Superior Saturday(62)

Someone was inside this crystal office, watching the platform and the rocket slowly slide across toward . . . - toward her, Arthur saw.

Superior Saturday. It had to be her. She looked eight feet tall at least, and Arthur couldn’t tell if she had shining blonde hair or was wearing a metallic helmet. She was certainly wearing some kind of armour, a breastplate of red-gold that shone like the setting sun, and leg and arm armour made from plates in different shades of evening sunlight.

The platform was turning so that the door in the lowest level of the rocket was lined up with her office. The door that Arthur was standing next to. The door that Superior Saturday clearly intended to use . . .

‘Make way! Let’s have a path through!’ called the commanding voice. Denizens pushed at Arthur, driving him away from the door, packing him in even tighter against his comrades as a path was cleared from the doorway through to the interior ladder that led up to the next level of the rocket.

A Denizen pushed back right into Arthur’s face, but he didn’t complain. He shifted a little to his right and peered through the two-inch gap between two Sorcerers’ shoulders in front of him.

Superior Saturday touched the wall of her office and the crystal fell away, shattering into motes of light that spun around and wove themselves into a pair of shining wings that fell upon her shoulders and flapped twice as she launched herself across the empty air to the aperture between the bronze bars that served as a door for the rocket. She landed as if she were dancing in a ballet, and strode through the crowd without a sideways glance at the Denizens who bent their heads and tried to bow, despite the cramped space and many painful cranial collisions.

There, in her hand! called the Will. The Key. You could call to it. No, on second thought, best not yet –

Definitely not, thought Arthur. He stood on tiptoe and craned his neck to see what it was that Saturday held in her hand. It wasn’t an umbrella, or even anything as large as a knife, just something slim and short . . .

It’s a pen, thought Arthur. A quill pen.

He lost sight of it, and Saturday as well, as she climbed up the interior ladder. The platform rose up some twenty or thirty feet and drifted across to line up with the middle of the tower. Then, with a flourish of peacock-quill pens, the entire platform settled on top of the tower with the groan and shriek of iron upon iron. A minute later, dozens of automatons climbed up and grease monkeys flew up from below and started to fix the platform to the tower.

Arthur looked across and up. It was hard to estimate, but he thought the clouds were only eight or nine hundred feet above them, and the tendrils that were still snapping down could reach about three hundred feet. So they had a six-hundred-foot safety margin. Presumably the assault ram had to be this close in order to have a chance of breaking through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens.

Someone shouted far below. Arthur looked back down. The grease monkeys and the automatons were disappearing back under the platform.

‘Brace for launch!’ called out the commanding voice inside the rocket.

The Denizens around Arthur grabbed the bars, and the Denizens farther in grabbed one another. Arthur took a firm grip on the closest bar and bent his knees.

‘Light the blue touchpaper!’ called out the voice.

Arthur couldn’t see exactly what happened then, but somewhere over in the middle of the rocket, there was a sudden eruption, a vertical jet of white-hot sparks that reached the wicker floor above but somehow did not set it alight.

‘Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one!’ called the voice. ‘Fire!’

There was a loud fizzling noise, and nothing happened.

‘Fire?’ repeated the voice, somewhat less commandingly.

‘What is going on down there?’ asked a clear, cold female voice that made Arthur shiver. ‘Must I do everything myself?’

‘No, milady,’ called the first voice, which was now beseeching. ‘There is a second touchpaper. I will light it myself.’

A minute later, there was another violent stream of sparks.

‘Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . um . . .’

A violent force struck the rocket, sending every Denizen to his or her knees. Arthur was thrown from side to side, smacking into the sorcerers around him, their umbrella handles smashing into his ribs and thighs.

Huge clouds of smoke billowed up and out, and the rocket stormed up from the platform, accelerating faster than anything Arthur had ever experienced before.

Four seconds later, he heard the terrible crack of a tendril from above, closely followed by several more.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The rocket shook with each impact, and the bronze cage rods rang like bells. The assault ram did not deviate from its course, straight up into the underbelly of the Incomparable Gardens.