Lady Friday

CHAPTER THREE

Arthur lay stunned for several seconds. He wasn’t hurt, but was seriously shocked from the sudden shift from where he’d been to where he was now, which was flat on his back in a deep drift of snow. Looking up, all he could see were large, puffy grey clouds and some lazy, downward-spiralling snowflakes. One landed in his open mouth, prompting him to shut it.

The silvery disc of metal from Lady Friday was still in his hand. Arthur raised his head a little and looked at it. He’d never seen the metal electrum before, but this plate was certainly made of that alloy of silver and gold, which he’d learned was the traditional material of Transfer Plates. Like the one he was holding in his hand. It must have been set to transfer whoever took it from the messenger, as soon as he or she touched it.

In other words, it was a trap that had instantly transported Arthur from the relative safety of the Great Maze to somewhere else. Somewhere where he would be more vulnerable…

Arthur’s thinking suddenly became more organised, the momentary shock of the transfer banished by sudden adrenaline. He sat up and took a careful look around, at the same time taking a series of deep breaths. The look was to see if there were any immediate enemies approaching. The deep breaths were to see if his asthma was coming back. If it was, then that would mean he had left the House and was somewhere on Earth or some other Secondary Realm.

His breathing was easy, unaffected by the shock and cold. Still, Arthur was puzzled. It didn’t look like any part of the House that he knew. It was too naturalistic. Usually you could tell that the sky was in fact a ceiling way above, or the sun moved in a jerky, clockwork way. Here, everything felt like it would back on Earth.

It was certainly cold and he was very wet from the snow. Arthur shivered and then shivered again. It took concentrated effort not to keep on shivering. To take his mind off it, he stood up and vigorously brushed off the snow. Not that it did much good since the drift came up to his thighs.

“I wonder if I can freeze to death?” Arthur said aloud. Though he spoke softly, it was so quiet around him that even his own voice was a bit disturbing. So was the question. He knew that he couldn’t die of hunger or thirst in the House, and that the Fourth Key would to some degree protect him from physical threats, though not from pain and suffering. But he was still mortal and he was feeling very cold indeed.

Thinking of the Fourth Key made Arthur slap his side in a sudden panic, the panic immediately replaced with relief as his hand touched the baton. It hadn’t fallen out, which was a very good thing since he’d never be able to find it under all the snow.

It also made him feel better to know that even if he had been transported into a trap, he had a weapon. Not that he planned to use the sorcerous powers of the Key, but the baton could turn into a sword and he could certainly use that, after all his training at Fort Transformation and the battle with the New Nithlings.

Arthur frowned. He hadn’t wanted to remember the battle. It was bad enough having nightmares about it, without having sudden flashes of memory from that fight forcing everything else out of his head. He didn’t want to relive the sights and sounds and emotions of that day.

He shivered again, as much at the memory as from the cold. He looked around again. He had to find shelter and quickly, and there was no obvious direction to walk in. Or wade in since the snow was so deep.

“That’s as good as any,” said Arthur to himself as he looked towards where he thought the snow and low cloud cover were a little clearer than elsewhere. He tucked the Transfer Plate inside his coat, took four clumsy steps, then stopped and stood completely still, his heart racing.

There were dark shapes emerging out of the snow some fifty yards ahead, at the limit of visibility. Familiar, but totally unwelcome shapes. Man-sized, wearing dark, very old-fashioned suits, topped with bowler hats. Arthur couldn’t see their faces, but he knew they’d be as ugly and bejowled as a bloodhound’s – the dog-faces of Nithling servants.

“Fetchers!” whispered Arthur; without conscious thought, the Fourth Key was in his hand, ivory baton stretching out as it transformed into a silver-bladed rapier.

There were six of the Nithlings in sight. They hadn’t seen Arthur yet, or smelled him, since there was no wind. He watched them, weighing his plan of attack. If he moved against the two on the right, he could probably get them both before the others reacted. It would only take the slightest touch from the Key to banish them back to Nothing, and then he could charge the next one along.

More Fetchers came into sight behind the first six. A long line of Fetchers, at least fifty of them. Arthur lowered his sword and looked behind him, checking his line of retreat. There were too many Fetchers. He might destroy a dozen and the rest would still pull him down. The Key might do something to protect him then, or he could use its full power to blast the Nithlings from a distance, but that was an absolute last resort. Arthur’s humanity was almost as precious to him as his life. If he became a Denizen, there would be no hope of any return to his family… if he had a family to return to.

Arthur quelled these dismal thoughts and quickly stamped through the snow, away from the Fetchers. At least they were walking slowly, more impeded by the snow than he was, their squat, lumpy bodies sinking further into the drifts.

They were also looking for something, Arthur saw when he paused to glance back. The first lot of six were an advance guard, but the line behind was a search party, with the Fetchers looking down and even rummaging in the snow every now and then.

Arthur didn’t look back again for quite a while, instead concentrating on making good speed. He was becoming quite alarmed at the complete lack of any trees, plants or buildings – anything that might give him some shelter. As far as he could tell, he was on an endless, snow-swept plain.

He kept going though, since there didn’t seem to be any alternative. After what might have been an hour or more, he was finally rewarded with the glimpse of something up ahead that could only be a building. He only saw it for a second before the snow and clouds swirled around and obscured it again, but it lent him hope. Arthur began to half-run, half-jump towards it.

He got another look a few yards on and instinctively slowed again to take in what he was looking at.

It was a building, he could see that, but a strange one. Through the bands of falling snow he could make out a rectangular outline that looked normal enough – a tower or something similar, perhaps nine or ten floors high, of similar dimensions to a medium-rise office block. But behind that there was something even bigger… and that something was moving.

Arthur brushed a snowflake out of his left eye, blinked away the moisture and marched forward, still intent on the building. He quickly saw that the moving thing was a giant wheel, at least a hundred and forty feet in diameter and perhaps twenty feet wide. It looked quite a lot like a Big Wheel at an amusement park, though it was made of wood and didn’t have little cabins for people to ride in. Its central axle was set about two-thirds of the way up the tower, which was built of dark red brick. Though the lower three floors were solid, above that level it had attractive, blue-shuttered windows, all of which were shut.

The wheel was being turned by water. Water poured down through the slats and spokes as it rotated, and chunks of ice were falling from it too. In addition to the water and ice, there were also other things being lifted up by the wheel on one side, only to fall off on the downward rotation. Arthur had first thought they were larger bits of ice, but as he got closer he saw they were books and stone tablets and bundles of papers tied with ribbon.

He’d seen similar items before, down in the Lower House, and he knew what they had to be. Records. Records of people and life from the Secondary Realms.

The water that drove the wheel, or rather the propelling current, came from a very wide canal, so wide Arthur couldn’t see the other side, the water and low cloud cover merging some hundred yards out. A very straight and regular shoreline extended to the left and right of the tower, continuing until it too was lost in cloud and snow in both directions.

Away from the wheel, the edge of the canal was iced over, upthrust fingers of ice holding still more papers, tablets, pieces of beaten bronze, cured sheepskins burnt with symbols and other unidentifiable objects. Even more documents were bobbing in the open water.

Arthur was more interested in the smoke he noted was rising out of the central stack of six tall chimneys that stood atop the tower. Catching sight of that hint of fire and warmth, he began to progress faster through the snow, jumping when he couldn’t physically push through the drifts.

As he drew nearer, Arthur heard the creak and grind of the huge wheel, accompanied by the crunch of breaking ice and the crash of falling water, interspersed with the thud and splash of documents of all kinds falling through the wheel. It was hard to tell what the vast wheel was actually supposed to do. If it was meant to lift the records, then it was failing to do so since they were falling through the many holes in the slats. The whole thing looked to be in a state of considerable disrepair.

Arthur reached the closest wall, but there was no visible door or other entry point on the side of the tower facing him. He hesitated for a moment, then started to walk around it to the right, choosing that direction at random. He was feeling suddenly more cheerful, with the prospect of shelter close at hand and also somewhere where he would be safe from the Fetchers. Or at least somewhere more defensible, if he had to fight them off.

Then Arthur rounded the corner and he saw two things. The first was a door, as he’d hoped. The second was a group of Fetchers who were sitting or lying in the snow in front of the door, very like a pack of dogs waiting for dinner to be brought out. There were eight of them, and as Arthur stopped, they all leaped to their feet, jowls wobbling, fierce eyes fixed upon him.

Arthur didn’t hesitate. He lunged at the closest Fetcher, even as the others bounded forward. The rapier barely touched it, but the Nithling dissolved into a waft of black smoke and Arthur swung his weapon viciously to the right, the blade sweeping through another two Fetchers as if they were no more solid than the smoke they turned into at the merest touch of the Key. Arthur stamped his foot and advanced on the remaining Nithlings, who growled and circled around to try to get behind him, all of them now intensely wary of his sword. Arthur foiled that by charging up to the wall. Swivelling to place his back against the bricks, he made small thrusts at the Fetchers as they feinted attacks, none of them daring to follow through with a real assault.

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

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.”