by Garth Nix
‘Start!’ exclaimed Arthur. He looked down at the iron ladder that led to the top-level walkway, and the cells stretching to the left and right – a seemingly endless row of riveted cast-iron doors. ‘Where do we start?’
‘Depends what you’re looking for,’ said Soot, unexpectedly appearing out of the gloom at the top of the ladder. ‘Did I hear you mention . . . theWill?’
‘Do you know where it is?’ asked Arthur eagerly, before he remembered he didn’t want their real business known to Soot.
Soot reared up and flexed, showing its nasty sucker underside again. Arthur leaned back from it, struck by the notion that it had got bigger somehow. It certainly looked about half again as big.
‘TheWill of the Architect?’ asked Soot. ‘That part of it entrusted to Grim Tuesday?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. Soot’s voice had dropped in pitch as well. It sounded more menacing, less eager to please than it had before. As if Arthur and Suzy were less useful to it now that it had got into the Treasure Tower.
‘I don’t know where it is exactly,’ replied Soot. Its silver eyes weighed up Suzy, who had hefted her copper tube, and it backed down the ladder. ‘But I know where it must be. Follow me.’
Soot slithered and popped down the ladder and onto the top walkway. It didn’t look back to see if they were following.
‘It’s got bigger,’ whispered Suzy. ‘Like a Nithling that’s sucked the life out of someone.’
Arthur nodded and bit his lip.
‘We have to follow it,’ he said finally. ‘There are too many cells to check every one. Particularly since Grim Tuesday must know we’re in here by now.’
‘What if it’s leading us into a trap?’
‘I still think we have to risk it.’
‘I s’pose so,’ said Suzy. ‘But keep your eye out for an architectural sword, or a light-axe, or something. If it gets any bigger, we’ll need a better weapon than this copper pipe.’
Arthur nodded and led the way down the ladder. His leg still felt weird and it felt weirder still when he finally stood up straight on the walkway. He took a few steps, stopped, then felt both his knees, his forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.
‘What is it?’
‘My leg . . . the one I broke,’ Arthur said hesitantly. ‘It’s got shorter. It’s an inch shorter than the other one!’
He bent down and felt his legs again. His clogs were long gone, fallen off into the Pit. He was standing in his socks, and there could be no doubt. He’d magically healed his broken bone, but he’d done it wrong. Not only was his leg a bit twisted, it was definitely shorter.
‘It is shorter,’ confirmed Suzy in a conversational tone. ‘Come on, that Soot is going down those stairs to the next level.’
‘You don’t get it!’ cried Arthur. ‘My leg is shorter!’
He coughed as he said it, his breath catching. He could feel his lungs tightening, but it couldn’t be asthma. Not here in the House. It was shock, or a panic attack, or something. It was bad enough having asthma and not being able to do everything. Now he was lame as well. Everything would be worse –
Arthur stopped himself.
I am not going to think about this now. I have to find Part Two of the Will, defeat Grim Tuesday, and get back in time to save the house and all our money and stop anything worse from happening. So one leg is a bit shorter? That’s better than it being broken, isn’t it?
‘Come on!’ repeated Suzy. She started off, and Arthur followed, lurching as he got used to his shorter leg.
They had to run to catch Soot, as the thing undulated down a set of iron steps to the next level, along it for a hundred yards or so, and then continued straight on down to the level below that.
Even in their socks, Arthur’s and Suzy’s footsteps rang on the metal walkway, the sound echoing through the vast open space in the middle.
‘If there are guards here, they’ll know where we are,’ said Arthur anxiously. His voice echoed out into the central courtyard, carrying even more than their footsteps.
‘There are no guards,’ called Soot. It had stopped outside a cell door that looked the same as all the others. ‘Grim Tuesday allows no one but himself to enter the Treasure Tower. Not even the Grotesques are allowed in here. But at last I am where I should have always been – with all the lovely treasure!’
Arthur and Suzy grimaced and stepped back as thick, translucent saliva dribbled out of Soot’s mouth and dripped down through the cast-iron mesh of the walkway.
‘Is theWill inside that cell?’ asked Arthur. It seemed a bit too straightforward for someone like Grim Tuesday to keep the Will here, even if no one but himself – or his former eyebrow – could know which of the five thousand rooms to look for.
‘There should be a way to the Will inside,’ said Soot, its drool bubbling as it spoke. ‘But here I must leave you. Other, more easily digestible treasures await me!’
It leaped backwards and over the railing as Suzy rushed forward to hit it with the pipe. She and Arthur rushed to look over the side, only to see Soot several levels down, clinging to the side of the walkway there. With a loud popping, it slithered underneath the walkway and was gone from sight.
‘Good riddance,’ said Arthur. ‘I suppose.’
‘If it’s led us to the right door,’ said Suzy. She looked it over, then tried to slide back the inch-thick bolt. It didn’t budge, even when she pulled with both hands and pushed with her feet against the rim of the door.
‘Stuck, or magically locked,’ she said. ‘Not even a padlock to pick.’
Arthur examined the bolt. It actually looked welded in place, with thick strands of metal between the bolt and the loops. As he touched it, Arthur’s hand felt suddenly hot. Flakes of rust fell to the floor, the bolt rattled, and Arthur easily drew it back.
Suzy whistled in admiration.
‘That’s a good trick.Wish I could do the same thing to Dame Primus’s biscuit pantry.’
Arthur pushed the door open and stepped inside.
FOURTEEN
ARTHUR STEPPED INTO another room that was bigger inside than out. This was no tiny cell, but a room about the size of the big family room in Arthur’s house – the house that they would lose if Arthur couldn’t stop the Grotesques.
Apart from the overall size, this room had nothing in common with Arthur’s family room. For a start, it looked more like a ship’s cabin than a room. The brick walls of the prison were gone, replaced by wooden planking, sealed with tar that had dripped in numerous places. The ceiling and the floor were planked too, and everything creaked a little as Arthur walked farther in. The only light came from a lamp that swung on a chain from the ceiling, making the shadows shift and sway.
There was a neatly made-up bunk in one corner and some barrels and a chest in another, but most of the room was taken up by a long table of deeply polished wood. On the table were hundreds and hundreds of different bottles, all carefully laid flat, many of them mounted on wooden or ivory bases.
Every bottle had a ship in it. Many different kinds of ships, in many different sorts of bottles. Glass of all colours, thick and thin, sealed with corks, or wax, or lead, or sprung metal stoppers. Ships with one mast, two masts, three masts, or no masts and lots of oars. Big ships that might have crews of hundreds of sailors and little ships just for one.
Arthur walked closer. The lamp swung, and the shadows shifted. Arthur saw a red glow suddenly flare in the corner at the end of the table and stopped as he saw it came from a pipe in the mouth of a man who was sitting there. An oldish man, white haired and white whiskered, his face looking like it hadn’t seen a shave for a week but wasn’t yet up to a beard.
He was wearing a heavy blue coat, the sleeves showing dark bands where four gold braided bands might once have been. Instead of the ubiquitous clogs of the Far Reaches, he had on rubber boots, with the tops folded over above the knee.
His eyes were deep set, bright blue, and very piercing. He met Arthur’s stare, carefully placed his pipe on a st
and, still smoking, then put down the quill pen he held, snapped shut the top of the inkwell, set down the huge bronze-bound book he was writing in, and spiked a piece of paper that looked like an old-fashioned telegram on a long metal spike that held hundreds of similar papers.
Then he stood up, all six feet six inches of him, and came into the light.
‘It’s the Piper!’ shrieked Suzy, and she fell to her knees, either in worship, a faint, or some sort of faked fall to distract the man. Arthur didn’t know. But he was slightly relieved this man wasn’t Grim Tuesday, which is what he’d thought.
The relief only lasted a second as the man reached into the shadows and pulled out a nine-foot-long harpoon that glittered and shone all the way from its incredibly sharp-looking point to the eyehole on the end where a rope would normally be attached.
‘Nay, lass, I’m not the Piper,’ growled the man, his voice deep and carrying. ‘That would be my youngest brother you’re thinking of. Now tell me your names before I must do as Grim Tuesday bids me, and send you to perdition.’
‘Ah, is perdition some part of the House?’ asked Arthur.
The man chuckled.
‘In this case, perdition means “total destruction,”’ he explained. ‘But I’m a kindly man and hold no grudge against you Denizens. My friend here will snip your skein of destiny, sharp as you like, and that will be the end of it.’
He slapped his harpoon as he spoke, and it shone still brighter.
‘Now, give me your names. I’ve a lubber’s employment now, keeping the register straight for Grim Tuesday, and I mislike pawing over a stone-cold corpse to find a name to strike off the roll. Speak!’
‘Off the roll?’ asked Arthur. ‘Do you mean the register of indentured workers?’
‘Aye, I do, and I must return to it, so kindly give me your names. Or must I prick it out of thee at the point of my companion?’
‘I’m not an indentured worker,’ said Arthur, though he quailed a little as the man lifted his harpoon and made as if to strike. ‘I’m the Master of the Lower House and I’ve come to get Part Two of theWill.’
The man’s eyes narrowed, but he put the harpoon aside and strode over to Arthur. Standing above him, he gripped the boy’s chin and pushed his head back till their eyes met. At the same time, he blocked an attempted blow from Suzy’s copper pipe, grabbed her by the collar, and lifted her up without looking.
‘Master of the Lower House, are ye?’
‘Yes . . . yes, I am!’ stammered Arthur. Suzy’s lips were turning blue and her eyes were rolling back in her head. ‘Leave her alone!’
He reached out and tried to drag Suzy down. At first he couldn’t move the man’s arm at all, then once again his hand felt hot and, with a sudden lurch, Suzy was dropped.
‘Well, well,’ said the man. ‘So you are, after all.’
He held out his hand.When Arthur hesitantly took it, they shook vigorously.
‘You can call me . . . let’s see . . . Captain Tom Shelvocke,’ the man said. ‘A mariner, temporarily becalmed by that slavemaster Grim Tuesday. And who’s this young lady, Master?’
‘Call me Arthur,’ said Arthur as he helped Suzy up. She gave Tom a nasty look and massaged her throat. ‘This is Suzy Turquoise Blue, Monday’s Tierce.’
‘Sorry about the neck wrangle,’ said Tom, offering his hand to Suzy. ‘Though by rights, you’d be stuck through and through by my friend, as is my orders from Grim Tuesday. “Any indentured workers that step through that door are to be slain,” he said. But if one of the other Days orders me to leave her alone, well then, Tom has to wait and think about it and maybe not do anything at all.’
Suzy reluctantly shook Tom’s hand, then stepped back, out of his reach.
‘Who are you?’ asked Arthur. ‘I mean, are you a Denizen . . . or something . . . someone . . . er . . . else?’
‘I’m a treasure,’ said Tom. ‘Collected by Grim Tuesday from a place called Earth. You’ve heard of it?’
‘Yes,’ replied Arthur. ‘I’m from Earth. I mean, that’s where I live, only I have to be the Master, but not yet . . . It’s a long story . . . but why would you be a treasure?’
‘Because I’m neither mortal nor Denizen nor Nithling,’ said Tom. ‘Like my brother, the Piper, who Miss Blue has obviously met. I’m one of the sons of the Architect and the Old One, in a manner of speaking. The Old One sired the three of us on mortal women, and the Architect brought us up in the House, with all the changes that brings.When She chained up Dad, we slipped back to the Secondary Realms. I went to Earth and signed up for a few seafaring journeys, here and there and back again. First I knew of Mother disappearing was when Grim Tuesday took me from the deck of my ship and stuck me in here. Took all the power of the Second Key to do it, and that wouldn’t have been enough if I was ready with my friend at hand. Or in all truth, if I’d drunk a little less rum at dinner, which I wouldn’t normally have done, you understand, if it wasn’t for that blamed bird I shot by accident . . . but there you have it. I’m bound here by the power of the Key, can venture no farther than the worldlets in my bottles, and must serve Grim Tuesday as an inky-fingered secretary.’
‘Nothing wrong with inky fingers,’ muttered Suzy.
‘What’s that?’ asked Tom sharply.
‘What’s your “friend” made out of?’ asked Suzy quickly and more respectfully than Arthur had seen her speak to anyone.
‘She’s made from the luminous trail of a narwhal’s wake under the aurora borealis in an arctic sea,’ said Tom. ‘Mother made her for me, as a birthday present when I was a century old and set fair for a seafaring life.’
‘Good,’ said Suzy. ‘There’s a Nithling outside who should meet your friend.’
‘A Nithling? Inside the Tower?’
‘It used to be Grim Tuesday’s eyebrow,’ Arthur explained. ‘Or so it says.’
Tom laughed again, a deep, booming laugh, and rubbed his hands together.
‘Looks like Tuesday’s glass is set for storms. Now, am I right in thinking you’re looking for something in particular in this Treasure Tower, Arthur? Anything I might be able to help ye with?’
Arthur had been thinking about that, and about what Tom had said. A few things had caught his attention.
‘What are these “worldlets” in the bottles?’ he asked.
‘Ah, the bottles are something I taught Grim Tuesday myself,’ Tom said. ‘You see, if you’ve got the art and the craft and the power, and a bottle made special, you can copy a little piece of the Secondary Realms and stick it in that bottle. It’ll stay there, right and tight, place and time and all, unless someone pulls the stopper. And if you’ve got the secret of it, you can visit whatever place you’ve got in your bottle.’
‘So they’re all copies of real ships in real places?’ Now that Arthur looked closely at the bottles, he could see that the ships were moving, the sea splashing, the sun – sometimes more than one sun – shifting in the sky.
‘All but one bottle,’ answered Tom. ‘There’s one that holds a real place, not a copy. One where time flows like it should, not round and round for a few copied hours.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Arthur. ‘What’s in that one bottle?’
Tom smiled. ‘I’m as pleased as punch you asked that question, for it’s the one I’ve been wanting to tell you. That single bottle holds a sun, and several worlds, and a sunship, the finest ever built. Sail into the sun, she can, right to its blazing core – with the crew none the hotter for it.’
‘Why would you sail to the centre of that sun?’ asked Arthur.
‘Why, you’d sail there to see what Grim Tuesday might have put there ten thousand years ago.’
‘TheWill?’
Tom smiled and shrugged.
‘Can you take us there?’
‘I could take one of the Seven Days into any of these bottles at their command, for Grim Tuesday never said nay about that.’
‘Well, I, Arthur, Master of the Lower House, command you to take
me and Suzy to the centre of the sun where Grim Tuesday went ten thousand years ago.’
‘It will be my pleasure to go a-sunfaring with the two of you,’ replied Tom. ‘We’ll just need some brightcoats, star-hoods, and Immaterial Boots.’
The mariner went over to a chest behind the barrels and reached way down inside it, far further than it was deep. He quickly produced several long overcoats that shimmered in different colours, like mother-of-pearl. He threw these to Arthur, who nearly collapsed under the weight of what felt like a hundred pounds of wool. Then he threw across several pairs of boots identical to the ones he was wearing himself, that just looked like ordinary rubber seaboots. Finally he gestured to the corner of the table.
‘And we’ll need the saltshaker off the luncheon corner of my board, Miss Blue, if you don’t mind. Likely Old Tuesday will have left some Fetchers aboard.’
Arthur separated out the pile of coats into half a dozen garments. One looked to be his size, so he happily discarded his apron and tried it on. The coat fit perfectly. Despite its weight, it was very cool and very soft, and Arthur immediately liked it.
‘Star-hood in the collar,’ said Tom. He put on a brightcoat himself and took the huge silver saltshaker from Suzy and put it in his pocket. Then he folded up his collar and unfurled a hood that was made from what Arthur thought must be loosely woven starlight. It sparkled and shimmered, barely visible, save for the faint outline where it touched Tom’s hands.
‘Drag it right over, you won’t come to harm,’ Tom instructed. He pulled the hood completely over his face and down to the top button of his coat, where it fastened with a single press of his thumb.
‘Immaterial Boots on and you’ll be equipped for any trouble of a starry nature,’ said Tom. ‘Just remember to pull your hands into your sleeves if it gets a little hot. Not that you need any of this gear aboard the Helios, as I call her, but it’s best to be prepared – we might have some trouble docking.’
‘What do we dock with? What’s at the centre of that star?’ Arthur asked as he struggled to get the Immaterial Boots on. As soon as his feet were snug, they rippled and changed shape to look like his normal runners. Suzy’s became shiny patent-leather half-boots.
