‘Uh, East Area? Kind of that way,’ said Michaeli, pointing.
‘Thank you,’ said Suzy. ‘And your roof garden lies beyond that door?’
Michaeli nodded, bewilderment plain on her face. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘Back to the House, first creation of the Architect and epicentre of the universe,’ said Suzy. ‘If I can find the Front Door, and if the Skinless Boy and his minions don’t stop me. Goodbye!’
Michaeli gave a tentative wave. Suzy bowed, clapped her wings behind her back, and ran up the stairs to the roof garden.
Behind her, Michaeli looked at Leaf to see if she was still breathing, but didn’t go any closer. Then she went across to her own room and looked out the window. There was an ambulance in the street. She hesitated for a moment, then ran down the stairs.
Suzy patted the ceramic iguana that stood in the roof garden on the head, jumped on its back, and launched herself into the sky with a few strong wingbeats. Thirty feet above the roof, she caught an updraft and quickly soared to a height of several hundred feet.
The wings, besides being exceptional examples of their kind for flying, were also imbued with several other properties. Suzy was counting on one of them to make the return trip to the House uneventful. According to Dr Scamandros, who had reluctantly helped her borrow them from Dame Primus’s dressing room, flying with the wings would generate a sorcerous effect that would make mortals unable to look at her. The wings also had some protective qualities, but again, only when in use for flight. Suzy had thought this rather shabby, and still thought so, even after Dr Scamandros had explained that it was the nature of sorcery to never live up to expectations.
Not that Suzy anticipated anything other than flying. She intended to fly to the manifestation of the House, which she had seen through Seven Dials was located above the hospital. Then she would fly right up to the Front Door and, if necessary, hover in front of it while she knocked. Then it would be straight back to Monday’s Dayroom with the pocket. From there she would work out how to get it to Arthur so he could throw it in sufficient Nothing to get rid of it and the Skinless Boy.
A very straightforward and satisfactory job, Suzy thought. Even Dame Primus could hardly complain – though she would, of course, and carry on about the Original Law, but Suzy was used to that. It would be a small price to pay for saving Arthur’s world from the Spirit-eater.
Suzy was three-quarters of the way to the hospital and could clearly see the House ahead when she also saw the flaw in her plan. From the lack of interest from various official-looking mortals she had flown above, it was probably true that the wings shielded her from the gaze of humans. And while this would not work on Nithlings, both she and Dr Scamandros had thought it very unlikely that the Skinless Boy had a set of wings.
What they hadn’t given full thought to was the fact that someone had made the Skinless Boy in the first place and had helped it get through the Front Door to Earth, in defiance of numerous laws of the House. Anyone who would raise a Spirit-eater would not hesitate to use more common Nithlings. There could easily be other Nithlings here, sent to help the Skinless Boy achieve whatever he had been sent to do.
And now here they were. Suzy flapped her wings hard to gain height as she saw them. Three winged shapes, slowly flying in a circle about five hundred yards out from the Front Door. Currently they were playing a game with one of the mortals’ flying machines, taking turns to dive in front of it as it came around on its orbit of the hospital, its spinning top part chattering away. The fact that the mortal pilot couldn’t see them and wouldn’t know what he’d hit if one of them miscalculated was obviously the main attraction of the game.
Suzy didn’t know exactly what kind of Nithlings they were. They were roughly human-sized, but one had the head of a rodent, one had a head like a snake, and the third had a head that resembled a partially squashed avocado with eyes and a toothy mouth. They all had normal-enough limbs, save for great variety in the number of fingers. All three wore Denizen cast-off shirts, waistcoats, and breeches, similar to the clothes favoured by Suzy herself, though these Nithlings did not have hats. They also had very fine-looking red-feathered wings, not the cheap paper ones. The wings probably had similar properties to Suzy’s own, though Nithlings also had a native ability to remain unseen in the Secondary Realms.
They were armed with tridents, which suggested they might have once served Drowned Wednesday, but that was surely misdirection. Suzy knew too much about Drowned Wednesday to fall for that one. The sad, food-obsessed Trustee would not have employed Nithlings. These three had to be in the service of one of the four remaining Morrow Days.