Grim Tuesday

by Garth Nix

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Arthur. When the blob didn’t answer for a moment, he added, ‘What do you call yourself?’

  ‘I suppose you could call me . . . Soot,’ said the thing. ‘Yes . . . Soot. I have breathed it, lived in it, and eaten it for so long that it is a fitting name.’

  ‘Eaten it?’ asked Suzy. ‘Why eat soot?’

  ‘Boredom,’ said Soot. ‘The Overseers fire their steam-guns at me if I get too close. The Nithlings would eat me themselves. I have been unable to get into the Treasure Tower. What else has there been for me to do but brood upon the walls and ceiling of this realm and eat soot?’

  ‘If we help you get into the Treasure Tower,’ said Arthur, ‘you’ll have to swear to help us in every way you can against Grim Tuesday.’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Soot. It practically bounced off the ceiling in excitement. Arthur wished it hadn’t because he saw its belly, lined with lots of horrid-looking little suckers, like an octopus’s tentacle. That was what made the popping sound when it moved.

  ‘That story might be true, but I reckon that still makes it a Nithling,’ whispered Suzy, as she edged as close as she could to Arthur. ‘A clever one, so very dangerous. But we need that diamond.’

  ‘I’m sick of hanging upside down and getting smashed into . . . this stupid ceiling,’ Arthur whispered back. ‘Let’s accept its help for now.’

  Suzy nodded reluctantly.

  ‘We accept your offer,’ said Arthur to Soot.

  ‘Fine! Fine!’ burbled Soot. ‘It’s a pleasure working with you. Whoever you are.’

  ‘I’m Arthur,’ said Arthur quickly, before Suzy could introduce him as Monday or the Master of the Lower House. ‘That’s Suzy.’

  ‘And you’ll be thieving just a few odds and ends from the Treasure Tower?’ asked Soot. His voice sounded slightly anxious and he clearly took it for granted that Arthur and Suzy were thieves.

  ‘We’ll be reclaiming stolen goods!’ snapped Suzy indignantly. ‘Goods as should have been returned to their rightful owner ten thousand –’

  ‘Suzy!’ interrupted Arthur. He didn’t want Soot to know too much. If the thing did have some strange connection with Grim Tuesday, it was possible that Grim Tuesday might have a connection with it, as well.

  ‘Reclamation,’ muttered Suzy. ‘Arthur only wants wot he’s supposed to have already –’

  ‘Suzy! Are you ready to do the stickit spell?’

  ‘Oh, stickit fingers, is it?’ asked Soot, peering with his silvery eyes atArthur’s hands. ‘Very nice workmanship.Not made by the Grim himself, but one of his better crafters.’

  ‘Stick by day and stick by night, stick for a minute each, left and right,’ Suzy recited to her hands, keeping herself propped on her elbows and forearms. As she said the words of the spell, the little finger puppet things on her fingers wriggled and squeaked and began to glow with a fuzzy green light.

  Suzy braced against a wingbeat, then slapped both hands against the ceiling and pulled back. One hand stuck by the thumb and two fingers. Immediately Suzy used her other hand to grab both strings that hung around her neck. She pulled them. Wax seals cracked and her two wings instantly blew into a cloud of confetti that was whisked away by the breeze.

  Suzy hung from the ceiling and turned to Arthur. She smiled, despite her two black eyes and a bruise on her chin, evidence of the damage done by being constantly beaten into the ceiling.

  ‘That’s a relief! I’ll be dropping in about forty seconds, so you jump now, Mister Soot, and make sure you keep your distance on the pyramid.’

  Suzy punctuated her instruction by drawing the copper tube out of her belt.

  Soot needed no encouragement.With a single flexing motion, accompanied by lots of tiny popping noises like exploding bubble wrap, it launched itself straight down. Caught a little by the breeze, it plopped onto the eastern face of the pyramid, about thirty feet below the apex.

  ‘Good luck, Arthur,’ said Suzy. She quickly thrust the copper tube back through her belt to leave her hand free. ‘I reckon you should –’

  The stickits on her right hand suddenly stopped squeaking and sticking.

  Arthur watched Suzy fall. He almost couldn’t bear to see her hit the pyramid, but she landed on her feet, then bounced and rolled down for a few seconds before she arrested her descent by slapping her sticky left hand on the glass.

  She lay still for a few seconds, then rolled back and waved up at Arthur, shouting something he couldn’t hear, the words carried away by the breeze and the beat of his wings.

  Arthur looked back up, stopped himself yet again from being pushed into the ceiling, and took a deep breath. Then, propping himself so his hands didn’t touch the ceiling, he spoke the words of the stickit finger spell.With the last word, he felt the ends of his fingers tingle, and the stickits on his left hand began to squeak.

  Arthur used his right hand to pull the right string. He heard the wax crack, then confetti blew up past his ears. A second later, he began to fall, while his remaining wing beat harder and harder, trying to maintain its single-minded upwards thrust.

  Arthur expected to corkscrew, but he didn’t. Instead his single wing threw him head over heels, which rapidly became a series of wild somersaults.

  An eye-blink later, Arthur hit the glass face of the pyramid.

  Very, very hard.

  THIRTEEN

  ARTHUR SCREAMED as he hit. There was an unbearable pain in his left leg, and he was sliding down the glass, faster and faster, while his single wing thrashed around his head so he couldn’t see anything.

  Then he managed to slap his sticky hand on the glass and came to a sudden stop. He pulled the string and almost choked on a sudden mouthful of confetti as it shot up all around him.

  Arthur started to slide again as his hand became unstuck. He slapped his other hand down and stopped again.He could hear Suzy shouting something, and Soot too, but couldn’t give themany attention.He had to see what was wrong with his leg. The pain was deep inside, but stabbing up into his body and down to his feet. He hardly dared to look.

  But he made himself. Both his jeans and the pyjama-like trousers the Lieutenant Keeper had given him were ripped. He could see some blood and what he had feared – something protruding that could only be bone.

  He’d broken his tibia or fibula, the bones in the lower leg.Maybe both of them, in a complex fracture. A bad one.

  Arthur felt a terrible, sudden coldness sweep over him. He began to shiver. He tried to quell the shivers as he drew his leg up for a closer look. It made him feel sick to see his leg looking all lumpy and wrong, with that piece of bone thrust out through the skin.

  Arthur gulped in a deep breath. He could feel his lungs tightening as panic set in.

  I will not have an asthma attack, he told himself. I can’t have one. I’m in the House. Things are different here. Everything heals quickly. Even a broken bone will heal in time . . . but I haven’t got time . . . can’t stand the pain for long . . . I have to do something . . .

  Hesitantly, he laid his hand lightly over his shin, only just touching the lumpy broken part. Even so, it sent another stab of pain up his leg and into his head. He almost blacked out.

  ‘By the power of . . . of the First Key . . . the power that remains in my hand,’ Arthur whispered. ‘Heal me. Fix the broken . . . bone.’

  His hand stopped shaking, though the rest of his body didn’t. Then he felt it grow hot. As Arthur watched, the bone retreated back through the skin, which rejoined itself.

  The pain remained for what seemed like several minutes but could only have been seconds, for it faded just as Arthur’s right hand lost its stickiness and he had to slap his left hand onto the glass.

  His leg still felt very strange, but Arthur was able to look around and refocus on what was going on. A moment later Suzy slid down next to him, stopping herself a little short with her sticky hand. Soot watched from a distance, silver eyes twinkling amid its black hair.

  ‘What happened?’
asked Suzy. ‘Are you sorely hurt?’

  Arthur shook his head. The shakes were slowly subsiding but it took an effort to find his voice.

  ‘I . . . I broke my leg. But I think I fixed it . . .’

  Suzy raised her eyebrows and grimaced when it made her black eyes hurt.

  ‘Not bad. Don’t s’pose you could fix up my bruises while you’re at it?’

  ‘Uh, I don’t really know what I did,’ said Arthur. He lifted his leg and flexed it a few times. It felt stiff and clumsy, and Arthur experienced a stab of fear. The bone was healed all right, but his leg now looked and felt a bit crooked.

  It hasn’t set straight, he thought. I’ll be lame. No running ever. No baseball. No soccer.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Suzy, interrupting Arthur’s thoughts. ‘Overseers.’

  Arthur looked down and started to slip. Quickly he changed hands again and temporarily forgot about his leg. Suzy was pointing to a band of Overseers that had emerged out of the smog down below and were running towards the base of the pyramid.

  ‘Don’t think their steam-guns’ll reach us,’ said Suzy. ‘But they might have other weapons. We’d better start. It won’t be quick with the stickit fingers.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ called out Soot. It started undulating to the top of the pyramid. ‘We must get inside and join . . . see the treasures!’

  Arthur nodded and pulled himself up as far as he could above his sticking hand and reached out to plant his other hand. Then he had to wait until it stuck, then repeat the process.

  After ten minutes, they were still short of the top. Almost a thousand feet below and several hundred feet to the east, at the base of the pyramid, the group of Overseers was busy putting together something that looked suspiciously like a weapon. They had wheeled a steam engine in from somewhere out in the smoggy regions and were stoking it furiously, as other Overseers set up a long bronze barrel on a tripod mount and connected it to the engine by a hose of some silver-metal mesh.

  ‘Steam-cannon,’ said Soot, looking down from its perch on the very apex of the pyramid. ‘Hurry, before they blast us off!’

  ‘We are hurrying!’ saidArthur as he pulled back on one hand to see if it was sticking yet.He kept looking down, not at the Overseers, but at his leg. As far as he could tell, it worked fine, but froma point several inches below his knee the leg was definitely not straight and it felt weird.

  Suzy reached the top before Arthur. Soot immediately held out the diamond in his tongue

  ‘Wait,’ said Suzy. ‘I’ll have to time my stickits carefully.’

  She took out her pocket watch, left it hanging down the front of her apron, and waited till her stickit fingers swapped. Then she extracted a once-white handkerchief from her sleeve, used it to receive the gem, and gave it a good polish before she touched it.

  ‘Keep an eye on my watch,’ she instructed Arthur as he arrived. ‘I’ll cut till my stickit fingers are about to swap. Tell me when the second hand hits two.’

  Arthur looked at the watch dangling on its silver-gilt chain. It kept spinning around, so the face was difficult to see. The second hand was ticking around steadily, but as it reached twelve Arthur was distracted by his own stickits swapping over.

  ‘Look out!’ he called hastily as he stopped his sudden slide with a slap on the glass.

  Suzy popped the diamond in her mouth and slapped her other hand down just in time. Then she resumed her work with the gem. The diamond didn’t actually cut through the glass, but it scored it enough so a solid hit would snap off the pinnacle of the pyramid, allowing them to climb inside to the weathervane atop the tower.

  ‘They’re going to fire the steam-cannon,’ said Soot anxiously. ‘Hurry! Hurry!’

  Arthur looked down. The bronze barrel was being elevated to target the top of the pyramid, Overseers frantically turning wheels and gears. Long wafts of steam were escaping from the end of the barrel, and the steam engine was blowing a steady stream of thick black smoke.

  ‘Only a bit more to cut,’ Suzy said to Arthur. ‘You’d better hit it, rather than me. It will probably need the power of the First Key. Take the tube from my belt.’

  Arthur reached over and slid out the copper tube. Suzy finished the deeply scored line she’d drawn right around the pyramid, about four feet down from its point.

  ‘Hit it!’

  Arthur swung hard. The copper tube bounced off, jarring his hand. But there had been a definite cracking sound and his hands were hot. He swung again, and this time the cracking sound was so loud he had no doubt that the point of the pyramid had broken all along the diamond-cut line.

  Together, Arthur and Suzy pushed at the top part of the pyramid. It resisted for a moment, then snapped off. The top three feet of the pyramid toppled over and fell down the other side, leaving a nice square access hole directly above the weathervane.

  Arthur’s stickits changed and he slipped back a few feet before he could slap his other hand down. Suzy quickly tested the edge of the inch-thick glass.

  ‘It’s not sharp,’ she said, and climbed up and inside the pyramid, her feet tapping the east-west crossbars of the weathervane to make sure they’d take her weight.

  Suzy’s right hand stuck to the glass as she lowered herself down. She pulled at it, then quickly said, ‘Stickit fingers, my thanks to you, your work is done, till called anew. ’

  ‘That’s the spell, Arthur,’ she added, her voice suddenly fading as her head dipped below the lip of the hole. She waved at Arthur through the glass, and he faintly heard her say, ‘Come on!’

  Before he could move, Soot swarmed past him, dived into the hole, and slid down the weathervane on the opposite side from Suzy. It continued to the roof of the tower and disappeared from Arthur’s sight.

  A second later, the first blast of long-range steam screamed up the side of the pyramid, clouding the glass as it came.

  Arthur swung his legs into the hole and Suzy helped place his feet on the crossbars of the weathervane. He crouched down as low as he could, so he was almost entirely inside the pyramid. Almost - but his right hand was stuck outside, firmly glued by the stickit fingers.

  Arthur opened his mouth to speak the unsticking spell, but he only got the first word out before the steam hit. Most of it hurtled above his head, but some spilled back down inside the pyramid. Arthur ducked down even more as it scalded his ears and the back of his neck. It hurt, but he’d only suffered the cooler edges of the blast.

  Except for his right hand. That must have been right in the middle of the superheated stream of steam. But it didn’t hurt. Arthur didn’t look for a moment, imagining that he couldn’t feel the pain because it was so intense, and all that was left were the bones. Then he discovered that his right hand was clenched against his chest and his left hand was stuck to the weathervane. The stickits must have swapped an instant before the steam hit, and Arthur had instinctively snatched his hand in just in time.

  Arthur sighed a very deep sigh of relief and recited the spell. Immediately, the stickits on his left hand quieted down and stopped wriggling.

  ‘This is hinged,’ said Suzy, who had climbed down to the roof and was examining the base of the weathervane. The whole thing was about six feet high and made of cast iron, so it would be very heavy. Arthur tapped the cold iron beak of the cockerel and wondered how they were supposed to lift it and get inside the tower, as Dame Primus had suggested. Even if it was hinged.

  ‘There must be a catch somewhere,’ added Suzy. ‘A lock or lever . . . ah –’

  She pressed a hidden button. There was a loud metallic zing! and Arthur was flung violently into the air. He smacked down onto the roof of the tower and rolled down the tiles to the gutter. His legs went over and he scrabbled desperately to get a grip, his fingers no longer sticky.

  At the last second, he grasped the gutter, leaving his legs dangling over the side of the tower. Arthur tried to breathe a sigh of even temporary relief, but he couldn’t get a breath.

  Then there was a rattle on the t
iles and Suzy’s anxious face appeared, looking down at him and the ground, several hundred feet below.

  ‘Sorry!’ said Suzy. ‘It was spring-loaded . . .’

  ‘Help me up!’ whispered Arthur. His breath was coming back. Once again he was grateful to be in the House. If he’d had the wind knocked out of him like that back home, he would’ve had an asthma attack for sure.

  ‘Swing your feet back, I mean behind you,’ said Suzy. ‘The pyramid wall is only a few feet away. Push against it and I’ll pull you over.’

  It took several minutes to get Arthur onto the roof. He lay on his back for a few minutes, panting, then wearily sat up.

  Suzy was looking into the hatchway under the weathervane, which now hung at a right angle to the tower. Arthur slowly climbed up next to her, thankful that the pitch of the roof was not too steep.

  ‘Bigger inside than out,’ muttered Suzy, still looking inside. ‘And that Soot thing has scarpered.’

  Arthur looked through the hatch. Even with Suzy’s comment, he still expected to see something like a round tower room.

  But the inside of the tower bore no relationship to the outside. It wasn’t even round. It was rectangular and vast. It reminded Arthur of a nineteenth-century prison he’d visited on a school excursion. Large and gloomy, it had an open internal courtyard with many levels of cells built into the brick walls on each side, each traced by a cast-iron walkway.

  The prison Arthur had visited had six levels, with a hundred cells or so on each side. The Grim’s treasure prison had at least fifty levels, and the main courtyard was a mile long, maybe more. It was hard to tell, because the only light came from flickering oil lanterns – or imitations of lanterns – that were placed in wall brackets between every fourth cell. There had to be at least a thousand cells on every level, Arthur calculated, which meant there were more than fifty thousand rooms!

  ‘It looks like a prison,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean, it looks almost exactly like one I visited back home. Only much, much bigger.’

  ‘That’s what Grim Tuesday does,’ said Suzy. ‘Copies stuff.We’d better start looking for theWill.’