Then, as the Lieutenant Keeper went on the defensive, continually retreating upward, Suzy wondered whether she should try to get away. But she still couldn’t see anywhere to retreat to. Instead, she followed the combat, her wings straining to keep up.
Suddenly the Lieutenant Keeper stopped retreating and flung himself forward. The other Denizen tried for a stop-thrust but missed, and the two closed, blades locking. The Lieutenant Keeper was the slighter and shorter of the two, but his wings must have been stronger, for he pushed his opponent back at least twenty feet. At the same time he shouted something, a word that Suzy couldn’t understand but still felt through every bone in her body, like a ripple of ague.
With that word, a circle of white light appeared directly behind the silver-winged Denizen. He must have sensed it, for his wings thrashed even harder to keep his place – but the Lieutenant Keeper was too strong for him.
‘This does not end –’ shouted the Denizen as he fell back into the circle of light. It was a doorway out, Suzy saw, with a gold-panelled room on the other side and an elephant’s-foot umbrella stand. Once the Denizen was through, the circle closed like a bursting soap bubble. Again there was nothing but featureless space all around.
‘Cripes,’ said Suzy. ‘Who was that?’
‘Superior Saturday’s Dusk,’ said the Lieutenant Keeper. ‘We are old adversaries, he and I. Not all the Days or their servants follow the compact of the Door to the letter, and Saturday’s minions are the slipperiest of all.’
The Lieutenant Keeper brushed back his long white hair with his fingers and wiped his face with the sleeve of his blue coat. He still looked harried; his waders were dripping with water and there were more dried blue bloodstains on his right sleeve. ‘Doubtless he will return soon, possibly with others. I have closed many of the doors in the House, but this is of little avail when Saturday orders them open again and Sunday does not say yea or nay. Where do you wish to go, Suzy?’
‘The Lower Hou –’ Suzy started to say. Then she stopped.
‘Can I go anywhere within the House?’ she asked.
‘The Front Door opens in all parts of the House, in various guises,’ the Lieutenant Keeper informed her. ‘Not all those doors are safe. Some are stuck, and some are locked, and some are lost, even from me. But I can show you a door to any of the demesnes, within certain bounds.’
‘Do you know where Arthur is now?’ asked Suzy. She’d planned to take the pocket back to Monday’s Dayroom, but it would be better to get it straight to Arthur so he could destroy it without delay.
‘I do not,’ said the Lieutenant Keeper. ‘Come, decide where you would go. My work is never done, and I cannot tarry.’
‘The Great Maze,’ said Suzy. ‘I want to go to the Great Maze.’
‘The only door I might open there is in the Citadel. That is where Sir Thursday resides. Are you sure that is where you want to go?’
‘Sure,’ said Suzy.
‘There is great trouble in the Maze,’ warned the Lieutenant Keeper. He looked directly at Suzy, his pale ice-blue eyes meeting hers. ‘It is possible that soon all doors to and from the Maze will be closed. Elevators too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a Nithling Army stands on the brink of conquest there. If they defeat Sir Thursday’s forces, then the Great Maze will be cut off in order to save the rest of the House. So I ask again: are you sure you want to go there?’
‘I got to get this to Arthur,’ Suzy answered, patting the container under her waistcoats. ‘So I reckon I do have to go there. Besides, it can’t be as bad as all that. I mean, Nithlings never get on with one another, do they?’
‘These ones do,’ said the Lieutenant Keeper. ‘Here, as you insist, is the door to the Great Maze and Sir Thursday’s Citadel.’
He gestured with his sword, and once again spoke a word that made Suzy’s stomach flip over and her ears ring. A circle of light formed, and through it she could see a wooden walkway along a stone wall. A Denizen in scarlet uniform was marching along the walkway with his back to her, a musket on his shoulder.
‘Thanks!’ said Suzy. She flapped her wings and was about to dive headfirst into the hole when she felt herself held back by her tip feathers.
‘No wings in the Great Maze,’ said the Lieutenant Keeper. The wings detached themselves from Suzy, dropping into his hands. ‘They attract too much lightning. Something to do with the tile changes.’
‘But I have to give them baaa –’
Before Suzy could finish talking, the doorway moved toward her and she fell through, emerging into late-afternoon sunlight and a cool wind, high on the battlements of one of the bastions of the Star Fort, an inner defence of Sir Thursday’s Citadel.