that this floating ball was some sort of floating bomb—a mine—and it was going to explode.

A few seconds later, with Arthur only ten yards away, the buoy did explode. But it was not the lethal blast Arthur feared. There was a bright flash, and a rush of air above Arthur’s head, but no deadly rain of fragments.

Smoke poured out of the ball, dark black smoke that coiled up into the air in a very orderly fashion, quite unlike any smoke Arthur had seen before. It started to whip about like a snake, dancing all over the place. Eventually its “head” connected with its “tail” to form a giant smoke ring that hovered ten feet above the buoy, which was still intact, though its upper half had broken open into multiple segments like a lotus.

The smoke ring slowly closed in on itself to become an inky cloud that spun about for a minute or so, then it abruptly burst apart, turning into eight jet-black seabirds that shrieked “Thief!” above Arthur’s head before they each flew off in a different direction, covering the eight points of the compass rose.

Arthur was too tired to worry about what the seabirds were doing, or who they might be alerting. All he cared about was the fact that now the top half of the buoy was open, he could pull himself up on it and have a rest.

Arthur had only just enough energy to drag himself over and into the buoy. It was full of water, but he could sit in it quite comfortably and rest. That was all he wanted to do for a while. Rest.

But after only twenty minutes, according to his still-backwards but otherwise reliable and waterproof watch, Arthur found that he had rested enough. Though there was still no visible sun, it felt like one was beating down on him. He was really hot, and he was sure he was getting sunburned and that his tongue had started to swell from lack of water. He wished he’d managed to keep a sheet from the bed to use as a sunshade. He took his dressing gown off and made that into a makeshift turban, but it didn’t really help.

At that point, Arthur started to hope that whoever the birds were supposed to alert would show up. Even if they thought he was a thief. That implied there was something to steal here, which didn’t seem to be the case. The buoy was just a big, empty, floating ball with the top hemisphere opened up. There was nothing inside it except Arthur.

Another baking, uncomfortable hour passed. Arthur’s broken leg began to ache again, probably because the painkillers he’d had in the hospital were wearing off. The high-tech cast didn’t seem to be operational any more and Arthur could see distinct holes in it now.

Arthur picked at one of the holes and grimaced. The cast was falling apart. He was definitely sunburned as well, the backs of his hands turning pink, as if trying to match the bright red stain on his palms. According to Arthur’s watch it was nine o’clock at night, but there was no change in the light. Without being able to see any sun, he couldn’t tell whether night was approaching. He wasn’t even sure there would be a night. There was in the Lower House, but that didn’t mean anything. There might not be any relief from the constant heat.

He wondered if he should try and swim somewhere, but dismissed the idea as quickly as it came up. He was lucky to have found this buoy. Or perhaps it wasn’t luck, it was the Mariner’s disc that had led him here. In any case, Arthur couldn’t swim for more than half an hour at the most, and there wasn’t much chance of finding land in that time. Better to sit here and hope that the smoky seabirds brought someone.

Two hours later, Arthur felt a much cooler breeze waft across the back of his neck. He opened his puffy eyes to see a shadow passing across the sky. A veil of darkness advanced in a line across the horizon. Stars, or suitable facsimiles of them, began to twinkle as the light faded before the approaching line of night.

The wind and the lapping sea grew cold. Arthur turned his turban back into a dressing gown, shivered and hunched up into a tighter ball. Clearly he was going to be sunburned during the day and then frozen at night. Either one would kill him, so not dying of hunger and thirst was no great bonus.

As he had that thought, Arthur saw another star. A fallen star, quite close to the sea, and moving towards him. It took another moment for his heat-addled brain to recognise that it was in fact a light.

A light fixed to the bowsprit of a ship.

CHAPTER FOUR

The fallen star grew closer and the ship became more visible, though it was still little more than a dark outline in the fading light. A rather rotund outline, for this ship looked to be very broad, wallowing its way through the waves. It had only two masts, rather than the three of the ship that had picked up Leaf, and its square-rigged sails were definitely not of the luminous variety.

Arthur didn’t care. He stood up gingerly, his muscles cramping from weariness and confinement in the buoy, and waved frantically.

“Help! I’m over here! Help!”

There was no answering shout from the ship. It rolled and plunged towards him, but he could see some of the sails being furled, and there were Denizens rushing about on the deck. Somebody was shouting orders and others were repeating or questioning them. All in all, it didn’t appear very organised.

Particularly as the ship sailed right past him. Arthur couldn’t believe it. He shouted himself hoarse and almost fell out of the buoy from jumping up and down. But the ship kept on its way, till Arthur could only see the glow of the single lantern that hung from its stern rail.

Arthur watched till the light disappeared into the darkness, then he sat down, totally defeated. He rested his head in his hands and fought back a sob.

I am not going to cry, he told himself. I will work something out. I am the Master of the Lower House and the Far Reaches. I am not going to die in a buoy in some rotten sea!

Arthur took a deep breath and lifted his head up.

There will be another ship. There must be another ship.

Arthur was clutching at this hope when he saw the light again, followed by another.

Two lights!

They were a hundred feet apart and perhaps two hundred yards away. It took Arthur only a second to understand that he was looking at the bow and stern lights of the ship. He’d lost sight of the stern light as the vessel turned, but now it was heaved-to, broadside on to him.

A few moments later, he heard the slap of oars in the water and Denizens chanting as they rowed a small boat towards him. Arthur couldn’t make out the words till they were quite close and the light of a bull’s-eye lantern flickered across the water, searching for Arthur and the buoy.

“Flotsam floats when all is sunk.Jetsam thrown isn’t just junk.Coughs and colds and bright red soresWaiting for us, so bend yer oars!”

The yellow beam of light swept over Arthur, then backtracked to shine directly in his face. Arthur raised his arm to shield his eyes. The light wasn’t bright enough to blind, but it made it hard to see the boat and its crew. There were at least a dozen Denizens aboard, most of them rowing.

“Back oars!” came a shout from the darkness. “Yarko was right! There is a Nithling on that buoy! Make ready your crossbows!”

“I’m not a Nithling!” shouted Arthur. “I’m… I’m a distressed sailor!”

“A what?”

“A distressed sailor,” replied Arthur. He had read that somewhere. Sailors were supposed to help one another.

“What ship? And what are you doing on that treasure marker?”

“Uh, my ship was the Steely Bed. It sank. I swam here.”

There was a muttering aboard the boat. Arthur couldn’t clearly hear all the words, but he heard “claim”, “ours”, “stick ’im and sink ’im” and the sound of someone being knocked on the head and grunting in pain. He hoped it was the Denizen who said “stick ’im”, since he was fairly sure he was the “’im” being referred to.

“Give way,” shouted the Denizen in charge. The oars dipped into the sea again and the boat moved forward. As it came alongside the buoy, Arthur got his first real look at the crew, with the Denizen holding the bull’s-eye lantern opening its shutters to spread the light around.

They were not a good-looking bunch. There were eight men and five women. They might have started with the usual handsome features of Denizens, but the great majority of them had eye patches, livid scars across their faces and an illustrated catalogue of tattoos, ranging from ships to storms to skulls and snakes, up and down their forearms, on cheeks and foreheads and bared midriffs. They wore many different styles of clothing, all in bright colours, the single common feature being a wide leather belt that supported a cutlass and knife. Half of them also had red knitted caps, and the leader, a broad-shouldered male Denizen with scarlet sunbursts tattooed on his cheeks, wore a leather Napoleon hat that looked a little too small for him.

He smiled at Arthur, revealing a mouth with most of its teeth missing. Of the remaining four or five, three were capped in gold.

Pirates, Arthur figured.

But there was something strangely non-aggressive about them too. Something that reminded Arthur of people playing dress-up. Surely real pirates would just kill him without a second thought, not sit quietly looking at him. And one of them was drawing a picture of the scene with a charcoal stick in a sketchbook.

“The Steelibed,” said the leader. “Can’t say I’ve heard of her. When did she sink? Carrying any cargo?”

“Maybe a day ago,” said Arthur cautiously. “Not much cargo. Um, cotton and stuff.”

“And stuff,” repeated the leader, with a wink at Arthur. “Well, with a treasure marker in front of us, we’ll not bother with ‘cotton and stuff’ if there’s anything below. The question is, are you claiming salvage?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” said Arthur cautiously. “Maybe. I might.”

“Well, if you’re not sure, then it don’t matter!” declared the leader, with a laugh that was echoed by the crew. “We’ll just have a look below and if there’s anything left, we’ll have it up. Then we’ll be on our way and you can get on with your own business.”

“Hold on!” cried Arthur. “Take me with you!”

“Lizard, take a line and have a glance under the buoy,” said the leader to one of the crew, a small woman who had blue scales tattooed all over her face. At least Arthur hoped they were tattoos and not actual scales. She undid her belt, kicked off her boots and quickly dived over the side with a rope held between her teeth.

“Please, I need to get to land,” said Arthur. “Somewhere I can make a phone call.”

“Ain’t no phone calls in the Border Sea,” said one of the Denizens. “Exchange got flooded and they never built a new one on the high ground.”

“Shut yer trap, One-Ear,” instructed the leader. He turned back to Arthur. “You want to come aboard the Moth as a passenger, then?”

“That’s your ship?” asked Arthur. “The Moth?”

“Aye, the Moth,” replied a Denizen who had a shark’s toothy mouth tattooed around his own. “What’s wrong with that? Moths can be extremely frightening. If you get trapped in a cupboard with a whole passel of moths—”

“I didn’t mean anything bad about the name,” said Arthur. He thought quickly. “It’s just I was surprised to be picked up by such a famous ship.”

“What?” asked one of the other Denizens. “The Moth?”

“Yes. Such a famous ship and its crew of … uh … such renowned pirates!”

Arthur’s speech was met by a sudden silence. Then the crew of the boat erupted, falling over themselves as they tried to run out the oars again. All of them shouted at once:

“Pirates! Where?! What pirates?! Back to the ship!”

“Hold hard!” roared the leader. He waded in among the crew, slapping them openhanded across the backs of their heads till they subsided on to the slats. Then he turned to Arthur.

“I ain’t never heard anything so insulting. Us! Pirates! We’re Salvagers and proud of it. We don’t take anything that hasn’t been thrown away first or sunk and come up. Or treasures left in the open sea.”

“Sorry,” said Arthur. “It was just the eye patches and the clothes and the tattoos and everything… I was confused. But I really would like to be a passenger.”

“Just because we’re only Salvagers doesn’t mean we can’t dress nice and wear an eye patch if we want,” muttered Shark-Mouth. “Or two eye patches, come to that.”

“Can’t wear two, you idiot,” said another Denizen.

“Can so,” replied the first. “Get some of that one-way leather from the doctor—”

“Shut up!” roared the leader. He turned back to Arthur and said, “I’m not saying you can be a passenger, right? I’m only the Second Mate of the Moth. Sunscorch is my name. But we’ll take you back to the ship. The Captain can decide your fate.”

“Thanks!” said Arthur. “My name’s Arth—”

He stopped halfway through. Better to keep his name to himself, he thought.

“Arth? Well, get aboard, Arth.”

Two of the closer Denizens held the boat against the buoy and another one helped Arthur across.

“Gettin’ yer leg ready to cut off, are yer?” asked the helping Denizen with a grin. He slapped Arthur’s cast and waved his own leg, showing off a wooden peg that started below the knee. “They grow back too quick, though, I’m telling yer.”

Arthur grimaced at the sight and quickly suppressed a flash of fear that his leg might have to be cut off. And his wouldn’t grow back, unlike a Denizen’s.

“I’ve had this one chopped a dozen times,” continued the peg-legged crew member. “Why, I remember—”

He stopped in midsentence and recoiled, staring at Arthur’s red-stained hands.

“He’s got the Red Hand!”

“Feverfew’s mark!”

“We’re all doomed!”

“Quiet!” roared Sunscorch. He peered down at Arthur.

“It’s only red tar or something from the buoy,” said Arthur. “It’ll wash off.”

“From the buoy,” whispered Sunscorch. “This here buoy?”

“Yes.”

“There wasn’t any smoke, was there?”

“Yes.”

“What about birds? That smoke didn’t turn into cormorants, did it? Smoky black cormorants that screamed out something that might have been ‘Death’ or ‘Dismemberment’ or anything like that?”

“There were birds,” admitted Arthur. “They screamed out ‘Thief’ and flew away. I thought they must have brought you here.”

Sunscorch took off his hat and wiped his bald head with a surprisingly neatly folded white handkerchief that he took out of a pocket.

“Not us,” he whispered. “Lookout saw the open buoy and the Captain thought it worth a glance. That there treasure marker must be one of Feverfew’s. The birds will have flown to find him, and his ship.”

“Shiver,” intoned the crew. “The ship of bone.”

As they spoke, the Denizen with the lantern shuttered it right down to the merest glimmer and everybody else looked out at the sea all around.

Sunscorch ran his tongue over his remaining teeth and kept wiping his head. His crew watched him intently, till he put away his handkerchief and clapped his hat back on.

“Listen up,” he whispered. “Seeing as we’re probably dead or headed for the slave-chain anyway, we might as well see what’s below. Lizard? Where’s Lizard?”

“Here,” came a whisper from the water. “There’s a chest all right, a big one, sitting pretty as you please atop a spire of rock, ten fathom down.”

“The chain?”

“Screwed to the rock, not to the chest.”

“Let’s be having that chest, then,” whispered Sunscorch. “Bones, you and Bottle back oars. Everyone else, hands on the line. You, too, Arth.”

Arthur joined the others to grab hold of the rope. At Sunscorch’s hoarsely whispered commands, they all hauled together.

“Heave away! Hold on! Heave cheerily! Hold on! Heave away! Hold! One more!”

At the last command, a dripping chest as long as Arthur was tall and as high as his waist scraped over the gunwale and was manhandled into the boat. As soon as it was settled, there was a mad dash to the oars. With Sunscorch whispering more commands and the rowers very gently dipping their oars, the boat moved ahead and then turned towards the lights of the Moth.

“Hope we get back to the ship in time so as we can all die together,” whispered the Denizen on the oar next to Arthur. “It’d be better that way.”

“What makes you so sure we’re going to die?” asked Arthur. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“Feverfew never leaves any survivors,” whispered another Denizen. “He slaves ’em or kills ’em. Either way they’re gone for good. He’s got strange powers. A Sorcerer of Nothing.”

“He’ll torture you first, though,” added one of the women, with a grin that showed her teeth were filed to points. “You touched the buoy. You’ve got the Red Hand that shows you tried to steal from Feverfew.”

“Quiet!” instructed Sunscorch. “Row quiet and listen!”

Arthur cupped a hand to his ear and leaned over the side. But all he could hear was the harsh breathing of the Denizens and the soft, regular swoosh and tinkle of the oars dipping in and out of the water.

“What are we listening for?” Arthur asked after a while.

“Anything we don’t want to hear,” said Sunscorch, as he looked back over the stern. Without turning around, he added, “Shutter that lantern, Yeo.”

“It is shuttered,” replied Yeo. “One of the moons is rising. Feverfew will see us miles away.”

“No point being quiet, then,” said Sunscorch.

Arthur looked where the mate pointed. Sure enough, a slim, blue-tinged moon was rising up on the horizon. It wasn’t very big and it didn’t look all that far away—a few tens of miles, not hundreds of thousands—but it was bright.

The blue moon rose quickly and rather jerkily, as if it was on a clockwork track that needed oiling. By its light Arthur could easily see the Moth, wallowing nearby. But he could also see something else, far away on the horizon. Something that glinted in the moonlight. A reflection from a telescope lens, atop a thin dark smudge that must be a mast.

Sunscorch saw it too.

“Row, you dogs!” roared the Second Mate. “Row for your miserable lives!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Their arrival aboard the Moth resembled a panicked evacuation more than an orderly boarding. The boat was abandoned as most of the Denizens clawed their way up the side ladder or the untidy mess of netting that hung along the Moth’s yellow-painted hull, all of them shouting unhelpful things like “Feverfew!” and “Shiver!” and “We’re doomed!”

Sunscorch managed to drag several Denizens back and get them to take the line from the chest. But even he wasn’t able to get the crew to do anything about retrieving the boat. As it began to drift away, he jumped to the ship’s side himself, reaching back to help Arthur get hold of the netting.

“Never lost salvage nor a passenger,” he muttered. “No thanks to the scum of the sea I have to sail with. Mister Concort! Mister Concort! There’s a boat adrift!

“Concort’s the First Mate,” he confided to Arthur as they climbed the side. “Amiable, but hen-witted. Like most of this lot he was with the Moth when it was a counting house. Chief Clerk. You’d think after several thousand years at sea he’d have learned … but I’m misspeaking meself. Up you go!”

Arthur was pushed up and over the rail. He fell on to the deck, unable to get his bad leg in place in time. Before he could get up himself, Sunscorch gripped him under each elbow and yanked him upright, shouting at the same time.

“Ichabod! Ichabod! Take our passenger to the Captain! And get him a blanket!”

A thin, non-tattooed Denizen neatly dressed in a blue waistcoat and an almost white shirt stepped out of the throng of panicking sailors and bowed slightly to Arthur. He was thinner than most of the other Denizens and moved very precisely, as if he was following some mysterious dance pattern in his head.

“Please step this way,” he said, doing an about-turn that was almost a pirouette and would have looked more in keeping on a stage than on the shifting deck of a ship.

Arthur obediently followed the Denizen, who was presumably Ichabod. Behind him, Sunscorch was yelling and slapping the backs of heads.

“Port watch aloft! Prepare to make sail! Starboard watch to the guns and boarding stations!”

“Very noisy, these sailors,” said Ichabod. “Mind your head.”

The Denizen ducked as he stepped through a narrow doorway. Though Arthur was considerably shorter, he had to bend his head down too. They were in a short, dark, narrow corridor with a very low ceiling.

“Aren’t you a sailor?” asked Arthur.

“I’m the Captain’s Steward,” replied Ichabod severely. “I was his gentleman’s gentleman when we were ashore.”

“His what?”

“What is sometimes called a valet,” replied Ichabod as he opened the door at the other end, only a few yards away. The Denizen stepped through, with Arthur at his heels.

The room beyond the door was not what Arthur expected. It was far too big to be inside the ship, for a start: a huge, whitewashed space at least eighty feet long and sixty feet wide, with a decorated plaster ceiling twenty feet above, complete with a fifty-candle chandelier of cut crystal in the middle.

There was a mahogany desk right in the middle of the room with a green-shaded gas lantern on it, and a long row of glass-topped display cases all along one wall, each illuminated by its own gently hissing gaslight. In the far corner, there was a curtained four-poster bed with a blanket box at its foot, a standing screen painted with a nautical scene, and a large oak-panelled wardrobe with mirrored doors.

It was also absolutely quiet and completely stable. All the noise of the crew and the sea had vanished as soon as the door was shut behind Arthur, as had the constant roll and sway of the deck.

“How—”

Ichabod knew what Arthur was asking before the boy even got the question out.

“This is one of the original rooms. When the Deluge came and we had to turn the counting house into a ship, this room refused to transform to something more useful, like a gun deck. Eventually Dr Scamandros managed to connect it to the aft passageway, but it isn’t really in the ship.”

“Where is it, then?”

“We’re not entirely sure. Probably not where it used to be, since the old counting house site is well submerged. The Captain thinks that this room must have been personally supervised by the Architect and retained some of Her virtue. It lies within the House, that’s for sure, not out in the Realms.”

“You’re not worried that it might get cut off from the ship?” asked Arthur as they walked over to the bed. The curtains were drawn and Arthur could hear snoring behind them. Not horrendous “I can’t bear to hear it” snoring, but occasional drawn-out snorts and wheezes.

“Not at all,” said Ichabod. “The ship is still mostly the counting house, albeit long-transformed and changed. This room is of the counting house, so it will always be connected somehow. If the passageway falls off, some other way will open.”

“Through the wardrobe maybe,” said Arthur.

Ichabod looked at him sternly, his eyebrows contracting to almost meet above his nose.

“I doubt that, young mortal. That is where I keep the Captain’s clothes. It is not a thoroughfare of any kind.”

“Sorry,” said Arthur. “I was only…”

His voice trailed off as Ichabod’s eyebrows did not return to a more friendly position. There was a frosty silence for a few seconds, then the Denizen twitched his nose as if something had irritated his nostrils, and bent down to open the blanket box.

“Here is a blanket,” he said unnecessarily, handing it to Arthur. “I suggest you wrap yourself in it. It may stop that shivering. Unless of course it is merely an affectation.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Arthur. He hadn’t realised he was shivering, but now that Ichabod mentioned it, he realised he was very cold, and little tremors were running up and down his arms and legs. The heavy blanket was very welcome. “I am cold. I might even have a cold.”

“Really?” asked Ichabod, suddenly interested. “We must tell Dr Scamandros. But first I suppose I should wake the Captain.”

“I’m already awake,” said a voice behind the curtain. A quiet, calm voice. “We have a visitor, I see. Anything else to report, Ichabod?”

“Mister Sunscorch is of the opinion that we are being pursued by the awful pirate Feverfew, on account of stealing one of his treasure chests.”

“Ah,” said the voice. “Is Mister Sunscorch doing … um … things with the sails and so on? So we can, ah, flee?”

“Yes, sir,” said Ichabod. “May I present the potential passenger Mister Sunscorch took aboard from Feverfew’s buoy? He is a boy and, I believe I am correct in assuming, a true mortal. Not one of the Piper’s children.”

“Yes,” said Arthur.

“First things first, Ichabod,” came the reply. “Second-best boots, third-best coat and my, ah, sword. The proper one with the, err, sharpened blade.”

“The sharpened blade? Is that wise, sir?”

“Yes, yes. If, ah, Feverfew catches us … now, mortal boy, what is your name?”

“My name is—look ou—!” said Arthur as Ichabod walked straight into the wardrobe mirror. But the Denizen didn’t hit it. He went right through, like a diver into a pool of still water, the silvered glass rippling as he passed.

“Lookow?” asked the Captain.

“Sorry, I got distracted,” said Arthur. “My name is Arth.”

“Lookow sounds better than Arth,” said the Captain. “Pity. Names can be a terrible burden. Take mine, for example. It’s Catapillow. Captain Catapillow, at your service.”

“Caterpillar?” asked Arthur, not sure he’d heard it right through the bed’s curtains.

“No! Cat-ah-pillow. See what I mean? Suitable name for the manager of a counting house, but hardly the stuff of nautical legend.”

“Why don’t you change it?”

“Officers not allowed to,” came the muffled reply. “Name was issued by the Architect. Inscribed in the Register of Precedence. That’s why I’m Captain. Most senior aboard, 38,598th in precedence within the House. Prefer not to be, but no choice in the matter. Mister Sunscorch is, um, the only professional sailor aboard. Boots?”

“Here they are, sir,” said Ichabod, inserting boots, coat and sword between the curtains. Arthur hadn’t seen him come back through the mirrored door of the wardrobe, but there he was.

There was a muffled curse from the bed and the curtains billowed out. Then the boots thrust out under them, half on Captain Catapillow’s feet. Ichabod helped him ease them on all the way, and Catapillow slid out of the bed and stood up and bowed to Arthur.

He was tall, but not as tall as Dame Primus or Monday’s Noon. He was also not particularly handsome, though not exactly ugly either. He didn’t have any tattoos, or at least none visible. He just looked very plain and ordinary, with a rather vacant face under a short white wig with a kind of ponytail at the back tied with a blue ribbon. His blue coat was quite faded and he only had one gold epaulette, on his left shoulder.

“Now, young Arth,” Catapillow said as he tried to buckle on his sword-belt and failed. He stood still while Ichabod fixed it up. “You want to be a passenger aboard a ship that will shortly be sunk and everyone on it put to, umm, the sword or made slaves by the pirate Feverfew?”

“No,” said Arthur. “I mean I want to be a passenger, but surely we can escape? I saw that ship, the pirate one, but it was a long way away. We must have a good lead.”

“A stern chase is a long chase,” muttered Catapillow. “But they’ll, you know, probably catch us in the end. I suppose we should go and, er, have a look. Mister Sunscorch might have some—what-do-you-call-’em—ideas. Or Dr Scamandros. Just when I was going to examine some new additions to my collection. I suppose it will be Feverfew’s collection soon and he won’t appreciate it.”

Arthur started to ask about the Captain’s collection. He could tell from Catapillow’s fond gaze that it was housed in the display cabinets along the wall. But before he could get the words out, Ichabod trod on his foot and coughed meaningfully.

“What’s that?” asked Catapillow, looking back at the boy.

“The Captain’s needed on deck!” said Ichabod in a loud, firm voice.

“Yes! Yes!” said Catapillow. “Let’s see where that vile, um, vile ship of Feverfew’s has got to. We can talk about your passage fee later, Arth. Follow me!”

He led the way back to the door. As soon as it opened, Arthur heard the deep roar of the sea, the groan of the ship’s timbers, and the continuing shouts of the crew and Sunscorch.

He had to shut his eyes as he left the room and stepped into the corridor because the floor of the ship was rocking but the room’s wasn’t, creating a very sick-making feeling at the back of his eyes. But it passed as soon as he was in the ship proper again, though the ship was pitching up and down so much he had to use a hand to steady himself every few paces.

It was bright out on the main deck. The moon was high above them, its light cool and strong. Arthur could even have read by it, he thought, and he noticed that it was strong enough to cast shadows.

He hugged his blanket tighter around his shoulders as he felt the wind. It had grown colder still, and stronger. Looking up at the masts, all the sails were full. The Moth was heeled over quite steeply to starboard and was plunging ahead at quite a rate.

Unfortunately, when he looked over his shoulder, Arthur saw that the pirate ship was sailing even faster. It was much smaller than the Moth, and narrower too, with only two masts and triangular sails rather than the square ones on the merchant vessel.

“The ship looks white in the moonlight,” said Arthur. “And are those sails brown?”

“They’re the colour of dried blood,” said Ichabod. “A shade called ‘vintage sanguinolent’ by tailors. The hull is supposedly made from a single piece of bone, that of a legendary monster from the Secondary Realms. Feverfew himself is said to be a pirate from the Realms, once mortal, who mastered the darker depths of House Sorcery and is now half-Nithling, half—”

“That will … that will do, thank you, Ichabod,” said Catapillow nervously. “Come with me.”

He led the way up to the quarterdeck, where two Denizens wrestled with the wheel, and Sunscorch shouted orders at the Denizens aloft and on the deck, trimming sails and yards. There were two other Denizens there as well. One stood next to Sunscorch, nodding sagely at every order but saying nothing. He looked rather like Captain Catapillow, with a bland face and similar clothes, so was clearly an officer. Probably the First Mate, Arthur thought. The one who used to be the Chief Clerk in the counting house.

The other Denizen was completely different. He was crouched on the deck next to the wheel. A strange, small figure not much taller than Arthur, he was almost completely lost inside a voluminous yellow greatcoat with rolled-up cuffs. He was bald and his face and head were completely covered in small, colourful tattoos that Arthur realised after a moment were animated, moving and shifting around. Tattoos of ships and sea creatures, birds and clouds, maps and moons and stars and suns and planets.

“Mister Concort, who is First Mate,” whispered Ichabod, pointing to the Denizen next to Sunscorch. “And Dr Scamandros, our most accomplished sorcerer and navigator. He’s casting the haruspices to see where we might be able to go. No one must interrupt, take note. Dreadful things would happen.”

At that moment, a gust of wind hit the Moth hard and she heeled over even further. As everyone on the quarterdeck scrambled to keep their footing, Arthur stumbled against Captain Catapillow, and both of them ended up sliding across the deck and into the rail.

Arthur almost went over, into the dark sea that was surprisingly close below. He managed to save himself and, at the last second, his blanket, but at the cost of a jolt to his broken leg that sent a savage, stabbing pain up his side and into his head.

As the ship righted itself in response to Sunscorch’s shouted commands, Arthur noticed that almost everybody else had ended up on the starboard rail, apart from the two helmsmen clinging to the wheel, Sunscorch next to them, and Dr Scamandros to the side. He was still crouched where he’d been, as if he were glued to the deck. All the things he was studying were also still there, which seemed impossible. Several maps were laid out on the deck, with a pair of gilt-bronze dividers on top, a ruler and the skull of a small animal that had been converted into a cup to hold a dozen or so pencils.

There were also lots of small pieces of coloured cardboard strewn apparently at random next to the map. Dr Scamandros was studying them and whistling through his front teeth. After a few seconds, he gathered them up into his cupped hands and threw them down again. To Arthur’s surprise, they joined together as they fell, and he realised they were jigsaw pieces. When they hit the deck, nearly all of them had joined, but two or three pieces remained separate. The jigsaw was incomplete.

Dr Scamandros stopped whistling and the wind, as if in response, eased a little. The Denizen gathered the jigsaw pieces together again and put them in a cardboard box that had a picture of a sheep on it, which he then put inside his yellow greatcoat. After this was done, he stood up. This was obviously the point at which he could be interrupted, because Catapillow and Concort rushed over to him.

“What are the signs, Doctor?” asked Catapillow. “Is there a course out of here?”

“No,” said Scamandros. His voice was very high and pure, and reminded Arthur strangely of a trumpet. “There is some power interfering with both the goat and sheep auguries. I dare not try the ox in such circumstances. Without guidance, I can find no true course.”

“Is it Feverfew?” asked Sunscorch. “Even so far away?”

“No,” said Scamandros. He had caught sight of Arthur for the first time and his dark eyes were staring straight at the boy. “It is much closer. Who is that?”

“Arth,” said Sunscorch. “A mortal boy. We picked him up with Feverfew’s treasure.”

“He holds an object of great power,” said Dr Scamandros, excitement in his voice. He rummaged inside his coat and pulled out a pair of glasses with gold wire rims and thick smoked-quartz lenses, which he slipped on to his forehead, not over his eyes. “Bring him here.”

Arthur stepped forward of his own accord and staggered across the deck. Sunscorch caught him and held him, loosely enough for the grip to be either a friend helping out or a guard about to secure a prisoner.

“What is in your pocket, boy?” asked Dr Scamandros. “It is interfering with my augury and, thus, my navigation of this ship.”

“It’s … it’s a book,” said Arthur. “It won’t be of any use to you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that!” Scamandros exclaimed. He reached forward to Arthur’s pocket and Sunscorch tightened his grip on the boy’s arms. “What have we—”

As he touched the top of the Atlas, there was a loud report, like a pistol shot. Scamandros’s hand came back so quickly Arthur didn’t even see it, and then the navigator was hopping around the deck with his fingers thrust into his armpit, screeching, “Ow! Ow! Ow! Throw him overboard!”

Sunscorch hesitated, then picked up Arthur in a bear hug and tottered to the starboard rail, crashing into it with considerable force.

“Sorry, lad,” he said as he lifted Arthur up and prepared to heave him into the waiting sea. “We need the doctor.”

CHAPTER SIX

“No!” screamed Arthur. Then, as Sunscorch continued to lift him up, “I’m a friend of the Mariner! Captain Tom Shelvocke!”

Sunscorch lowered Arthur to the deck.

“Prove it,” he said coldly. “If you’re lying, I’ll carve you a set of gills before I throw you over.”

Arthur reached with a shivering hand into his pyjama top and pulled out his makeshift floss-chain. For a dreadful moment he thought the disc was gone, then it slid free and hung on his chest.

“What are you waiting for, Sunscorch?” yelled Dr Scamandros angrily. “Throw him overboard!”

Sunscorch looked closely at the disc, flipped it with his finger and looked at the other side. Then he sighed and let go of Arthur. Just then, the ship rolled to port and back again, almost sending Arthur over the side anyway.

“Do as the doctor says, Mister Sunscorch!” called Catapillow. “We must have a course to get away!”

“I can’t, Captain!” shouted Sunscorch. “The boy has the mark of the Mariner. If he asks for aid, as sailors we must give it.”

“I am asking,” said Arthur hastily. “I don’t want to be thrown overboard. I only want to send a message to the Lower House. Or the Far Reaches.”

“He has the what? The who?” asked Catapillow.

Sunscorch sighed again and helped Arthur along the sloping deck to the group gathered around the wheel. Dr Scamandros still had his hand under his arm. He scowled at Arthur.

“No seaman will go against the Mariner,” said Sunscorch. “The boy has the Mariner’s medal, so you’ll have to figure something else out, Doc. He ain’t going over the side.”

“The Mariner,” said Scamandros. “A figure of reverence for the nautically inclined. One of the Old One’s sons, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, though the question hadn’t been asked of him. “And the Architect’s.”

“Perhaps I was a little hasty,” Scamandros continued. “I thought perhaps you had something in your pocket we wouldn’t want aboard. But any friend of the Mariner … please do accept my apology.”

“Sure,” said Arthur. “No problem.”

“Well, ah, welcome aboard,” said the Captain. “We’re delighted to have you here. Though I fear that our voyage is, um, about to be cut short.”

Everyone looked back over the stern. The Shiver had closed in and was now less than a mile away.

“She’ll be firing her bowchasers soon,” said Sunscorch. “If they’ve any powder. They’ve the weather gauge too. We’ll have to fight it out.”

“Oh,” said Concort. He swallowed and frowned at the same time. “That doesn’t sound very good.”

“Can you get us a better wind, Doctor?” asked Sunscorch. “Untie one of your knots?”

“No,” replied Scamandros. “Feverfew is already working the wind and his workings are stronger. There is no escape within the Border Sea.”

“And is there, er, no plausible course out to the Realms?” Catapillow pulled his sword partly out of its scabbard as he spoke, and almost cut his nervous fingers on the exposed blade.

“There is one possibility that I may have overlooked due to extreme pain in my hand,” said Scamandros. “I cannot cast the haruspices because of magical interference. But the young have natural ability, so this boy may be able to. Can you read portents of the future in the strewn intestines of animals, young sir?”

“No,” said Arthur with a grimace of revulsion. “That sounds disgusting!”

“They don’t use actual intestines any more,” whispered Ichabod. “Just magical jigsaw puzzles of intestines.”

“Indeed, the art has grown more orderly and less troublesome for the laundry,” said Scamandros, who clearly had very superior hearing. “Though personally I believe it is best to be trained the old way, before coming to the puzzles. So you are not a haruspex or seer?”

“No…”

“Then you shall cast the pieces and I will read them.” Scamandros took a large box out from under his coat—bigger than the one he’d put away before—and handed it to Arthur. There was a picture of an ox on the box, the back half cross-sectioned to show its innards. “Quickly now. Take the box and empty the pieces into your hands.”

As Arthur opened the box, something shrieked overhead. It sounded like a cross between a train whistle and a terrified parrot. Sunscorch looked up, then muttered, “They’ve got powder! That’s a ranging shot!” and started to shout more commands to the helmsman and crew. The Moth lumbered and rolled to port as the wheel spun and the crew hauled on lines to trim the yards, the horizontal spars on the mast that the sails were attached to.

Arthur knelt down on the deck and put his hands in the box. Though all he could see were pieces of coloured cardboard, he recoiled as he touched them.

“Ugh! They feel like raw mince or … or worse!”

“Ignore that!” instructed Scamandros. “Pick them up and cast them on the deck! Quickly now!”

Arthur shuddered and hesitated. Then he heard the whistling again and a huge plume of water exploded just behind the Moth, showering them all with freezing water.

“Over and under,” said Sunscorch grimly. “They’ll have the range inside a minute.”

Arthur took a deep breath and plunged his hands into the box. Picking up the pieces was like picking up handfuls of dead worms. But he got them all, raised them up and threw them at Scamandros’s feet.

As before, the jigsaw came together as it fell. But this time all the pieces joined to make a perfect rectangle. The colours ran and shimmered like spilled paint, then formed into lines and patterns. In a few seconds, a picture appeared. A picture of a rocky island, a mound of tumbled yellow stones, surrounded by a sea of curious colour, more violet than blue.

Scamandros looked at the picture, muttering to himself, then he rolled up the chart at his feet and immediately unrolled it again, revealing a completely different map.

“Forlorn Island, Sea of Yazer, on the planet we call Gerain,” said Scamandros. “That’ll do!”

“Err, Mister Concort…” said Catapillow.

“Ah, Mister Sunscorch…” said Concort.

“Prepare to Cross the Line!” roared Sunscorch. “Idlers take a hold!”

Catapillow and Concort rushed to the rail and gripped it. Sunscorch joined the two Denizens on the wheel. Scamandros picked up the jigsaw, which didn’t fall apart, and stood by them.

“Grab hold of a rope or the rail,” Ichabod instructed Arthur. “When the doctor shouts, look down and close your eyes. And whatever you do, don’t let go!”

Arthur did as he was told, taking a firm grip on the portside rail. He looked back at Dr Scamandros, who was holding the jigsaw and muttering to himself, with occasional instructions to Sunscorch.

“Port five, steady,” he said. “Starboard ten and back again amidships, hold her as she goes, port five, port five, starboard ten…”

The Moth rolled and tilted first to one side and then the other, but didn’t seem to change its actual direction very much for all the turning of the wheel this way and that.

But Dr Scamandros kept ordering small changes of direction.

Arthur heard a muffled bang come from behind them and looked astern, just in time to see the flash of the Shiver’s bowchasers, followed by that same whistling screech. This time, it didn’t end in a waterspout or a pass overhead. Just as Dr Scamandros shouted something unintelligible and threw the jigsaw in the air, Arthur heard a terrible splintering, crashing noise that momentarily blotted out all other sounds.

But he didn’t look. He closed his eyes and bent down as instructed, hoping that whatever the cannonball had hit wasn’t going to fall down on his head.

There was a moment of silence after the terrible sound of some major part of the ship breaking, immediately followed by a flash so bright Arthur’s eyes were filled with white light, even through shut eyelids. That flash was accompanied by a crash of thunder that shook the whole ship and stirred a vibration so strong it made Arthur’s limbs and stomach ache.

Arthur knew what was happening at once. His hand went to the invitation card in his pocket and he hunkered down as low as he could, still clutching his pocket.

They were about to pass through the Line of Storms again!

The thunder was so deafening that its echoes lingered in Arthur’s ears and head, so even when it ceased it took him awhile before he stopped trembling and his hearing started to return. The after-image of the lightning remained in patches, and dark spots danced around his eyes.

Arthur opened his eyes to a scene of destruction and wonder. One of the huge horizontal spars from the Moth’s mainmast had been struck by the cannonball and broken off. Half of it was sprawled over the deck and half was in the water, a tangled mass of timber, ropes and canvas.

Arthur only glanced at that. His attention was drawn ahead of the ship. There, extending upward from the sea into the sky, was a huge gilt picture frame, easily four hundred feet long and three hundred feet high. It bordered an enormous, brightly glowing version of the jigsaw picture Arthur had made, with the yellow stone island and the violet sea. But this didn’t look like a picture. The sea was in motion, there were purple-tinged clouds drifting above the island, and birds or birdlike things were flying around. Arthur could still see the jigsaw piece outlines—much narrower and more wriggly pieces than in a normal jigsaw—but the lines were very faint.

“Starboard Watch! Cut away that yard! Quickly now!”

The Moth rolled as Sunscorch spoke, sending its sails flapping, to make a sound like sarcastic applause.

“Helm! Hold her steady!” shouted Sunscorch.

The Moth was trying to sail straight for the framed image, Arthur saw. He understood it was not an image. It was a doorway to another world, out in the Secondary Realms.

“Did we lose ’em?” asked Sunscorch to the doctor.

Scamandros looked astern, lowering his smoked glasses over his eyes to stare at the now surprisingly distant Line of Storms.

“I’m not … no!”

Arthur looked back, too, blinking at the still-bright flashes of lightning, though they were now several miles away. At first he couldn’t spot anything, then he saw the silhouette of the Shiver’s dark sails. She had dropped back but would soon catch up again, particularly with the Moth slowed by the broken spar over the side, which acted like a large and clumsy sea anchor.

“They’ll try and follow us through the portal,” said Sunscorch.

“Um, is there anything … some manoeuvre or other?” asked Catapillow anxiously.

“Get that spar cut away!” roared Sunscorch. Arthur winced. Clearly Sunscorch got louder the more anxious he was.

Dr Scamandros looked ahead at the vast gilt-framed doorway to the violet-hued sea. It was several hundred yards away. He looked back at the pursuing ship, took out a pencil and made some calculations on the cuff of his big yellow coat.

“At our current speed Feverfew will board us short of the portal,” he said. “Even if they don’t take down a mast or hole us below the waterline.”

“He won’t fire again,” said Sunscorch. “Don’t need to, does he? We’re slow enough now. Anything more might damage the loot.”

This confident assessment was immediately undermined by the report of a cannon astern, resulting in another plume of water, this time well short.

“Then again, he might sink us for sport,” added Sunscorch. He looked down at the main deck where the Denizens were hacking ineffectually with axes at the fallen yard. “Cut away! Don’t slap at it! Cut! Doctor, if there’s anything you can do, do it. No seamanship can save us now! I’m for an axe!”

“Carry on!” Catapillow called out as Sunscorch leapt down the companionway to the waist of the ship.

Arthur looked at the rapidly gaining pirate vessel, then at the living picture in its vast gilt frame. Even without calculating anything, it was clear the Shiver would catch them before they could get to the transfer portal. It was too far away…

Arthur suddenly had an idea.

“I don’t know any sorcery or anything,” Arthur said. “But that big painting is like a transfer plate you step on, isn’t it?”

Scamandros nodded distractedly.

“So if we can’t get to it in time, can it somehow be moved to us?”

Scamandros frowned, then cocked his head as if struck by Arthur’s suggestion. Arthur noticed that all the small tattoos on the doctor’s face were showing scenes of trouble. Storms at sea. Sunken ships. Exploding suns. Imploding planets.

Just as the doctor opened his mouth to speak, the Shiver fired again.

“Interesting. Yes, it is theoretically possible to—”

Whatever Scamandros was going to say was lost as a cannonball struck the Moth’s side just behind and below the wheel, smashing the heavy timber into a spray of deadly foot-long splinters that went whistling across the quarterdeck.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next thing Arthur knew, he was lying on the deck, right up against the rail, with his good leg hanging overboard. He could hear screaming all around him, and shouting. For a moment he thought he’d suffered a sudden asthma attack and had passed out from lack of air. But his breathing was fine, or so his mind reported before it suddenly switched back to the current situation. The splinters flying through the air—

Arthur pulled his leg in, sat up and stared around him. He was vaguely aware that his broken leg hurt, but that was nothing new. There was blood on his dressing gown, but it was bright blue. A pain in his left hand made him lift it up. There was blood there too—red blood, but not much of it. Arthur focused on his middle finger, and pulled out a needle-shaped splinter that had sliced across a knuckle and was still hanging there.

“Will you look at that?! Ruined!” said a voice next to Arthur. The boy slowly turned to look. There was a large hole on the far side of the deck. The planking was gouged all around and there was blue blood splattered all over the place, amid shattered wood and splinters.

Ichabod was pointing at his waistcoat. A splinter as long as Arthur’s forearm was sticking out of the Denizen’s stomach. Blue blood was trickling out of the wound and into his waistcoat pocket.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” asked Arthur. He was in shock and part of his mind was telling him to check himself over again. He knew the Denizens could recover even from a beheading, but that didn’t help. It also didn’t apply to him. A wound like Ichabod’s would kill him for sure.

“It certainly does hurt,” replied Ichabod with a grimace. “But just look at my favourite waistcoat!”

Arthur looked along his own arms and legs. They were fine. He gingerly felt his stomach and head. They seemed fine too. Only his finger had been touched.

The Denizens around the wheel had not been so lucky. Arthur could hardly bear to look at them, they were so pierced by splinters. At least the blue blood didn’t look so serious as real human blood would. And they were still standing and complaining about their bad luck.

“Seriously wounded to the Captain’s quarters!” instructed Dr Scamandros. He didn’t appear to be injured, but blue fluid dripped from the sleeve of his yellow greatcoat. “You too, mortal! You could be killed up here! Get below at once. Ichabod, take charge of our valuable passenger!”

Arthur struggled to his feet and hesitantly walked to the gangway, Ichabod at his side.

“Are you going to do something, Doctor?” asked Captain Catapillow plaintively, as he stared down at the spot where his foot and one of his third-best boots used to be. “I think that cannonball was coated in Nothing.”

“You’d feel a lot worse if it was, Captain,” said Dr Scamandros. “As I was saying, it is theoretically possible to accelerate the transfer by bringing the portal to the traveller, rather than the other way around. It is of course exceedingly difficult and dangerous.”

Everyone looked at the pirate vessel astern. It fired again, a great gout of water exploding out of the sea a little ahead and to the port side of the Moth.

“What could happen that would be worse than eternal slavery or a slow and torturous death by Nothing-based sorceries at the hands of Feverfew?” asked Concort. He didn’t sound like he really wanted to know.

“If I fail, we shall transfer not into that Secondary Realm, but into the Void of Nothing, and be immediately expunged from existence.”

“My collection too?” asked Captain Catapillow.

“The ship and everything on it or connected with it,” said Scamandros. “Including all your stamps, sir. So what are your orders?”

Arthur hesitated on the steps, waiting to hear Catapillow’s commands. Surely there was some other way? Perhaps he could escape via the Infinite Stair … no … not in his current state. He probably didn’t have the power any more…

“I can’t have the collection fall into Feverfew’s hands,” said Captain Catapillow in a small voice. “All or … or Nothing!”

Arthur saw Scamandros open his yellow greatcoat. The inside was lined with dozens of pockets and loops for magical implements and apparatus. Scamandros selected two lengths of bronze rod with curved-back hooks set near their pointed ends. Though they were in miniature under his coat, only a few inches long, they expanded as he dragged them out, till they were at least a yard in length.

“Fire irons,” said Ichabod. “Matching set. Very nice. Come along!”

Arthur started to follow Ichabod down the port-side ladder to the waist, where Sunscorch and the crew had finally succeeded in cutting away the last of the broken yard and its accompanying debris. But Arthur stopped on the companionway to look back. He saw Scamandros reaching out with a fire iron in each hand, the bronze rods continuing to extend till they became shafts of curdled sunlight that reached up into the sky and to each side of the ship.

Only a few seconds later, the transformed fire irons reached all the way to the vast gilt-framed portal to the Secondary Realm. The hooks on the end were now easily thirty feet long. The irons wavered outside the edges of the frame, then Scamandros brought them in and seated them. As sun bronze met magical gilt, there was a horrendous metallic noise, like an angle grinder suddenly cutting into steel, magnified a hundred times.

Everyone on the ship stared up at the portal and the doctor’s two levers. Ichabod didn’t protest or try to make Arthur go below. Like everyone else, he wanted to see what would happen next.

Scamandros shouted something, a word that passed through Arthur like a hot wire, causing him to cry out and clap his hands to his ears. The doctor shouted again and Arthur, suddenly stripped of strength, fell down the ladder on to the deck, taking a surprised Ichabod with him.

Then Scamandros yanked the fire irons back towards himself. This action was magnified all along their sun-curdled length. With the squeal of ten thousand fingers on a giant blackboard, the entire vast doorway to Forlorn Island shuddered towards the Moth.

At first, it looked like all was going well. The portal rapidly grew closer and the Moth continued to sail straight at it.

Then, when it was only yards away, the portal began to totter and shake, and the top edge started to lean forward. Behind it, in place of the normal sky, was a dark mass that glittered like some volcanic stone.

The Void of Nothing.

“Faster!” shouted Scamandros, fear in his voice. “Make the ship go faster!”

Denizens who had been frozen in awe sprang into action, goaded again by the now unbelievably loud voice of Sunscorch. Yards were trimmed, ropes hauled, sails hoisted where sails were hardly ever seen.

“Faster!” screamed Scamandros. The portal was falling towards them now, and instead of dragging it with the fire irons, the doctor was trying to hold it up. Darkness rippled behind it. “We must get through before it drops!”

The portal fell further and the bowsprit of the Moth pierced its shining jigsaw-crazed surface. Then the bow passed through and the rest of the ship followed. The light changed to a softer, golden tone and the breeze around Arthur became instantly warm.

As the sternpost of the Moth passed the portal, Scamandros fell to the deck, his fire irons clattering at his side, no longer anything more than lengths of bronze. The portal, its work done, collapsed in on itself. The threat of Nothing was gone.

But there were other troubles for the Moth.

“Splashdown! Brace!” roared Sunscorch. “Take hold!”

Arthur instantly shuffled back and wound his arms through the port-side ladder. He knew from the volume of Sunscorch’s order that this was serious.

The Moth had come through the portal all right, but because of the angle of entry, they had not come through at the same level. The ship had entered this new world thirty feet above the water.

Now it was crashing down into the sea.

Before the echo of Sunscorch’s shout had gone, the ship tilted precipitously forward. Arthur saw Ichabod slide past, till the Denizen managed to grab hold of a grating. Other Denizens tumbled along further down the deck and some fell or jumped from the rigging, though as far as Arthur could tell they went into the violet sea.

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