She snatched the box and backed away, pausing to tip another shelf full of towels over the nurse, who was staggering to her feet.
Leaf was out the door and in the corridor when the nurse got her head free and shouted after her, her voice a strange mixture of a woman’s and a boy’s. Whatever she said – or the Skinless Boy said through her – was lost as the door slammed shut on Leaf’s heels.
Though Leaf couldn’t hear the exact words, she caught the tone. The Skinless Boy knew she was infected with the mould. Sooner or later, it would control her mind and she would have no choice but to bring the box and the pocket back.
After all, there was nowhere for her to go.
Nine
AFTER THE IRONING lesson, Corporal Axeforth tediously demonstrated how to smear a kind of white clay over the recruits’ belts, preferably without getting it anywhere else. This was followed by painting their boots with a hideous tarry mixture and then sanding the very black but rough result back to a smooth finish before applying a glossy varnish that was the stickiest substance Arthur had ever encountered.
Following the demonstrations, when they got to practise what they’d been shown, Arthur talked quietly with the Piper’s child, whose name was Fred Initial Numbers Gold. He was a Manuscript Gilder from the Middle House and had been drafted the day before.
Fred was optimistic about their future Army service and even welcomed it as a change from his nitpicking job of applying gold leaf to the numbers in important House documents. He’d heard – or he remembered, he wasn’t sure which – that Piper’s children were usually employed in the Army as drummers or other musicians, or as personal aides to senior officers. This didn’t sound too bad to him.
After the final lesson on preparing their recruit uniforms, the section was dismissed for dinner. Only there wasn’t any – and there wouldn’t be any, Corporal Axeforth explained, for six months. Food was a privilege and an honour to be earned by good behaviour and exemplary duty. Until they had earned it, the dinner break was merely an hour to be used to prepare for the evening lessons and the next day’s training.
Arthur missed the food, though like everyone else in the House he knew he didn’t actually need to eat. He spent the hour going through all his equipment and the uniforms that were laid ready on his bed and in his locker. The most useful item of the lot was a thick, illustrated book called The Recruit’s Companion, which, among its many sections, listed and illustrated every item and had short notes on where and how each would be used, though Arthur still had to ask Fred to explain some of its contents.
‘How come we have so many different uniforms?’ he asked.
Fred looked down at the segmented armour and kilt, the scarlet tunic and black trousers, the buff coat and reinforced leather trousers, the forest-green jerkin and leggings, the long mail hauberk and coif, and the bewildering array of boots, pieces of joint-armour, bracers, and leather reinforcements.
‘The Army’s made up of different units and they all wear different uniforms,’ Fred explained. ‘So we got to learn the lot, case we get sent to the Legion, the Horde, or the Regiment … or one of the other ones. I forget what they’re all called. That armour there, the long narrow pieces that slide together and you do up with the laces, that’s Legionary wear. Scarlet’s for the Regiment, and the Horde wear the knee-length ironmongery. They’ve all got different weapons too. We’ll learn ’em all, Ray.’
‘I guess I’d better sort them out according to this plan,’ said Arthur. He put The Recruit’s Companion down on the bed and unfolded the poster-sized diagram out of it that showed the correct placement of every one of the 226 items Arthur was now personally responsible for. ‘Though I don’t see anyone else putting their stuff away.’
‘They’re ordinary-grade Denizens,’ said Fred, whose bed and locker were patterns of military order. He said this as if it explained everything.
‘What do you mean?’ Arthur asked, since it didn’t really explain anything to him.
‘They won’t do anything until they’re told to,’ said Fred, with a puzzled glance at Arthur. ‘Are the ordinary Denizens different in the Lower House? All this lot are from the Middle. Paper-cutters, most of them, though Florimel over there, she was a Binder, Second Class. Have to watch out for her. She thinks she ought to be Recruit Lance-Corporal because she’s got the highest precedence in the House of the lot of us. I guess she’ll find out that doesn’t matter here. All of us recruits are equal in the eyes of the Army: low as you can go. The only way from here is up. I reckon I might be able to make General by the time my hitch is up.’