Lady Friday

Then the biggest, ugliest Fetcher with the least-dented bowler hat spoke, in a voice that was half-growl, half-bark, but clear enough.

“Tell the pack, tell the boss.”

A smaller Fetcher turned and darted away, even as Arthur dashed forward and slashed at it and the leader. The small Fetcher was too fast, but the leader paid for its inability to speak and move at the same time, the point of the rapier tearing through the sleeve of its black coat before making coat, hat and Fetcher disappear in a puff of oily black vapour.

The three remaining Fetchers whimpered and backed away. Arthur let them go since he hadn’t caught the small one anyway. The trio retreated, facing him for twenty or thirty yards, then spun about and ran, disappearing into the blur of snow.

A sharp, metallic noise behind and to the left made Arthur himself spin about. The noise came from the door and for a moment he thought it was some weapon being readied behind it. Then he saw there was a metal-lined letterbox in the middle of the door and the cover of it was flapping.

Arthur pushed the cover open again with the point of his rapier and tried to look inside without getting too close. He was rewarded by the sight of someone recoiling back from the other side and some muffled sounds that were probably swearing.

“Open up!” commanded Arthur.

CHAPTER FOUR (#uf545b455-1d24-5b55-af80-4c699620bdcb)

Leaf felt her stomach do a weird flip-flop as she opened her eyes. The line of sleepers still marched on, wandering along a wide corridor roughly hewn out of a dull pink stone, lit every few yards by dragon-headed gas jets of tarnished bronze that spat out long blue flames across the slightly curved ceiling. Leaf tried to keep her place in the line of sleepers, but as she took a step she almost lost her balance, her arms windmilling in a most wide-awake fashion.

For several seconds Leaf staggered forward, trying to regain her balance and act asleep at the same time. It took her several more steps to realise that it wasn’t some sort of inner ear problem. Experimenting, she pushed off a little harder – harder than she intended, overcompensating for her bed-weakened legs. She shot up several feet and almost collided with one of the gas jets in the ceiling, even though it was at least nine feet from the floor. Avoiding the flame, she pushed the sleeper ahead of her.

While this confirmed her hypothesis that she was somewhere with lower gravity than Earth, it unfortunately also attracted the attention of the Denizen guards behind her. Two of the final four guards rushed at her, while the others continued on with the few sleepers who were at the end of the line behind her.

Leaf didn’t have time to do more than stand up and look back before the duo gripped her arms and hauled her out of the line to stand on one side of the passage. She let her arms go slack, shut her eyes and let her head hang, as if she had gone back to sleep, but the Denizens weren’t fooled this time.

“She’s awake,” said one. Though she was dressed in the same grey business suit and trench coat as all the others, Leaf could tell from her voice that she was female.

“Maybe,” said the other, male Denizen. “What do we do with her if she is?”

“Look it up. Have you got a copy of Orders and Procedures?”

“I was working on the binding last night and I put it under a rock to press it, and then I forgot which rock it was under. Can I borrow yours?”

“I’ve been gilding the initial capitals,” answered the female Denizen. “It’s on my worktable.”

“I suppose we could ask Her…”

Leaf couldn’t help but shiver; from the way the Denizen said “Her” it was clear he was talking about Lady Friday.

“Don’t be stupid! She doesn’t want to be bothered. We had one wake up once before. What did we do with her?”

“I’ve never had one wake up, Milka.”

“It was only twenty years ago, local time. Where were you?”

“Where I wish I still was, Sixth Standby Hand on the Big Press. I only got sent here when Jakem took over the binding line. He never liked me and all because I accidentally wound one of the lesser presses when his head was in it – and that was more than a thousand years ago—”

“I remember!” said Milka.

“You remember? You weren’t there—”

“No, idiot! Not whatever you did. I remember that accidental wake-ups get handed over to the bed turner!”

“Who?”

“The bed turner. You know, the mortal in charge of looking after the sleepers. I forget her name. Or maybe I only knew the name of the one before this one or the one before that. They just don’t last long enough to remember.”

“Where do we find this bed turner, then?” asked the male Denizen. Leaf decided that she would call him “Stupid” until she heard his actual name. It seemed to be appropriate.

“She’s got an office somewhere. Look it up on your map. You have got your map, haven’t you? I’ll keep hold of this mortal.”

Leaf felt Stupid let go of her and she started to tense her muscles, ready to try to escape if Milka let go as well. But the female Denizen tightened her grip on Leaf’s upper arm, her fingers digging in hard.

“No you don’t!” said Milka. “I’ve worked enough with Piper’s children to know what you mortals are like. Tricksters, all of you. There’s no point in pretending to be asleep. No point running away from us neither, because there’s nowhere to go.”

Leaf lifted her head, opened her eyes and took a long, slow look around. Stupid was clumsily opening up a map that kept on unfolding, growing larger and larger till he had the full eight-by-eight-foot square of thick, linen-rich paper against the wall. Unfortunately it was the back of the map he was looking at, so he had to turn it over and got rather caught up in it in the process.

Milka sighed, but again did not relax her fierce hold on Leaf’s arm.

“What do you mean, there’s nowhere to go?” Leaf asked as Stupid continued to struggle with the map. He’d got it the right way round but part of it had folded back on itself. From the parts Leaf could see, it looked more like the plan of a building than a map. It was all rooms and corridors, arranged in a large circle around some sort of central lake in the middle. Or something round that was coloured blue anyway.

“Oh, given up on the tricksy pretending-to-sleep act, have you?” said Milka. She sounded friendly enough. Or at least not actively hostile. “I meant what I said. This here is Lady Friday’s Mountain Retreat. She had the mountain built special back at the House and then shifted it here. That’s when the middle bit sank in – it got dropped a bit. Beyond the mountain there’s one of the wildest, meanest worlds in all the Secondary Realms. She likes Her privacy, She does.”

“Found it!” exclaimed Stupid. He put a finger on the map, letting go of one edge in the process. The whole thing collapsed again, folding itself over his head.

“There really is nowhere to run,” Milka repeated, with a sharp dig of her fingers. “You just stand against the wall and in a minute we’ll take you to the bed turner. Give us trouble and you’ll be punished.”

She released Leaf and took the map off Stupid, easily refolding it to show the area that he’d indicated earlier.

For a moment Leaf did think of running. But her legs were still weak, her balance was off and most of all she believed Milka. There probably was nowhere to run to, or at least nowhere immediately obvious. It would be best to go along for now and learn as much as possible about where she was. Then she could work out a plan not just to get away herself but to rescue Aunt Mango – and everyone else, if it was possible.

“Circle Six, Eighteen Past,” said Milka. “And we’re on Circle Two at Forty-three Past. So we have to go up four circles and either back around or forward. Back would be a bit quicker.”

“Why?” asked Stupid.

Milka sighed. “Because anticlockwards around the circle from forty-three to eighteen is twenty-five segments, and clockwards from forty-three to eighteen is thirty-five segments.”

“Oh, right, I wasn’t counting properly,” said Stupid. He pointed to his right. “That’s forwards, isn’t it?”

“No, that’s backwards,” said Milka. “You’re facing into the crater.”

She prodded Leaf. “Come on. The sooner you get delivered, the sooner you get to work.”

“Work?” asked Leaf. “What work?”

“You’ll find out,” said Milka. “Hurry up.”

Leaf started walking. Every step felt strange; she had to consciously take smaller, less forceful movements in order to keep her balance. It wasn’t like being on the moon – at least she wasn’t moving like the Chinese astronauts who’d landed there a few years ago. She guessed it was about eighty-five per cent of what was normal on Earth. Enough to upset her balance, that was for sure.

The rough-hewn passage with its gaslights continued for several hundred yards, always curving gently to the left. Every now and then there were doors, sometimes on both sides. Very ordinary-looking wooden doors, all painted pale blue, with a wide variety of bronze knobs and handles that might or might not signify what lay behind them.