Sir Thursday brushed his hands to remove the last bits of powdered metal and stalked over to Arthur, leaning close.
“You may have plans, Arthur, to try to free the Will yourself. But you are not Arthur Penhaligon here, Master of the Lower House, the Far Reaches, and the Border Sea. You are a commissioned officer in my army and I am ordering you to do nothing to free the Will. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Arthur.
“Disobeying orders on active service is considered mutiny,” said Sir Thursday. “For which the penalty is death. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then the matter is concluded, at least for the remainder of your service.” Sir Thursday’s mouth curved up on one side, in what he probably imagined was a grin. “Much can happen in ninety-nine years, Mister…Green.”
“Yes, sir!” said Arthur, thinking,
More like the next twenty-four hours. You’re going to get me killed on this suicide mission.
“You had best join the assault unit and prepare yourself,” said Sir Thursday. “We shall enter the Improbable Stair in eighteen minutes. Dismiss!”
Arthur saluted and did an about-turn. But as he spun around on his heel, he heard a distant voice speaking directly into his mind. It was very faint but clear, and he recognized the tone. All the Parts of the Will had a kind of monomaniacal directness, even in mental speech.
Arthur, I am here, bound to the Key. I can free myself if Sir Thursday’s attention and power are sufficiently diverted.
Arthur gave no sign he had been contacted. He continued marching, his mind juggling many plans, fears, and notions, constantly dropping, picking up, and throwing them about.
To hear what was said and to speak to his mind, the Will must have been in the room with Sir Thursday. It said it was bound to the Key, so that must have been there as well. But Sir Thursday carried no visible weapons. He wore a private’s uniform but without a cartridge bag or bayonet frog to put anything in.
But there was that badge,
Arthur thought.
That weirdly oversized badge on his cap. A sword with a snake wound around the hilt…
A
rthur found a sergeant waiting for him. It felt strange to be saluted by him instead of being shouted at, but it was a pleasant kind of strange. Arthur thought he would quickly get used to being an officer. The sergeant led him down a winding stair to a vast, echoing armory that occupied a cavern hewn from the rock under the Star Fort. There were racks and racks of weapons and armor, in eight rows that each stretched for at least a hundred yards. The eleven Piper’s children were clattering about, collecting their equipment. They were watched with resigned suspicion by three grizzled Denizen Armorer Sergeants. One of the sergeants, catching sight of Arthur and his new badges of rank, shouted, “Stand fast!”
The Piper’s children stood at attention, but not very fast or very smartly. One of them was even on the brink of slouching. Arthur ignored this.
“As you were,” he called. “Carry on. Corporal Blue!”
Suzy appeared from behind a rack of bell-barreled musketoons. She had a savage-sword buckled onto a wide, nonregulation leather belt. On the cross-belts
above, she carried four small Nothing-powder pistols in holsters.
Arthur gestured at her to go back behind another rack, then joined her there, where they were shielded from the others by a line of eight-foot-high arrow shields known as pavises.
“Arthur, I’ve got the pocket!” whispered Suzy. She tapped her tunic.
“The pocket? My shirt pocket?” asked Arthur, taken aback. He’d been about to tell her about Sir Thursday. “You mean the one used to grow the Skinless Boy?”
“Well, I ain’t talking about just any pocket,” said Suzy. “Do you want it now? I reckon you can stick it in that spike thing, if it’s made of Nothing.”
“Yes,” Arthur said quickly. He held out his hand. “But how did you get it? Did Leaf…is my family all right?”
“Dunno.” Suzy rummaged around inside her tunic and pulled out a clear plastic box with the scrap of material in it. “Leaf got the pocket, but she couldn’t get back to the House. She telephoned from your home, and I nipped through the Seven Dials, but by the time I got there that brain fungus had taken her over. I didn’t have time to stick around, so I flew into the Front Door. Only I got stopped by Superior Saturday’s Noon, who would have had my
guts for garters if the Lieutenant Keeper, bless his white hair, hadn’t lobbed in—”
“I’ll have to get the full story later,” Arthur interrupted. He was desperate to hear all the details, but he had to concentrate on the problems immediately at hand. “We’ve only got a few minutes. Sir Thursday knows who I am. He’s ordered me not to free the Will, which I think is in that cap badge he wears. The snake. And the Key is the sword.”
Suzy scratched her head. “That’s a bit of a poser. I thought he’d be the sort who’d just cut your head off.”
“He follows orders and regulations,” said Arthur. “But I reckon if I show any insubordination he
will
kill me. Besides, I think he’s planning to get me killed anyway, during this attack on the spike.”
“He’s bound to,” agreed Suzy, which wasn’t very encouraging. “What are you going to do?”
Arthur looked around to check that no one had come within hearing distance.
“The Will spoke to me, in my head. It said it could free itself if Sir Thursday is sufficiently distracted. Once it’s free, I guess it can help me get the Key. Only…I have to admit, even if I do get the Key and the Will helps, I’m a bit…nervous…about taking on Sir Thursday.”
“I know what you mean,” said Suzy.
“Also, since I’ve been ordered not to try to free the Will, I can’t even try to distract Sir Thursday myself,” said Arthur.
“Why not?” asked Suzy. “Just disobey orders. I do it all the time, with Old Primey.”
“I don’t think I can,” Arthur explained. “I can feel a sort of pressure in my head when I think about disobeying orders, and find it hard to even imagine going against a direct order from Sir Thursday. I think it’s from recruit school, and it’s gotten even worse since I was commissioned. That must be why Sir Thursday made me an officer.”
“I’ll distract him,” said Suzy. She had a thoughtful look in her eyes. “I reckon I’ve had so much practice disobeying orders I can manage.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” said Arthur hurriedly. “We have to wait until Sir Thursday has destroyed the Nothing spike. If it isn’t destroyed, we won’t have a chance against the New Nithlings…though now that I think about it…”
“What?” Suzy took a power-spear from a rack and mimed throwing it, to test its weight. Arthur ducked as she swung it around but kept talking.
“I wonder if anyone has tried talking to the New Nithlings and their commander,” said Arthur. “I know they’re the enemy, but they’re not like normal Nithlings that just want to kill and destroy. Who knows what these ones really want? Maybe I could negotiate with them.”
“Negotiate with Nithlings?” asked Suzy. “You can’t negotiate with Nithlings—”
“Five minutes!” called the sergeant who’d shown Arthur to the armory. “Five minutes!”
“Five minutes!” repeated Arthur. “I’d better get ready.”
He ran over to a rack of Legionary armor and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled out a junior centurion’s bronzed cuirass rather than the segmented armor of an ordinary Legionary. He put it on, and wedged the plastic box with the sorcerous pocket into the sheath under the armhole of his cuirass, meant to hold a last-resort dagger. “Can you get me a savage-sword, Suzy? One of the medium-sized ones.”
“Yes, sir!” said Suzy, snapping a salute.
“You don’t have to—” Arthur started to say. He stopped when he saw Suzy’s eyeline. She was looking over his shoulder. At the same time, someone shouted, “Atten-hut!”
Arthur spun around, cuirass straps flapping loose. Sir Thursday had entered the armory. He was still wearing his scarlet Regimentals but had on an iron Legionary helmet instead of a beret, without the badge. He was holding a very long, broad sword that Arthur instantly knew was the Fourth Key. He could feel its power through his bones, a kind of shivery ache that traveled from his fingers to his backbone and down his legs.
The sword had a very wide hilt and handle, so it could be swung with two hands…or by one if the wielder was very strong. There was a decorative metal snake wound around the plain brass hilt. All in all, the sword was a much larger twin to the one that had been on Sir Thursday’s cap badge.
“Mister Green!” snapped Sir Thursday. “Fall the troops in and check their equipment.”
“Yes, sir!”
Arthur hurriedly fastened the cuirass straps up under his arms, buckled on the savage-sword that Suzy handed him, and slapped on an officer’s helmet, complete with its scarlet horsehair crest. For a few seconds after that he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he remembered what the officers always did:
Tell a sergeant to take care of it.
He looked around and located the closest Piper’s child sergeant, a Borderer with three black chevrons on her arm. Arthur quickly marched over to her.
“What’s your name, Sergeant?”
“Quicksilver,” said the sergeant. “Sir.”
“You’ll be the troop…platoon…whatever-we-are sergeant, Sergeant,” said Arthur. He was a bit flustered, talking to a sergeant like this, after his weeks in recruit school on the receiving end of orders. “Have everyone fall in, and we’ll both check their equipment.”
“Very good, sir,” said the girl. She looked quite a lot like Suzy, Arthur noticed. She had the same kind of narrow face, though Sergeant Quicksilver had very short black hair and her eyes were brown. “Suggest we call the unit a raiding party, sir.”
“Good—carry on, Sergeant,” said Arthur. That was what officers said when they didn’t know what to do.
“Raiding Part-eeeee!” yelled Quicksilver. “Fall in! One rank!”
The Piper’s children quickly formed up, automatically sorting themselves into line in order of height and shuffling sideways to get the right separation, measured by holding out a clenched fist against the shoulder of the soldier to the right. They were an odd-looking bunch. Nearly all of them had combined different kinds of armor, weapons, and equipment from the various standard items used by soldiers of the Regiment, Legion, Horde, or the Borderers. Arthur realized that all of them except for him had at least two weapons, and often three or four. He also realized that none of the Artillerists had volunteered, which perhaps explained why that unit was called the
Moderately
Honorable Artillery Company.
“Raiding Party ready for inspection, sir!”
Arthur exchanged salutes with Quicksilver, then walked along the line, looking over each soldier. If he’d felt more
confident he would have commented on their weapons or equipment, but instead he just asked their names. He didn’t feel like a real officer, but even as a fellow soldier he wanted to know who they were. After the battle at Fort Transformation, he knew that at least some of them would probably not be coming back. He wanted to know the names of his comrades, and he tried to fix their faces in his mind as well, so he would have something to remember if he survived the coming battle and they did not.
He repeated the names in his head as they were spoken, memorizing them. He’d always had an excellent memory, particularly for words and music.
The twelve Piper’s children apart from himself, Suzy, and Fred were Quicksilver, Gluepot, Yellowbristle, Awning, Jazebeth, Halfcut, Sable, Fineold, and Ermine. They didn’t tell him their first names. Five were girls and four were boys, and they looked between the ages of nine and thirteen.
At the end of the line, Arthur wheeled around and marched over to Sir Thursday, who was waiting patiently. Again, there was an exchange of salutes as Arthur declared the raiding party ready. Sir Thursday nodded, then marched over to address the soldiers directly.
“I will enter the Improbable Stair first,” announced Sir Thursday. “You will bring up the rear, Mister Green. The
soldier following me will hold the back of my belt, and the soldier behind him his belt, and so on. If anyone lets go, he or she will fall out of the Improbable Stair wherever we happen to be at that instant, and anyone holding on will also go. Therefore it is essential that everyone keep a good grip.
“The Improbable Stair is…improbable…so though we are traveling a very short distance within the House, it is possible that we may emerge upon a landing of the Stair, which may be anywhere and anywhen. If this occurs, do not let go! We shall embark upon the Stair again immediately. No one must let go until I give the order. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” shouted the raiding party.
S
ir Thursday didn’t waste any time. As soon as he’d finished talking, he walked over to the right-hand side of the line of Piper’s children and took his place. “Raiding party!” he ordered. “Right turn! Take hold of the belt of the soldier in front of you!”
Arthur hurriedly joined the end of the line as everyone turned right. He barely had time to grab Fred’s belt before Sir Thursday sketched out a series of steps with his sword, its point leaving glowing lines in the air.
“No need to stay in step!” called out Sir Thursday as he raised his boot and improbably trod on the first of those glowing, insubstantial steps he’d just drawn. “You may find it helpful to shut your eyes—but you must hang on!”
Though Arthur had used the Improbable Stair before, he’d never seen anyone else disappear into it. When he’d traveled on the Stair he had been totally focused on imagining a stair where there wasn’t one, a series of steps made of brilliantly white marble, stretching up forever.
But that wasn’t what he saw now. Sir Thursday ascended the glowing steps he’d drawn and then his head disappeared
as if it had been suddenly erased, and then his shoulders too and, all too quickly, the rest of him. The Piper’s child following gasped as her arm disappeared, then shut her eyes and was dragged onwards, apparently into disintegration.