Lord Sunday

As the fiery column slowly sank back to the ground, Arthur spun around again, checking behind him. He listened for the squealing noises and, though he couldn’t hear them, he heard something else: a clicking noise, getting louder and closer. Arthur knew what it was – the sound the insect soldier’s limbs had made when it had moved, but magnified a thousand times.

He jumped up on the trench’s firing step and looked out on to the yellow mud no-man’s-land of this alien war. Thousands of stick-insect soldiers were marching towards him, all perfectly in step, all holding those squealing tubes.

I could kill them all from here, thought Arthur. He felt a feral grin begin to spread across his face, before he pushed it away. He had the power, it was true, but he knew he didn’t have the right. They weren’t even really enemies; they knew nothing of the struggles in the House. They might look like giant stick insects, but obviously they were sentient beings, as technologically advanced as humans, perhaps even more so.

So what? thought Arthur. I’m no longer human. I am Lord Arthur, Rightful Heir to the Architect. I could kill ten thousand humans as easily as ten thousand alien insects.

He began to raise the mirror, visualising an even bigger, more awesome column of fire, one that stretched from horizon to horizon, saving only him from the inferno.

“No,” whispered Arthur. He forced his self-righteous pride and anger back. “I am me…I’m not Lord Arthur and this is wrong. All I have to do is leave.”

He swung the mirror round and looked into it, trying to think of Sir Thursday’s chamber and not all the destructive things he could do to anyone or anything that opposed him.

But he couldn’t focus – it was all he could do to keep his rage in check. He really wanted to destroy the insect soldiers, and every time he almost had a mental picture of Thursday’s room, it was replaced by images of fire and destruction.

As Arthur struggled with his thoughts, the mirror remained constant. He saw only his reflection, the now all-too-perfect face, so handsome that even a beard of frost could not lessen his unearthly beauty.

Arthur groaned and put the mirror back in his pouch. The horde of insect warriors was approaching at a steady pace and had neither slowed nor speeded its advance. The forward ranks hadn’t aimed their weapons either, but he suspected he was probably in range. Arthur looked at the hole in his arm. It was neatly cauterised, but he could see right through from one side to the other. Only his sorcerously altered body allowed him to cope with such a wound. It felt about as painful as a paper cut to him now.

But he knew he could not survive a hundred – or a thousand – such wounds. He also knew that the rage he was barely keeping inside him would come out long before then, and that he would use the Keys to wreak destruction such as even these warring aliens had never imagined.

I have to get out of here, thought Arthur. Before I do something terrible…

He jumped back down and tried to visualise the Improbable Stair. That could be its first step there, the pale blue sandbag that was the firing step of the trench. It just had to turn white and luminous, and that would be the way in.

“White and luminous,” said Arthur. “The way into the Improbable Stair.”

Ahead of him, the clicking noise suddenly increased in volume and tempo. The soldier insects were beginning their charge.

“White! Luminous! Stair!” shouted Arthur.

A squealing zing went over his head, but he didn’t turn or look. All his attention was on that one pale blue sandbag, which was slowly, ever so slowly, beginning to turn white.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_87a2ed60-ff8d-5932-b994-68d7419592ce)

Suzy Turquoise Blue, sometime Ink-Filler Sixth Class, Monday’s Tierce and General of the Army of Lord Arthur, waggled her left foot just enough to start her spinning in an anticlockwise direction. She’d been slowly turning clockwise for the past hour and she felt like a change. She could introduce that motion with only a slight movement of her foot, which was fortunate since it was the only part of her that wasn’t tightly wrapped in the inch-thick scarlet rope that suspended her from a crane that had been swung out some 16,000 feet up on the eastern side of Superior Saturday’s tower.

“Stop that!” called a Sorcerous Supernumerary, who sat at the base of the crane. He was reading a large leatherbound book and dangling his legs over the edge of the tower. “Prisoners are not to spin anticlockwise!”

“Sez who?” asked Suzy.

“The manual says so,” replied the Supernumerary rather stiffly, tapping the book he held. “I just read that bit. Prisoners are not to spin anticlockwise, for the prevention of sorcerous eddies.”

“Better wind me in then,” said Suzy. “Else I’ll keep spinning.”

She had been hanging there for more than six hours, ever since being captured by the Artful Loungers near the Rain Reservoir, where Arthur had gone down the plughole in search of Part Six of the Will. Since being a prisoner was a definite improvement over being dead, which was what she thought was going to happen when the Loungers had attacked, Suzy was quite cheerful.

“It says here, Prisoners are to be left dangling in the wind and rain at all times, unless ordered otherwise by Suitable Authority,” said the Supernumerary.

“It’s stopped raining,” said Suzy. “It’s not all that windy either. It’s quite nice in fact. Besides, aren’t you a Suitable Authority?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” grumbled the Supernumerary. “You know quite well I wouldn’t be here if everyone else wasn’t up top, fighting Sunday. Or down below, fighting the Piper.”

And that’s only the half of it, thought Suzy with a smile that would have annoyed the Supernumerary if he’d seen it. Superior Saturday is fighting Lord Sunday up above in the Incomparable Gardens; the Piper is fighting Superior Saturday’s forces in the lower portions of the Upper House; Dame Primus is trying to hold back the Nothing that is eroding the House, while also preparing to attack Superior Saturday; Arthur hopefully by now has got Part Six of the Will and will be trying to obtain the Sixth Key…

It’s all like a very complicated game, thought Suzy as she spun back towards the Supernumerary. I wonder if anyone really knows what’s going on.

Thinking about games gave her an idea. Artful Loungers were too crazed and dangerous to try to trick, but this Sorcerous Supernumerary was more like a normal Denizen.

“You know, if you wind me in, we could play chess,” said Suzy. She pointed her toe at the chess set that was on top of the closer desk. It looked to be a very fine one, with ivory pieces that had ruby-chip eyes.

“That’s one of Noon’s sets,” said the Supernumerary. “We can’t touch that! Besides, I failed chess.”

“We could play draughts. We oughter play something until my rescuers show up and chuck you off the building,” said Suzy.

“What?” asked the Supernumerary. He looked around nervously. Unlike most of Saturday’s tower, the prison section at level 61620 (that was really floor 1620, which was quite high enough) was a solid buttress attached to the main building, rather like a shelf that was put on as an afterthought. It was not made up of open iron-framed office cubes, but was a broad and elegant veranda of teak decking that ran alongside the tower for a hundred feet. The outer edge was lined with a dozen cranes that were mounted so that they could pivot and swing their hooks out over the edge, to suspend prisoners some 16,000 feet above the ground.

Currently, only one of the cranes had a dangling prisoner. The Internal Auditors who usually ran the prison level had all left to join Saturday’s assault upon the Incomparable Gardens and had presumably dispatched all their prisoners before their departure. Now only Suzy was there, guarded by two Sorcerous Supernumeraries. One was reading the manual, and another was prowling back and forth in front of the single, large leather-padded door that led back into the tower proper. As she paced, she muttered to herself about awesome responsibilities and the inevitability of things going wrong. This Supernumerary had not once looked over at Suzy, almost as if she wanted to deny the existence of her prisoner.

“What do you mean, rescuers?” the Supernumerary with the manual asked. “And why would they chuck me off the tower?”

“I’m a Piper’s child, right?” asked Suzy. “Who’s attacking the tower?”

“The Piper,” said the Supernumerary. “Oh…I see. But he’ll never get this far.”

“Dunno about that,” said Suzy. “I mean, Saturday’s nicked off with all the best fighters, ain’t she? I mean, she’s all right, she’ll be living it up in the Incomparable Gardens, with her Artful Loungers and Internal Auditors and all. It’s you poor blokes I feel sorry for.”

“We always get the worst jobs,” admitted the Sorcerous Supernumerary. “You know what the higher-ups call us? Maggots, that’s what. At least that’s what one called me once…”

“Wot’s your actual name then?” asked Suzy. “I’m Suzy Turquoise Blue.”

“Giac,” replied the Supernumerary. He looked over the edge and sighed. “I was enjoying being up this high till you said I might get chucked off.”

“Course, you might not get thrown off,” Suzy said thoughtfully.

“I bet I would,” said Giac. “Bound to be. Just my luck.”

“They might just cut your head off,” said Suzy. “The Newniths, I mean. The Piper’s soldiers. Big, ugly brutes they are, with charged battle-axes and the like. I’m glad I’m on the same side as them, is all I can say.”

“They’ll never get this far,” repeated Giac uneasily.

“Might as well ’ave a bit of fun before whatever happens happens,” said Suzy. “Tell you what – why don’t you bring me in, we’ll play draughts, and then when the Newniths show up, I’ll get them to just take you prisoner. Instead of cutting your head off.”

“I have to do what the manual says,” replied Giac gloomily. “Besides, one of the Internal Auditors might come back. They’d do worse than cut my head off.”

“Worse?” asked Suzy. “Like what?”

“Encystment,” said Giac with a shudder. He turned a page in the manual and stared at it, then sighed and shut the book.