Superior Saturday (7 page)

Goldbite coughed and raised a paw.

‘The Simultaneous Nebuchadnezzar that is twinned with the one we have secreted in the Upper House is not aboard this vessel. Should you wish to try it, upon the terms I have outlined, we must rendezvous with the
Rattus Navis II
. If I send a message and she steams towards us, and we to her, it should only be a matter of half an hour. We have been travelling in convoy.’

‘Convoy?’ asked Arthur. ‘With loads of Newniths aboard? I hope you’re not planning to attack Port Wednesday after all?’

‘I do not know the ultimate destination of the Newnith force,’ answered Goldbite. ‘But I can tell you that we took them aboard in the Secondary Realms, and so I expect we shall disembark them in another.’

‘Okay, good,’ said Arthur. ‘I think. What can they be up to? I wish the Piper would just stay out of everything. I suppose I could ask one of the Newniths—’

‘Please!’ interrupted Goldbite. ‘As I said, the Raised Rats seek to be noncombatants. At present the Newniths have agreed to the polite fiction that one of their number was lost in an accident at sea. They will not come below to seek you out, but should you make yourself known, then they will feel compelled to fight. I expect you would win, Lord Arthur, but your companions could be killed, and certainly many Newniths would die. Please stay here, drink cranberry juice, and when we have made our rendezvous, we will transfer you to the other ship as quickly and quietly as is possible.’

‘All right.’ Once again Arthur had to fight back the urge to stride out upon the deck and order the Newniths to bow before him. And if they would not, then he would blast them to cinders and let wind and wave blow them away ...

No,
thought Arthur.
Stop! I will do this my way. No matter what I look like on the outside, I am not going to change who I truly am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn’t mean I have to use it!

‘I am going to need some things,’ announced Dr Scamandros, who was rummaging in his pockets. ‘Hmm ... freshly cut Rat hair ... four paw prints in jelly or plaster or sand, at a pinch ... grey or brown paint, a bigger brush than this one ... I think I have every thing else.’

‘Watkingle can organise those items for you,’ said Goldbite.

‘Whose fresh-cut Rat hair, sir?’ asked Watkingle. ‘I ain’t due for a haircut—’

‘Someone will need one,’ said Goldbite. ‘See to it at once.’

‘Aye, aye,’ grumbled Watkingle. He left the cabin, mumbling to himself, ‘Hair, plaster, grey or brown paint ...’

‘Let me see,’ continued Dr Scamandros. He set a green crystal bottle stoppered with a lead seal on the table. ‘The large bottle of activated ink ... might be best to read up a little. There’s that piece in
Xamanader’s Xenographical Xactions
... sure I had a copy somewhere ...’

‘Where is the other Nebuchadnezzar? The one in the Upper House?’ asked Arthur, though as always he was fascinated by the amount and size of the stuff Scamandros could keep in his coat. ‘And are there Rats who might be able to help me there?’

‘I don’t know much,’ replied Goldbite. ‘I believe it is in the very lowest levels of the Upper House, by the steam engines that drive the chains. We do have some agents in place. And, of course, the Piper’s children there who help us would probably assist you too.’

‘Piper’s children?’ asked Suzy. ‘I never knew there was a bunch of us lot in the Upper House.’

At the same time, Arthur asked, ‘Steam engines? Chains?’

Goldbite explained what little he could, with Scamandros interrupting a little, in between cataloguing items he needed and re-sorting strange things that had come out of his coat. As it happened, the sorcerer could add little to Goldbite’s explanations. Scamandros had been expelled from the Upper House several thousand years previously, and back then Superior Saturday had still used more conventional means to build her tower, and there had been other buildings too, not just one enormous, sprawling construction of iron cubes.

‘It sounds like some sort of giant toy construction set,’ said Arthur. ‘And all the cubes get moved along rails by steam-driven chains?’

‘So I am told,’ said Goldbite.

‘Reckon that’ll be worth looking at,’ said Suzy happily. ‘Nothin’ like a nice cloud of honest steam and a bit of sooty coal smoke to invigilate the lungs.’

‘Vigorate,’ said Scamandros absently. ‘In-vig-o-rate. The other’s to do with exams and looking into matters. Cause of my downfall.’

‘I’m sure it will look interesting enough,’ said Arthur. ‘But we have to remember it’s the fortress of our enemy. If you do come, Suzy, you have to stay out of sight and be sneaky. I don’t want to have to fight thousands of sorcerers. Or Saturday, for that matter—not in her own demesne with the Sixth Key. We’ll just go in, find Part Six of the Will, get it, and get out. Get it?’

‘Got it,’ said Suzy.

‘Good,’ said Arthur. At that moment, a fleeting memory of his father, Bob, flashed through his head, of him watching one of his favourite Danny Kaye films and laughing fit to burst. But then it was gone, and Arthur couldn’t think why it had come to mind. He wished he could have held on to it longer. His father, and his family, felt so distant. Even a brief memory of them made him feel not so much alone.

They were taken in a ship’s boat from the
Rattus Navis IV
to the
Rattus Navis II.
Rowed by eight salty Rats with blue ribbons trailing from their straw hats who kept in time to Watkingle’s hoarse roars of ‘Pull, Pull,’ the boat made a quick passage across the few hundred yards of open sea that separated the ships.

Arthur sat with his back against the bow, looking at the
Rattus Navis IV
and the ranks of Newniths on the deck. They were all facing the other way, studiously ignoring the departure of their brief fellow passenger. He was thinking about them, and where they might be going, and also thinking about where he was going, when a great spray of cold seawater splashed across his shoulders. He turned around just in time to cop the last of it in his open mouth, and saw that they were plunging down the face of a wave, having just cut through the crest of it, in the process taking on perhaps a third of a bucket of water. It would have been much more, save for Watkingle’s skill in steering the boat.

In that small amount of water, which had mostly fallen over Arthur, there was something else, which now lay wet and sodden in his lap. It was a fluffy yellow elephant—his toy elephant, which he’d already found once in the Border Sea, home of lost things, only to lose it again somewhere between the Sea and the Great Maze.

‘Elephant,’ he said dumbly, and clutched it to his chest, as tightly as he’d ever held it as a small child. Then he remembered who and where he was, and slowly lowered the toy back into his lap.

‘You need to be careful with that,’ said Dr Scamandros, looking at him over the top of his open copy of
Xamanader’s Xenographical Xactions,
a small scarlet-coloured book that looked too slim to have much sorcerous wisdom in it. ‘Childhood totems are very potent. Some one could make a Cocigrue from it, like the Skinless Boy, or perhaps a sympathetic needle to bring you pain.’

‘I won’t lose Elephant again,’ said Arthur. He put the small toy inside his tunic and made sure it couldn’t fall out. It made rather a strange lump, but he didn’t care.

‘I ’ad a toy when I was little,’ said Suzy. She frowned for a moment, then added, ‘Can’t remember what it was. It moved and made me laugh ...’

‘Ahoy the boat! Come alongside!’

Suzy’s recollections were left behind as they scrambled up the rope ladder to the deck of the
Rattus Navis II,
where they were met by a nattily dressed Raised Rat whose uniform was much finer and considerably more decorative than any other Arthur had seen. Even the basic blue material of his coat had a swirling, silken pattern that caught the light.

‘Greetings, Lord Arthur! I am Lieutenant Finewhisker, commander of this vessel. Please, come below. We have our own small contingent of Newniths aboard, senior officers for the most part, who have been kind enough to foregather in the bow and take tea while you ... ahem ... visit.’

‘Thank you,’ said Arthur.

‘Follow me, please.’ Finewhisker moved quickly to the aft companionway and ushered them down to the captain’s great cabin. It was similar to the cabin in the
Rattus Navis IV,
but was much more elaborately decorated. There were red velvet curtains on the windows, and the chairs were upholstered in a bright patterned cloth that looked almost like a tartan.

Arthur hardly noticed the decorations. The cabin was dominated by an enormous green glass bottle that sat in a wooden cradle that was lashed to the deck. The bottle was at least eight feet long and five feet in diameter, and if it wasn’t for the neck being only as thick as his leg, he could have easily got inside
without
being turned into a Rat first.

The green glass was cloudy, but not entirely opaque, and something that looked like smoke or fog was swirling about inside, prevented from issuing out into the cabin by the Simultaneous Nebuchadnezzar’s huge, wire-wrapped, steel-bonneted cork.

‘Everything is prepared,’ said Finewhisker. ‘You need only enter the bottle, whenever you are ... ah ... made ready to do so. May I offer you a refreshing cordial, Lord Arthur, while your sorcerer prepares his spell?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Arthur. ‘How long will it take you, Doctor Scamandros?’

Scamandros was sorting out his various supplies on the bench. He glanced over at Arthur, blinked several times at the Nebuchadnezzar, and coughed.

‘Perhaps thirty minutes, Lord Arthur. If I may prevail upon someone to fetch me a large piece of cheese with the rind on, I would be grateful. I thought I had a slab of Old Chewsome, but I can’t lay my hand on it.’

‘I will have the cook deliver some,’ Finewhisker said. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable. I must go on deck for a few minutes, but I will be back in plenty of time to open the Nebuchadnezzar. Quite a specialised technique is required, so please do not attempt the cork yourselves. I should also warn you not to touch the glass. The exterior of the bottle is often very, very cold, and occasionally very, very hot. As neither the heat nor cold radiates, it can be a very unpleasant shock.’

‘Doesn’t radiate?’ muttered Scamandros. ‘How very interesting.’

He turned away from the plaster Rat footprints he had been holding and took a step toward the Nebuchadnezzar, then threw his hands up and turned back, the tattoo of a spinning ship’s wheel on his forehead indicating that he had recalled his immediate task.

‘So we go through this ’ere bottle,’ said Suzy thoughtfully. ‘Then we find Part Six of the Will, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur.

‘’Ow exactly do we do that?’ asked Suzy. ‘Reckon it might turn up like Part One and jump in me gob?’

‘I wish it would,’ said Arthur. ‘But it will be trapped somehow. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to feel its presence—I can kind of sense the Parts of the Will now. Or maybe it will be able to speak into my mind, as the other Parts did when I got close enough.’

‘I get a stomachache when Dame Primus is around,’ said Suzy. ‘Maybe that’ll help.’

‘Anything might help. We’ll have to be very careful. Presuming we can find and free Part Six, we’ll use the Fifth Key to head straight back to the Citadel—’

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ interrupted Scamandros. ‘You daren’t do that! Didn’t I explain? There’s always a working of sorcerers watching for sorcery in the Upper House. I daresay there’s even more of them than ever, these days. As soon as you start to use a Key, they’ll hit you with a confinement or encyst you—’

‘They will not dare cast a spell against the Rightful Heir, wielder of the Fifth Key!’ pronounced Arthur, in stentorian tones. He stood up and thumped his chest. ‘They are mere Denizens, it is I who—’

He stopped, wiped his suddenly sweating forehead, and sat down.

‘Sorry,’ he said, in his normal voice. ‘The Keys ... they’re working on me. So how do we get out once we have Part Six, Doctor?’

‘I don’t know, Lord Arthur,’ said Scamandros. ‘I am not much of a strategiser ... all I know is that if you use a Key, you will have only moments before they act against you. If you are very swift, you might be able to get out before they land a spell on you. And it is possible you might be too strong, even for hundreds or thousands of Saturday’s sorcerers. But if they can hold you for a few minutes, that would be enough for Saturday herself to join the working.’

‘And the Sixth Key is strongest in its own demesne,’ said Arthur. ‘What does getting encysted mean, by the way?’

Scamandros shuddered and his tattoos turned a sickly green.

‘You get turned inside out and trapped inside a ... kind of bag ... made out of your own bodily fluids ... which are then vitrified, like glass.’

‘That’s awful! If that happened, wouldn’t I be dead?’

‘Not if you’re a Denizen. They can survive being encysted for a few months, maybe a year. Saturday used to have the cysts hung up here and there, as a warning. It was quite a rare punishment in my day.’

‘Sounds better than a hanging,’ said Suzy brightly. Then she frowned and added, ‘Only I can’t remember any hangings. We used to go to them, and my mum’d take our nuncheon wrapped up in a white cloth ...’

Her voice trailed off as she tried to recall her long-ago human life.

‘I will also have to give you something to wrap the Fifth Key in,’ Scamandros continued. ‘To hide its sorcerous emanations. I have just the thing, somewhere ... but first I must finish constructing this spell. If you would both be so kind as to remain totally silent and look the other way for a few minutes, I need complete concentration.’

Arthur and Suzy complied. Arthur twitched one of the fine curtains aside and looked out at the rolling sea. The waves came almost to the window, and spray splashed across every time the ship heeled over. But it was a tight window and didn’t leak. Arthur found it quite hypnotic just watching the mass of moving grey-green water topped with white. For a few minutes he could empty his mind of all his troubles and just watch the endless sea ...

‘Done!’ exclaimed Scamandros.

Arthur and Suzy turned back. The plaster footprints and the Rat hair had disappeared and the bottle of activated ink was empty. Scamandros was holding the tin of grey paint in one hand and the large brush in the other.

‘Right, clothes off. I’ve got to get you painted up.’

Suzy took off her battered hat and started unbuttoning her coat.

‘Hang on, uh, wait a moment.’ Arthur’s cheeks coloured with embarrassment. He’d got used to mixed washrooms in the Glorious Army of the Architect, though they never really got completely undressed. But that was with Denizens. Suzy, though he could forget about it most of the time, was practically a normal human girl. ‘Why do we have to take our clothes off?’

‘The paint is transformative—it will prepare you to become a Raised Rat,’ Scamandros answered. ‘The activation I shall write upon the rind of the cheese, and then when you eat it, you will become a Raised Rat. I think.’

‘Okay,’ muttered Arthur. He turned back to look out the window and hesitantly undressed.

‘Least there’s ain’t no bibliophages wanting to have a nibble on any writing, like,’ said Suzy. ‘You had writing all over your other clothes, Arthur. Is that what they do back home these days?’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur. He took a deep breath and slipped off his underwear. ‘Start painting, Scamandros.’

‘He’s painting me,’ said Suzy. ‘You’ll ’ave to wait. Youch, that’s cold paint!’

Arthur bit back an order to hurry up and focussed on the view out the window. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Putting them on his hips seemed ridiculous when naked, but so did just letting them hang. Finally he folded them at the front, even though he thought that probably didn’t look too good either.

‘Right, Lord Arthur, here we go,’ said Scamandros. The next second Arthur felt a slap of cold fluid on his back, and flinched.

‘Steady!’ instructed Scamandros. ‘Haven’t any to waste.’

Arthur gritted his teeth and stood very still as Scamandros quickly brushed paint from his head to his heels.

‘Very good, Lord Arthur. Turn around, if you please.’

Arthur shut his eyes and slowly turned around. He heard a knock at the door at the same time, and a Raised Rat called out, ‘Got that cheese for you, sir. I’ll just put it here.’

‘Arms up, Lord Arthur,’ said Scamandros cheerily.

Arthur screwed his eyes shut even tighter and quickly raised his arms. He couldn’t help flinching as the paint went on some delicate areas.

‘You’re done!’ said Scamandros.

Arthur opened his eyes and looked down. He’d been expecting to see grey paint on himself, but instead he saw a fine coat of grey-black fur that covered him from ankle to wrist like a hairy wetsuit.

Though the fur went some way to preserving his modesty, Arthur quickly sat down, crossed his legs, and draped his coat across his lap.

‘You won’t have tails,’ said Scamandros sadly. ‘Couldn’t do it. But quite a few of the Rats go without, having lost them in sea fights and the like.’

He picked up the slab of cheese, broke it into two equal parts, and started writing with a peacock-feather pen he dipped in a tiny bottle of activated ink no larger than Arthur’s little fingernail.

‘I could get used to fur,’ said Suzy. ‘Saves washin’ and changin’ clothes.’

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

‘I do wash ’em,’ Suzy protested. ‘And change ’em. Lot of Denizen clothes clean themselves, you know. And change to fit. I wonder if this fur gets all manky in the rain ...’

‘The cheese is ready,’ said Dr Scamandros. He held up the two pieces, each roughly triangular and about ten inches long.

‘Do we have to eat it all?’ Arthur didn’t sound excited by the prospect.

‘Um, perhaps not.’ Scamandros hesitated. ‘About two-thirds should do the trick ... but it would be best to err on the side of completion.’

‘Right,’ said Arthur. ‘All we need now is Lieutenant Finewhisker to open the Nebuchadnezzar—oh, I almost forgot. You were going to give me something to hide the Key’s thingummies—’

Dr Scamandros nodded and fossicked about inside his coat for a few moments before bringing out a crumpled piece of glittering metallic cloth that looked rather like a crushed tinfoil hat. He smoothed it out and pushed the edges apart, revealing that it was a small rectangular bag.