Someone or something said something back. Noon frowned.
‘Well, reroute it! I said express.’
The lift suddenly lurched and fell, hurling Arthur into one of the Commissionaires, who remained rock-steady at attention. Noon and Dawn were thrown against the railings of the rotunda. Noon scowled and pulled the speaking tube towards him. Then he reached in with one long, slim finger and tugged at something. There was a stifled scream from the tube, then Noon slowly pulled out a nose he had twisted in his white-gloved fingers, followed by a mouth and chin, then a whole head complete with a battered hat – all of which was impossible for Arthur to believe, since the tube was no wider than a can of soup.
A few seconds later, Noon had dragged an entire man out of the tube, dropping him on the floor next to the rotunda. The extracted fellow was short and fat. His coat was too long, its badly mended back brushing the floor.
Noon glowered down at him.
‘Elevator Operator Seventh Grade?’
‘No, Your Honour,’ said the little man. Arthur could see he was trying to be brave. ‘Elevator Operator Fourth Grade.’
‘Not anymore,’ replied Noon. His notebook appeared in his hand and he wrote in it quickly. Then he tore out the sheet and let it fall.
‘Oh, please, Your Lordliness,’ said the man miserably. ‘I’ve been in grade four a hundred years –’
The paper hit the little man’s shoulder and exploded into blue sparks that surrounded his head like a corona. The sparks ate away the man’s squashy hat, leaving him bald, then descended to destroy his coat, his shirt, his breeches, and his coat. Arthur shut one eye, not really wanting to see what might come next, particularly if the man’s skin started dissolving or something. But it didn’t. Instead the sparks formed into a simple toga-like robe of off-white that settled on the man in place of his former clothes.
‘You didn’t need to do that as well,’ said the elevator operator with considerable dignity. ‘They were hard-won, those fittings.’
Noon held the speaking tube over the man’s head.
‘Count yourself lucky,’ he said. ‘Do not cross me again – and get back to work.’
The elevator man sighed, rubbed one knuckle to his forehead in a perfunctory gesture of respect, and raised his hand. It went easily into the speaking tube, then somehow all the rest of him was sucked up as well, as if the tube were a vacuum cleaner and the man was collapsible.
When he was gone, Noon spoke into the tube again.
‘As we discussed. Express and smooth. Lower Ground twenty-twelve. The Upper Coal Cellar Entry.’
Arthur suppressed a shudder. That sounded like a long way away from anywhere he knew. With that thought came a wave of negativity. Everything was too difficult, too hard. He might as well give up.
How can I save everyone from the plague? the depressed section of his mind said. I can’t even save myself from imprisonment.
Stop it! Arthur told this part of himself. Suzy and the Will are free. I’ve still got the Key. There will be the chance to do something. There has to be . . .
Fourteen
THE UPPER COAL Cellar Entry was a rickety wooden platform on the edge of a blasted plain. A vast panorama of open space, dimly lit by the beams of only three or four elevators. As in the Lower Atrium, there was a ceiling above the platform, but unlike the Atrium the ceiling here was flat, not domed, and it was much higher up.
Arthur was marched out onto the platform within his box of Commissionaires. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw that the plain beyond the platform was not a totally featureless expanse as he’d thought. There was something in the middle.
A circular patch of total darkness.
A huge hole, at least half a mile in diameter and of a depth unseen and unknowable.
‘Yes,’ said Noon, who had been watching Arthur. ‘That pit is the Deep Coal Cellar. Sergeant! March the prisoner to the edge.’
There was a pathway from the elevator platform to the pit. It was paved with white stone that repelled the black dust that lay everywhere else, dust that billowed up as they passed. Coal dust, Arthur guessed it was. He hoped he wasn’t breathing it in and that it wouldn’t still be in his lungs when . . . if . . . he ever got back home. He’d really need the Key then, to keep on breathing. There was no way his poor lungs could survive coal dust along with everything else.
As the Commissionaires marched, their legs occasionally squeaking for want of oil, Arthur tried to stay calm. Suzy had retrieved the Will, and surely it would come looking for him. Though Dusk had said that this was one place the Will wouldn’t dare go, because it feared the Old One.
That doesn’t sound good, whispered the defeatist part of Arthur’s mind. Stuck in a prison pit with some creature called the Old One.
‘You will not be alone down there,’ said Noon. He looked at Arthur knowingly, as if he had just read his mind. ‘There are some House Denizens down there, demoted to the most menial of tasks, chipping coal to size and so forth. They will not dare bother you. But there is one other, who you should stay away from, if you value your life and sanity. He is called the Old One, and he is not to be trifled with. Keep away from him, and you will merely suffer from the cold, the damp, and the coal dust.’
‘How will I know the Old One if I see him?’ asked Arthur. He tried to sound defiant but it didn’t come out that way. His voice sounded squeaky and small. He cleared his throat and tried again, ‘And how am I supposed to get out of here, if I do want to give Mister Monday the Key?’
‘You’ll know the Old One,’ said Noon. He smiled his cold smile, white teeth gleaming. ‘He’s hard to miss. As I said, avoid him, if you can. As for getting out, just say my name three times. Monday’s Noon. I’ll come and fetch you. Or I’ll send someone to take care of the matter.’
They arrived at the edge of the pit as Noon finished speaking. The Commissionaires stopped right at the lip, with only inches separating their toes from the void. Arthur peered past them, down into darkness. He could not see how deep the pit was, or any lights below.
Noon took out his notebook and tore out a page. He quickly folded this page into the shape of two wings, serrating the edges with a small knife to give the impression of feathers. Then he wrote a word on each small paper wing and shook them slowly. With each shake, they grew bigger, until Noon was holding a pair of feathery wings as tall as Arthur. They were pure white and glowing, but where Noon held them, black ink trickled down from his fingers like blood.
‘Let me through,’ Noon instructed the Commissionaires. They stepped aside to let him pass, but the one closest to the pit thoughtlessly stepped out into nothing. He made no effort to save himself or grab the edge. He just fell into the void, without making a sound, save the sigh of the air parting. Arthur didn’t hear him hit the bottom.
Noon frowned, shook his head, and muttered something about ‘inferior merchandise’. Then he suddenly slapped the wings onto Arthur’s back and pushed the boy extremely hard – into the pit!
Arthur felt the wings attach themselves to his shoulder blades. It was a weird sensation. Not exactly painful, but not pleasant. Rather like having a tooth filled at the dentist, with an injection removing the pain but not the vibration. The shock of this sudden attachment and then the next shock as his wings spread and slowed his fall took Arthur’s mind off the fact that he had just been pushed into an apparently bottomless pit. By the time this had registered, his wings were beating hard, and he was falling very slowly, no faster than a spider leisurely descending on her web.
Up above, and far behind him now, Arthur heard Noon laughing, and then the tromp of the metal Commissionaires’ boots upon the white pavestones as they marched away.
‘I’ll never call you,’ whispered Arthur. He clutched the Key tightly in his hand. His voice came back, strong, angry, and loud. ‘I’ll find a way out. I’ll sort you out and Mister Monday and the whole lot of you!’
‘That’s the spirit!’ said a soft voice near him in the darkness. Surprised, Arthur lashed out with the Key, but the metal met no resistance. He was still falling slowly, and there was nothing around him but air and darkness.
Or was there? Arthur raised the Key and said, ‘Light! Shed light!’
The Key shone with sudden bright light, casting a globe of illumination around Arthur and his beating wings. In the light Arthur saw another winged figure, matching the speed of his fall. A man, all in black, his black wings as glossy and dark as a raven’s, with not a touch of white.
‘Monday’s Dusk,’ spat Arthur. ‘What do you want?’
‘It seems the Key’s powers are not all unknown to you, as Noon would have it,’ whispered Dusk. Arthur could hardly hear him over the beating of both their wings. ‘As to what I want, I want to help you, Arthur. You have been chosen by the Will. You hold the Minute Key of the Lower House.’
‘What?’ asked Arthur. Surely this was some sort of trick. ‘Aren’t you like Monday’s right-hand man or something?’
‘Noon sits at the Master’s right hand, Dawn at his left. Dusk stands behind, in the shadows. Yet sometimes it is easier to see the light when you stand partly in the darkness. Monday was not always as he is now. Nor were Noon and Dawn. The Lower House was not the shambles it has become. All of this has led me slowly . . . oh so slowly . . . to come to the conclusion that something must be done. I helped the Will free itself, by giving an Inspector a box of snuff. Now I will help you by giving you some advice.’
Arthur snorted in disbelief. This was so obvious. He’d seen it a million times on television. Good cop, bad cop. Noon had done the bad cop act, now it was Dusk’s turn. He was pretty convincing at it, though.
‘You should talk to the Old One. The others forget that while he opposed the Architect, he does not hate Her work. You are one small part of that, and so he will be interested and will not harm you. Ask him about the Improbable Stair. Use the knowledge he gives you.’
‘Why should I trust you?’ asked Arthur.
‘Why trust anyone?’ Dusk replied, so quietly that Arthur could not hear him and had to repeat his question. Dusk flew closer, until his face was close enough to touch, the tips of his ebony wings almost brushing Arthur’s snowy ones with every forward beat.
‘Why trust anyone?’ he said again. ‘The Will wants its way. Monday wants his way, as do the Morrow Days. But who can say what those ways will lead to? Be cautious, Arthur!’
On the last word, Dusk’s wings beat more strongly and he rose, while Arthur continued to fall. Arthur had no control over the wings Noon had made for him. They merely slowed his fall, like a parachute, only better.
Arthur had a long time to think about what Dusk had said. His wings kept beating and he kept falling, until he grew used to the motion and it even made him sleepy. The Deep Coal Cellar was deep indeed, deeper than any pit or mine Arthur had ever heard of in his own world, save the ocean trenches where strange life-forms dwelled.
Finally there was an end to the interminable falling. Arthur had a brief warning as his wings suddenly doubled their efforts, beating furiously so he came to a complete stop. Then they detached themselves, dumping Arthur the last three or four feet onto hard, wet ground. He landed with a splash and fell over, soaking himself and almost losing the Key. A second later, two shredded pieces of paper fell next to him, to become lumps of wet pulp.
The water was only a few inches deep. Little more than a puddle, though it was not an isolated one. Arthur held up the Key so its light shed farther and saw that there were puddles of water everywhere. Black water, lying stagnant in pools between stretches of marginally drier ground that were a foul, muddy mixture of coal dust and water.
There were also piles of coal. Lots and lots of small pyramids five or six feet high had been labouriously piled up every five yards or so. Arthur took a look at the closest pile. Unlike the perfectly even pieces that he’d seen Suzy use, the coal here was all misshapen lumps of very different sizes. As he walked around, Arthur saw that the pyramids were also of different sizes, and some were much better ordered than others. A few times he saw collapsed pyramids that were just dumps of loose coal.
As Noon had promised, it was cold as well as damp. At least the water keeps the coal dust down, Arthur thought, though it billowed up as he moved around. But he had to keep moving because it was too cold to stay still. If Suzy was right and he didn’t need to eat, then he supposed he could keep moving all the time.
Except that she hadn’t said anything about not needing to sleep and Arthur was tired. They had shifts here, he knew, so presumably that meant the people – or Denizens, as they seemed to be called – did sleep.
Hopefully the Key would protect him from getting pneumonia or a cold, if it was possible to catch such things here, despite Suzy’s opinion. But it would be a miserable experience trying to sleep on a pile of coal in the cold and wet.
Arthur kept weaving between the piles of coal as he thought about what he was going to do. Should he trust Dusk? One of the last things the Will had mentioned was the Improbable Stair, as a possible means of getting to Mister Monday’s Dayroom. Dusk had talked about the Improbable Stair too. Perhaps it was a way out of here as well as a way into Monday’s rooms.
But to find out he would need to find the Old One and risk talking to him. Arthur had noted the shiver that had gone through Dawn and the Commissionaire Sergeants when the Old One had been mentioned. They were afraid of him, that was for sure. And the Will must also fear the Old One, Arthur concluded, or Noon and Monday would never have left him down here with the Key.
He couldn’t think of an alternative. Which meant that he had to get methodical about finding the Old One. The pit was only half a mile in diameter, though many miles deep. If Arthur kept track of where he’d been, he should be able to search the whole pit in a grid pattern, though it would not be quick work.