‘Boss? What do we do?’ a grease monkey called from above.
Alyse looked up. ‘Get yourself down here! You and Bigby and Whrod. I’m sending Ray and Suze back down to get a Number Three temporary chain bracket. The rest of you, I want every inch of horizontal chain from here to ten offices out in all directions checked for corrosion.’
‘Corrosion accident causal effect?’ asked a tinny, booming voice.
The speaker was one of the octopoidal automatons. It spoke through a valve under its central sphere, which rather horribly opened and shut as it talked.
‘How would I know?’ shouted Alyse. ‘Most likely, though. We’ll have to look.’
‘Higher authority approaches,’ reported the automaton. ‘Await instruction.’
‘Big nob!’ hissed one of the grease monkeys above.
The three Sorcerous Supernumeraries straightened like string puppets yanked to attention and rapidly climbed back up.
‘Quick, you drop over the side to the next level, run through to the north side, and use your wings,’ Alyse told Arthur. ‘A Sorcerer-Overseer will see who you are straight away, up close.’
‘Suze!’ Arthur shouted. ‘Get down here!’
He slid down the uneven floor and began to lower himself over the side, making sure first that he wasn’t going to drop on the head of the Denizen below.
‘Thanks,’ Arthur said to Alyse. ‘Suze! Come on!’
‘I’m here!’ Suzy called, landing with a thump near Arthur and almost rolling off before she got a good handhold. ‘In a hurry, are we?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. He let go and dropped down to the next floor. He’d thought of aiming for the desk so he didn’t have so far to fall, but decided against it. There was no point in attracting the attention of the sorcerer there, particularly since he’d just noticed that these Denizens with the purple umbrellas weren’t writing. They still looked into the shaving mirror viewers or whatever they were, but they weren’t writing anything.
‘Where we going?’ asked Suzy.
‘To the side and down,’ Arthur said quietly as he led the way through an office and dodged around the occupant, who had pushed his chair back much farther than normal. ‘Flying. We have to find Dartbristle again and get him to lead us to wherever the stormwater goes.’
‘Why not just ask Alyse? She’s got that guide to the whole place and all.’
Arthur stopped suddenly and Suzy ran into his back.
‘What guide?’ he asked.
‘That book – it’s got maps and instructions and everything, for wherever the gang might have to go,’ said Suzy. ‘Least that’s what Bigby was telling me. Kind of like your Atlas, only not as good.’
Arthur looked back. They’d only gone half a dozen offices.
‘She just wanted to get rid of us,’ he said.
‘Fair enough,’ said Suzy. ‘Can’t blame her for that.’
‘Yes, I can.’ Arthur was about to say more when a huge torrent of water crashed down between him and Suzy, knocking the Piper’s child off her feet.
‘This ’ere rain is a bit much,’ Suzy said as she struggled to her feet. ‘Wouldn’t mind a bit of sunshine, meself.’
‘Wouldn’t we all,’ said the Denizen at the nearby desk. He didn’t look away from his mirror-screen.
‘Thought you lot weren’t supposed to talk to us,’ Suzy chided.
‘We’re not,’ sighed the sorcerer. ‘But it gets so boring just watching the mirror, waiting for something worth watching. What was that you were saying about someone wanting to get rid of you? I couldn’t hear properly over the rain.’
‘It was nothing,’ said Arthur.
‘Just the usual?’ The Denizen sighed again. ‘I thought you grease monkeys weren’t so afflicted, not being eligible for promotion and so forth.’
‘Afflicted?’ asked Suzy.
‘Resentful and envious,’ said the Denizen. ‘Take my last promotion, for example. The fellows I’d drunk tea with for the last thousand years, shared many a biscuit . . . they threw our department silver teapot at me as I rose above their heads.’
‘Come on, Suze,’ said Arthur. ‘We need to go back up.’
‘We do? What about that Overseer?’
‘An Overseer?’ squeaked the Denizen. ‘Get away from me! I must attend to my studies!’
He immediately opened a book and began to read it quietly aloud while also watching his mirror, one eye focussed left and one focussed right, which was quite disturbing to see.
Arthur stood still for a minute, thinking, then started back toward the stalled office.