‘How about you tell us the plan?’ said Suzy. ‘Before the others come back in? Between Fred and me, we can probably fix it up.’
‘Thanks!’ said Arthur, not without sarcasm. ‘It is pretty basic. First, the Piper and Saturday will both go for Lady Friday’s Scriptorium to try to seize the Key. They’ll expect me to do the same, and I guess that’s what Friday would predict I’d do. But I think I’ll try to find the Fifth Part of the Will first, which may or may not be in the Scriptorium but probably is in the Middle House. And I have a way to find the Will. At least I think I do, if I can get a sorcerer to do a simple spell. If there are any sorcerers in the Middle House …’
‘Sorcerers?’ asked Fred. ‘Depends on what kind of sorcery. There’s heaps of Denizens who use sorcery up in the Top Shelf. Most of the High Guild, though they’re not exactly what you’d call full sorcerers, like that Dr Scamandros. Binding and Restoration, that’s mostly sorcery anyway. What do you want one of them to do?’
Arthur was about to answer when the door flung open and Pirkin leaned in, his face framed by a flurry of snow. An icicle fell off his nose and bounced on the stone floor.
‘All hands on deck!’ he said. ‘There’s some kind of battle going on above us, up under the sky!’
Fourteen
IT WAS COLD out on deck, colder than it had been before, but it was no longer snowing. The raft, travelling up the canal at a sharp angle, was already breaking through the low clouds, and the sky around them was clear and much lighter, though it did grow darker again overhead. Arthur could see a slice of the sun on the far horizon, where it had presumably stuck, its light falling in a tight band that did not extend to the top of the canal.
There were some other lights in the darkness above, twinkling faux stars on the underside of the intermediate roof. Somewhere unseen up there was the skylock through which the canal would pass.
As Arthur stared up, he saw half a dozen new stars move swiftly across the sky, till one of them suddenly exploded into many smaller, fiery fragments that rained down in a quickly fading shower. The other five swerved away and grew fainter, till they disappeared again.
‘A skirmish of the air,’ said Ugham. ‘I know not the combatants. One side is lit fair, the other stalks in darkness. Ah, the light-bearers come again!’
He pointed at a different quarter of the sky. This time more than a dozen stars were moving in an arrowhead formation towards the point where the explosion had been. The stars grew brighter as they crossed the sky, and Arthur realised that they were drawing closer to the raft, descending as well as moving horizontally.
‘Who are they?’ Arthur asked Pirkin.
‘Dunno,’ answered the Paper Pusher. ‘I know who’s waiting in the dark, though.’
‘So do I,’ breathed Fred. Arthur glanced at his friend, who was staring entranced up at the sky.
‘Who?’
‘Winged Servants of the Night,’ Fred and Pirkin said together. Pirkin had a strange catch to his voice, a melancholy that Arthur had not heard there before.
As they spoke, two of the bright stars once more exploded into sparks, which slowly drifted down before fading away.
‘That’ll be lit-up wing feathers falling,’ said Suzy. ‘Whatever was wearing them will have a long way to fall.’
Suzy’s comment made Arthur look back down and around. In the swath of light from the stuck sun, he could finally see the other side of the canal. It was at least half a mile away, but the width of the canal was not the most impressive thing about the waterway. It stretched ahead in a straight line for several miles before curving to the right, all the time climbing at a gentle ten degrees. At the curve, Arthur could see that the whole vast canal was supported on thousands of columns that disappeared down into the clouds. It looked like an impossible freeway flyover stretched up a thousand times and then flooded with water. Seeing it made him feel nervous and slightly giddy.
It was easier to look up, so Arthur did, just in time to see something come hurtling down towards them. It had been practically invisible until it fell into the sunlight, a black speck against the black sky. It fell like a stone towards the raft, and for a moment Arthur thought it was some kind of missile. But when it got to several hundred yards out he saw it was roughly human-shaped – and that it was going to miss the raft and possibly the canal as well, to plummet down to the Flat.
Then a black, crow-shaped wing spread out from its left shoulder, and, from its right, a crumpled, bent-up mess of wild feathers. Flapping madly with its single working wing, the creature corrected its course towards the raft and slowed a little, corkscrewing wildly as it fell.