Grim Tuesday (25 page)

With that, he slapped a button that appeared in the air. The elevator sprang into visibility, its door open. The Denizen staggered into it. The doors closed and a beam of light shot up towards the far distant ceiling, well beyond sight.

Arthur stared at the fading beam, totally confused. The Denizen was obviously not one of Grim Tuesday’s servants. Nor was he a Nithling. Or was he? Why did he want Nothing to destroy the House?

Where were the Nithlings, for that matter? Grim Tuesday had said, “One up here, a thousand down below.”

Arthur turned back to look up at the buttress and
saw where the Nithlings were. They were hundreds of feet up the face of the buttress, clawing out bricks with their hands and claws and tentacles and talons. Thousands of them, swarming over the face of what Arthur now realized was effectively a dam wall.

A huge dam made of special bricks, holding back the great void of Nothing itself.

A leaking dam, getting weaker by the second.

A dam wall Arthur had to fix.

Bricks are no good,
Arthur thought.
The Nithlings can pull out bricks. Reinforced concrete, that’s what we need. Magical reinforced concrete.

He raised his gauntleted hands and began to concentrate, muttering to himself.

“Bricks into reinforced concrete. Special reinforced concrete. Immaterial Concrete, like my boots but a thousand times stronger, a thousand times tougher.”

He felt the gloves vibrate with the power of the Key, but when he looked up at the dam, there was no change. The streaks of thick, dark Nothing were spreading as the Nithlings splintered the mortar and crumbled the bricks.

Someone croaked something behind Arthur. He whirled around, ready for another attack. But it was only Yan, raising himself up on one elbow.

“Touch the bricks,” Yan whispered. “Touch the bricks to transform them!”

Arthur nodded and ran towards the buttress. A brick sailed past his ear, and then another one struck his misshapen leg. He screamed and fell, holding his hands over his head.

“Key, protect me!”

The green glow in Arthur’s brightcoat spun itself into a sphere all around him. More and more bricks came raining down, but when they hit the green barrier, they splintered into dust. Coughing and partially blinded, Arthur staggered forward and got both his palms onto the wall.

He looked up for a second, to see Nithlings of all shapes and sizes coming down towards him. Some of them flew, some simply jumped, some scuttled, and some ran as if the wall were horizontal rather than vertical. But none could get to him for at least thirty seconds, Arthur judged.

He leaned into the wall, resting all his weight on his palms, and once again thought of the dams he had seen, either in person or in pictures.

The biggest, strongest dam anywhere. Reinforced concrete. Reinforced Immaterial Concrete. Dozens of yards thick, on top of the existing brickwork. Impenetrable.
Impervious to Nothing. Too smooth for fingers, claws, talons, or tentacles, or teeth. A real dam wall. A mighty buttress! Built with the power of the Second Key!

Arthur felt that power flow from the gauntlets into his body and then out again. He was both a pool and a conduit. The power welled up inside him, then when he was full of it, it spilled over, back through his hands. He could feel the new dam wall building, the Immaterial Concrete spreading from his hands, expanding out like spilled ink upon a page.

“It’s working!” he cried, just as a bullheaded Nithling landed heavily near him and rushed to the attack, its sharp horns aimed directly at his unprotected back.

T
he Nithling fared no better than the bricks, for the Key had continued to divert some small part of its power to fulfill Arthur’s spoken command. The boy felt a spray of something against the back of his neck, but it was not enough to distract him from his task.

Other Nithlings landed and charged, only to meet the same fate. None could prevail against the power of the Second Key. Many realized it and, instead of attacking, they fled, hoping to find some way into other parts of the House or the Secondary Realms. Others climbed higher up the buttress as the new wall rose. They tried desperately to pull out just one more brick, to erode one more line of mortar. Many were caught, as reinforcing metal wove its way around and through them, and were drowned by the rising columns of Immaterial Concrete.

Only one Nithling neither attacked, tried to pry a few bricks away, nor fled. A strange Nithling that watched Arthur from a place of concealment behind a many-holed boiler that had rolled down to its final resting place, here at the lowest part of the Pit.

The lurker did not look like any normal Nithling. If seen from the left side, it looked just like a boy. In fact it looked just like Arthur in his school uniform. But from the right side, it was a skeleton, bare bones of red ochre bereft of skin. Front-on, it was a hideous split-faced thing, half smiling boy and half grinning skull.

When it was clear that the buttress was going to be rebuilt and there was no chance of Nothing breaking through in the immediate future, the Skinless Boy laid himself down completely in the boiler and folded one fleshy hand and one bony one across his chest. He was in no hurry. The messenger who had come to watch his unusual birth had presented several interesting possibilities and opportunities, depending on what happened with the buttress. Arthur’s success had not been considered likely by the messenger, but he had prepared for it and told the Skinless Boy what to do.

Arthur, unaware of his strange watcher, felt his fingers twitch. He looked up and saw his sunburst fading, but the concrete wall that he had made sparkled with starlight, and that was enough to see that it was complete. There was no sign of any leaking Nothing. No Nithlings. Only Yan, no longer propped up on one elbow, but sprawled in a heap.

The Grotesque was still breathing, but only just. He opened one eye as Arthur slowly walked over to him.

“No need to remake us now,” he whispered. “Who’d have thought the Grim wrought so badly? One swordthrust to slay all seven…We did not want to be what we became, Arthur. Remember that.”

His eye clouded over and his head fell back. As it touched the ground, Arthur saw the Grotesque’s face flicker and change, showing him the three handsome Denizens who had gone into the making of Grim Tuesday’s seven students. Then it was just Yan’s face again, cold and dead.

Arthur looked away. Now he was truly alone, in the very depths of the Pit. The sunburst was just a faint spark above, the shadows creeping up the dam wall.

He felt completely done in, too tired to do anything, even clean away the brick dust and the peculiar slime that coated his back and hair. His arms were sore too, as if he’d been carrying a heavy weight for a long time.

Arthur let his weariness carry him to the ground. He sat down, then lay on his back and looked up into the gathering darkness.

Light descended from above. A bell rang, and an elevator door opened.

“Going up,” said the disembodied voice. “Least, I hope we are. Last trip down here for this elevator. All aboard who’s coming aboard.”

Arthur groaned and staggered to his feet.

He hobbled over to the lift and got in.

“This could be a bit tricky, sir,” said the disembodied voice. “Taken some damage, this elevator. Not to mention that last passenger, with his emergency rise.”

“Emergency rise?” asked Arthur with a yawn. “What’s that?”

“Well, strictly speaking, this elevator only goes up to the top floor of the Far Reaches. But that last passenger went right through to the Atrium of the Lower House. He had the paperwork, of course, but it does terrible wear and tear to an elevator.”

“Who was he?” asked Arthur sharply.

“Dunno. Someone important,” said the voice. “Him as went down before you.”

The elevator lurched and shuddered as Arthur thought about a suitable reply to that. Instead he wedged himself in the corner as the lift gathered speed.

“This could be a bit slow, sir,” said the voice. “Would you care for some music? I can play the clarinet a bit. Something soft, you understand, nothing too strident…”

The elevator did take a long time to get back up. Several hours at least, though Arthur lost track, as he fell asleep listening to odd, disconnected, half-familiar tunes played not very well on a clarinet of highly variable volume.

He was rudely awakened by the lift’s bell, and a stop that was more like an impact with a solid object above them than a controlled halt.

Arthur picked himself off the floor and staggered out of the elevator. He emerged blinking in the artificial sunlight to discover that the glass pyramid had entirely disappeared. The Treasure Tower had been partially whitewashed, and the palm tree gardens turned into a large expanse of lawn. Forty large white bell tents—almost the size of circus big tops—were set up in a circle around the Tower, and there were long lines of former indentured workers waiting outside them, each line stretching off into the smog. As far as Arthur could tell from the tables outside the tents and the groups of teacup-toting Denizens that were milling around between the lines, the tents were there to serve afternoon tea.

There was a reception committee waiting for Arthur, assembled in a semicircle around the elevator. Dame Primus was at the front, but there was also Monday’s
Noon and at least a hundred armed Commissionaire Sergeants, Metal Commissionaires, Midnight Visitors, and others.

Suzy was sitting on the park bench, eating a particularly large chocolate éclair. She was once more dressed in her usual shambolic collection of clothes with her favorite squashed top hat. Arthur noticed she’d kept her Immaterial Boots, and the rolled-up bundle at her side must be her brightcoat.

Suzy waved. Arthur waved back.

Dame Primus seemed to think this was a more formal greeting to her. She saluted Arthur with the First Key, which was in its sword form. She was even taller than Arthur remembered, and imposingly dressed in some sort of uniform, all electric blue and gold lace, and a ridiculously tall fur hat like the British guardsmen wore outside Buckingham Palace. Her wings were not visible, but there was a kind of hint of them, a shining in the air above her tightly bound-back platinum hair.

“Welcome, Arthur,” she boomed, her voice deep and penetrating but not quite as gravelly as it sometimes got. “Well done. Very well done.”

“I’m tired,” Arthur burst out. “I want to go home. I
want to have a long rest. I don’t want to be bothered again for at least six years like you promised!”

“That is understood, Arthur. However—” Dame Primus began. Something about her voice made Arthur look at her more closely and interrupt.

“You’re both of them now! I mean you’re both parts of the Will!”

“Yes,” said Dame Primus. “We are one, as was always the intention of the Architect. It was the unfaithful Trustees who broke me apart.”

“Speaking of breaking things, I need you to fix my leg,” said Arthur. “I can’t go home like this.”

“A hot towel, sir?” asked Sneezer, appearing at Arthur’s elbow and making him jump. “You seem a little,
ahem,
disarrayed. Perhaps if I take your coat? And perhaps a cup of coffee? Or a ginger beer? And I’ll just nip that earring out.”

Arthur didn’t even notice the earring’s removal. He took the towel and wiped his face. For some reason he couldn’t feel it, then he remembered the star-hood. He rolled that back, and Sneezer slipped off his brightcoat in one expert motion. When Arthur finally got it to his face, the hot towel was almost too hot, but it refreshed and woke him up a little. It also magically removed the
soot, brick-dust, and slime from all parts of his body, even though he only wiped his face. He looked around and noticed that both Grim Tuesday and Tom were nowhere in sight.

“Where is Grim Tuesday? And Tom?”

“The Mariner has once again chosen to avoid responsibility in this House,” sniffed Dame Primus. “He has left, probably to illegally enter the Secondary Realms. Naturally I have promulgated arrest orders for him should he return.”

“But Tom helped me,” Arthur protested. “You can’t arrest him. And what about Grim Tuesday?”

“The Denizen formerly known as Grim Tuesday has been put to work,” said Dame Primus. She pointed at the Treasure Tower. Arthur looked and saw a tall, bony figure in white overalls struggling with a huge tin of paint. An enormous paint roller, easily twenty feet wide, was propped up against the wall.

“There are many tasks awaiting our Lowest Assistant,” said Dame Primus. “The top level of the Far Reaches will be rehabilitated first, then the Pit must be filled in—which his former Overseers will be employed to do—and the spring reestablished. Not to mention the original treasures he has stolen that must be returned to their proper places in the House or the Secondary
Realms. There is a great deal of work to be done, Arthur. Work that would benefit greatly from the presence of the true Master of both the Lower House and the Far Reaches. So I am very pleased to return the First Key—”

“No!” shouted Arthur. He pushed Sneezer’s silver tray and proffered coffee cup aside and walked away. “Didn’t you listen to anything I said? I want to fix my leg and go home, and then I don’t want to be bothered again! Haven’t I done enough?”

“You must control your temper,” said Dame Primus. “It is not fitting for the Rightful Heir to have a temper tantrum in front of—”

“I am
not
having a temper tantrum,” Arthur said as coldly as he could manage. “I am letting you know that I want my leg fixed and then I am going home.”

“That would be extremely unwise,” replied the Will. “You can only return if you give up the Second Key, and if you do that, you will be unprotected. The danger is even greater than before. It is clear that the other Days are exploiting loopholes in their Agreement and actively working against you. Superior Saturday’s Dusk is believed to have been here, for example—”

“I think I met him,” said Arthur. “He killed Yan, and all the Grotesques died. With a single thrust. But I
wounded him and he ran away. For some reason he wanted to—”