“It lacks but a quarter hour to twelve,” said Lord Sunday. “Will you give me the Keys and the Atlas?”
Arthur looked up at him. Though many hours had passed, the sun in the Incomparable Gardens moved slowly and had barely shifted against the painted sky. Lord Sunday stood so the disc of the sun was behind his head, giving him a bright and blinding halo.
“No,” said Arthur slowly. “I won’t.”
Lord Sunday frowned and turned away. Arthur blinked and looked up, but saw no dragonfly. Wherever Lord Sunday had come from, it was not on one of his winged creatures.
“I will wait,” said Lord Sunday. “Perhaps you will reconsider afterwards.”
Arthur craned his head around. Sunday had sat down just behind the clock, on a striped canvas chair that had not been there before. A Denizen in a butler’s uniform who looked a bit like Sneezer, though he had green skin, was handing him a tall, pinkish drink. Beyond the butler, a tall-legged beetle the size of a van munched on the leaves of a tree. The beetle had a gilded throne on its back and several smaller cane chairs behind it, and was evidently Sunday’s choice of ground transportation.
The clock ticked. Arthur watched the minute hand move to three minutes to twelve. The chain tightened again, and he lay back and stared at the sky.
It will only be a short pain, he thought. Followed by an ache that will pass in an hour or two as my eyes grow back. It’s not like when I was human…
“Not like when I was human,” he whispered.
“What?” asked Lord Sunday. “What did you say? Did you agree to my proposal?”
“No!” Arthur shouted. He shut his eyes. He wasn’t sure he could stand the pain, but he was absolutely sure he didn’t want to see it happen. “Do your worst!”
The last few minutes stretched out for a very long time. Arthur could see the red glare of the sun through his eyelids. He scrunched his eyes more tightly closed and tried to think of other, nicer things. Of Bob’s music, and of his own songs. He tried to hum one, but he couldn’t remember it, and there were other songs that he should be able to remember, but he couldn’t think how they went either, not even classic songs he’d played a million times himself on the keyboard.
Bong! The clock began to strike. Arthur tensed as he heard the trapdoor fly open, his whole body taut as a bowstring. He ground his teeth together to keep his mouth shut as he heard the whirr and cackle of the clockwork puppets. A shadow eclipsed the red blur of the sun…
I will not scream, thought Arthur furiously. I will not scream or cry or show any sign…
The clock continued to strike, slowly counting to twelve.
Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!
There was no pain. Arthur felt nothing, not the slightest touch on his eyelids or face.
Bong! Bong! Bong!
He gulped, unable to stop himself, and his eyes ever so slightly unscrunched.
Bong! Bong!
Only two strikes to go and still nothing had touched his eyes. Arthur took in a deep, racking breath…
Bong!
The last strike was taking forever and the puppets still hadn’t attacked. They only had the time it took for the clock to sound the twelve chimes.
“Come on!” shouted Arthur.
Bong!
Arthur heard the whirr and the clatter of the puppets’ wooden feet, and the slap of the trapdoor closing. Slowly, ever so slowly, he opened his eyes.
Lord Sunday was standing near him, sipping his drink.
“You are brave,” he said. “Braver than I might have expected, from a mortal. Yet I think you will not be so brave next time.”
“Next time…” whispered Arthur.
“You must give me the Keys and the Atlas,” said Lord Sunday. “It is the only hope for the House and the Secondary Realms.”
Arthur stared up at him, his mind racing, fuelled by fear-induced adrenaline.
“You can’t actually hurt me,” he said with sudden realisation. “That would be like forcing me to hand over the Keys! You can try to scare me and that’s it!”
Lord Sunday gave him a slight, unfriendly smile, and stepped off the clock face.
“I’m not scared!” shouted Arthur. He tried to shout it again, but he couldn’t. Because he was scared. He didn’t know if he was right about the Keys. Maybe the next time the clock struck twelve, the puppets would take his eyes.
There was a soft patter in the grass near the clock. Arthur lifted his head and watched the beetle race past, with Lord Sunday and several of his servants on board. The beetle went very close to the plants where Elephant was hiding. Arthur held his breath as it went by, brushing the shrubs aside before disappearing over the edge of the terrace.
Elephant emerged a minute later and crossed the grass. He gripped one of the clock’s numerals with his trunk and used that to help lever himself up on to the clock face before trotting over to Arthur.
“I’ve still got my eyes, Elephant,” said Arthur. “And twelve hours to figure out something else. I can’t just wait for the Mariner. He took weeks to come to the Border Sea.”
Elephant nodded.
“I didn’t ask before,” said Arthur. “Because I didn’t think of it. But can you talk now?”
Elephant shook his head slowly and let out a soft, negative boom.
“I thought maybe I could send you to find a telephone,” said Arthur. “To call Dame Primus. But if you can’t talk…it’s not that I want you to go anywhere…”
Elephant nodded and sat down next to Arthur with a loud thud.
Arthur kept staring at the sky, busy thinking.
“Maybe you could go up the hill behind us,” he said slowly. “That’s where Sunday’s Noon took my Keys. If you could find them and they’re still in that net, you could bring them to me.”
Elephant lumbered back upright and let out a short, eager trumpet.
“OK,” said Arthur. “You go and take a look. But be very careful. Don’t get into a fight or get hurt. Try to stay hidden. And remember you can’t touch the Keys themselves. Only the net. Come back if it’s too dangerous.”
Elephant nodded, saluted with his trunk and headed off.
“I mean it!” Arthur called out. “Don’t try to touch the Keys. Be careful!”
He waited until Elephant had left the clock before he let his head fall back. Quietly he added, “You’re all I’ve got left. To remind me who I really am.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dame Primus bent down to Leaf and touched her sword hand with one gauntleted finger.
“Ow!” Leaf shrieked as a white-hot pain coursed through her fingers and up to her elbow, leaving her arm completely dead. Her nerveless fingers dropped the sword hilt and the loop fell from her wrist. The sword clattered to the ground, completely out of the Front Door.
“Oh,” said Leaf, looking down at the fallen blade. “Does this mean I’m not the Lieutenant Keeper any more? Can I go home?”
“No and no,” replied Dame Primus. “I have merely detached you from duty in the Door. I have another task for you.”
“But I don’t want any tasks!” Leaf protested. She massaged her arm as the feeling slowly returned, accompanied by ferocious pins and needles. “I want to go home!”
“I daresay you do,” sniffed Dame Primus. “But like it or not, you will either do my bidding or you will return to the Door and resume your duties there.”
Leaf clenched one fist. The fingers on her right hand still wouldn’t close.
“I guess I don’t have a choice,” she said angrily. “What’s this task?”
“You will take up your sword and go with General Suzy Blue to the Upper House to join with her in capturing sufficient elevator controls to enable our invasion to be launched. Should you survive that, then I expect you will join in our subsequent assault upon the Incomparable Gardens.”
“I’ll go along with that for now,” said Leaf, crossing her fingers behind her back. “But as soon as I see Arthur, I’ll just get him to send me home. So there.”
Dame Primus smiled, a thin smile that had no good humour in it.
“As you wish,” she said. “As we do not know where Lord Arthur is, and we cannot find him anywhere within our domains, within the House or out of it, I can only wish that you do find him, and quickly at that. Now tell me, did Sunday’s Dusk say why he was taking you from your world?”
The sudden change of subject rattled Leaf for a second.
“No – he just said something about Lord Sunday liking to have all his tools ready before he did some work.”
“Interesting,” said Dame Primus. “I wonder…”
She looked up at the ceiling, her gaze distant, as if she looked far beyond the pressed plaster decorations of book fruits growing upon vines of words. Then she bent her head back down and snapped at Leaf.
“In any event, there is no time to waste. General Suzy Blue!”
“I’m here,” said Suzy. She mouthed something under her breath, which Leaf thought might be “you old bat”.
“Your force must strike within the hour, and at least twenty elevator shafts must be open into the Upper House within a further hour of your attack.”
“Twenty, milady?” exclaimed Dr Scamandros. The tattoos on his face became tumbling Catherine wheels trailing sparks as they careened across his cheeks and crashed into each other. “In an hour? Even if they have been merely blocked, it will take me considerably more time to undo—”
“You have your colleague,” said Dame Primus, pointing to Giac. “Put him to work.”
“Even the two of us—”
“You will do it!” ordered Dame Primus. Her voice shredded the books in the shelf nearest her, their spine bindings falling to the floor like a nest of serpents suddenly all discarding their skins at once. “Don’t you understand? There is no time! Without Arthur here, the Middle House will soon fall, and the Upper House after it. Only the Incomparable Gardens can survive, and we must all be in it just as soon as we can!”
Suzy blinked and wiped paper dust off her face. Then she saluted. “Right, then. Come on, Leaf! Let’s go find our raiding party.”
Leaf, partially stunned herself, bent and picked up the Lieutenant Keeper’s sword. It practically leaped to her hand, instantly banishing the remaining deadness and pins and needles. But Leaf noticed at once she could no longer sense what was going on inside the Front Door.
“Dame Primus!” she called. The Will, who was already leaving, stopped and turned back. “The Front Door…there are lots of Nithlings in it and Nothing is leaking in everywhere. It needs to be defended.”
“Yes,” said Dame Primus. “It must be defended, for what little time remains. I shall dispatch Friday’s Dawn and a force of Gilded Youths. It is unlikely the Piper would try to use the Door. He has no need for it, now that he is within the Upper House.”
“That reminds me,” said Suzy quietly, after Dame Primus had stalked out. “You get those things I was after, Doc?”
“What?” asked Dr Scamandros, who was already deep in a technical discussion of elevator sorcery with Giac, who once again seemed surprised at the return of his long-forgotten knowledge. “Oh, yes!”
He rummaged inside his coat and handed over a large brown paper bag that looked like it was full of marbles. Or acorns. Suzy stuffed it in her own coat pocket, though like the doctor’s, there didn’t appear to be room for such a large bag.
“What’s in that?” asked Leaf. “And what’s with calling me ‘Admiral’?”
“Earpluggers,” said Suzy. “Make sure the Piper don’t get us again. As for Admiral, I reckon you need to be a nob to get anything done ’round ’ere. Though I s’pose you is Lieutenant Keeper of the Door…”
“Only until Arthur can fix things,” said Leaf. “And get me home.”
“We got to do some fighting first,” said Suzy with unconcealed relish.
Leaf shook her head and quietly followed Suzy as the Piper’s child rushed past the lines of soldiers and bookbinders.
“Come on, Giac, Doc!” Suzy called at the next intersection. “Hurry up! We’ve got an elevator to catch!”
Scamandros and Giac caught up just as Suzy reached some stairs and bounded up them, with Leaf following less enthusiastically a few steps behind.
“But, General!” called out Giac. “Aren’t there going to be more of us going?”
Suzy stopped at the top and tapped her pocket with the bag of earpluggers, as she called them.
“Of course!” she said. “Why do you think I need all these? And what do you think Bren, Shan and Athan have been up to? Gathering the Raiders, of course! Come on!”
Suzy’s Raiders, threescore and six Piper’s children arrayed in the most motley combination of weapons, uniforms and equipment that anyone had ever seen, were gathered in the courtyard, being watched suspiciously by a number of sergeants from the more regular units. The sergeants stood between the Raiders and the supply wagons, and whenever a Piper’s child drifted too close, they grunted warnings and raised their swagger-sticks, bow staves or knuckle-duster knives.
A short, black-haired and very dark-skinned Piper’s child in a uniform that was half Regiment and half Horde, with a savage-sword sheathed on his back rather than at his side, began to address the Raiders as Suzy and the others approached from behind.
“All right, you lot!” called out Fred Initial Numbers Gold. “Suzy’ll be here any minute. Has everyone got everything they need?”