Lord Sunday (8 page)

It was a smaller replica of the Old One’s prison, save that there was no one chained to the clock hands.

Or at least, Arthur thought, there was no one chained there
yet…

T
he elevator fell faster than was usual, and the ride was far less smooth. Suzy and Giac were thrown against the walls, and Part Six of the Will had to constantly flap its wings to keep its balance, finally just latching on to Suzy’s shoulder. It continued to flap there too, as Suzy tried to wedge herself into one corner to keep steady, with Giac in the opposite corner.

Even more alarming, every now and then a tiny globule of Nothing would explode through the floor and exit through the ceiling. This mostly
happened near the back of the elevator and the three passengers kept well away. If the Nothing actually hit anyone, it would dissolve everything in its upward path. Even a glancing pass might destroy a hand or foot.

It was also a frightening indication that Nothing was continuing to impinge on the House. If there were globules and particles of Nothing loose in the elevator shafts, it was likely the Void had breached more defences.

“Are you sure you pressed the right button?” asked Suzy. “Cos you know half the House is just Nothing now, and if we’re dropping into it—”

“The corroded buttons indicate high contamination by Nothing,” said the Will, who had been studying the rows of bronze or formerly bronze buttons. “Those that are entirely black and crumbled show lost portions of the House.”

“So the one for the Great Maze was still bright?” asked Suzy. “That’s good.”

“Not entirely,” said the Will. “There are several elevator positions within the Maze. Some of them are black. The one I chose is a little tarnished, and the verdigris is spreading, even in this short time.”

“The Maze is dissolving?” asked Suzy. “Nothing is spreading there as well?”

“It appears so,” said the Will. “I think we had better hurry this elevator up.”

It flew from Suzy’s shoulder, up to the ceiling above the buttons and, using its beak like an ice pick, smashed through a small walnut-and-ivory veneered panel that was set into the plainer wood. There was a gold ring behind the panel.

The Will glanced back down and said, “Crouch and brace yourselves.”

Suzy and Giac obeyed. The raven grabbed the ring, folded its wings and dropped back down to Suzy’s shoulder, pulling a slender golden chain out of the ceiling by the ring. As the chain grew longer, the elevator’s speed increased. By the time the Will arrived on Suzy’s shoulder, she felt herself rising into the air, suddenly weightless as the elevator accelerated down.

“I’m floating!” she cried. “This is great!”

“Is it?” asked Giac worriedly. “Are you sure?”

“Hold on!” warned the Will. “We’ll slow down just as fast. Or hit very hard. One, two, three, four, five, six—”

The raven released the ring on “six” and the chain shot back into the ceiling. As it did so, the elevator slowed suddenly, slamming Suzy and Giac to the floor. A few seconds later, there was a terrible impact. The elevator exploded around them, throwing them into the air again in a storm of splinters and broken floorboards. Before they could fall back down, everything tilted over on a sharp incline and all three of them slid down the wall and ended up in a confused tangle in the dangerous corner where the Nothing globules had turned the elevator into a sieve.

Finally a bell went
ping
and the inner door slid open to reveal a bent and buckled grille door that was hanging off its hinges. Beyond it lay a guardroom, where a dozen somewhat surprised Denizens uniformed in the buff coats and grey trousers of the Moderately Honourable Artillery Company were snatching up and readying their musketoons, pistols, sparkizan halberds and swords.

“Guess we’re here,” said Suzy as she crawled across Giac’s legs and brushed the Will’s wings away from her face, since it was perched on her head. “Wherever here is.”

She stood up, brushed off the splinters and dust,
and held up her hands, which seemed a wise precaution given the number of Nothing-powder weapons that were now aimed at her, including a small, wheeled artillery piece that was being pushed over by another half dozen artillerists, its bronze barrel coming into alignment with the door of the elevator.

“I’m General Suzy Turquoise Blue, personal aide-de-camp to Lord Arthur,” she called out. “Who’s in command here?”

The weapons were not lowered and no one answered.

Suzy had a moment of doubt, which was unusual for her, as she wondered whether the artillerists had gone from being moderately honourable to dishonourable, joining the Piper or Saturday. Then a Gun-Sergeant, his sleeves resplendent with gold stripes and crossed cannons, gestured to the other Denizens, who lowered their weapons a little, though not so much that anyone in the elevator would have a chance to break out. The gunner with the slow match near the cannon also lifted this burning fuse away from the touchhole, but not enough for anyone to get comfortable.

“Stay there, ma’am, and you others,” the Gun-Sergeant called out. “Marshal Dusk commands here and we are under orders to take no chances. I saw you at the Citadel fight, ma’am, but seeing ain’t always believing, so if you’ve no objection, we’ll send word to the Marshal.”

He made a sign with his hand and one of the artillerists towards the rear slid out around the heavy ironbound door on the opposite side from the elevator.

“Good idea,” said Suzy. “Um, where is here? We’re not at the Citadel?”

“This here’s the Cannon Arsenal,” said the Gun-Sergeant. He was about to add something else when he was interrupted by three distant horn blasts from somewhere outside.

“You might want to block your ears,” said the Gun-Sergeant, though neither he nor any of the other gunners made any move to do so.

Giac promptly obeyed, and the Will thrust its head under its wing. Suzy however was about to ask why when there was a sudden titanic blast outside. The stone walls of the guardroom shook and the elevator canted over even more, till it was almost
horizontal, and Suzy was sitting on what used to be the wall.

The Gun-Sergeant said something, but Suzy couldn’t hear it over the ringing in her ears. As the tinnitus subsided the Gun-Sergeant spoke again, and though Suzy couldn’t really hear it she could work out what he was saying by watching his lips.

“Told you so,” he said.

Suzy grinned and mimed cleaning her ears out with her fingers. It actually helped, so she kept at it and looked in surprise at her blackened fingertips. “Must be quite a while since the Bathroom Attendants washed between my ears,” she said proudly. “I don’t reckon they’ll get another chance.”

“I think it very unlikely,” said Part Six of the Will. It hopped on to Suzy’s shoulder and peered at the artillerists. “Tell me, Sergeant, why are you all wearing black armbands? And what was that explosion?”

The Gun-Sergeant narrowed his eyes. “I’m not answering questions from a bird of dubious background,” he said. “You look like some kind of Nithling.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Will. “I’ll have you know that I am Part—”

“Shush,” said Suzy, clasping the raven’s beak shut. “The bird’s all right. Marshal Dusk will vouch for it, as well as for me.”

“What about him?” asked one of the other gunners, pointing at Giac. “He’s one of Saturday’s, isn’t he?”

“Well, he was,” said Suzy. “Only now ’e’s not, orright? He works for Lord Arthur, same as the rest of us.”

“If you say so,” sniffed the gunner, but he maintained a ready stance with his sparkizan, and kept a thin blue spark sidling along the blade of the halberd-like weapon.

“So why the black armbands, then?” asked Suzy, repeating the Will’s question. “And what was that boom? Someone smoking in the Nothing-powder store again?”

A chorus of irritated voices answered the last question first. It was a commonly held belief in the rest of the Army that the Moderately Honourable Artillery Company’s artillerists and engineers were always on the verge of blowing themselves up by
accident and that only good luck spared them. It was a completely unfounded belief, but that didn’t make it any less irritating.

“Quiet!” roared the Gun-Sergeant. The ruckus died down, and the burly Denizen turned back to Suzy. “Now General, presuming you is who you say you are, you know that there ain’t no artillerist who smokes, even if we could get the makings, which we can’t since the fall of the Far Reaches. Likewise we don’t play games with matches or fire-starters or flame-sprays or sparkizans or any of the things that them other units says we do. So we don’t take kindly to jokes about our Nothing-powder stores blowing up or—”

He paused suddenly, and with the sixth sense of a long-serving sergeant, suddenly braced to attention and shouted, “Stand fast!”

The artillerists jerked fully upright to become frozen statues as the heavy door creaked fully open and a tall Denizen in a dark grey uniform with black epaulettes entered.

“Marshal Dusk!” Suzy called out.

“General Suzy Blue,” Dusk answered gravely. He paused to offer an elegant salute, which Suzy
returned with less elegance but considerable gusto.

“Your arrival is unlooked for,” Dusk continued, with just the hint of a question. “As are your companions. Am I right in presuming that I address a Part of the Will?”

“You are,” said the raven, preening. It liked to be recognised.

“And one of Saturday’s sorcerers?”

“Oh no, sir,” said Giac. “Just a Sorcerous Supernumerary, as I was, sir. But now I serve Lord Arthur.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” said Dusk. “I am sure there is much more to hear, but there is very little time to hear it. We must all be on the adjacent tile before it moves at sundown.”

“Where are we going to go?” asked Suzy. She was familiar with the way the Great Maze was divided into thousands of mile-square tiles, that moved at the end of every day, often travelling great distances in a single minute. But she did not possess one of the almanacs that officers used to work out which tile to get on in order to move to their required destination.

She stepped out of the wreckage of the elevator as she spoke, and walked closer to Dusk, turning to
one side for a moment so she could look out the narrow window in the thick stone wall.

“Too much of the Maze has been broken through by Nothing,” said Dusk. “We are evacuating to the Middle House. Most of the Army has already gone over the course of the day. I command a rearguard that has been destroying our siege train and larger guns, since we cannot take them with us, and there is the slight chance the Piper or some other enemy might swoop in and retrieve some for later use against us, before Nothing completely destroys the Maze.”

“That explains the explosion,” said the Will. It flew to the window and peered out with its sharp black eyes. “Perhaps you might tell me why you wear funereal armbands?”

“For Sir Thursday,” said Dusk after a moment’s hesitation. “He was our commander in chief for millennia after all, though he broke his trust to the Architect.”

“You mean he’s dead too?” asked Suzy.

“Yes,” said Dusk. “This morning, in his cell. The guards outside were also slain, and only Sir Thursday’s boots remained.”

“Sounds more like he escaped,” Suzy said.

“His feet were still in the boots,” said Dusk. “The rest of him had been dissolved by Nothing.”

Suzy raised an eyebrow and scratched her head. “So they’re all dead,” she said. “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…but who killed them?”

“What of Lady Friday?” asked the Will. “I understand she was also imprisoned in the Citadel?”

“She lives yet, for all I know,” said Dusk. “But she was taken with the advance party to the Middle House some hours ago.”

The Will mulled this over for a moment before cocking its head to ask, “And the other Parts of the Will? Where are they? Have they remade themselves as Dame Primus or are they still divided?”

“I believe they…ah…she…that is, Dame Primus has rejoined…herself…and is now at the Middle House, where she has established a command post,” said Dusk. “In preparation for Lord Arthur, of course. You do not happen to know where Lord Arthur is, by the by?”

“We do not,” said the Will with a look at Suzy. “But he gave me orders to prepare a force to assault the Upper House. If the Army has retreated to the Middle—”

Dusk interrupted him. “Not ‘retreated’, please,” he said. “We have merely taken up an alternate position, in preparation for further offensive action.”

“If the Army and Dame Primus are in the Middle House, we must go there,” said the Will. “But we cannot do so from this elevator.”

“Indeed,” said Dusk. “I am surprised you arrived in it. Dr Scamandros judged that shaft to be too compromised by Nothing or we would have used it ourselves.”

“Trust you to call a rotten elevator,” said Suzy to the Will. It clacked its beak at her and flew to Giac’s shoulder. He stiffened in alarm and looked away, as if he could ignore the presence of the sorcerous bird.

Marshal Dusk took a silver pocket watch out of his sleeve and flipped it open.

“Come! We have less than an hour. We must march to the next tile at once. It moves to the Citadel, and our last working elevator is at the Citadel.”

“So the tiles are moving?” asked Suzy. “They haven’t broken down?”

“Some still move,” replied Dusk. “We must hope the one we need will take us. If it doesn’t…”

“If it doesn’t…” prompted Suzy when Marshal Dusk did not finish.

“We will be consumed by Nothing,” concluded the Denizen.

L
eaf was a step away from the Front Door, with her eyes averted, when the Reaper pushed her hard in the middle of her back. She stumbled forward, her arms outstretched to stop herself – and encountered no resistance. Instead she went straight through the Door and fell screaming into darkness.

She was still screaming when the Reaper caught up with her, his scythe casting a bright greenish light around him. Only then did Leaf realise that she wasn’t actually falling, that her senses had betrayed her. She was more floating than anything else.
But if she looked away from the Reaper, or shut her eyes, the sensation of falling returned.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Inside the Front Door,” said the Reaper. “Where we should not linger. Climb upon my back, but do not essay any nonsense.”

“Why should I trust you?” said Leaf. She was already thinking about trying to strangle the Reaper or something like that, with the vague idea that if she could stall her eventual arrival wherever the Reaper wanted to take her, it would be a victory of sorts.

“You had best obey. There are now many Nithlings within the Door,” said the Reaper. “And I will need both hands to wield my scythe.”

Leaf looked around. All she could see were the Reaper and herself within a globe of greenish light. All else was darkness.

“I have little patience for those who
choose
to die,” said the Reaper. “Climb on my back. Now!”

Leaf looked around again. This time, she did see the hint of a shadow breaking the green light, a split-second warning before the sudden appearance of grasping legs that belonged to something that had
the abdomen and legs of a spider, and the torso and head of a human. Before those spurred, hairy limbs could grasp her, Leaf dived for the Reaper’s feet, even as the Denizen swung his scythe and the Nithling was parted in two. The different sections still scrabbled after Leaf, till the Reaper kicked them away and they spiralled off into the dark.

Leaf needed no more instruction. She climbed up the Reaper’s back, like a monkey up a tree, and embraced his neck with shaking arms.

“Hold tighter,” said the Reaper. Once he was satisfied she had obeyed, he jumped, extending his scythe ahead of him. Its green light shone around them as they moved through this strange darkness that was neither water nor air.

Like deep-sea creatures drawn to a glowing lure, the Nithlings came to the green light. The first one was a thing that was mostly a giant bird with a vicious beak and metallic feathers, though instead of talons it had vastly oversize human hands, each with eight fingers and no thumbs. It speared its beak at the Reaper, but he dived under it, sweeping up with his scythe, to burst through a sudden storm of blood and feathers and continue unslowed.

The next attack came from a dozen small Nithlings that had the general shape of crabs, though each had a human face upon the back of its shell, faces that cried and squealed and called out as they scuttled in from all directions—above, behind, below. But again the scythe moved and the Nithlings died, and the Reaper and his human burden moved on.

After the crabs with the human faces, there was silence. Leaf could not tell how swiftly they were moving, for she had no point of reference, nor was there any air moving past her face. She had a moment of panic as she wondered if in fact there simply was no air, and went as far as to lift off her gas mask, but even with it off she couldn’t tell if she was actually breathing in anything or not. Still, she was alive, and if she couldn’t breathe inside the Front Door, she’d already be dead, so there was no point worrying about it – particularly when there were plenty of other things to worry about, like where the Reaper might be taking her and for what reason. But even that paled into insignificance as Leaf suddenly saw that there was another glow up ahead, which looked like it was made by a whole lot of distant
lights; these were not green, but a nasty black-tinted red, like the smoky flames from burning rubber.

“Hold on with one arm and hold out your hand,” instructed the Reaper. He had not slowed at all, but was charging towards the red light. “You will also need to fight this time.”

Leaf held out her hand and her fingers closed around the hilt of a sword that appeared from nowhere. It was a short sword with a slightly curved blade of blue steel that was broader near the tip than the hilt. Faint sparks ran along the blade. As Leaf raised the weapon, the sparks intensified and she heard a fierce crackling noise, rather like the hoarse whispering of an angry crowd.

“Strike at the glimmer in their chests,” said the Reaper.

Leaf didn’t know what he was talking about for a few seconds, till they got close enough for her to see what was making the red glow. Rather than coming from a fire or fires, the light was issuing from the chests of a hundred or more Nithlings who were arrayed ahead of them, both on the same plane and above and below. These Nithlings had rudimentary wings of leather that they were all
flapping wildly, but more striking still was that, though they were basically humanoid, they appeared to have no heads. At least, they had no heads on their shoulders. Leaf saw that the red glow came from their eyes, which were in their chests and roughly level with their armpits, and that was where the rest of their heads were located as well. Horrible, malformed foreheads, noses and chins jutted out from their naked torsos, lit by the glow of their red eyes.

The Reaper seemed unperturbed by their numbers. Even as they flapped down, up and across to the point of his impact, he continued at full speed. Though he had no wings, Leaf saw that the scythe itself drew him forward, as if he were a diver hanging on to a propeller unit.

When they were only yards away, the Nithlings came to meet them, scores of them driving straight at their target from all angles. Leaf turned half around and swung about her with her sword, hacking and slicing in a desperate attempt to keep the Nithlings’ horrible hands from latching on to her and dragging her away. The Reaper’s scythe mowed all around them, and then Leaf was striking
at air and the Nithlings fell behind, unable to keep up.

Leaf watched the red points of light fade into the distance, but held her sword ready, her gaze darting around in an attempt to keep every direction covered. She also realised that she was holding on even tighter to the Reaper and that if he had been human, she would have strangled him long since. But he made no complaint.

Leaf started to ask the Reaper a question, but stopped when no sound came out of her mouth. She gulped and took a few deep breaths before trying again.

“How…how long till we get out of here?” she asked, pleased to hear only a slight tremble in her voice.

“That depends,” said the Reaper, “upon our foes.”

“Right.” Leaf shifted her grip on the sword and looked around again. As before, everything was dark. There was no light, save that of the scythe.

Then she saw something. A tiny, distant star, a pinprick of pure white light. They were heading straight towards it and it was growing larger by the second.

“Is that—”

“It is the other side of the Door,” said the Reaper, though in fact Leaf had been about to ask if it was another enemy. She felt a surge of relief. Somehow, even though she knew the Reaper was not her friend, she feared him less than whatever unknown Nithlings might appear.

The relief was very short-lived, as the Reaper suddenly changed direction. At the same time, Leaf thought she heard the echo of a trumpet or another horn of some kind. Faint and distant, and so low that it might have just been some trick of her ears.

“Where…where are we going?” asked Leaf. Her voice was not as steady as she’d hoped.

“To assist a companion,” said the Reaper. His voice, as always, was entirely devoid of emotion.

Leaf heard the trumpet call again as they flew through the strange atmosphere of the Door. It grew louder as they travelled, indicating that the Reaper was heading directly for whatever was creating the sound. It had to be an alarm call of some kind, though as usual Leaf couldn’t see anything in the darkness. She kept looking though, craning her neck as she tried to cover all possible
directions where Nithlings might suddenly appear and attack.

But no Nithlings did attack and after a little while the trumpet fell silent. Leaf wondered how the Reaper knew where to go, for he kept up their speed and made small changes of direction from time to time, so he clearly had a specific destination in mind.

Eventually Leaf saw something ahead: a single Denizen who at first she thought was standing strangely, till the Reaper turned sideways and she reoriented her notion of what was up and what was down. The Denizen was lying – or floating – on his back. He was wearing a swallow-tailed coat that looked turquoise-coloured in the green light, but Leaf knew it was actually blue and that the single epaulette on the shoulder was gold. His right arm trailed down at his side and his fingers barely held the hilt of a sword that had been fastened to his wrist. The braided cord was now loose, with one tassel falling down the blade and the other gone forever.

Leaf knew this Denizen was the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door, and even though dull blue blood was seeping through his coat and breeches in
a dozen places, he was not yet dead. As the Reaper stooped over him, he raised his head.

“You come too late for the fight,” he said weakly. “But I thank you.”

“I have long thought it unwise you should fight alone in the Door,” replied the Reaper. He transferred his scythe to his left hand and reached down to slide his right arm under the Lieutenant Keeper’s shoulder. “Come, I will bear you away. My Master shall make you anew.”

“Nay,” said the Lieutenant Keeper, shaking his head. “I must not leave my post, and their blades were Nothing poisoned. I will soon pass a more mysterious door than this one.”

Leaf, who was looking over the Reaper’s shoulder, wiped a tear from her eye. It was as much a reaction to everything that had happened as it was sorrow at the death of a Denizen she didn’t even know.

“Shed no tears, lass,” said the Lieutenant Keeper. “In truth, I have long been weary of my unceasing work. But before I am released, perhaps you would take my sword.”

“No!” the Reaper shouted as the Lieutenant
Keeper flicked the sword up to Leaf and fell back, slowly tumbling into a somersault, all strength and life gone, poured into his final act.

Leaf dropped her short sword and caught the hilt of the Lieutenant Keeper’s weapon, as the Reaper shrugged her off his back and jumped away, twisting so that he had his scythe ready to strike against her.

As Leaf’s fingers closed around the hilt, the golden braid fastened itself around her wrist. In that instant, she felt a new sense suddenly flower in her mind. She could feel the Front Door in all its vastness, could feel the thousands of entrances and exits, could almost taste the presence of intruders, sour and unwelcome…It was all too much, and she cried out and crouched down under the pressure of the sensory overload, not even noticing that her radiation suit was turning blue and softening, becoming a swallow-tailed coat just like the dead Lieutenant Keeper’s, while the bottom half became white breeches and the suit’s overboots became black top boots, the toe caps shiny as a mirror.

The Reaper raised his scythe, but did not strike. Instead he frowned and used the scythe to rise some ten feet above Leaf. He was still in striking distance,
but did not make any further moves until the girl slowly uncurled and stood up.

“My Master will be displeased,” said the Reaper.

“What?” asked Leaf. She was still trying to come to grips with her new ability to sense what was going on in the Door and it was hard to listen or talk at the same time.

“You are now the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door,” said the Reaper. “As such, I cannot compel you to come with me. I could kill you, of course, but my instructions are otherwise.”

“Whose instructions?” asked Leaf.

“Lord Sunday’s, of course,” said the Reaper. “As I’m sure you guessed.”

“Yes,” said Leaf. “What does he want with me?”

“I do not know,” replied the Reaper. “My Master likes to gather all possible tools before embarking upon any work. In this case, he must forgo your possible use.”

“What?” asked Leaf again, more sharply. She looked to one side, feeling the approach of a large group of Nithlings. “There are Nithlings coming—”

“That is not my concern,” said the Reaper. “I will leave you now.”

“But you can’t!” said Leaf. There were
lots
of Nithlings inside the Door, and there were strange breaches where she knew there should only be closed portals into parts of the House or the Secondary Realms. “I need your help!”

“I answered the Lieutenant Keeper’s call,” said the Reaper. “A detour from my proper work that has cost me dear. Now I must report my failure.”

“Wait a—” Leaf began, but the Reaper raised his scythe and it lifted him away. A moment later, he was accelerating into the dark.

“Farewell!” cried the Reaper, and he was gone.

Leaf hefted her sword, which shone with its own cold blue light, stark as a fluorescent tube, and looked to the direction from which the Nithling horde would come.