Lady Friday(45)

‘I … I couldn’t get through,’ said Leaf. ‘One of Saturday’s Denizens had replaced the operator.’

‘Plausible,’ said Noon. ‘A most competent lie, if it is not the truth. Now, how shall we keep you out of trouble until you are required, hmmm?’

Leaf didn’t answer. She raised her chin a half-inch and tried to look Noon in the eye, but the reflection from the monocle was too bright and she had to lid her eyes half-shut.

‘One of your mortal poets said it well,’ said Noon. ‘He put milady on to the notion in the first place. ‘To sleep, perchance to dream.’ I think it is time you slept, Miss Leaf.’

Leaf responded by throwing the pillowcases at Friday’s Noon and running away. But she had gone no more than a dozen paces when she felt a fierce buffet of air and was knocked to the ground, Noon standing over her with his yellow wings at full extension across the corridor.

Leaf began to crawl away. Friday’s Noon did not try to stop her. He took a small silver cone from his pocket and raised it to his lips, to use as a megaphone.

‘Sleep, Miss Leaf.’ Noon’s voice had transformed itself into Lady Friday’s, stronger than it had ever sounded before. Leaf was tired, so tired from everything she had been through; she had done everything she could … Leaf stopped crawling and lay still. Friday’s Noon replaced the silver cone within his coat and spoke to unseen Denizens behind him.

‘Take her to the bed turner. Tell him she is to be carefully tended. Milady may have need of her, in time to come.’





Sixteen


THERE WERE NINE Artful Loungers who swooped with darkened wings upon the raft, each bearing a curved sword of blue steel in his or her right hand and a long crystal stiletto in the left. The stilettos could only be used once, as they contained a core of Nothing that would kill even a Denizen. Dangerous weapons, they lasted only a few hours from their manufacture, for the Nothing would soon eat its way out of its sorcerous confinement in the crystal.

The leading Lounger never even made it to the deck, Ugham’s powerfully thrown spear arresting his flight with a vengeance. But the other eight landed in formation and advanced upon Cool of the Evening, Arthur, Suzy, Fred, and Ugham. Of Pirkin and the other Paper Pushers there was no sign, though all had been on deck only moments before, with Pirkin close to Arthur.

‘Leave at once!’ commanded Arthur, raising the Key. But he did not call upon its power, and the Artful Loungers did not respond. They smiled their vacant smiles and kept coming, their glossy patent leather shoes and chequered trousers all in step, their pastel-blue peasant smocks all unbuttoned in exactly the same careful, careless way, their berets all at the same angle.

‘Ready,’ muttered Ugham. As he spoke, the Loungers rushed forward and everything became a mad blur of movement, of trying to hit Loungers while not being hit, particularly by the Nothing-core stilettos. Arthur almost felt as if his body was reacting without his conscious direction, so swiftly did everything happen, muscles acting purely from training, reflex, and fear.

Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun. Arthur stood amid four dead Loungers, surprise still on their faces that they had been so easily slain by mere sword-wounds, not knowing they had been hit by the Fourth Key. The other four were backing away, and they kept on retreating until they were far enough away to turn and fling themselves up into the night.

Arthur looked down at himself and saw he was not harmed, not even marked by a scratch. He quickly turned to check the others. They were several feet behind him and he realised that he must have charged forward as the Loungers attacked.

‘Anyone hurt?’ he asked as he walked back to them. Though there was no spoken agreement, everyone then moved back several paces farther still, to put more space between themselves and the dead Artful Loungers. Arthur kept his back to them. He did not want to see his handiwork. ‘Those knives looked bad.’

‘Poison blades,’ said Ugham. ‘But I have taken no scathe. You bore the brunt of it, Lord Arthur.’

‘I never even got close to one,’ said Fred.

‘Me neither,’ said Suzy with a shudder. ‘And that’s the way I like it.’

‘Cool of the Evening?’ asked Arthur. The Winged Servant of the Night was still standing on one leg. ‘No new wounds?’

She signed a message to Fred.

‘She says not,’ he translated. ‘Uh, she wants to know who you are, Arthur. I guess smelling right isn’t everything.’

‘I am Arthur, the Rightful Heir to the Architect.’

‘Master of the Lower House, Lord of the Far Reaches,’ added Suzy.