by Garth Nix
Arthur stopped feeling his head.
‘Are we nearly there?’
‘Approaching the harbour bar as we speak,’ said Watkingle. He scratched his nose and added, ‘If you’re fit, the Captain and the Commodore would like to have a word.’
Five minutes later, Arthur was in the great cabin sipping on cranberry juice. He felt surprisingly good. His broken leg didn’t hurt at all and moved more freely, the crab cast adapting to his increased mobility. He also felt fresh and quite optimistic, no longer so weighted with fear for Leaf and the others.
I will do what I can do, he thought. There’s no point worrying about anything till I’ve tried my best.
‘We regret the blow to your head, Lord Arthur,’ said Longtayle. ‘Watkingle was following orders, but perhaps his idea of a little tap —’ ‘It’s fine,’ said Arthur. ‘If he hadn’t hit me, Feverfew would have totally taken me over.’
‘Feverfew? You saw him?’
‘I saw Leaf first. The Mantis must have gone out into the Secondary Realms, because she’d been aboard more than a month. I guess she’s fit in pretty well, from the look of things. But right at the end they were getting attacked by the Shiver. That’s when I saw Feverfew. He was . . . pretty ugly.’
‘The Mantis was definitely being attacked by the Shiver?’ asked Monckton. He looked at Longtayle, his tail rising up in an agitated question mark. ‘Feverfew grows very bold. We have no separate confirmation of this.’
‘Watkingle said the Mantis might be able to hold off the Shiver,’ said Arthur.
‘It’s impossible to say,’ said Monckton. He was obviously troubled. ‘If Feverfew was determined, he would probably win out. From talking to Doctor Scamandros, you were very fortunate to get away from him the first time.’
‘Is he all right?’ asked Arthur. ‘Doctor Scamandros? I forgot to ask . . .’
‘He recovers well,’ replied Longtayle. ‘He will be joining us shortly. So you say that the Mantis was being attacked by the Shiver four days ago, by House time? Do you know where?’
‘I think it was in the Secondary Realms, but I’m not sure.’
‘If Feverfew is out cruising for victims, then he and his pirates will not be in his harbour,’ said Monckton. ‘Greatly increasing your chances, Arthur. But four days ago by House time. . . he could be anywhere.’
‘It doesn’t matter where Feverfew is,’ said Arthur, hoping he sounded braver than he felt. ‘I have to get into that secret harbour. Even more now, if Feverfew has taken Leaf and the crews of the Moth and the Flying Mantis to be slaves.’
I hope that’s what happened, Arthur thought. Better than being killed. Though maybe the Mantis defeated Feverfew …
‘There is some good news,’ said Longtayle. ‘The Accelerated Coal has arrived and the Balaena is fully operational. I have just had a message via bottle from her, confirming that the submersible will rendezvous with us offshore in about ten minutes.’
‘We’re not going into Port Wednesday?’ asked Arthur.
‘No,’ confirmed Longtayle. ‘Commodore Monckton and I decided that it would be best to keep your presence secret, and your transfer to the submersible even more so. Feverfew certainly has informers in the port and they are bound to have sorcerous means of communicating with him.’
‘That makes sense. Did any messages for me come through while I was sleeping? Dame Primus must have got my letter if you’ve got your fuel canister already.’
Longtayle shook his head. ‘No messages have come through by bottle. However, there is a representative from Dame Primus aboard the Balaena. She has probably brought messages for you.’
‘She?’ asked Arthur eagerly. ‘Is her name Suzy Turquoise Blue?’
Longtayle took a paper scroll from the pocket of his coat, unrolled it, and scanned the text.
‘No name,’ he said. ‘Just “a representative from Dame Primus.”’
‘I hope it is Suzy,’ said Arthur. ‘No one else has come aboard the sub as well, have they? Like a tall, grizzle-bearded old guy with a harpoon?’
‘I presume you refer to the Mariner,’ said Longtayle stiffly. ‘If he chose to grace any of our vessels with his presence it would be reported instantly. We hold him in only slightly less esteem than his brother, our noble creator, the Piper.’
‘So he’s not aboard, then,’ said Arthur. Instinctively, he touched the Mariner’s medallion on his throat, to make sure it was still there. Not that it had done anything anyway. At least as far as he could tell. He’d always known it was unlikely the Mariner would show up to help him, but he had hoped. Now that small hope had all but disappeared.
‘Where is Doctor Scamandros?’ he asked. It was looking more and more likely that he’d have to sneak into Feverfew’s secret worldlet by himself, without the team he’d been imagining would be there to help him.
‘He should be here by now,’ said Longtayle. He strode over and opened the door to look in the passageway, startling the sentry. ‘Ah — here he comes.’
Doctor Scamandros entered a few seconds later. He looked the same as he always had, but was walking with the aid of an ebony walking stick that had a carved parrot head for a handle.
‘Lord Arthur!’ he exclaimed, using his stick to balance in order to offer a low bow. ‘I am most pleased to see you recovered. I cannot thank you enough for my timely rescue, as it is clear that without the friendly and most expert attentions of Mister Yongtin — worth every silver real, I may add — I would have expired quite rapidly from Nothing poison.’
‘I’m glad you’re okay,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean, that you’re all right. You are basically all right now, aren’t you?’
‘Indeed, “basically all right” describes my condition quite well.’
Arthur looked dubiously at the little Denizen. Scamandros hadn’t fully straightened up after his bow, and the tattoos on his face showed derelict hulks barely afloat amid the wreckage of battle, with sunken masts poking up through matted rafts of debris populated by desolate castaways.
‘I was hoping you might be able to help me get into Feverfew’s secret harbour,’ said Arthur. ‘But you don’t look well enough —’ ‘Poppycock!’ snorted the Doctor, wincing as he put his shoulders back and stood to attention. A tattooed wind blew across his face, and the hulks sprouted jury-rigged masts and sails. ‘Why, an hour or two of rest aboard these kind Rats’ submersible and I’ll be right as a trivet.’
‘You’ll be at least a day aboard the Balaena unless Drowned Wednesday changes her course dramatically,’ said Longtayle. At the same time, Arthur asked, ‘What’s a trivet?’
‘There you are, at least a day’s more rest and I shall once more be fighting fit. As to trivets, they are three-legged stands that are notionally most sound but in practice tend to fall over, so perhaps I erred in my metaphor. Right as rain is what I meant.’
‘What — oh, never mind. I’ll be happy with whatever help you can give me. Particularly if you can disguise me. With sorcery, I mean. To fool the pirates.’
‘Sorcerous disguises? A snap!’ declared the Doctor. ‘Though to be entirely accurate, while I could weave a most excellent disguise over you, it would not stand up to Feverfew’s burning gaze. Ordinary pirates, yes. Feverfew himself, no.’
‘I don’t plan to let Feverfew get a look at me,’ muttered Arthur. He glanced over at Monckton and Longtayle, who were taking delivery of another scroll from a messenger, clearly the latest arrival from a simultaneous bottle.
‘One of our ships is shadowing Drowned Wednesday,’ said Monckton, indicating the ivory whale on the chart. ‘She is maintaining her usual course for this time of year, following fish patterns, and the Balaena should be able to intercept her without trouble. But we need to get you on board immediately. Drowned Wednesday moves far more swiftly than any ship, so the submersible will have to get in position directly in front of her and then steam full ahead in order to navigate the great intake of water through the straining bones of the great creature’s mouth.’
‘Straining bones?’ asked Arthur. No one had mentioned anything about straining bones. ‘What. . . what are they?’
‘Drowned Wednesday in her Leviathan form is not just an overgrown Earth whale,’ said Monckton. ‘But she has some similarities with the larger types. As far as we have been able to ascertain, she does not have teeth as such, nor the typical baleen structure of some whales. But her upper and lower jaws hold vast vertical sheets of perforated bone, which form a lattice that strains the water that rushes into her mouth. The holes aren’t big enough to admit any ship larger than a brig, but the submersible should fit easily. Provided it can aim at one of the holes, of course. It is possible that the rush of water may be too fast for the submersible to have any steerageway, and it will smash into the bone. Or end up between the upper and lower plate and be ground to pieces.’
‘But you think your submersible has a good chance of getting through?’ Arthur hadn’t thought getting swallowed by Drowned Wednesday was going to be easy, but he hadn’t considered the possibility of smashing into some weird whale-teeth or getting crunched up. ‘What comes after the straining plates? Do we just keep on going with the flow into her stomach? And is that completely full of water or does it ebb and flow like a tide?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Monckton. ‘One of the reasons we have agreed to supply the Balaena to your expedition, Arthur, is that it will provide us with new information. The Balaena will send us reports via simultaneous bottle for as long as it — that is to say, we will be very interested to see what else is inside Drowned Wednesday in addition to Feverfew’s private worldlet.’
‘We’d best be getting aboard,’ said Longtayle. One of his ears twitched, and Arthur realised the Rat was listening to the sound of the ship’s engines, which had just grown softer. ‘We’ve heaved to. The submersible must be about to rendezvous.’
‘Submersible Rattus Balaena alongside!’ reported a Rat a second later.
‘Are you coming with us, Captain?’ Arthur asked Lieutenant Longtayle.
‘I am assuming command of the submersible,’ said Longtayle. ‘Due to the nature of the expedition, all the crew are volunteers. Are you ready to go, Lord Arthur? And you, Doctor Scamandros?’
‘I’m ready,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes, I believe I am,’ replied Scamandros.
‘Good luck!’ said Commodore Monckton. He stood and saluted as they left, as did the Steward and sentry Rats.
‘And to you too,’ muttered Doctor Scamandros as he followed Arthur out the door.
Twenty
THE SUBMERSIBLE’S CONNING tower was the only part of the Balaena visible above the surface. The sub had tied up on the starboard side of the ship, and Port Wednesday lay to port, so Arthur only had a brief glimpse of that harbour, made even less visible by the fading light from the distant ceiling as the Border Sea’s strange night came on.
He saw a dark granite mountain that had been terraced into a dozen or more levels, with hundreds of houses and buildings sprawled along each terrace. Beams of light shot up and down from the higher terraces, marking the paths of elevators to other parts of the House.
Arthur couldn’t see the harbour mouth, but he could see a telltale forest of masts in the middle of the lower terraces, so the harbour clearly cut deeply into the mountain, and the terraces wound around it.
‘Mind your step, sir!’ called a Rat.
Arthur gratefully accepted a helpful paw to jump from the ship to the conning tower. The Rat’s paw felt just like a human hand, at least through Arthur’s glove.
Arthur’s boots rang like a bell on the ladder as he quickly climbed down into the hull. The access tube was quite narrow and would have been difficult for a fully grown man, but it posed no problem for Arthur.
The inside of the submarine was not what he expected. Though it was a grey, dark metal above, inside it was panelled with a cherry-coloured timber, and there was a richly patterned carpet on the floor. Arthur peered at the design in the relatively dim light from what appeared to be electric lamps set into the bulkhead. It took him a moment to work out that the flowing lines contained text and that the whole carpet was some sort of epic poem. Or a mission statement. He’d heard of some weird companies doing that in their headquarters. But he didn’t have time to puzzle it out.
There was a door forward and a door aft, the forward one open. It was wood-panelled too, but Arthur could see the metal beneath, as it was easily six inches thick.
A crew Rat beckoned Arthur ahead. He was a brindled Rat, a kind of brown-and-black mixture, wearing a blue woollen turtleneck sweater with Rattus Balaena embroidered around the neck in gold. He also had on a leather helmet, like the ones pilots wore in really old, open biplanes, but without the goggles.
‘Welcome aboard, sir. If you would just come forr’d to the bridge. There’s not much room elsewhere.’
Arthur ducked as he stepped through the bulkhead door. The Rat led him along a very narrow corridor that had doors and hatches of varying shapes and sizes along both sides, till they came to another bulkhead door.
This opened to a chamber about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. It was also carpeted, but you could see where the carpet had been cut so the furniture could be bolted to the metal deck beneath.
The front of this chamber was dominated by a bank of glass-covered dials and instruments, numerous wheels and levers, and a crystal globe about two feet in diameter atop a central plinth. Two tall-backed leather chairs were positioned on either side of the globe, facing the controls.
The rear two-thirds of the bridge, as this room clearly was, could have been transplanted from an expensive hotel or café, though one with limited space. There were six elegant, narrow chairs, bolted to the deck in groups of three, each with a little table between them.
Longtayle and another submariner Rat were down at the controls, intent on going through a checklist. The only other person — or sentient being — there was an exquisitely dressed girl sitting demurely in one of the forward chairs, with her back to Arthur. She was wearing a pearly-white dress with puffed-up sleeves and numerous ruffles and flounces, topped with a very broad-brimmed white hat that had a spray of peacock feathers that almost touched the ceiling. She was drinking very slowly and precisely from a gold-rimmed teacup.
Arthur’s heart sank. She was too small to be a Denizen, but Dame Primus had obviously sent someone else, one of the Piper’s children more to her liking. Not the ragamuffin Suzy Blue.
Still, she would have messages, which could be important. With a sigh that he didn’t even try to suppress, Arthur slid between the chairs to approach the girl.
She turned her head very elegantly as Arthur sighed. Though the huge hat shadowed her face, Arthur recognised the sharp, dark-eyed face underneath. He tripped over his own feet and hit the shin of his good leg on the chair next to her.
‘Lord Arthur, I presume?’
Arthur recovered his balance and frowned. She looked like Suzy Blue, but her voice didn’t sound quite right. She certainly didn’t dress like Suzy Blue.
‘Suzy?’
‘My name is Suzanna,’ said the girl.
‘Suzy Turquoise Blue,’ said Arthur, with more conviction. It was Suzy, just all cleaned up and nicely dressed, and putting on a different voice.
‘Suzanna Monday’s Tierce,’ corrected the girl. ‘That is my name and station.’
‘What’s happened to you?’ burst out Arthur. ‘I can’t believe you’re acting like . . . like . . .’
‘A properly brought-up young mortal,’ said Suzy. ‘That is the standard Dame Primus has set for me and that I try to attain. Please, do sit down, Lord Arthur. Would you like a cup of this rather strong, but quite refreshing, tea?’
Arthur sat down with a thump. He’d really been looking forward to seeing Suzy again, and having her help. This beautifully dressed, ramrod-straight girl might look like Suzy, but she might as well be an imposter. He couldn’t see her being much help. She probably wouldn’t want to leave the
submarine.
‘Do you have any messages from Dame Primus?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Tea?’ responded Suzanna.
‘Just the messages, if you have any.’
‘La! You are in a fearful rush!’ protested Suzy. She put her teacup down with agonising slowness and took a small silk handbag out of her lap. It was a delicate shade of pink. Arthur almost couldn’t bear to look at it. Suzy Turquoise Blue was a brave adventurer, not someone who carried around a tiny pink handbag and said ‘La!’
Suzy reached into the bag and withdrew a tiny square of paper that grew as it came out, to become a larger envelope of stiff, heavy paper, sealed with a huge red wax seal that showed the stern profile of Dame Primus. Without a laurel wreath, Arthur noticed.
‘With the compliments of Dame Primus,’ said Suzy, passing it over with a very fake-looking smile.
Arthur snatched the letter. As he bent it to break the seal, he saw Doctor Scamandros out of the corner of his eye. The little sorcerer was being assisted to one of the chairs by the same Rat who’d shown Arthur in.
Up the front, Longtayle and the helmsrat sat down in the control chairs. Longtayle raised a pipe to his mouth and spoke into it. His amplified words crackled out of a speaker hidden somewhere above Arthur’s head, and could be heard echoing up from the corridor behind as well.
‘All hands to diving stations! Sections report when secure!’
Arthur opened the envelope. Like most letters in the House, there was no separate sheet of paper. The writing was all on the inside of the envelope. Arthur unfolded it completely and paused to listen as other Rats’ voices crackled and echoed through the loudspeaker system.
‘Engine room ready.’
‘Auxiliaries ready.’
‘Air circulation ready!’
‘Tower secure!’
‘Foresnout ready.’
Longtayle spoke to the helmsrat. Arthur started to read his letter.
To Arthur, Rightful Heir to the Keys to the Kingdom and Master of the Lower House, the Middle House, the Upper House, the Far Reaches, the Great Maze, the Incomparable Gardens, the Border Sea, and those Infinite Territories beyond the House commonly called the Secondary Realms.
