Lady Friday (4 page)

Emelena stopped, took a deep breath, and bowed. When she stood up, she added, “I have the metal tablet in an envelope here, Lord Arthur.”

She took a small but heavy buff-colored envelope out of her apron pocket and held it out to Arthur. He instinc—

tively reached for it and his fingers had just touched the envelope when Dame Primus shouted, “No! Don’t take—”

Her warning came a fraction of a second too late, as

Arthur’s fingers closed and Emelena’s let go. As he took the weight, Arthur felt a sudden surge of sorcerous energy erupt out of the package. The envelope blew apart in a shower of tiny confetti and Arthur had a fraction of a second to see that what he was now holding was a small round plate made of some highly burnished silvery metal.

Then everything around him vanished, to be replaced by a sudden rush of freezing air, the nauseous shock of disorientation, and the sudden fearful realization that he was falling ... followed seconds later by his sudden impact with the ground.

Arthur lay stunned for several seconds. He wasn’t hurt, but was seriously shocked from the sudden shift from where he’d been to where he was now, which was flat on his back in a deep drift of snow. Looking up, all he could see were large, puffy gray clouds and some lazy, downward-spiraling snowflakes. One landed in his open mouth, prompting him to shut it.

The silvery disk of metal from Lady Friday was still in his hand. Arthur raised his head a little and looked at it. He’d never seen the metal electrum before, but this plate was certainly made of that alloy of silver and gold, which he’d learned was the traditional material of Transfer Plates. Like the one he was holding in his hand. It must have been set to transfer whoever took it from the messenger, as soon as he or she touched it.

In other words, it was a trap that had instantly transported Arthur from the relative safety of the Great Maze to somewhere else. Somewhere where he would be more vulnerable ....

Arthur’s thinking suddenly became more organized, the momentary shock of the transfer banished by sudden adrenaline. He sat up and took a careful look around, at the same time taking a series of deep breaths. The look was to see if there were any immediate enemies approaching. The deep breaths were to see if his asthma was coming back. If it was, then that would mean he had left the House and was somewhere on Earth ... or some other Secondary Realm.

His breathing was easy, unaffected by the shock and cold. Still, Arthur was puzzled. It didn’t look like any part of the House that he knew. It was too naturalistic. Usually you could tell that the sky was in fact a ceiling way above, or the sun moved in a jerky, clockwork way. Here, everything felt like it would back on Earth.

It was certainly cold and he was very wet from the snow. Arthur shivered and then shivered again. It took concentrated effort not to keep on shivering. To take his mind off it, he stood up and vigorously brushed off the snow. Not that it did much good, since the drift came up to his thighs.

“I wonder if I can freeze to death?” Arthur said aloud. Though he spoke softly, it was so quiet around him that even his own voice was a bit disturbing. So was the question. He knew that he couldn’t die of hunger or thirst in the House, and that the Fourth Key would to some degree protect him from physical threats, though not from pain and suffering. But he was still mortal and he was feeling very cold indeed.

Thinking of the Fourth Key made Arthur slap his side in a sudden panic, the panic immediately replaced with relief as his hand touched the baton. It hadn’t fallen out, which was a very good thing, since he’d never be able to find it under all the snow.

It also made him feel better to know that even if he had been transported into a trap, he had a weapon. Not that he planned to use the sorcerous powers of the Key, but the baton could turn into a sword and he could certainly use that, after all his training at Fort Transformation and the battle with the New Nithlings.

Arthur frowned. He hadn’t wanted to remember the battle. It was bad enough having nightmares about it, without having sudden flashes of memory from that fight forcing everything else out of his head. He didn’t want to relive the sights and sounds and emotions of that day.

He shivered again, as much at the memory as from the cold. He looked around again. He had to find shelter, and quickly, and there was no obvious direction to walk in. Or
wade
in, since the snow was so deep.

“That’s as good as any,” said Arthur to himself as he looked towards where he thought the snow and low cloud cover were a little clearer than elsewhere. He tucked the transfer plate inside his coat, took four clumsy steps, then stopped and stood completely still, his heart racing.

There were dark shapes emerging out of the snow some fifty yards ahead, at the limit of visibility. Familiar, but totally unwelcome shapes. Man-sized, wearing dark, very old-fashioned suits, topped with bowler hats. Arthur couldn’t see their faces, but he knew they’d be as ugly and bejowled as a bloodhound’s—the dog-faces of Nithling servants.

“Fetchers!” whispered Arthur; without conscious thought, the Fourth Key was in his hand, an ivory baton stretching out as it transformed into a silver-bladed rapier.

There were six of the Nithlings in sight. They hadn’t seen Arthur yet, or smelled him, since there was no wind.

He watched them, weighing his plan of attack. If he moved against the two on the right, he could probably get them both before the others reacted. It would only take the slightest touch from the Key to banish them back to

Nothing, and then he could charge the next one along ....

More Fetchers came into sight behind the first six. A long line of Fetchers, at least fifty of them. Arthur lowered his sword and looked behind him, checking his line of retreat. There were too many Fetchers. He might destroy a dozen and the rest would still pull him down. The Key might do something to protect him then, or he could use its full power to blast the Nithlings from a distance, but that was an absolute last resort. Arthur’s humanity was almost as precious to him as his life. If he became a Denizen there would be no hope of any return to his family ... if he had a family to return to ....

Arthur quelled these dismal thoughts and quickly stamped through the snow, away from the Fetchers. At least they were walking slowly, more impeded by the snow than he was, their squat, lumpy bodies sinking farther into the drifts.

They were also looking for something, Arthur saw when he paused to glance back. The first lot of six were an advance guard, but the line behind was a search party, with the Fetchers looking down and even rummaging in the snow every now and then.

Arthur didn’t look back again for quite a while, instead concentrating on making good speed. He was becoming quite alarmed at the complete lack of any trees, plants, or buildings—anything that might give him some shelter. As far as he could tell, he was on an endless, snow-swept plain.

He kept going, though, since there didn’t seem to be any alternative. After what might have been an hour or more, he was finally rewarded with the glimpse of something up ahead that could only be a building. He only saw it for a second before the snow and clouds swirled around and obscured it again, but it lent him hope. Arthur began to half-run, half-jump towards it.

He got another look a few yards on and instinctively slowed again to take in what he was looking at.

It was a building, he could see that, but a strange one. Through the bands of falling snow he could make out a rectangular outline that looked normal enough—a tower or something similar, perhaps nine or ten floors high, of similar dimensions to a medium-rise office block. But behind that there was something even bigger ... and that something was moving.

Arthur brushed a snowflake out of his left eye, blinked away the moisture, and marched forward, still intent on the building. He quickly saw that the moving thing was a giant wheel, at least a hundred and forty feet in diameter and perhaps twenty feet wide. It looked quite a lot like a Ferris wheel at an amusement park, though it was made of wood and didn’t have little cabins for people to ride in. Its central axle was set about two-thirds of the way up the tower, which was built of dark red brick. Though the lower three floors were solid, above that level it had attractive blue-shuttered windows, all of which were shut.

The wheel was being turned by water. Water poured down through the slats and spokes as it rotated, and chunks of ice were falling from it too. In addition to the water and ice, there were also other things being lifted up by the wheel on one side, only to fall off on the downward rotation. Arthur had first thought they were larger bits of ice, but as he got closer he saw they were books and stone tablets and bundles of papers tied with ribbon.

He’d seen similar items before, down in the Lower House, and he knew what they had to be. Records. Records of people and life from the Secondary Realms.

The water that drove the wheel, or rather the propelling current, came from a very wide canal, so wide Arthur couldn’t see the other side, the water and low cloud cover merging some hundred yards out. A very straight and regular shoreline extended to the left and right of the tower, continuing until it too was lost in cloud and snow in both directions.

Away from the wheel, the edge of the canal was iced over, upthrust fingers of ice holding still more papers, tablets, pieces of beaten bronze, cured sheepskins burnt with symbols, and other unidentifiable objects. Even more documents were bobbing in the open water.

Arthur was more interested in the smoke he noted was rising out of the central stack of six tall chimneys that stood atop the tower. Catching sight of that hint of fire and warmth, he began to progress faster through the snow, jumping when he couldn’t physically push through the drifts.

As he drew nearer, Arthur heard the creak and grind of the huge wheel, accompanied by the crunch of breaking ice and the crash of falling water, interspersed with the thud and splash of documents of all kinds falling through the wheel. It was hard to tell what the vast wheel was actually supposed to do. If it was meant to lift the records, then it was failing to do so, since they were falling through the many holes in the slats. The whole thing looked to be in a state of considerable disrepair.

Arthur reached the closest wall, but there was no visible door or other entry point on the side of the tower facing him. He hesitated for a moment, then started to walk around it to the right, choosing that direction at random. He was feeling suddenly more cheerful, with the prospect of shelter close at hand and also somewhere where he would be safe from the Fetchers. Or at least somewhere more defensible, if he had to fight them off.

Then Arthur rounded the corner and he saw two things. The first was a door, as he’d hoped. The second was a group of Fetchers who were sitting or lying in the snow in front of the door, very like a pack of dogs waiting for dinner to be brought out. There were eight of them, and as

Arthur stopped, they all leaped to their feet, jowls wobbling, fierce eyes fixed upon him.

Arthur didn’t hesitate. He lunged at the closest Fetcher, even as the others bounded forward. The rapier barely touched it, but the Nithling dissolved into a waft of black smoke and Arthur swung his weapon viciously to the right, the blade sweeping through another two Fetchers as if they were no more solid than the smoke they turned into at the merest touch of the Key. Arthur stamped his foot and advanced on the remaining Nithlings, who growled and circled around to try to get behind him, all of them now intensely wary of his sword. Arthur foiled that by charging up to the wall. Swiveling to place his back against the bricks, he made small thrusts at the Fetchers as they feinted attacks, none of them daring to follow through with a real assault.

Then the biggest, ugliest Fetcher with the least-dented bowler hat spoke, in a voice that was half-growl, half-bark, but clear enough.

“Tell the pack, tell the boss.”

A smaller Fetcher turned and darted away, even as Arthur dashed forward and slashed at it and the leader. The small Fetcher was too fast, but the leader paid for its inability to speak and move at the same time, the point of the rapier tearing through the sleeve of its black coat before making coat, hat, and Fetcher disappear in a puff of oily black vapor.

The three remaining Fetchers whimpered and backed away. Arthur let them go, since he hadn’t caught the small one anyway. The trio retreated facing him for twenty or thirty yards, then spun about and ran, disappearing into the blur of snow.

A sharp, metallic noise behind and to the left made Arthur himself spin about. The noise came from the door and for a moment he thought it was some weapon being readied behind it. Then he saw there was a metal-lined mail slot in the middle of the door, and the cover of it was flapping.

Arthur pushed the cover open again with the point of his rapier and tried to look inside without getting too close. He was rewarded by the sight of someone recoiling back from the other side, and some muffled sounds that were probably swearing.

“Open up!” commanded Arthur.

Leaf felt her stomach do a weird flip-flop as she opened her eyes. The line of sleepers still marched on, wandering along a wide corridor roughly hewn out of a dull pink stone, lit every few yards by dragon-headed gas jets of tarnished bronze that spat out long blue flames across the slightly curved ceiling. Leaf tried to keep her place in the line of sleepers, but as she took a step she almost lost her balance, her arms windmilling in a most wide-awake fashion.

For several seconds Leaf staggered forward, trying to regain her balance and act asleep at the same time. It took her several more steps to realize that it wasn’t some sort of inner ear problem. Experimenting, she pushed off a little harder—harder than she intended, overcompensating for her bed-weakened legs. She shot up several feet and almost collided with one of the gas jets in the ceiling, even though it was at least nine feet from the floor. Avoiding the flame, she pushed the sleeper ahead of her.

While this confirmed her hypothesis that she was somewhere with lower gravity than Earth, it unfortunately also attracted the attention of the Denizen guards behind her. Two of the final four guards rushed at her, while the others continued on with the few sleepers who were at the end of the line behind her.

Leaf didn’t have time to do more than stand up and look back before the duo gripped her arms and hauled her out of the line to stand on one side of the passage. She let her arms go slack, shut her eyes, and let her head hang, as if she had gone back to sleep, but the Denizens weren’t fooled this time.

“She’s awake,” said one. Though she was dressed in the same gray business suit and trench coat as all the others, Leaf could tell from her voice that she was female.

“Maybe,” said the other, male Denizen. “What do we do with her if she is?”

“Look it up. Have you got a copy of
Orders and

Procedures?”

“I was working on the binding last night and I put it under a rock to press it, and then I forgot which rock it was under. Can I borrow yours?”

“I’ve been gilding the initial capitals,” answered the female Denizen. “It’s on my worktable.”

“I suppose we could ask Her ....”

Leaf couldn’t help but shiver; from the way the Denizen said “Her,” it was clear he was talking about Lady Friday.

“Don’t be stupid! She doesn’t want to be bothered. We had one wake up once before. What did we do with her?”

“I’ve never had one wake up, Milka.”

“It was only twenty years ago, local time. Where were you?”

“Where I wish I still was, Sixth Standby Hand on the Big Press. I only got sent here when Jakem took over the binding line. He never liked me, and all because I accidentally wound one of the lesser presses when his head was in it—and that was more than a thousand years ago—”

“I remember!” said Milka.

“You remember? You weren’t there—”

“No, idiot! Not whatever you did. I remember that accidental wake-ups get handed over to the bed turner!”

“Who?”

“The bed turner. You know, the mortal in charge of looking after the sleepers. I forget her name. Or maybe I only knew the name of the one before this one ... or the one before that. They just don’t last long enough to remember.”

“Where do we find this bed turner, then?” asked the male Denizen. Leaf decided that she would call him “Stupid” until she heard his actual name. It seemed to be appropriate.

“She’s got an office somewhere. Look it up on your map. You have got your map, haven’t you? I’ll keep hold of this mortal.”

Leaf felt Stupid let go of her and she started to tense her muscles, ready to try to escape if Milka let go as well. But the female Denizen tightened her grip on Leaf’s upper arm, her fingers digging in hard.

“No you don’t!” said Milka. “I’ve worked enough with Piper’s children to know what you mortals are like. Tricksters, all of you. There’s no point in pretending to be asleep. No point running away from us, neither, because there’s nowhere to go.”

Leaf lifted her head, opened her eyes, and took a long, slow look around. Stupid was clumsily opening up a map that kept on unfolding, growing larger and larger till he had the full eight-by-eight-foot square of thick, linen-rich paper against the wall. Unfortunately, it was the back of the map he was looking at, so he had to turn it over and got rather caught up in it in the process.

Milka sighed, but again did not relax her fierce hold on Leaf’s arm.

“What do you mean, there’s nowhere to go?” Leaf asked as Stupid continued to struggle with the map. He’d gotten it the right way around but part of it had folded back on itself. From the parts Leaf could see, it looked more like the plan of a building than a map. It was all rooms and corridors, arranged in a large circle around some sort of central lake in the middle. Or something round that was colored blue anyway.

“Oh, given up on the tricksy pretending-to-sleep act, have you?” said Milka. She sounded friendly enough. Or at least not actively hostile. “I meant what I said. This here is Lady Friday’s Mountain Retreat. She had the mountain built special back at the House and then shifted it here. That’s when the middle bit sank in—it got dropped a bit. Beyond the mountain there’s one of the wildest, meanest worlds in all the Secondary Realms. She likes her privacy, she does.”

“Found it!” exclaimed Stupid. He put a finger on the map, letting go of one edge in the process. The whole thing collapsed again, folding itself over his head.

“There really is nowhere to run,” Milka repeated, with a sharp dig of her fingers. “You just stand against the wall and in a minute we’ll take you to the bed turner. Give us trouble and you’ll be punished.”

She released Leaf and took the map off Stupid, easily refolding it to show the area that he’d indicated earlier.

For a moment Leaf did think of running. But her legs were still weak, her balance was off, and most of all she believed Milka. There probably was nowhere to run to, or at least nowhere immediately obvious. It would be best to go along for now and learn as much as possible about where she was. Then she could work out a plan not just to get away herself but to rescue Aunt Mango—and everyone else, if it was possible.

“Circle Six, Eighteen Past,” said Milka. “And we’re on Circle Two at Forty-three Past. So we have to go up four circles and either back around or forward. Back would be a bit quicker.”

“Why?” asked Stupid.

Milka sighed. “Because counterclockwards around the circle from forty-three to eighteen is twenty-five segments and clockwards from forty-three to eighteen is thirty-five segments.”

“Oh, right, I wasn’t counting properly,” said Stupid. He pointed to his right. “That’s forward, isn’t it?”

“No, that’s backward,” said Milka. “You’re facing into the crater.”

She prodded Leaf. “Come on. The sooner you get delivered, the sooner you get to work.”

“Work?” asked Leaf. “What work?”

“You’ll find out,” said Milka. “Hurry up.”

Leaf started walking. Every step felt strange; she had to consciously take smaller, less forceful movements in order to keep her balance. It wasn’t like being on the moon—at least she wasn’t moving like the Chinese astronauts who’d landed there a few years ago. She guessed it was about eighty-five percent of what was normal on Earth. Enough to upset her balance, that was for sure.

The rough-hewn passage with its gaslights continued for several hundred yards, always curving gently to the left. Every now and then there were doors, sometimes on both sides. Very ordinary-looking wooden doors, all painted pale blue, with a wide variety of bronze knobs and handles that might or might not signify what lay behind them.

“Slow down!” Milka called out. “Take the stairs on the right.”

Leaf slowed down. There was an open archway up ahead, on the right. The number 42 was painted in white on the right of the arch—or rather, Leaf saw, the numeral was a mosaic made of small pieces of ivory or something similar. At the apex of the arch there was another white numeral, this time 2.

Through the arch was a landing that had the number 2 inlaid in the floor, again in small white stones or pieces of ivory. From the landing there was a broad stair that went up to the left and down to the right, the steps again carved straight out of the stone, this time faced with a smoother, pale stone with a bluish tint. The stairs were also lit by gas jets, smaller ones than before, which were shaped like crouching leopards and set into the wall rather than the ceiling.

“Up!” ordered Milka.

Leaf turned to the left and started up the steps. She climbed quite a long way before they came to another landing, which had the number 3 on it.

“Three more to go,” said Milka.

Even with the lower gravity, it was a long climb. Leaf counted three hundred steps between level three and level four and a similar number between four and five, though she lost count at one point, when her mind was distracted by worries, both for her family and for herself.

They met no one else on the way up and there was no one in evidence when they came out on level 6, or “circle six” as Milka called it. The corridor they entered looked almost exactly like the one the sleepers had taken, way down below, though Leaf did note there was some minor variation in the color and texture of the rock.

“Now we walk around to segment eighteen,” said Milka.

“I hate this place,” said Stupid. “I wish we were back in the House.”

“Quiet!” snapped Milka. “You never know who might hear you!”

“I was just saying—”

“Well, don’t. What did I do to get lumbered with you anyway, Feorin?”

Leaf was a bit disappointed to hear Feorin’s real name. It made it hard to keep thinking of him as Stupid.

“I don’t know,” he said now. “Did you accidentally press someone?”

“No. I volunteered. Thought it would lead to promotion. Now be quiet. The sooner we drop off this child, the sooner we can have a cup of tea and put our feet up.”

“Tea? Have you got some?” asked Feorin. “Really?”

“Yes. I got a chest from those rats last time we were back home. Hurry up.”

They walked considerably faster after the mention of tea, with Feorin leading the way. Judging from the num—

bers they came across every few hundred yards and from her brief look at the map, Leaf worked out that she was in a circular passage that was divided into chapters—or seg—

ments—like a clock. The passage ran along the outer rim of the circle and all the rooms and presumably lesser cor—

ridors ran from the rim in towards the center, or at least until they hit whatever the big blue thing was on the map.

Leaf spent some of the time working out how big the circle was. If there were sixty segments and the distance between segments was about three hundred paces, and she knew her paces were about eighteen inches long, then the total circumference was 300 times 1.5 feet, or 450 feet or 150 yards, times 60, which was 9000 yards or about 5 miles. From that, using c=2nr she could calculate the diameter ....

Leaf was so intent on working this out in her head that she didn’t realize that Feorin had suddenly stopped. She ran into his back and bounced off, losing her balance and landing on her bottom.

Leaf started to get up but instantly decided to stay where she was as Feorin threw his arms back, his trench coat flew off, and his eggshell-blue wings exploded out, the trailing feathers brushing across her face. At the same time, he drew a short sword or a long dagger from a sheath at his side, a dagger whose mirrored blade sent bright reflections leaping across the walls.

Milka followed suit a fraction of a second later and actually leaped over Leaf, the gas flame in the ceiling whooshing as she passed through it. Like Feorin, her wings were pale blue, and she too had a mirror-surfaced dagger.

Leaf couldn’t see what they were attacking—or defending against—because the Denizens’ weapons were too bright. All she saw were the flicker of wings and a blur of light like the photon trails left in long-exposure photographs of nighttime traffic.

Then Feorin was hurled past her, thrown at least thirty feet back down the passage. He hit the floor and skidded along at least another twenty feet before hitting a curve of the wall.

Leaf saw the attacker then. Or part of it—a long, gray tendril or tentacle as thick as her leg and ten feet long, which was connected to a gray, mottled object the shape of an oval football but as big as a refrigerator. It was scuttling backwards like a huge rat, though she could see no legs. Leaf only got to see it for a second before Milka cut the tendril into several bits and then plunged her dagger into the football-shaped thing with a flash of light so intense that Leaf was not only blinded but felt a heat on her face as if she had been instantly sunburned.

It took several seconds for her vision to come back, seconds spent stunned as her mind and body began to work out that she should actually be seriously afraid and doing something, preferably running away.

But when her sight began to return, complete with floating dots and blotchy bits, Leaf quelled her fear. She was aided in this because Milka was kicking small blackened fragments of the thing she’d fought into a pile, in a manner that indicated it was no longer any sort of threat. And Feorin was walking back, seemingly unconcerned.

“What was
that?”
asked Leaf. Her voice sounded small and scared and distant, even to herself.