Grim Tuesday (22 page)

“How dare you!” squealed the Will, its high-pitched voice echoing out into the central void.

Arthur didn’t reply. He reached out and grabbed Suzy’s hand as she was dragged past. She stopped too and started to crawl back.

“Unhand my tail!” squealed the Will. It turned on Arthur and tried to scratch him, but he kept his grip and jumped behind it.

“I’m not letting go until we go through the weirdway in that cell,” gasped Arthur as he jumped again, Suzy jumping with him. She managed to get a grip directly on the Will’s tail as well.

“This is outrageous behavior. I protest!”

“Who is that?” bellowed Grim Tuesday. His shout was followed by heavy footsteps ringing on the iron steps.

“Hurry up!” snapped Arthur to the Will. “You don’t want to meet Grim Tuesday either, do you?”

The bear turned again and sped into the cell far faster than Arthur had seen it move before. The two children barely hung on, both running hunched over and scraping the door frame.

Arthur kicked the door shut with his foot, jarring his bad leg. He could hear Grim Tuesday’s shouts reverberating outside as he hastily looked around the room. It was mostly empty, but there was an armchair sitting opposite two exquisite clocks on the wall: an ornate cuckoo clock made of finely sculpted gold, and a very simple, small ivory dial set in a walnut frame.

“Let go, let go, let go!” whined the Will. “I insist that you let go.”

Arthur looked at Suzy, then tentatively loosened his grip. When they weren’t struck by invisible forces, they both let go completely and stepped well back to get clear of the Will’s claws and to look at the two clocks.

“If you’ve rumpled my fur, I shall send you the cleaning bill,” said the Will as it curled around to inspect its tail.

Arthur ignored it. Instead he stretched up and touched the door of the cuckoo clock. It was solid gold, with an emerald-set door handle. Arthur opened it and was not surprised to find the door expanding as he pulled it, stretching down and across till there was no
sign of the clock. Instead there was a normal-sized doorway in the wall, leading to a dark corridor whose walls, floor, and ceiling rippled as if they were made of stretched cloth rather than the solid stone they otherwise appeared to be.

“Come on!” Arthur held the door open for Suzy. Strangely, it still felt as if he was reaching up to hold a tiny clock door. “Claws, come on!”

“How many times must I repeat myself, you may address me as—” the Will started to say. It made no move towards the weirdway.

Before he could finish, Arthur suddenly slapped his hand to his mouth and groaned, as the now-familiar ache struck. Tom had used his harpoon, a fact confirmed by a shriek of agony from Soot and another inarticulate bellow from Grim Tuesday. It sounded like they were all very close.

“Go through!” screamed Arthur in frustration as the Will turned around to inspect its tail again.

Then Grim Tuesday shouted again, from right outside the door.

“Finish the Nithling, Captain! I’ll fix the other thieves!”

G
rim Tuesday’s shout finally galvanized the Will into action. The sun bear shot into the weirdway and Arthur dived after it. He had a momentary glimpse of the cell door opening and the shadow of Grim Tuesday falling on the armchair. Then the cuckoo clock reassembled itself, closing the weirdway.

Arthur shivered. He did not want to meet Grim Tuesday without the Will’s help. He needed to be taught the spells or incantations he would need to wrest the Second Key from the unfaithful Trustee.

The Will had already caught up to Suzy. Arthur ran after them both, steadying himself with his hands as he wobbled from side to side. This weirdway was even more fluid underfoot than the one he’d used in the Lower House to get to Mister Monday.

It was a lot shorter too. Arthur came to the end and ran straight out without even realizing that the darkness was the exit, not another turn. He stumbled against Suzy and the sun bear, then fell over a waist-high palm tree.

“Tuesday’s in the cell,” gasped Arthur as he pulled himself up on the palm, shredding most of its fronds. He could still see the weirdway exit, a strange inky doorway standing between two twelve-foot palm trees. “How do we shut the weirdway?” he asked.

“Blood ought to do it,” said Suzy. She got out her knife and then, before Arthur could do anything, suddenly gripped his hand tight and stuck the point of the blade into his thumb. “A Day’s blood, that is. Yours. Sorry about that. Bung some in.”

Arthur flicked a few drops of blood at the dark doorway. Instead of going through, they splattered as if on glass. The weirdway gave a strange, cooing sigh that made Arthur step back as it closed in on itself, leaving only air between the palm trees.

Arthur looked around. The air was clean and bright, and they were surrounded by healthy-looking palms and carefully tended shrubs with pale pink trefoil flowers. For a moment he thought they were out of the Far Reaches altogether. Then he saw the wall of the Treasure Tower and the sparkle of the pyramid glass.

“Yep,” said Suzy, noting his look. “We’re in the garden around the Tower. Still inside the pyramid.”

“We’d better find somewhere to hide,” said Arthur. “What’s that?”

He pointed up at the pyramid wall. It was hard to see through the shining glass, but somewhere in the distance Arthur could just make out big red-bursting flares that had to be very bright to make it through the smog. They were exploding near the ceiling of the Far Reaches and then drifting back down.

“Rockets,” said Suzy. “Ooh, that was a good one!”

“Why…who would be firing rockets?” Arthur asked. He tilted his head to catch a distant, muffled noise. “I can hear bells too. Electric bells, like the elevator bells. Lots of them, all going off at once. Like the fire alarm at school…”

He looked at Suzy and said, “Those rockets are distress signals. The bells are alarms.”

“Grim Tuesday’s problem,” said Suzy, with a shrug. She started to push through a line of thick bushes to see if there was a good place to lurk.

“It must be Nothing,” said Arthur. “That’s what everyone’s afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid of Nothing,” said the Will. “Or anything else. Nothing cannot divert me from my duty.”

“You should be afraid,” Arthur warned. He was sick of this part of the Will. It was all bluster and wind. “Dame Primus was afraid of Nothing. I’m afraid of Nothing, like anyone with any sense. What if it all
breaks out and destroys the foundations of the House and the whole…everything…the complete universe?”

“The Architect’s work is far too superior for that to happen,” said the Will smugly. “You need not worry on that score.”

“You’ve been locked up for ten thousand years,” Arthur pointed out angrily. “Grim Tuesday has dug a huge great Pit into the foundations here in the Far Reaches, right into Nothing. The Atlas says it is a great danger to the House—and I bet it knows more than you.”

“The Atlas?” asked the Will, sitting up and losing its supercilious look. “You have
The Compleat Atlas of the House
?”

“Yes, I do.” Arthur took it out and flashed it in front of the Will’s nose like a police badge, then thrust it back in his pocket. “Because whether I like it or not, I am the heir to this whole mess!”

“Ah, perhaps I have been a little too rigorous in applying the principles laid down at my creation,” the sun bear said with a couple of delicate coughs. “If I might make a closer examination of—”

“Arthur! Take a look at this!”

Arthur pushed through the bushes. Suzy was standing
on a long stone bench, looking out over a well-manicured hedge towards the eastern side of the glass pyramid.

“Get down!” Arthur called nervously. “He’ll see us.”

“Come and have a look!” answered Suzy.

Arthur glanced around, then jumped up, knowing from past experience that Suzy wouldn’t get down until he took a look at whatever it was she wanted him to see.

“I think Grim Tuesday has got a whole lot of new problems,” said Suzy, pointing to the border between the windswept clean air and the ceiling-high wall of smog.

Arthur stared. Through the swirling edge of the smog, he saw the fringe of a great crowd. Hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Denizens were marching north, towards the station and the elevators. They were waving their leather aprons as they marched, throwing them in the air and trampling upon them.

Closer to the pyramid, a few dozen Overseers were running in all directions. A few ran towards the glass wall. Arthur could see they were shouting, probably to Grim Tuesday, for help, though he could only hear the ringing bells and the deeper, rough noise of the crowd.

“The register of indentured workers,” he said. “It
was
destroyed by the sun!”

“Sure was.” Suzy took out the indenture ticket from around her neck and looked at it. All the columns had
reset to zero. Suzy took it off, bit it with her teeth to start a tear, then ripped it to pieces.

“I can make another register,” said a harsh voice behind them. “The other Days will sell me more workers. It is merely an annoyance.”

Arthur spun around. Even though the boy was standing on a bench, Grim Tuesday was taller. A hardfaced man with no eyebrows, his arms were corded with muscle, and his leather jerkin was torn near the heart with the telltale marks of a Nothing burn upon his chest. He wore gloves of flexible silver metal, bound with golden bands.

“I…I am the Rightful Heir,” said Arthur, though his mouth was suddenly dry. “I claim the Second Key and Mastery of the Far Reaches.”

Grim Tuesday’s eyes narrowed. “You are the boy Penhaligon.”

“Yes. I am Arthur Penhaligon. Give me the Second Key and…and I will be merciful.”

“I do not recognize your claim,” said Grim Tuesday with finality. He raised his right hand and made a chopping motion. Though he didn’t come any closer, Arthur felt a savage blow strike his chest. He was knocked backwards over the bench, and crashed down to the grass behind.

Arthur lay there, stunned and wheezing.

I have to get up. I have to get up and get away. I have to
—

Before he could get up, Grim Tuesday stood above him. This time he raised his left hand and made a claw.

Arthur covered his eyes with his arm and cried out.

I hope it’s quick. I hope Dad and Mom will be okay and they keep the house and everything. I hope Michaeli gets to university. The plague had better not come back. Suzy should run right now, she might make it. If Nothing bursts out, everyone will die anyway. The Will-should do what it’s supposed to do. I tried my best. I tried to do the right thing and sometimes evil does win anyway no matter what you do…

“Before I extract your heart and gild it for my…depleted store of treasures,” Grim Tuesday said, “I want you to give me the Atlas. Take it from your pocket and hand it to me.”

Arthur moved his arm and opened his eyes. His mind was racing furiously again, but his thoughts were more concentrated.

“No,” he said.

The Atlas must be like the Key. Grim Tuesday can’t take it, even from my dead body. It has to be given freely.

“Give it to me,” Grim Tuesday ordered, without inflection. He might not have even heard Arthur. He clawed the air with his hand, and Arthur felt his heart stabbed all around by a thousand needles.

“No, I won’t.” Arthur raised his voice and halfshouted and half-sobbed out, “Will! I call upon you as the Bearer of the Atlas and the Rightful Heir to do your…do your job. Just do…do what you’re supposed to do…” he finished in a whisper.

“Give me the Atlas!” roared Grim Tuesday. “Why am I thwarted at every turn?!”

“Cos you’re a rotten bastard,” said Suzy as she popped out from the hedge and swung a large paving stone at the back of his head. But she would have done better not to speak. Grim Tuesday spun like a top, a blur of motion, and smashed the stone to powder with his fist. Suzy was also caught by the blow, flying through the air to smack into a palm tree. She struck with enough force to snap its trunk, and fell down with it.

“Now, Penhaligon, the Atlas!”

“No,” whispered Arthur. “You give me the Key.”

“You shall know pain,” threatened the Grim. “Unspeakable pain, until you give me the Atlas.”

“Ahem!”

Grim Tuesday looked surprised by the interruption.
He glanced around at normal head height, but it wasn’t until the second “ahem!” that he saw the Will near his feet. His eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists.

“What?!” Grim Tuesday raged. “You,
here
! I shall soon fix that!”

“I think not,” said the Will, and for once Arthur was glad to hear its stuffy, self-satisfied tone. “You tricked me once, but not again. And I have taken the precaution of enlisting assistance.”

The bushes parted and Tom strode out, his harpoon in his hand. He nodded curtly at Grim Tuesday and reached down to help Arthur up.

“You are bound to me, Captain,” snarled Grim Tuesday, raising both his hands. “By the power of the Second Key—”

“Which I now officially place in dispute,” announced the Will. “I revoke your status of Trustee, pending further inquiry.”

Grim Tuesday shook his head. “You cannot. I will not allow it! I do not allow anyone to take things away from me! What is mine is mine forever.”

“Your sooty old eyebrow proved that one wrong when it ate up a bunch of stuff,” said Suzy, staggering over. Her nose was bleeding but otherwise she seemed to
be all right. Grim Tuesday took a step towards her and raised his hand, but did not persist when Tom made a slight motion with his harpoon.

“Your wishes are immaterial, Lord Tuesday,” declared the Will. “I have spoken. While I am not ready to pronounce on the matter of a Rightful Heir, it is clear that you cannot continue to wield the power of the Second Key.”

“You must allow it,” said Grim Tuesday with cold satisfaction. He pointed at the bursting rockets up in the smoggy regions. “Those are distress signals from the depths of my Pit. The bells confirm it, as will the screams of my former workers. Nothing is breaking out. Only I can stem it, and I must have the power of the Key to do so. But I know when to cut my losses. You may all leave my domain. I shall not prevent you.”