by Garth Nix
‘Friday is using the Key,’ warned the Will, who came right after him. It shrank itself down some more and scuttled between two swaying sleepers. ‘In a most peculiar fashion.’
‘This is unusual,’ said Scamandros, who was next to emerge from the white-lit transition from the Seven Dials. He raised his glasses to his forehead and peered at the nearest sleeper. ‘These mortals are being drained of … well, not life, exactly, but close to it.’
Leaf had stopped shouting. Arthur was about to push forward when he heard a distant crackling sound and a pain he knew danced across his teeth. An instant later, the Mariner’s harpoon flew down from the crater wall. It looked as if it would strike Friday but she leaped up the merest fraction of a second ahead of its impact, yellow wings bursting to turn her jump into flight. The Key stayed in her hand, rainbow-bright and full of experience.
‘The Mariner!’ shouted Friday, pointing up at the crater wall. ‘Attack him!’
A dozen Denizens, including the monocled Noon, wheeled in the air and flew towards the window where the Mariner held out a hand for his returning harpoon.
‘Stop!’ roared Arthur. He raised the baton of the Fourth Key high, hands steady in the gauntlets of the Second Key. ‘Keys, bring Friday to me! And you Denizens, leave the Mariner alone!’
Arthur’s voice echoed throughout the crater. It did not sound like a boy shouting, but a great lord calling for his servants to do his bidding.
Lady Friday jackknifed in the air as she tried to fly back to her balcony. Still holding the mirror with its cargo of experience, she was carried backwards as if blown by a wind, landing in an unladylike sprawl in front of Arthur. More sleepers tumbled out of her way, but she paid them no heed.
‘So, you got out,’ she said to the Will conversationally. ‘This boy managed what you could not yourself.’
‘That is so, madam,’ said the Will. ‘And now it is time for you to relinquish your charge to this same boy, who is not a boy at all, but Lord Arthur, the Rightful Heir.’
‘I am ready to do so,’ said Friday. ‘But may I just taste a little more? I am defeated, I know, but only as a mortal can I truly know the feeling of defeat. Give me just a few minutes more, let me enjoy the rich textures of mortal life once more—’
‘No,’ said Arthur. He sheathed the baton and held out his hand. ‘I, Arthur, anointed Heir to the Kingdom, claim the Fifth Key—’
Friday screamed and tried to tip the mirror to her mouth, rainbow threads falling everywhere around her face. Arthur spoke more quickly, gabbling out the words.
‘—and with it the demesne of the Middle House. I claim it by blood and bone and contest out of truth in testament and against all trouble!’
The mirror flew from Friday’s hand into Arthur’s. She shrieked again and hurled herself after it. Arthur dodged aside, hurtling farther than he intended due to the lesser gravity. Friday whirled to try again, but the Will, grown larger again, gripped the back of her neck with its sharp bat teeth and shook her till thin rivulets of blue blood ran down her shapely neck.
Arthur looked for a moment at the rainbow-hued mirror in his hand and then at all the sleepers. He felt no sense of triumph. He felt sick in his heart, hollow and defeated.
‘I suppose my mum’s here somewhere,’ he said. ‘We were just that little bit too late.’
Dr Scamandros coughed and raised his hand. ‘Ahem, Lord Arthur, I believe it may not be entirely too late. The great majority of the extracted experiences must still lie within the Key. It is possible they can be returned. Friday would know best.’
Arthur turned to Friday, who hung limp and silent in the Will’s jaws. ‘Is it possible to return the experiences?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps,’ said Friday dully. ‘I do not know. If it lies within the power of the Key, it can be done. I am no sorcerer.’ ‘Arthur, the Mariner is signalling,’ said Fred.
Arthur looked up at the crater. He could make out the Mariner clearly now, and he felt a small surge of happiness when he saw that the small figure by his side was Leaf.
‘Arthur!’ roared the Mariner, his seagoing voice of command almost as loud as Arthur’s sorcerously magnified shout had been. ‘There are dangerous plants getting in! Order Friday’s Denizens to repel boarders!’
‘What?’ Arthur shouted back. ‘Dangerous what?’
‘Plants!’ shouted the Mariner, and Leaf too, from the look of it, though her voice was totally drowned out.
The Denizens who were circling above heard it clearly. All but one swooped down towards Arthur and for a second he thought they were going to attack. But they halted to hover a good distance away, and one of them spoke.
‘Lord Arthur, may we go to fight the plants at once? If their way in is not stopped promptly, we will be swamped.’
‘Go and fight the plants,’ ordered Arthur. Then he looked up and said, ‘Hey, where have Friday’s Noon and Dusk gone?’
‘Lord Arthur, if I may interrupt,’ said Scamandros. ‘There may be a time factor in returning the experiences. A degradation may occur if it is not done quickly—’
‘Right!’ said Arthur. ‘How do I put the experiences back?’
Scamandros looked doubtful and the tattoos on his cheeks changed from books with turning pages to a wild tangle of question marks that began to fight one another.
‘The Keys shortcut much sorcery,’ he said. ‘If you assume the position Lady Friday took when taking the experiences, and simply ask the Fifth Key to replace the stolen experiences, it may work. Unfortunately, to discern a more rigorous technique would take me days or weeks.’
‘Give me your wings, Fred,’ Arthur said quickly. ‘Stick them on. Thanks. Don’t let Friday go, Will. Suzy, keep an eye out for Friday’s Noon and Dusk. They should know they’re beaten, but …’
He flexed the wings and leaped into the air, careful to hold the Fifth Key level. He knew that it wasn’t like a cup and he probably couldn’t spill the contents, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.
The silver chair was sunk, though Arthur could see it through the clear blue water. So he stood on the stone pillar and faced the direction Friday had. Seeing all the sleepers standing and swaying all around him, he couldn’t help but search for his mother’s face. Was she here? Were there other people he knew?
‘Hurry!’ called out Scamandros, who was looking closely at the back of one of the sleeper’s heads.
Arthur took a deep breath, raised his arms as he had seen Friday do, and concentrated his thoughts on the Fifth Key. Just to be sure, he also spoke aloud, though quietly, so only he could hear.
‘Fifth Key, return the experiences you hold to these poor people, so that they are just as they were before Friday stole their precious lives. Repair their memories and give back all their happinesses—’ He paused for the briefest instant, wondering whether that was all they needed, but in that same moment knew that it was not. He would not himself be content to have only his happy memories.
‘—and all their sorrows. Thank you.’
The Key flashed with multicoloured light, and streamers exploded out from Arthur’s hand, snaking back across the silver-mirrored lake to connect with all the sleepers, making for just a few seconds a brilliant shining lattice of every colour of the rainbow.
Then the streamers were gone and the mirror in Arthur’s hand grew dull. As the sleepers still swayed and shuffled in their places, Arthur spread his wings and flew back to the others.
‘Did it work?’ Arthur shouted in dismay as he landed. ‘They don’t look any better!’
Scamandros leaned back from the head he was inspecting, pushed his glasses farther up his forehead, and shouted back, ‘Yes! Most, if not all, the stolen experience has been returned. The sleep is a different matter, merely an instruction from Friday, easily broken. But I suggest we leave them asleep until they can be returned.’
‘You have done well, Arthur,’ said the Will, who had spat out Friday and was now content to keep her wrapped under one wing. The former Trustee d
id not complain or struggle. She sat there, staring into space, her eyes unfocused. ‘Very well indeed.’
Arthur was not listening. He was already aloft again, flying over the crowd, searching for his mother.
‘That’s a dozen gold roundels you owe me, Fred,’ said Suzy. ‘Told you we’d get back to Arthur and get the Fifth Key before we got a decent cup of tea.’
‘We got a cup of tea at Binding Junction,’ protested Fred.
‘Not a decent cup,’ said Suzy. ‘That was poison.’
‘I wonder how we are going to get all these people back to where they belong,’ said Scamandros. ‘And now that I think of it, I wonder how we are going to get back. I forgot to pack a Transfer Plate!’
Twenty-six
‘SHE’S NOT AMONG the sleepers in the crater,’ Arthur said an hour later. The silver chair had been fished out of the lake and set up on the shore, and he was sitting on it, as the centrepiece of an impromptu court or council of war. ‘Leaf, are you sure this Harrison fellow would know if she was here?’
Harrison, who had been found hiding in the linen store, nodded from where he was kneeling in front of Arthur. Leaf, who was sitting at Arthur’s side on a wooden chair from one of the closer rooms, also nodded. Her Aunt Mango stood next to her, swaying from side to side and occasionally snoring.
‘Harrison had the records from Friday’s hospital back home of everyone sent through. I’m on the list, but there’s no mention of your mum.’
‘Someone else has taken her, then,’ said Arthur. ‘Scamandros, there can be no doubt she is not on Earth?’
‘If we could not find her through the Seven Dials, she is either shrouded by sorcery or somewhere else,’ Scamandros replied.
Arthur bit his lip, then asked the question that had been worrying him for a long time.
‘Could she be dead?’
‘Only if no one knows she is dead. Which is very unlikely.’
‘I have to find out,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t suppose it’s any use now, but Scamandros, if I use the First Key instead of the Fifth, will it contaminate me less?’
‘No, Arthur,’ Scamandros said sadly.
‘Thought not,’ Arthur muttered. He raised the mirror, glad that he couldn’t see the crocodile ring and its measure of his sorcerous contamination under the gauntlet of the Second Key. ‘Friday, I charge you by the power of the Fifth Key to tell me truly if you know anything of what has happened to my mother since last Thursday, in the time of Earth, my home.’
‘I know nothing,’ whispered Lady Friday. ‘I would have taken your mother, if she had been there for the taking. But she was not among the patients of the temporary hospital from which I took my final selection. I would have so enjoyed her experiences,
I’m sure—’ ‘Enough!’ ordered Arthur.
He bent his head and kneaded his forehead with his gauntleted fingers until a sudden fear that this could somehow contaminate him even more made him sit back straight, just in time to see the Mariner approaching. He was leading two bedraggled Denizens, who were in turn carrying across their shoulders Friday’s Noon and Dusk. The two superior Denizens were silent and still, their eyes closed, but they were not dead. There were papers stuck on their foreheads, hanging down over their elegant noses. Friday’s Noon had lost his monocle.
‘Milka and Feorin!’ said Leaf. ‘These were the two who helped me. Not that they really meant to.’
‘I found them trying to sneak out and board my ship!’ The Mariner laughed. ‘Doubtless they did not know what I do with stowaways!’
Arthur looked at the bedraggled would-be star sailors, and then at Friday’s Noon and Dusk. He was annoyed that they had escaped punishment, the more so that they were doing it by partaking of some poor long-lost mortals’ lives.
‘Can they be brought out of their experiencing?’ he asked.
‘Not without breaking their minds,’ said Scamandros. ‘It is not an area which I have studied. I don’t know who has. Now, Arthur, we must get these sleepers back to their Secondary Realm, to your Earth. They will wake up before too long and I doubt that waking here would serve them well.’
‘I need to get Aunt Mango back,’ confirmed Leaf.
‘Easier said than done.’ Arthur felt the pocket at his side where the Fifth Key rested. They had already established that there were two ways out of Friday’s retreat, mirror-paths set up that could be activated by the Key. One went back to the private hospital on Earth and the other to the Middle of the Middle House.
‘Martine can lead us back if you can open the way with the Key,’ said Leaf. She had spoken to the craggy-faced, grey-haired woman, who was not anywhere near as mad as Harrison had made out. She was just shy and deathly afraid of Lady Friday and the Denizens, though she’d served the former Trustee for at least thirty years.
‘I’ve got a Transfer Plate too,’ said Suzy, pulling out a disc of burnished electrum. ‘The doc can retune it for the Citadel or wherever you want to go, Arthur.’
‘I want to go back to Earth!’ said Arthur. ‘I’m just not sure if that’s the right thing to do. The Piper may already be attacking the Citadel again, and without the Keys, Dame Primus will be hard-pressed. So perhaps I should go there. Or I should move directly against Saturday … if I can figure out some way of getting into the Upper House. There’s just so much I don’t know!’
‘Knowledge, like all things, is best in moderation,’ intoned the Will. ‘Knowing everything means you don’t need to think, and that is very dangerous.’
‘Whatever you decide, Arthur, I must be away,’ said the Mariner. ‘The solar tide of this purple star flows strongly, and I would catch it. If you do not require them, I might also take these Denizens. My current ship requires no crew, but I have my eye on a larger vessel.’
‘They may go, if they wish,’ said Arthur. ‘Though if you could stay, Captain, I’d really appreciate it.’
‘Do we wish?’ Feorin asked Milka.
‘Definitely,’ said Milka. She bowed low to Arthur, and then almost as low to Leaf.
‘I must catch the tide,’ said the Mariner. ‘I am a seafarer, Arthur. Long ago I decided I did not want to be immured in all the politicking and bickering within the House. When my debt to you is fully paid, I shall not come again, save that it be at my own whim.’
The Mariner saluted Arthur. Then he took his crew and left, striding back inside to begin the long climb up to the crater rim where his small starship nestled against a crack in the dome. As they disappeared, Leaf heard Feorin asking the Mariner whether he had his ship’s log bound in leather or calfskin.
‘I have decided,’ said Arthur. ‘I will go back to Earth with you, Leaf, and the sleepers. Suzy – you, Fred, and the Will had better use the Transfer Plate to go to the Great Maze and take Friday with you to be locked up, with her Noon and Dusk. Dr Scamandros, I have the plate here that took me to the Middle House. You can reset it for Monday’s Dayroom – I know Dame Primus wants you to keep an eye on the Old One.’
‘It is not the Old One that is troubling,’ said Dr Scamandros. ‘He is chained as always. But there has been a curious winnowing of Coal-Collaters and other strangeness in the cellars. I am investigating that.’
‘I am going to give you the first four Keys to take to Dame Primus,’ continued Arthur, directing his attention to the Beast. ‘I’ll need the Fifth Key to get back to the House. Which I will do as soon as possible.’
‘I’d keep them all if I was you,’ said Suzy.
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘Everything of power from the House, Denizen or Key, has a bad effect on the Secondary Realms. I have brought enough plagues and troubles to my world. Besides, Dame Primus will need them to fight off the Piper. And Saturday.’
‘Saturday!’ exclaimed Suzy. ‘That reminds me. Where did I put it?’
She rummaged in the pockets of her paper coat, pulled out a small square of paper, and handed it to Arthur.
‘It’s the paper poor old Uggie had. I reckon he got it from the Raised Rat w
ho used the Transfer Plate Friday sent to Saturday, the one whose tracks we saw in the snow. There’s a bloody paw print on the outside, see?’
‘What is it?’ asked Arthur. He unfolded it as Suzy answered.
‘Something worth a Raised Rat dying for, I’d say.’
Arthur read what was written on the scrap of paper aloud. It had been torn from a larger paper, and there was an edge that he thought had probably once held a seal, for there was a trace of the rainbow wax used by all the Trustees.
For the last time, I do not wish to intervene. Manage affairs in the House as you wish. It will make little difference in the end.
S.
About the Author
GARTH NIX was born on a Saturday in Melbourne, Australia, and got married on a Saturday, to his publisher wife, Anna. So Saturday is a good day. Garth used to write every Sunday afternoon because he had a number of day jobs over the years that nearly always started on a Monday, usually far too early. These jobs have included being a bookseller, an editor, a PR consultant and a literary agent. Tuesday has always been a lucky day for Garth, when he receives good news, like the telegram (a long time ago, in the days of telegrams) that told him he had sold his first short story, or when he heard his novel Abhorsen had hit The New York Times bestseller list.
Wednesday can be a letdown after Tuesday, but it was important when Garth served as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, because that was a training night. Thursday is now particularly memorable because Garth and Anna’s son, Thomas, was born on a Thursday afternoon. Friday is a very popular day for most people, but since Garth has become a full-time writer it has no longer marked the end of the work week. On any day, Garth may generally be found near Coogee Beach in Sydney, where he and his family live.