Grim Tuesday 1 of 2

Prologue
The blood-red, spike-covered locomotive vented steam in angry blasts as it
wound up from the very depths of the Pit. Black smoke billowed through the
steam, coal smoke that was laced with deadly particles of Nothing from the deep
mines far below.
For over ten thousand years, the Pit had been dug deeper and deeper into the
foundations of the House. Grim Tuesday's miners sought workable deposits of
Nothing, from which all things could be made. But if they found too much in one
place or broke through to the endless abyss of Nothing, it would destroy them
and much else besides, before the hole could be plugged and that particular shaft
closed off.
There was also the constant danger of attack by Nithlings, the strange creatures
that were born from Nothing. Sometimes Nithlings came as multitudes of lesser
creatures, sometimes as a single, fearsome monster that would wreak enormous
havoc until it was defeated, turned back, or escaped into the Secondary Realms.
Despite the danger, the Pit grew ever deeper, and the shafts and tunnels that
preceded it spread wider. The train was a relatively recent addition, a mere three
hundred years old as time ran in the House. The train took only four days to
travel from the bottom of the Pit up to the Far Reaches. There wasn't much left
of the Reaches, since the digging had eaten away much of Grim Tuesday's
original domain within the House.
Very few ordinary Denizens ever rode the train. Most had to walk, a journey of
at least four months, following the service road next to the railway. The train
was only for the Grim himself and his favored servants. Its locomotive and
carriages were razor-spiked all over to prevent hitchhikers, and the conductors
used steam-guns on anyone who tried to get on. Even an almost-immortal
Denizen of the House would think twice about risking a blast of superheated
steam. Recovery would take a long time and be extraordinarily painful. -
Flying would be far faster than the train, but Grim Tuesday never wore wings
himself and had forbidden them to everyone else. Wings attracted Nothing from
all over the Pit. Sometimes they caused flying Nithlings to form. Other times, the
flapping set off storms of Nothing that the Grim himself had to quell.
The train whistled seven times as it came to a screeching stop alongside the
platform. Up Station had been built by Grim Tuesday himself, copied from a
very grand station on some world in the Secondary Realms. It had once been a
beautiful building of vaulting arches and pale stonework. But the coal smoke
from the train and the Grim's many forges and factories had stained the stones
black. The pollution from Nothing had also eaten into every wall and arch,
riddling the stone with .tiny holes, like a worm-eaten wooden ship. The station
only stayed up because Grim Tuesday constantly repaired it with the power of
his Key.
Grim Tuesday held the Second Key to the Kingdom, the Key that he should have
handed to a Rightful Heir ten thousand years ago, but instead chose to keep, in
defiance of the Will left by the Architect who had created the House and the
Secondary Realms.
Grim Tuesday rarely thought about the Will. It had been broken into seven
fragments and those fragments had been hidden away across the vastness of


space and the depths of time. He had hidden a fragment himself, the Second
Clause of the Will, and had once been sure that no one else would ever reach it.
But now he had learned that the first part of the Will had escaped. It had found
itself a Rightful Heir, and that heir had unbelievably managed to vanquish Mister
Monday and assume his powers.
That meant Grim Tuesday would be next. As he stepped off the train, he scowled
at the open letter he held in his gauntleted hand. The messengers who had
brought this unwelcome message to the Far Reaches were waiting now,
expecting a reply.
Grim Tuesday read over part of the letter again. The heir was a boy named
Arthur Penhaligon, a boy from the world that was one of the most interesting of
those in the Secondary Realms. A place called Earth, which had given birth to
many of the artists and creators whose work Grim Tuesday copied. Humans,
they called themselves. They were the most gifted result of all the Architect's
aeons-old seedlings, the only creatures anywhere, in the House or out of it, who
rivaled Her in their creativity.
The Grim scowled again and crushed the letter. He did not like to be reminded
that he could only copy things. Given a good look at anything original, he could
make a copy from Nothing. He could even combine existing things in interesting
ways. But he could not create anything entirely new himself.
"Lord Tuesday."
The greeting came from the taller of two messengers.


Denizens of the House, but not like the ones in the Far Reaches. They stood head
and shoulders above the soot-stained, Nothing-pocked servants of Grim Tuesday
who flocked to the train to unload the great bronze-bound barrels of Nothing
brought up from below. These barrels of Nothing would be used to make raw
materials like bronze, steel, and silver, which would in turn be transformed into
finished goods in Grim Tuesday's factories and foundries. Some of the Nothing
would be used directly by the Grim to magically fashion the exquisite items he
sold to the rest of the House.
The Grim's servants usually wore rags and badly mended leather aprons, and
were hunched and slow and beaten-looking. The messengers could not look
more different, standing arrogantly in their shining black frock coats over snowywhite
shirts, their neckties a somber red, a little lighter than their silken
waistcoats. Their top hats were sleek and glossy, reflecting and intensifying the
pallid light from the gaslights that lined the platform, so it was hard to see their
faces.
Grim Tuesday snorted. He was pleased to see that he was still taller than the
messengers, though they were at least seven feet tall. His servants were generally
twisted and foreshortened by their exposure to Nothing, but Grim Tuesday was
not. He was thin in the fashion of someone who can easily run all day or swim a
mighty river. He scorned fancy clothes, preferring leather trousers and a simple
leather jerkin that showed the corded muscles in his arms. His hands were
hidden, encased in gold-banded gloves of flexible silver metal. Grim Tuesday
always wore these gloves, whether he was working or not.
"I have read the letter," grumbled Grim Tuesday. "It matters not to me who rules
the Lower House, or any other, for that matter. The Far Reaches are mine and so


they shall remain."
"The Will —"
"I've taken care of my part, and far better than that sloth Monday," interrupted
Grim Tuesday. "I have no fears on that score."
"The writer of the letter does not think so."
"No?" The Grim frowned again, and the scars where his eyebrows once were
met above his nose. "What do you know that I do not?"
"We know of a way that you can strike at the Lower House and this… Arthur
Penhaligon… a loophole in the Agreement."
"Our Agreement?" growled Tuesday. "I trust you are not suggesting anything
that would let Wednesday or that fool Friday encroach upon my preserves?"
"No, no. It is a loophole only you can exploit. The
Agreement forbids interference between the Trustees and their properties. But
what if you had a lawful claim to the Lower House and the First Key? Then it
would be your property, not another's."
Grim Tuesday understood what the messenger was saying. If he could find a
way to say this Arthur owed him something, then he could take the First Key as
the payment. There was only one problem, which the Grim told the messenger
— he had no claim against Arthur.
"The former Mister Monday owed you for more than a gross of metal


Commissionaires, did he not?" the messenger asked in reply.
"Aye, and many other things, both exquisites and ordinaries," answered Grim
Tuesday. His face twisted in anger as he added, "None of it paid for, in coin of
the House or in Denizens to work my Pit."
"You know that not having been paid your just debts, you may lay claim to the
holdings of the debtor. If you had already served a distraint upon the former
Mister Monday, and the Court of Days had decreed that the Mastery and the Key
be given up to you, then —"
The messenger's point was clear to Grim Tuesday. If he had asked for payment
from Mister Monday before Arthur took over, then Arthur would have inherited
Mister Monday's debt.
"But I did not serve a distraint," Grim Tuesday pointed out. "And the Court
could not in good faith…"
The taller Denizen smiled and drew a long roll of parchment from inside his
waistcoat. It grew even longer as it came out, till he unrolled a scroll the size of a
small carpet. It was covered with glowing gold writing, and several large round
seals of gold hung from the bottom, attached with rainbow wax that changed
color every few seconds.
"Fortunately the Court was able to hold a special sitting that was deemed to have
taken place an instant before Mister Monday was deposed, and I am pleased to
say that you have won your case, Grim Tuesday. You may pursue your debt in
the Lower House against Monday's successors, and special leave has been
granted for you to pursue that debt in the Secondary Realms as well."


"They will appeal," grunted Tuesday, but he reached out and took the parchment.
"They have," said the messenger. He drew a cheroot from a silver case and lit it
with a long blue flame that came out of his forefinger. He took a deep draw and
blew out a long thread of silver smoke that wove itself through the bands of dark
and ugly smoke above. "Or rather, the Steward has. That entity which was
formerly Part One of the Will and now calls itself Dame Primus. We doubt that
Arthur Penhaligon has any idea about what is going on."
"I like not these legal niceties," grumbled Grim Tuesday. He pulled at his chin
with a metal-bound hand, almost talking to himself. "What is done once to the
Lower House might be done again to me and my realm. Besides, I see the seals
of only three of the Morrow Days upon this document…"
"You need only set your own seal there, and it will be four of seven. A majority,
and the Lower House is yours."
Grim Tuesday looked up at the tall messenger. "I would naturally keep the First
Key if I am successful in taking over… I mean to say, recovering what I am
owed?"
"Naturally. All that, and anything you might acquire in the Secondary Realms."
The hint of a smile flickered across Grim Tuesday's face. He could inherit the
First Key and everything else that was Arthur's. "And there will be no
interference?" he asked. "No matter what I do in the Secondary Realms?"
"As far as our… office… is concerned, you have permission to go to this world,


this Earth, and do what you need to recover your debt," said the messenger. "It
would be best to avoid any… shall we say… flamboyant looting or destruction,
but I think you will be safe from prosecution otherwise."
Grim Tuesday looked down at the parchment. He was clearly tempted, his eyes
shining strangely yellow, almost as if they reflected a vision of gold. Finally he
pressed one gauntleted thumb against the parchment. There was a flash of harsh
yellow light, and a fourth seal materialized, clinking against the others, its
rainbow ribbon sending a ripple of light across the parchment.
The two messengers applauded softly, while the mass of servants momentarily
stopped unloading the train, till they were beaten on again by the Overseers.
Grim Tuesday tucked the parchment into his left gauntlet. The document shrank,
till it was no larger than a postage stamp and easily tucked in under his wrist.
"There is one other matter we are charged to raise," said the first messenger. He
seemed suddenly more cheerful and less reserved.
"A small matter," said the second messenger with a smile. He had not spoken
before and his unexpected speech made some of the servants jump, though his
voice was mellow and smooth. "We believe your miners are currently capping a
shaft that has broken through into Nothing?"
"It is taken care of," snapped the Grim. "Nothing will not break into my Pit or
the Far Reaches! I cannot speak for the other parts of the House, but we have
Nothing well in hand here. I understand Nothing as no one else does!"
The messengers glanced at each other. The tiniest scornful glance, too fast for
Grim Tuesday to catch, was hidden in the shadows cast by the brims of their


shining hats.
"Your prowess with Nothing is well known, sir," said the first messenger. "We
simply want something pushed through the sealed passage into Nothing."
"A little something," said the second messenger. He pulled out a small square of
cloth. It looked clean and white, but a very close observation with a magnifying
glass would show several lines of writing, done in the tiniest letters of dull silver,
letters no higher than a single thread.
"It will dissolve, be destroyed," said the Grim, puzzlement on his face. "What is
the point of that?"
"A whim of the one we serve."
"A notion. An experiment. A precauti —"
"Enough! What is this cloth?"
"It is a pocket," said the first messenger. "Or was one once. Of a shirt."
"Ripped untimely from a uniform. Shorn from a school chemise —"
"Bah! Riddles and rubbish!" exclaimed Grim Tuesday. He snatched the cloth and
tucked it in his right gauntlet. "I will do as you ask, if only to hear no more of
your blathering. Take your merriment back to where you belong!"
The two messengers bowed slightly and turned on their heels. The crowd of the
Grim's servants parted before them as they strode away towards the banks of
elevator doors at the rear of the station. As always, these elevators were guarded


by Overseers, the most trusted of Grim Tuesday's servants. Clad in breastplates
of dull bronze over black coats of thick leather, their faces hidden by longsnouted
helmets, they carried steam-guns and broad-bladed swords called
falchions and usually terrified all who beheld them. But the Overseers shuffled
away from the two messengers and bowed their heads.
Grim Tuesday watched the two Denizens enter a lift. The doors clanged shut,
then a beam of bright light shot up into the air, easily visible through the smog
and the decaying roof of the station, till it disappeared into the ceiling of the Far
Reaches itself, more than half a mile above.
"Do we move at once, Master?" asked a short, broad-shouldered, and longbearded
Denizen whose leather apron was noticeably finer and cleaner than the
other servants. He held a large leather-bound notebook ready and had a quill pen
in his hand. Another squat, heavily built servant held an open bottle of ink on his
palm. Their faces were almost identical, each with a flattened, broken-looking
nose separating deep sunken eyes, one blue and one green. There were five more
Denizens with the same basic features, though only three were in evidence at the
station.
Together they were called Grim's Grotesques, the seven top executives of Grim
Tuesday. He had made them by melding the three Denizens who had once
served him as Dawn, Noon, and Dusk into one that was then recast into seven.
"I must return to the works," said Grim Tuesday. "There is still too much
Nothing leaking through South-West Down Thirteen and only I can stem it. But
someone must go and get this Arthur Penhaligon to sign over his Mastery and
the First Key. Not you, Yan. I need you with me. Tan is still below. So it must be
you, Tethera."
The servant holding the ink bottle nodded.
"Take Methera. Two of you should be sufficient. Work within the strictures we
used before on that world, in their year 1929. Do not call me unless you must, or
I shall dock the cost from your pay. Send a telegram, it's cheaper."
Tethera nodded again.
"And if you see an opportunity to quietly expand my collection," added Grim
Tuesday with a slow smile, "take it."
"And this scrap of cloth, this pocket?" asked Yan. "Shall you do as the
messengers ask? It stinks of upper-floor sorcery."
Grim Tuesday bit the knuckle of his gauntleted hand, then slowly nodded.
"I will. It is no great matter. A Raising of some kind. A Cocigrue or Spirit-eater."
"Forbidden by law and custom," reminded Yan.
"Bah!" snorted Grim Tuesday. "It is not of my making, even should I care for old
laws. We lose working time nattering here. Raise steam!"
The last two words were shouted back at the train. Overseers shouted in answer,
slapping servants with the flat sides of their falchions to get them to unload the
last of the barrels of Nothing faster. Other servants eased themselves between the
spikes on the locomotive to disconnect water pipes, while a score of the dirtiest
and most malformed Denizens hurried to push the last few wheelbarrows piled
with bagged coal up to the locomotive's tender.
Grim Tuesday walked back to the front carriage, followed by Yan. Tethera went
the other way, towards the main entrance of the station. This was not only a vast
door out into the workshops and industries of the remnant Far Reaches, but, for
those who knew the spell, it could also be transformed for a short time into the
Front Door of the House, which led out to all the Secondary Realms beyond.
Including the world of Arthur Penhaligon.
Chapter One
Arthur hurried up to his room, the incessant jangling of the old-style telephone
bell getting louder and louder. The rest of his family couldn't hear it no matter
how loud it got, but that didn't make him feel any better. He couldn't believe the
Will was already calling him. It was less than eight hours since he'd defeated
Mister Monday, assumed the Mastery of the Lower House and the powers of the
First Key, and then just as quickly handed them (and the Key) over to the Will.
The Will in turn had promised to be a good Steward and leave him alone for at
least five or six years. Not a few hours!
It was also only fifteen minutes since Arthur had released the Nightsweeper, the
cure for the Sleepy Plague that otherwise might have killed thousands, if not
millions, of people. He'd saved his world, but was he going to be left alone to get
some richly deserved sleep?
Obviously not. Furious, Arthur raced into his room, grabbed the red velvet box
the Will had given him, and ripped off the lid. There was an ancient telephone


inside, the kind with a separate earpiece. It wasn't obviously connected to
anything, but Arthur knew that didn't matter. He grabbed it, unhooked the
earpiece, and listened.
"Arthur?"
He knew those gravelly, deep tones at once. The frog-voice that the Will had
kept, even when it had transformed itself into a woman. Or something that
looked like a woman.
"Yes! Of course it's Arthur. What do you want?"
"I fear that I bear bad news. In the six months since you left —"
"Six months!" Arthur was now confused as well as annoyed. "I've been back for
less than a day! It's only just after midnight on Tuesday morning."
"Time runs true in the House, and meanders elsewhere," boomed the Will, its
voice clear and loud, almost as if it were in the room. "As I was saying, I bear
bad news. Grim Tuesday has found a loophole in the Agreement that forbids
interference between the Trustees. With the aid of at least some of the Morrow
Days, he has laid claim to the Lower House and the First Key, claiming them as
payment for the various goods he delivered to Mister Monday over the last
thousand years."
"What?" asked Arthur. "What goods?"
"Oh, metal Commissionaires, elevator parts, teapots, printing presses, all manner
of things," replied the Will.


"Normally, payment would not be required till the next millennial settlement,
some three hundred years hence. But Grim Tuesday is within his rights to
demand payment earlier, as Mister Monday was always behind with his debts."
"So why not pay him?" Arthur asked. "I mean, with… with what you normally
use for money. So he can't claim anything."
"Normally payment would be made in coin of the House, of which there are
seven currencies, each of which has seven denominations. The currency of the
Lower House, for example, is the gold roundel, of three hundred and sixty silver
pence, the intermediate coins being —"
"I don't need to know the types of coins!" interrupted Arthur. "Why not pay
Grim Tuesday in these gold roundels or whatever?"
"We don't have any," replied the Will. "Or very few. The accounts are in a
terrible mess, but it appears that Mister Monday never signed any of the invoices
that should have billed the other parts of the House for the services supplied by
the Lower House. So they haven't paid."
Arthur shut his eyes for a moment. He couldn't believe he was being told about
an accounting problem in the epicenter of the universe, in the House on which
the entirety of creation depended for its continuing existence.
"I've made you my Steward," Arthur said. "You deal with it. I just want to be left
alone like you promised. For the next six years!"
"I am dealing with it," replied the Will testily. "Appeals have been lodged, loans
applied for, and so on. But I can only delay the matter, and our hopes of a legal


victory are slim. I called to warn you that Grim Tuesday has also gotten
permission to seek repayment of the debt from you personally. And your family.
Even your whole country. Maybe your entire world."
"What!" Arthur couldn't believe it. Why couldn't everyone just leave him alone!
"Opinion is divided on exactly who can be claimed against, but the amount due
is quite clear. With compound interest over 722 years, the sum is not
insignificant. About thirteen million gold roundels, each of which is one drubuch
weight of pure gold, or perhaps you would say an ounce, which is 812,500
pounds avoirdupois, or roughly 29,000 quarters, which in turn is approximately
363 tons —"
"How much would that be in dollars?" asked Arthur faintly. Nearly four hundred
tons of gold!
"That is your money? I do not know. But Grim Tuesday would not accept any
currency of the Secondary Realms. He will want gold, or perhaps great works of
art that he can copy and sell throughout the House. Do you have any great works
of art?"
"Of course I don't!" shouted Arthur. He had felt much better earlier, and had
even believed he might never have an asthma attack again. But he could feel the
familiar tightening, the catch in his breath. Though it was only on one side.
Calm, he told himself. / have to stay calm.
"What can I do?" he asked, making the words come out slowly and not too loud.
"Is there any way of stopping Grim Tuesday?"


"There is one way…" mused the Will. "But you have to come back to the House.
Once here, you would then need to —"
A loud beep cut off the Will and a new voice spoke, accompanied by a crackling
buzz.
"This is the Operator. Please insert two and six't continue your call."
Arthur heard the Will reply, but its voice was very faint.
"I haven't got two roundels! Put it on our bill."
"Your credit has been revoked by order of the Court of Days. Please insert two
roundels and six demi-crowns. Ten… nine… eight… seven… six…"
"Arthur!" called the Will, very distantly. "Come to the House!"
"Two… one… This call is terminated. Thank you."
Arthur kept holding the earpiece, but it was silent. Even the background buzzing
had stopped. All he could hear was the rasping of his own breath, struggling to
get in and out of his lungs. Or, rather, struggling inside his right lung. His left
side felt fine, which was weird since that was the lung that had been punctured
by the Hour Key in his life-or-death battle with Mister Monday.
Three hundred and sixty-three tons of gold.
Arthur lay down while he thought about that. How would Grim Tuesday try to
get him to pay? Would he send Fetchers again, or other creatures of Nothing? If


he did, would they bring a new plague?
He was so tired he couldn't think of any answers. Only questions. They raced
around and around inside his head.
/ have to get up and do something, Arthur thought. I should look in the Compleat
Atlas of the House or write down some kind of action plan. It's Tuesday already,
so there's no time to waste. Grim Tuesday will only be able to do things here in
my world on Tuesday, so he won't waste any time… I mustn't waste any time…
waste any…
Arthur woke up with a start. The sun was streaming in through his window. For
a moment he couldn't work out what had happened or where he was. Then the
fog of sleep began to clear. He'd flaked out completely and now it was after ten a.
m.
On Tuesday morning.
Arthur jumped out of bed. After the fire and the plague of the day before, there
was no chance of having to go to school. But that wasn't what worried him. Grim
Tuesday could have been doing something for hours while Arthur slept. He had
to find out what was going on.
When he got downstairs, everyone else was either out or still asleep. There was
the very faint echo of music from the studio, which meant his adoptive father,
Bob, was playing with the door open. Arthur checked the screen on the fridge
and saw that his mom was still at the hospital lab. His brother Eric was
practicing basketball out in back of the house and didn't want to be disturbed by
anyone. There was no message from his sister Michaeli, so he figured she was


still asleep.
Arthur turned on the television and found the news channel. It was still full of
the "miraculous" escape from the Sleepy Plague, with the genetic structure of the
virus sequenced overnight and so many sufferers coming out of their comas
without going into the final, lethal stage.
The fire at his school got some coverage too. Apparently it had been a very
strange blaze, destroying every book in the library — even melting the metal
shelves with its intensity — but the building itself had been hardly damaged and
the fire had spontaneously extinguished itself. About the same time Arthur had
entered the House, he figured.
The quarantine was still in place around the city, but within the city people were
allowed to move about during daylight hours if they had "urgent business that
could not be delayed." There were checkpoints maintained by police and Federal
Biocontrol authorities, who would test anyone passing through. Arthur could still
hear the constant dull chatter of quarantine helicopters flying a cordon around
the city.
There was no new news, at least none that Arthur could identify as the work of
Grim Tuesday. He shut the television off and looked outside. Everything
appeared normal. The only people in the street were across the road, putting a
sold sign in the front yard of the house there.
Which, Arthur thought, was more than a bit weird on the morning after a
citywide biohazard emergency.
Arthur looked again. There was an expensive, clean new car, the kind real estate


agents always used. There were two men in dark suits, with the usual kind of
sold sign. But as Arthur looked, his eyes teared up and his vision blurred. When
he rubbed his eyes and looked again, the men were much shorter, wider, and
misshapen than they had been. In fact, one looked like he had a hunchback as
well, and both had arms that reached down almost to their knees.
Arthur kept staring. The two men looked a bit blurry, but as he focused on them,
he saw their suits fade. Those clothes were an illusion — the two were actually
wearing old-fashioned coats with huge cuffs, odd breeches, wooden clogs, and
leather aprons.
Arthur felt a chill run through his whole body. They weren't real estate agents.
Or even human. They had to be Denizens of the House, or perhaps creatures
summoned from Nothing.
Agents of Grim Tuesday.
Whatever was about to happen had already begun.
Arthur ran back up the stairs, taking three at each jump. Before he got to the top
he was wheezing and clutching his side. But he didn't stop. He grabbed The
Compleat Atlas of the House from his room and went up again, out onto the
rooftop balcony.
The two… whatever they were… had finished hammering in the sold sign and
had gotten another sign out of their car and were hammering that in as well.
Arthur couldn't quite see what it said till they stepped out of the way. When he
read the bold foot-high words it took a second for them to penetrate.


DUE FOR DEMOLITION. THE NEW LEAFY GLADE SHOPPING MALL
COMING SOON.
A shopping mall! Across the street!
Arthur put the Atlas on his knees and looked at the two real estate agents. Still
staring at them, he placed his hands on the book and willed it open. He'd needed
the Key before, but the Will had assured him that at least some pages would be
accessible without it.
Who are those people? Are they servants of Grim Tuesday? What does Grim
Tuesday oversee in the House? Thoughts tumbled through Arthur's head, though
he tried to concentrate on the two "real estate agents."
He felt the book shiver under his hands, then it suddenly exploded open. Arthur
almost toppled over backwards. It always shocked him, even when he was
expecting it, that the book trebled in size.
It was open at a blank page, but he'd expected that too. A small spot of ink
appeared, then stretched into a stroke. Some unseen hand rapidly drew a portrait
of the two real estate agents. But not with the illusory dark suits. The Atlas
showed them as they had appeared once Arthur rubbed his eyes, wearing large
leather aprons that stretched from the neck to the ankle. Only in the illustration
they both carried large hammers and had forked beards.
After the illustration was done, the invisible pen started to write. As it had
before, it started in some weird alphabet and language, but changed into English
as Arthur watched, though the writing was still very old-fashioned.


Immediately following the breaking of the Will, Qrim tuesday embarked upon a
course that has wrought great damage to the Jar Reaches of the Mouse that
were his assigned domain. Jn the vast room originally known as the Qrand
Cavern, there was a deep spring that brought a regular and controlled
effervescence of Nothing to the surface. Zhe Qrim used this elegant provision of
Nothing to prepare raw materials for lesser artisans, and to make and mold a
miscellany of items himself, copying artifacts created by the Architect, or the
work of lesser beings in the Secondary Realms, yet the more the Qrim made such
items, the more he wished to make, in order to sell what he wrought to the other
Days and even ordinary Denizens of the Mouse.
limited by the amount of Nothing that rose to the surface of the spring, the Qrim
decided to sink a shaft to mine the source that supplied the spring, that single
shaft has become many tunnels, deeps, and excavations, until almost all the Jar
Reaches become an enormous Pit, an horrific sore that threatens the very
foundation of the Mouse.
to work his ever-expanding mine, Qrim Zuesday sought Denizens from the other
parts of the Mouse, taking them from the other Days in lieu of payment for the
things he sold. Zhese Denizens have become little more than slaves, indentured
without hope of release.
As the number of these workers became legion, Qrim Zuesday needed more
officers to oversee them. Against all laws of the Mouse, and by use of prodigious
amounts of Nothing, the Qrlm melded his Dawn, J^oon, and Dusk together and
then recast them as seven individuals. Jn order of precedence they are I/an, Zan,
Zethera, Methera, Pits, Sethera, Azer.


Collectively they are known as Qrim's Qrotesques, for the seven all are
misshapen in different ways, since the Qrim could only make poor twisted copies
of the Architect's great work.
Zhe two Qrotesques pictured are Zethera and Methera. Zethera is obsequious to
all and speaks honeyed words, but his actions are spiteful and vindictive.
Methera is silent and cruel, speaks only to wound, and delights in the afflictions
of others.
As with all Qrotesques, Zethera and Methera have greater powers than most
Denizens, but are lesser beings in all ways than any of the other Days' Dawn,
Noon, and Dusk. Beware their breath and the poison spurs within their thumbs.
Despite their fearful mangling and botched remaking at Qrim Zuesday's hands,
the Qrotesques are slavish In their loyalty and love him as dogs love even the
crudest master, their hearts filled with an awful mixture of hate, fear, and
infatuation.
Arthur looked across at the two Grotesques. They had hammered the due for
demolition sign in and were getting another sold sign out. Arthur stared at them,
a frown deepening on his forehead and tension building in every muscle.
How could they buy the houses so quickly? Are they really planning to build a
mall, or are they just trying to freak me out?
The two servants of Grim Tuesday walked over to Arthur's own front lawn.
Arthur stared down at them as they started to hammer in the sign. He couldn't
believe they were doing it, but he couldn't think of anything he could do to stop
them. For a moment he considered throwing something down on their heads, but


he dismissed that idea. The Grotesques were superior Denizens of the House and
almost certainly couldn't be harmed by any weapon Arthur could lay his hands
on.
But he had to do something!
Arthur shut the Atlas and hurriedly stuffed the shrunken book back in his pocket.
Then he took off down the stairs at top speed.
They were not going to demolish his home and build a shopping mall!
Chapter Two
As Arthur ran down the stairs, he heard the music stop from the studio and then
the front door slam. Bob must have seen the Grotesques as well. Arthur tried to
shout a warning but didn't have enough breath for more than a wheezy whisper.
"No, Dad! Don't go outside!"
Arthur jumped the last five steps and almost fell. Recovering his balance, he
raced across and flung the door open, just in time to see his father striding across
the front lawn towards the two Grotesques. He looked angrier than Arthur had
ever seen him.
"What do you think you're doing?" shouted Bob.
"Dad! Get back!" cried Arthur, but his father didn't hear him or was too angry to
listen.


Tethera and Methera turned to face Bob. Their mouths opened wide, far too wide
for mere speech.
"Hah!" breathed the Grotesques. Two dense streams of gray fog stormed out of
their open mouths, forming a thick cloud that completely enveloped Bob. When
it cleared a few seconds later, Arthur's dad was still stand-ing, but he wasn't
shouting anymore. He scratched his head, then turned and wandered back past
Arthur, his eyes dull and glazed.
"What did you do to him?" shouted Arthur. He wished he still had the First Key,
in its sword form. He would stab both the Grotesques through without thinking
about it. But he didn't, and innate caution made him stay near the front door, in
case they breathed out the fog again.
Tethera and Methera gave him the slightest of bows, not much more than a oneinch
inclination.
"Greetings, Arthur, Lord Monday, Master of the Lower House," said Tethera.
His voice was surprisingly melodious and smooth. "You need not fear for your
father. That was merely the Gray Breath, the fog of forgetting, and will soon
pass. We do not use the Dark Breath, the death-fog… unless we must."
"Unless we must," repeated Methera softly.
They both smiled as they spoke, but Arthur recognized the threat.
"Go back to the House," he said, trying to invest as much authority in his voice
as he could. It was a bit difficult because he still couldn't draw a full breath and
wheezed on the last word. "The Original Law forbids you to be here. Go back!"


Some of the power of the First Key lingered in his voice. The two Grotesques
stepped back and the calm on their faces was replaced with snarls as they fought
against his words.
"Go back!" repeated Arthur, raising his hands.
The Grotesques retreated again, then rallied and stopped. Clearly Arthur did not
have the authority or the remnant power to force them to go, though he had
unsettled them. Both wiped their suddenly sweating foreheads with dirty white
handkerchiefs plucked out of the air.
"We obey Grim Tuesday," said Tethera. "Only the Grim. He has sent us here to
claim what is his. But it need not go badly for you and yours, Arthur. Just sign
this paper, and we will be gone."
"Sign and we'll be gone," repeated Methera in his hoarse whisper.
Tethera reached into his jacket and pulled out a long, thin, gleaming white
envelope. It drifted across to Arthur, as if carried by an invisible servant. The
boy took it carefully. At the same time, Methera held out a quill pen and an ink
bottle, and the Grotesques stepped forward.
Arthur stepped back, holding the envelope.
"I need to read this first."
The Grotesques stepped forward again.
"You don't need to bother," wheedled Tethera. "It's very straightforward. A


simple deed handing over the Lower House and the First Key. If you sign it,
Grim Tuesday will not pursue the debt against your folk. You will be able to live
here, in this Secondary Realm, as happily as you did before."
"As happily as you did before," echoed Methera, with a knowing smirk.
"I still need to read it," said Arthur. He stood his ground, though the Grotesques
sidled up still closer. They had a very distinct smell, a lot like fresh rain on a hot,
tarred road. Not exactly unpleasant, but sharp and a little metallic.
"Best to sign," said Tethera, his voice suddenly full of menace, though he
continued to smile.
"Sign," hissed Methera.
"No!" shouted Arthur. He pushed Tethera with his right hand, the one that had
most often held the First Key. As his palm touched the Grotesque's chest it was
outlined with electric blue light. Tethera stumbled back, grabbing at Methera to
keep his balance. Both Grotesques staggered away, almost to the road. There
they straightened up and tried to assume poses of dignity. Tethera reached into
the front pocket of his apron and drew out a large, egg-shaped watch that chimed
as he opened the lid and inspected the face.
"You may have till noon before we commence our full repossession," Tethera
shouted. "But we shall not cease our preparations, and delay will not be to your
advantage!"
They got into their car, slammed the doors, and drove off, without any engine
noise whatsoever. Arthur watched as the car proceeded about twenty yards up


the street, then suddenly vanished in a prismatic effect like the sudden, brief
rainbow after a sun-shower.
Arthur glanced down at the gleaming white envelope. Despite its crisp look, it
felt slightly slimy to his touch. How could he sign away the First Key and the
Mastery of the Lower House? They had been so hard to win in the first place.
But he also couldn't let his family suffer…
His family. Arthur raced back in to check on Bob. There was no reason for
Tethera to lie, but the Grotesques' breath had looked extremely poisonous.
Bob was back in his studio. Arthur could hear him talking to someone, which
was a good sign. The padded soundproof door was partly open, so Arthur poked
his head around. Bob was sitting at one of his pianos, holding the phone with one
hand and agitatedly tapping a single bass note with the other. He looked fine, but
as Arthur listened, he quickly realized that while the Gray Breath had worn off,
the Grotesques had, as they'd threatened, continued their "preparations."
"How can the band suddenly owe the record company twelve million dollars
after twenty years?" Bob was asking the person on the phone. "They've always
robbed us to start with. We've sold more than thirty million records, for heaven's
sake! It's just not possible —"
Arthur ducked back out. The Grotesques had given him an hour and a half before
full repossession — whatever that was. But even these beginning attacks were
very bad news for the family. They'd be living on the street, forced to get
handouts…
He had to stop them. If only he had more time to think…


More time to think.
That was the answer, Arthur thought. He could get more time by going into the
House. He could spend a week there perhaps, and still come back to his own
world only minutes after he left. He could ask the Will and Noon (who used to
be Dusk) what to do. And Suzy…
His thoughts were interrupted as Michaeli came charging down the stairs,
holding the printout of an e-mail, her face stuck in a frown that had to come from
more than lack of sleep.
"Problem?" Arthur asked hesitantly.
"They've canceled my course," said Michaeli in a bewildered voice. "I just got
an e-mail saying the whole faculty is being closed down and our building is
being sold to pay the university's debts! An e-mail! I thought it must be a hoax,
but I called my professor and the front office and they both said it's true! They
could have written me a letter! Dad!"
She ran into the studio. Arthur looked down at the envelope in his hand,
hesitated for a moment, then slit it open along the seam. There was no separate
letter inside — the writing was on the inside of the envelope. Arthur folded it out
and quickly scanned the flowing copperplate, which was done in a hideous bilegreen
ink.
As he'd half-expected, the contract was all one way and not in his favor. In a
long-winded way, like all documents from the House, it said that he, Arthur,
would relinquish the First Key and the Mastery of the Lower House to Grim


Tuesday in recognition of the debts owed to Grim Tuesday for the provision of
the goods listed in Annex A. There was nothing about leaving Arthur's family
alone after that, or anything else.
There didn't seem to be an Annex A either, but when Arthur finished reading
what was on the opened-out envelope, it shimmered and a new page formed.
Headed Annex A, it listed everything that the former Mister Monday or his
minions had bought and not paid for, including:
fflne Gross (1,296) Standard Pattern Metal Commissionaires
Doz. bespoke Metal Sentinels, part-payment ree'd, 1/8 still owing plus interest
Six Great Gross (10,368) One-Quart Silver Zeapots
Plentitudes (497,664) Second-Best Steel ^ibs 6 Gross (864) Elevator Door
Kollers
Vivo Great Gross (3,456) Elevator Meaning Bars, Bronze 1 JCac (100,000)
Elevator Propellant, Confined Safety Bottle 129Miles Motional Wire, Zelephone
Metaconnection 1 Statue, Mister Monday, Gilt Bronze, Exquisite 77 Statues,
Mister Monday, Bronze, Ordinary 10 Quintal (1000-weigttt), Bronze Metal Tish,
Tireproof, semi-animate 1 jCongDoz. (13) Umbrella Stands, Petrified
Apatosaurus foot
The list kept going on and on, the page re-forming every time Arthur reached the
end. Finally he looked away, refolded the envelope, and shoved it in the back
pocket of his jeans


Reading the letter hadn't changed anything, except that his determination not to
sign it was even stronger. He had to get to the House as fast as possible.
He was about to leave immediately when he remembered the telephone in the
red velvet box. It was possible the Will might be able to scrounge up enough
money to call him again, so he'd better get that.
Arthur walked up the stairs this time. He didn't think he'd have a full-on asthma
attack — he would have already had it if he was going to — but he'd gotten a
persistent wheeze instead and couldn't quite get enough breath.
The red velvet box was where he'd left it, but when Arthur went to put the lid
back on, he saw that it was empty. The phone had disappeared. Lying on the
bottom of the box was a very small piece of thick cardboard. Arthur picked it up.
As he touched it, words appeared, scribed in the same sort of invisible hand that
wrote in the Atlas.
Zhis telephone has been disconnected. Please call Upper Mouse 23489-8729-
1'3783 for reconnection.
"How?" asked Arthur, He didn't expect an answer, but the message wrote itself
out again on the card. Arthur threw it back in the box and went down the stairs
again.
On the way back down, the question came up again in his head. Just one simple
word that covered a lot of problems.
How?


How am I going to get into the House? It doesn't exist in my world anymore.
Arthur groaned and pulled at his hair, just as Michaeli came rushing back up the
stairs.
"You think you've got problems?!" she snapped as she went past. "It looks like
Dad is going to have to go back on tour, like, forever and I'm going to have to
get a job. All you have to do is go to school!"
Arthur didn't get a chance to reply before she was gone.
"Yeah, that's all I have to worry about!" he shouted after her. He slowly
continued down the stairs, thinking hard. The House had physically manifested
itself before, taking over several city blocks. That manifestation had disappeared
when Arthur came back after defeating Mister Monday. But maybe the House
had returned with the Grotesques?
There was only one way to find out. After a quick look to check that no one —
particularly a Grotesque or two — was watching, Arthur went out the back door
and got on his bike.
Provided he wasn't held up at a quarantine checkpoint, it would only take ten
minutes to ride over to where the House had been. If it had reappeared, he would
try to get in, through Monday's Postern or maybe even the Front Door, if he
could find it.
If it wasn't there, he would have to think of something else. Each minute gave
the Grotesques more time to do something financially horrible to his family, or
his neighbors, or…


Arthur pushed off hard and accelerated out the drive, pedaling furiously for a
minute, until his wheezing warned him to ease off.
Behind him, the sold sign on his front lawn shivered and dug itself a little further
in.
Chapter Three
The House was gone. At least, its manifestation in Arthur's world had not
returned. Instead of a vast edifice of mixed-up architecture, there were only the
usual suburban houses, with their lawns and garages and basketball hoops over
their garage doors.
Arthur rode his bike around several blocks, hoping some trace of the House
remained. If there was just one of its strange outbuildings or even a stretch of the
white marble wall that surrounded the House, he felt he could somehow get
inside. But there was nothing, no sign at all that the House had ever been there.
He felt strange riding around, looking for something that wasn't there, a feeling
made stronger because the streets were deserted. Though the quarantine had
been slightly relaxed inside the city, most people were sensibly staying at home
with their doors and windows shut. Arthur was passed by only one car on the
road, and that was an ambulance. Arthur looked the other way, in case it was the
same ambulance he'd escaped from the day before. He was thankful it didn't
slow down or stop.
As he finished his circumnavigation of the last block, Arthur began to feel
panicky. Time was slipping away. It was already 11:15. He only had forty-five


minutes to find some way to enter the House, but he had no idea how he was
going to do that.
The sight of several moss-covered garden steps reminded him of the Improbable
Stair. That bizarre stairway went from everywhere and everywhen, through the
House and the Secondary Realms. But the Stair was dangerous and there was a
good chance of ending up somewhere he really didn't want to be. It wasn't worth
trying the Stair unless he must. Even then, he probably wouldn't be able to enter
it without the Key.
There had to be another way. Perhaps if he could track down the Grotesques'
headquarters, he could find their doorway back to the House —
Something moved at the corner of his eye. Arthur twisted his head around,
immediately alert. There was something in the movement he didn't like.
Something that gave him a slight electric tinge across the back of his neck and
up behind his ears.
There it was again — something flitting across the garden of the house opposite.
Moving from the letterbox to the tree, from the tree to the car in the driveway.
Arthur put one foot on the pedal, ready to move off, and watched. Nothing
happened for a minute. Everything was quiet, save for the constant drone of the
distant helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the city.
It moved again, and this time Arthur saw it dash from behind the car to a fire
hydrant. Something about the size and shape of a rabbit, but one made of pale
pink jellylike flesh that changed and rippled as it moved.


Arthur got off his bike, laid it down, and got out the Atlas, readying himself for
its explosive opening. He didn't like the look of this thing, which he guessed was
some sort of Nithling. But at least it was timid, hiding and scuttling.
Arthur could still see a single paw poking out from behind the hydrant. A paw
that slowly melted and reformed through several shapes. Paw, claw, even a
rudimentary hand. He concentrated his thoughts on that sight, gripping the green
cloth binding of the Atlas tight.
What is the thing that hides behind the hydrant?
The Atlas burst open. Even though he was ready, Arthur took a step back and
nearly fell over his bike.
This time, the invisible writer wrote quickly and in instant English, ink
splattering all over the page.
Arthur looked up. The Scoucher was leaping towards him, no longer small and
innocuous, but an eight-foot-tall, paper-thin human figure whose arms did not
end in hands but split into hundreds of ribbon-thin tentacles that whipped out
towards the boy. They sliced the air in front of Arthur's face, though he was at
least fifteen feet away.
There was no time to get on his bike. Arthur twisted away from the tentacles and
threw himself into a sprint, the Atlas still open under his arm. It closed itself and
shrank as he ran, but he didn't try to put it in his pocket. He couldn't pause even
for a second or those tentacles would latch on. They might sting, or paralyze, or
hold him tight so the Scoucher could do whatever it did —


These thoughts drove him to the end of the street. He hesitated for an instant,
uncertain of which way to turn, till the Atlas twitched to his right and he
instinctively followed its lead. It twitched again at the next corner and then again
a minute later, directing him down a partly hidden laneway — all at high speed.
A speed Arthur soon realized he couldn't keep up. Whatever had happened to his
lungs in the House had improved them, but he wasn't cured. He was wheezing
heavily and the tightness on his right side was spreading to the left. He'd run
farther and faster than he'd ever done before, but he couldn't sustain his speed.
Arthur slowed a little as he exited the lane and looked over his shoulder. The
Scoucher was nowhere to be seen. He slowed down a bit more, then stopped,
panting and wheezing heavily. He looked around. He'd thought he was headed
towards home, but in his panic he'd gone in a different direction. Now he wasn't
sure where he was, and he couldn't think of any possible refuge.
Something flickered at the corner of his eye. Arthur spun around. The Scoucher
was back in its small fluid shape, sneaking again. It was about thirty yards back,
zipping from cover to cover, slinking forward whenever he couldn't see it.
Arthur wasn't even sure it was a Nithling. Perhaps it was something else,
something made by Grim Tuesday that the Grotesques had set upon him. He
needed to know more, but he didn't dare to stop and look at the Atlas while the
thing was creeping up on him. He needed somewhere to hide, perhaps a house —
The moment he looked away, the Scoucher stormed out from behind a pile of
paving stones next to an unfinished path. One reaching tentacle, even longer than
the rest, brushed the back of Arthur's hand as he turned to flee. It wasn't much
thicker than a shoelace, and he hardly felt its touch, but when he glanced down,


blood was flowing freely. More blood than seemed possible from such a tiny
scratch.
Arthur was halfway across a well-mown front lawn when someone called his
name from the neighboring house.
"Arthur?!"
He knew that voice. It came from Leaf, the girl who had helped him after his
asthma attack, whose brother and family were among the first afflicted by the
Sleepy Plague. He'd seen her briefly the day before, while traveling via the
Improbable Stair. He had no idea where she actually lived, but here she was on
the porch next door, staring at him in surprise. Or staring at the Scoucher —
"Look out!" she cried.
Arthur changed direction, narrowly avoiding a sweep of the Scoucher's tendrils.
He jumped over a low brick wall, trampled through Leaf's parents' prize
vegetable garden, leaped up the front steps of her house, and charged through the
front door. Leaf slammed it shut after him. A second later it was hit by a sound
like rain drumming on the roof — the impact of hundreds of tentacles upon the
heavy door.
"Your hand's bleeding!" Leaf exclaimed as she slammed home a large bolt. "I'll
get a bandage —"
"No time!" gasped Arthur. A lot of blood had come from the simple scratch, but
the flow was already slowing.


Arthur opened the Atlas, ignoring its sudden expansion. He added in a low
wheeze, "Have to… see how… fight…"
The drumming sound came again. Leaf gasped and jumped back as several
tentacles ripped the draft excluder off the bottom of the door and slithered inside.
She picked up an umbrella and struck at them, but the tentacles gripped the
umbrella and cut it into pieces. More and more tentacles came through under the
door. Then they started sawing backwards and forwards.
"It's cutting its way through!" screamed Leaf. She pushed over a plant in a heavy
earthenware pot and rolled it against the door. The Scoucher's tentacles struck at
the spilled earth for a second, then went back to their sawing. The door had a
steel frame, but the tentacles cut through it quite easily.
Arthur concentrated on the Atlas.
What are a Scoucher's weaknesses? How can it be defeated?
An ink spot appeared on the page, but was not blotted up. Words came quickly,
and once again were in English and the regular alphabet straightaway. The
penmanship was not up to its usual standard.
Scouchers are a particularly unpleasant type of JVithling. Zhey issue from the
narrowest cracks and fractures, and are consequently short of substance.
Zypically they gain a greater and more defined physical presence in the
Secondary Realms by consuming the blood or ichor of the local inhabitants.
Scouchers in their earlier phases may take a variety of shapes but always have
several limbs that end in very fine tentacles, which are lined with tiny but
extremely sharp teeth. Zhey use these tentacles to cut their victims, who usually


fall unconscious. Zhe Scoucher then laps up the free-flowing blood —
"Arthur! The door —"
"How can I defeat a Scoucher?" Arthur asked furiously.
Silver is anathema to Scouchers, as is ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium,
iridium, and platinum. Scoucher hunters typically use silver dust blown through
—
"Silver! Have you got anything silver?" Arthur wheezed, clapping the Atlas shut.
At the same time Leaf grabbed his arm and dragged him across the room and
into the kitchen. She slammed the kitchen door behind them and threw herself at
the refrigerator, trying to slide it across. Arthur shoved the Atlas into his pocket
and grabbed one corner of the fridge, rocking it out from the wall as the terrible
sound of splintering wood suddenly stopped in the other room.
"It's inside!"
The fridge was barely set down before it rocked forward. Tentacles punched
through the flimsy kitchen door and rasped across the steel sides of the fridge.
"Silver! Silver will kill it!" Arthur repeated. He opened the nearest drawer, but
all he could see were chopsticks and wooden utensils. "A silver fork will do!"
"We don't have anything metal!" Leaf cried out. "My parents won't eat with
metal."
Several tentacles ripped the freezer door off and flung it on the ground. More


tentacles swarmed in to grip the edges and the whole refrigerator shifted across
the floor with the squeal of metal feet on tiles.
"Jewelry!" exclaimed Arthur as he looked around for something, anything silver.
"You must have some silver earrings!"
"No," said Leaf, shaking her head wildly. Her earrings swung too, without any
sort of metallic jangle. They were ceramic and wood.
Another squeal alerted Arthur a second before the refrigerator started to topple
over. He jumped away an instant before it fell and followed Leaf as she raced
through the door at the opposite end of the kitchen.
Arthur slammed the rear kitchen door shut behind him. But this one had no lock,
and from the weight of it, could barely stop a determined fist, let alone
otherworldly tentacles.
"Come on!" screamed Leaf. She ran down a flight of concrete steps to the back
door, Arthur close behind. "I know… we have got some silver!"
The back door led into a garage that had obviously never housed a car. It was
part plant nursery and part storage area, with bags of potting mix stacked up next
to boxes identified by contents and date.
"Look for a box marked medals or ski jumping!" instructed Leaf urgently,
pushing Arthur on. She turned back herself and locked the door, using a key
from the drip tray of a hanging planter. She was just withdrawing the key when
several tentacles punched through the door and lashed across her arm. They cut
deeply and Leaf staggered back, shocked into silence. She tripped over a tray of


seedlings and fell heavily onto a sack of sand.
Arthur took a step towards her, but she waved him back, before pushing her
hand hard against the cuts to try and slow the bleeding.
"Silver medals," she coughed out. "In a box. Dad won lots… that is, came
second… silver medals ski jumping. Before he met Mom and became a
neohippie. Hurry!"
Arthur glanced at the door. The Scoucher was cutting through it as easily as it
had the front door. He would have less than a minute to find the medals, maybe
only seconds.
Rapidly he scanned the boxes, dates and contents labels tumbling through his
brain. Children's toys from ten years ago, an encyclopedia, Aunt Mango's
paintings, tax records, Jumping —
Something splintered behind him and he heard Leaf's sharp intake of breath.
Arthur grabbed the box marked jumping, pulling down three others at the same
time. They fell on his feet but he ignored the pain, ripping through the cardboard.
A shower of small velvet boxes fell out. Arthur caught one, flipped it open,
grabbed the medal inside, spun on one foot, and hurled it towards the Scoucher
that was coming through the door.
The medal flew true, smacking into the thin figure as it bowed its head to pass
through the doorway. The Scoucher took a step back, puzzled, but otherwise
seemed unharmed as the medal slid down its chest.


"Gold!" shrieked Leaf.
Arthur was already bending down to get another medal. This time he opened the
box and threw the contents in one swift motion. Something silver flashed
through the air as the Scoucher charged forward. The medal hit with a satisfying
clunk, but did not slide down. It stuck like a fried egg to a pan and started to
sizzle like one as well.
The Scoucher let out a pathetic groan and folded in on itself. Within a second, it
was rabbit-sized again, but without the shape of a rabbit. Just a blob of pinky
flesh with the silver medal still sizzling on top of it. Arthur and Leaf stared as
black smoke poured out of the blob — smoke that curled around and around but
didn't rise or dissipate. Then the Scoucher disappeared, and the silver medal spun
and rattled on the concrete floor.
"How's your arm?" asked Arthur anxiously before the medal came to a stop. He
could see the blood coming out between Leaf's fingers. She looked very pale.
"It's okay. There's a first-aid kit in the kitchen, under the sink. Bring me that and
the phone. What was that thing?"
"A Scoucher," shouted Arthur over his shoulder as he ran inside. He found the
first-aid kit and the phone and ran back, desperately afraid that he'd find Leaf
dead on the ground. Strangely, the cut on his hand had completely closed up.
Though it had bled profusely for a few minutes, he could hardly see where it was
now. Arthur immediately forgot about it as he crashed through the remnants of
the door.
Leaf's eyes were shut but she opened them as Arthur knelt by her side.


"A Scoucher? What's that?"
"I'm not really sure," said Arthur. He opened the first-aid kit and prepared a
wound dressing and a bandage, suddenly very glad he'd taken the course last
year and knew what to do. "Keep the pressure on until I'm ready… Okay… let
go."
Rapidly he got the dressing onto the deep cuts and bandaged Leaf's arm firmly
from the elbow to the wrist. There was a lot of blood, but it wasn't arterial
bleeding as he'd feared. Leaf would be all right, though she still needed an
ambulance and professional help.
He picked up the phone and dialed 911, but before he could speak, Leaf snatched
it away from him. She spoke quickly to the operator, shaking her head when
Arthur tried to take the phone back.
"You can't call," she said after hanging up. "I'll tell them some story. You have
to go over to…"
She closed her eyes, and her mouth and forehead creased in concentration. "Go
to the old Yeats Paper Mill on the river. Go under it to come to the House."
It sounded like something Leaf had memorized from someone else.
"What?" asked Arthur. The Atlas had led him to Leaf, but — "How come…
how…"
"The girl with the wings, the one who was with you yesterday," Leaf said


slowly. Shock was clearly taking hold. Arthur got a coat out of one of the fallen
boxes and draped it over her as she kept talking. "Just then I kind of blacked out
and it was like she was sitting next to me. She told me what I just told you.
There was more, but you woke me up just when she was getting into it."
"The Yeats Paper Mill?" asked Arthur. "Go under it?"
"That's it," confirmed Leaf. She had shut her eyes again. "It's not the first true
dream I've had. My great-grandmother was a witch, remember."
Arthur looked at his watch. 11:32. He had less than half an hour and the paper
mill was at least a mile away. He wasn't even sure where his bicycle was. He
could never make it into the House before the Grotesques unleashed their full
plan.
"I can't make it in time," he said to himself.
"Take Ed's bike," whispered Leaf, pointing to the black-and-red racing bicycle
racked up between three sturdy green mountain bikes. "He won't be back from
the hospital for a few days."
Arthur stood up but hesitated. He felt he should wait for the paramedics to arrive.
"Go," said Leaf. She tapped her forehead weakly. "They'll be here in a few
minutes. I can tell."
Arthur hesitated until he heard the faint call of a siren. It got a little louder.
Leaf smiled. "Not second sight. Just good hearing."


"Thanks," said Arthur. He ran and wheeled the bike over to the garage door. The
lack of an automatic opener puzzled him for a second, till he worked out he had
to push the door up himself.
"Hey, Arthur!" Leaf called out as he got on the bike. Her voice was so weak that
it came out a little louder than a whisper. "Promise you'll tell me what this is all
about."
"I will," replied Arthur. If I get the chance.
Chapter Four
Arthur pedaled furiously, coasted till he got his breath back, then pedaled
furiously again. He wasn't sure that he actually would get his breath back, as that
familiar catch came and his lungs wouldn't take in any air. But each time he felt
his chest stop and bind, there was a breakthrough a moment later and in came the
breath. His lungs, particularly the right one, felt like they were made of Velcro,
resisting his efforts to expand them until they suddenly came unstuck.
He tried not to look at his watch as he cycled. But Arthur couldn't help catching
glimpses of its shining face as the minute hand moved so quickly towards the
twelve. By the time he got to the high chain-link fence around the old Yeats
Paper Mill, it was 11:50. Arthur only had ten minutes, and he didn't know how to
get through the fence, let alone get under the old mill — whatever that meant.
There were no obvious holes in the fence and the gate was chained and
padlocked, so Arthur didn't waste any more time looking. He leaned Ed's bicycle
against the fence, stood on the seat, and pulled himself up on one of the posts.


Despite being scratched by the top strands of old, rusty barbed wire, he managed
to swing himself over and drop to the other side. At the bottom he checked his
shirt pocket, to make sure it hadn't been torn off with the Atlas inside. He'd lost it
that way before and he was not going to lose it again.
"Underneath … underneath," Arthur muttered to himself as he ran across the
cracked concrete of the old parking lot towards the massive brick building and
its six enormous chimneys. No paper had been made at the Yeats Paper Mill for
at least a decade, and the whole place had been set aside for some sort of
development that had never happened. Probably a shopping mall, Arthur
thought sourly.
There had to be underground storage or something here, but how could he find a
way down?
Wheezing, Arthur ran to the first door he could see. It was chained and
padlocked. He kicked it, but the wood held firm. Arthur ran along the wall to the
next door. This one looked like it had been opened recently, and the chain was
loose. Arthur pushed it open just wide enough to squeeze himself through.
He hadn't known what to expect inside, but he hadn't thought it would be a huge
open space. All the old machinery and huge piles of debris from former internal
walls had been pushed to the sides, leaving an area about the size of a football
field. Light streamed down in shafts from the huge skylights and many holes in
the tin roof.
In the cleared area, a strange machine squatted. Arthur knew instantly it came
from the House and was not a relic of past papermaking. It was the size of a bus
and looked like a cross between a steam engine and a mechanical spider, with


eight forty-foot-long, jointed limbs that sprouted from a bulbous cylindrical body
— a boiler — with a thin smokestack at one end.
The limbs were made of a red metal that shone dully even where the sun did not
fall, but the boiler was a deep black that sucked up the sunlight and did not
reflect it.
There were several huge bottles of the same black metal near the spidermachine.
Each one was taller than Arthur and easily three or four feet in
diameter.
Arthur sneaked across to a pile of debris and took another look. He couldn't see
anyone, so he slinked along to the next pile and then the next. When he was level
with the machine, he was surprised to see a very normal-looking office desk next
to it. There was a giant plasma screen on the desk, and a PC beneath it. Arthur
could see a green activity light flashing on the PC, de-spite the fact its electric
lead was coiled up on the concrete floor, not plugged into anything. He could
also see something on the screen. Graphs and rows of figures.
Arthur was just about to creep forward for a better look when a Grotesque
walked around from the other side of the boiler. Arthur wasn't sure if it was one
of the two he'd seen before. Whoever it was, it was no longer disguised in a
modern suit. Its leather apron had what looked like scorch marks all over it, and
numerous tools were sticking out of the pockets on the front.
Arthur ducked down behind some fallen bricks and froze. The Grotesque sang to
itself as it picked up a huge pair of long-handled tongs from the floor and went
over to the dark bottles.


"Double, treble, quadruple bubble, watch the stock market get into trouble…"
Using the tongs with much grunting and shuffling, the Grotesque picked up one
of the huge bottles and slowly maneuvered it over to the boiler. It put the bottle
down for a moment to open a hatch almost at ground level directly below the
smokestack. Then it drew out gloves, a tightly fitting hood, and goggles with
smoked quartz lenses from inside its apron. It put these on, picked up the tongs
again, and used them to lever the bottle into a position where its neck fitted into
the opening in the boiler.
Then it spoke. Three words in a language that Arthur did not know. Words that
sent a shiver through the soles of his feet and up his spine. Words that caused the
heavy wax seal on the bottle to shatter and release the contents into the boiler.
The contents were Nothing. Arthur saw a dark, oily waft that was both liquid and
smoke at the same time. Most of it poured into the boiler, but a few tendrils
escaped, winding back towards the Grotesque, who stepped smartly back. It
dropped the tongs and drew a glittering blade of crystal that crackled with
electric sparks.
The Nothing that had escaped began to eddy and spiral, taking a definite shape.
At first it looked like it would become some sort of animal, something tigerlike,
with clawed paws and a toothy mouth. Then it changed to become a human
shape, but one with bunched tendrils instead of hands.
A Scoucher!
The Grotesque sheathed its crystal blade and eased one of the many rings it wore
off its middle finger. As the Scoucher's shape became definite and it lunged


forward, the Grotesque flicked its ring. It struck the Scoucher in the face, and
once again Arthur heard the sizzling sound. A moment later, the Scoucher was
gone, and the ring bounced on the floor with the clear bell-like sound of silver.
The Grotesque laughed and bent to pick it up. Arthur chose that moment to run
to the next pile of debris. Instantly, the Grotesque swung around, its crystal blade
in its hand once more. Arthur instinctively flinched, but the Grotesque did not
rush over to attack. Instead it smiled and flourished its hand at the machine.
"So the Master of the Lower House has come to see my strange device. I
presume you require a demonstration? A little foretaste of what is to come at
twelve o'clock?"
The Grotesque strode to the side of the machine and turned a large bronze wheel.
A shriek came from the boiler, rising in intensity with each turn of the wheel.
Smoke suddenly poured out of the smokestack. Weird smoke that was gray and
slow and thick, pitted with tiny specks of intense blackness. As the smoke rose
and the shrieking grew louder, the arms of the machine rose high in the air and
began to jerk and jitter from side to side.
Arthur looked around frantically. Whatever the raa-chine did, it would be bad.
He had to find the way into the House!
"Oil up fifteen percent!" shouted the Grotesque and it spoke another word that
made Arthur feel suddenly ill. In response, the spider-arms stopped for a
moment, then began to dance in a rhythmic, mesmerizing pattern. As they
moved, sparks fountained out of the pointed ends of each limb, leaving
luminescent aftertrails across Arthur's eyes. Bright trails that were vaguely


reminiscent of mathematical formulae and symbols, though not ones that Arthur
recognized.
On the plasma screen, the graphs suddenly disappeared, replaced by a spinning
breaking news logo. It was replaced a moment later by the face of a TV network
woman, with the words sudden oil shock scrolling across the screen. Arthur
couldn't hear her over the shrieking machine and the whirr and buzz of its arms,
but he could guess what she was saying.
The Grotesque's bizarre machine had somehow sent the price of oil up fifteen
percent.
"What stocks does your father own?" jeered the Grotesque. It took a piece of
paper out of its apron pocket and looked at it. "Oh, I know. Music Supa-Planet,
down fifty percent!"
Again it spoke a strange word that sent a ripple of pain through Arthur's joints.
The spider-arms stopped at the word, then began a different dance, tracing out
their strange formulae in patterns of light.
Arthur shook his head to try and clear the aftereffect of the bright sparks and the
words. On the second shake, he saw something. A little door at the base of one
of the huge paper mill chimneys. A metal inspection hatch that was slightly ajar.
The chimneys go below the surface. That has to be a way down.
He ran towards the hatch, with the Grotesque's voice echoing all around, even
above the shrieking engine.


"Northern Aquafarms, down twenty-five percent!"
Arthur reached the inspection hatch. As he pulled it open, the shriek of the
engine suddenly stopped. He glanced back and saw the Grotesque staring at him
malignantly.
"Go where you will, Master of the Lower House. The Machine merely pauses
for want of fuel, and I shall soon supply that!"
Arthur shuddered, bent his head, and climbed through the hatch. He was only
just inside when the Grotesque shouted something, another word that made
Arthur's teeth and bones ache, and slammed shut the hatch behind him, cutting
off all the light.
In the brief moment before the door closed, Arthur saw that the chimney was at
least thirty feet in diameter, with well-worn steps that circled around and down.
In the total darkness, Arthur descended by feel, careful not to commit his weight
to a step until he was sure it was there. Not for the first time, he wished he still
had the First Key, for the light it shed and many other reasons.
Finally he reached the bottom. It was slightly flooded, water coming up to
Arthur's ankles. The river was close by here. He was probably below its level,
Arthur thought uneasily. It didn't help to think of the river suddenly breaking in,
not here in the absolute darkness.
But there had to be a way out, a way into the House. Didn't there? Arthur began
to think that he had been lured into a trap. Maybe this was just a chimney and
he'd been led into it like a complete fool.


Maybe the Grotesque is going to let more water in. Is it already rising?
Arthur began to edge around the walls, feeling with his feet and hands. He was
starting to panic, and the cold water was not helping his breathing. He could feel
his right lung seizing up, the left laboring hard to make up for its companion's
failings.
His hand touched something sticking out from the wall. Something round, about
the size of an apple. Something smooth and soft. Wooden, not brick.
A door handle.
Arthur sighed in relief, and turned it.
The door opened inwards. Arthur stumbled in, tripping over the lintel. His
stomach somersaulted as he continued to fall.
Straight down!
Just like the last time he'd entered the House, Arthur was falling slowly — as
slow as a plastic bag caught on a summer breeze — through darkness.
But this time he didn't have the Key to get him out of this strange in-between
place that was neither his own world nor the House. He might fall forever and
never arrive anywhere…
Arthur gritted his teeth and tried to think of something positive. He had held the
First Key. He was the Master of the Lower House, even if he'd handed his
powers over to a Steward. He felt sure there was some remnant magic in his


hands, which had once wielded the Key.
There has to be some residual power.
Arthur thrust out his right hand and imagined the Key still in his fist. A shining
Key.
"Take me to the Front Door!" he shouted, the words strangely dull and flat.
There was no echo in this weird space, no resonance of any kind.
Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then Arthur saw a very pale glow form
around his knuckles. It was so dark it took him a little while to work out what it
was. The light comforted him, and he tried to concentrate on it, willing it to grow
stronger. At the same time, under his breath, he kept repeating his instruction.
"Take me to the Front Door. Take me to the Front Door…"
His wrist clicked as his hand moved away, tugged by an unseen force. He felt the
direction of his fall change from straight down into a shallower dive.
"Take me to the Front Door. Take me to the Front Door. Take me to…"
Far off, a tiny light caught Arthur's eye. It was too far away to be more than a
luminous blob, but Arthur felt sure he was headed towards it, that it would grow
and grow until it became a huge rectangular shape of blinding light.
It bad to be the Front Door of the House.
Chapter Five


To Arthur's considerable relief, the light did grow and it did look exactly like the
Front Door. Only this time he was approaching very slowly, so he had enough
time to prepare himself for the shock of falling through to the other side — to the
green lawn of Doorstop Hill, in the Atrium of the Lower House.
Once he was there, he figured it would be relatively easy to get to Monday's
Dayroom. Arthur wondered if it was called Arthur's Dayroom now, or the Will's
Day-room, or something else completely different. In any case, he would find
the Will and Suzy there, and together they would work out what to do about
Grim Tuesday and his minions.
Arthur was still thinking about that as he drifted gently towards the Door, when
he was unexpectedly thrust forward by a tremendous force. Completely
unprepared for what felt like a giant whack in the back, he tumbled end over end
and crashed headfirst into the bright rectangle of light.
For an instant Arthur felt like he was being turned inside out, everything twisted
in impossible and painful directions. Then he bounced on his feet on the other
side and crashed down onto his hands and knees. Jarring pain in both told him he
had not landed on soft grass. It was also completely dark, without even the soft
glow of the distant ceiling of the Atrium, and certainly no elevator shafts
illuminating the scene. Even worse, there was smoke everywhere — thick,
cloying smoke that instantly made Arthur's lungs tighten and constrict.
Before he could begin to feel around or even cough, someone grabbed him by
the shoulders and pulled him up and back. Arthur swallowed his cough and
instinctively screamed, a scream that was cut off as some kind of fluid enveloped
him. He started to choke, thinking that he was in water, but a solid clap on the


back stopped that and he realized that whatever the fluid was, it wasn't water and
it wasn't getting into his throat and nose. A moment later he was out of it and
could feel air again. He had passed through some kind of membrane or fluid
barrier.
Wherever he was, everything looked extremely blurry and there was too much
color, like he was standing with his nose pressed to a stained-glass window
where the colors kept mixing up.
"Relax and blink a lot," instructed whoever was gripping his shoulders — a
calm, deep male voice that sounded vaguely familiar. It only took Arthur a
second to remember whose it was.
The Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door.
Arthur blinked madly and tried to relax. As he blinked, the colors settled down
and the blurriness eased, at least when he was looking straight ahead. It was still
very blurry to either side.
"Are we inside some sort of multicolored glass ball?" Arthur asked after a
moment. They certainly were inside something spherical and there was light
shining into it, light that kept shifting around and was diffracted into many
different colors.
"We are in a temporary bubble inside the Door itself," explained the Lieutenant
Keeper. He let go of Arthur, stepped in front of him, and saluted. As before, he
was wearing a blue uniform coat with one gold epaulette. "One that lessens the
effect of the Door on mortal minds. Now, we only have a brief respite before you
must go through to the Far Reaches —"


"The Far Reaches?" exclaimed Arthur in alarm. "But I wanted to go to the
Atrium of the Lower House."
"The Front Door opens on many parts of the House, but the door you entered in
the Secondary Realms leads only to the Far Reaches and the Grim's railway
station."
"I can't go there!"
"You must go there," declared the Lieutenant Keeper. "You have already gone
there. I snatched you back, but I cannot keep you inside the Door for any great
length of time. You must go where you are going. That is the Law of the Door."
"But…" Arthur struggled to think. "Okay, if I have to go to the Far Reaches, can
you send a message from me to the Will or Suzy, in the Lower House?"
"That part of the Will is called Dame Primus now," said the Lieutenant Keeper.
"I am afraid I am not allowed to send unofficial messages to her or anyone else. I
can hold a message for someone, but I cannot pass it on unless they inquire
whether I have one."
He unbuttoned part of his coat and reached in to withdraw a watch. It played a
haunting melody as he flipped open the case and gravely studied the dial.
"Two minutes, then I must return you to the Far Reaches."
"Can you give me a disguise?" asked Arthur desperately. The Lieutenant Keeper
had helped him before with a shirt and cap, so he didn't stand out in the Lower


House. Arthur would need a disguise even more in Grim Tuesday's domain.
"That I can do. I hoped you would ask."
The Lieutenant Keeper reached out through the glowing walls of the sphere.
When he pulled his hand back he held one end of a clothesline. He reeled it in.
As the pegs dropped off, various items of clothing fell into Arthur's lap,
including a faded pajama-like top and pants, a strange hooded cape of some
rough material the color of mud, and a many-times-patched leather apron.
"Put the work suit on over your clothes," instructed the Lieutenant Keeper. "You
will need layers for warmth. Roll up the cape for later."
Arthur put on the pajama-like top and trousers, and then strapped on the apron,
which was very heavy leather. As instructed, he rolled up the hooded cape. It
was very thick, and difficult to squash down. Arthur didn't recognize the material.
"Stabilized mud," said the Lieutenant Keeper as Arthur looked down on a rolledup
cape that was a quarter as big as he was. "Inexpensive and it offers sufficient
protection against the Nothing rain in the Pit. While it lasts."
"Nothing rain?" asked Arthur. He didn't like the way the Lieutenant Keeper said
the Pit either. He remembered that the Atlas had called it a huge sore in the
foundation of the House.
"The Pit is so vast that clouds form partway down and there is constant rain,"
said the Lieutenant Keeper as he reached back out through the barrier and
retrieved a pair of wooden clogs stuffed with straw.


"The rain concentrates the Nothing pollution that pervades the Pit and carries it
back down. Hence the name."
"But what is the Pit exactly?" asked Arthur. All he knew from the Atlas's earlier
reference was that it was some sort of giant mine, and a danger to the House.
"Unfortunately, you will soon see for yourself. I fear you will have difficulty
staying out of it. Once in, you should escape as quickly as you can. Now — put
on the clogs. Keep your socks. They are not so different as to attract notice."
Arthur slipped off his comfortable, arch-supported, computer-designed sneakers
and put on the straw-stuffed wooden clogs. They felt loose and extremely
uncomfortable. When he stood up he couldn't take a step without his heels lifting
out.
"I can't even walk in these," he protested.
"All the indentured Denizens wear them," said the Lieutenant Keeper. "You
cannot risk being given away by your footwear. Now, for the smog. It contains
minute particles of Nothing, so it wears down Denizens and will almost certainly
slay a mortal. Which hand did you hold the First Key in most?"
"The right," said Arthur.
"Then you must put two fingers from your right hand up your nostrils and your
thumb in your mouth while you inhale and recite this small spell: First Key,
grant this boon to me, that the air I breathe be pure and safe, and keep from me
all harm and scathe."


"What?"
The Lieutenant Keeper repeated his instructions and added, "You may need to
repeat this spell, as it too will be worn down by the smog, and the residual
powers of the Key will fade from your flesh. Do not stay overlong in the Far
Reaches, particularly the Pit."
"I won't if I can help it," muttered Arthur. "I guess I can always get out up the
Improbable Stair if I really have to."
The Lieutenant Keeper shook his head.
"You mean I can't use the Stair?" asked Arthur. He knew the Stair was risky, but
at least it had been an option. Like a parachute or a fire escape. Some faint hope
of escape from disaster.
"You would never reach a favorable destination." said the Lieutenant Keeper.
"Not without a Key, or a well-practiced guide."
"Great," said Arthur dolefully. He carefully put his fingers in his nostrils and his
thumb in his mouth. It was difficult to say the spell around his thumb, but
possible. He felt a tingling in his nose and throat as he said the words, and at the
end of the spell, let out an enormous sneeze that rocked him back on his heels.
"Good!" declared the Lieutenant Keeper as he quickly consulted his watch again.
"Now we must return you to your destination. I have done all I can, Arthur
Penhaligon, and more than I should. Be brave and take appropriate risks, and
you shall prevail."


"But what… please tell someone where I've gone —"
Before Arthur could say any more, the Lieutenant Keeper snapped a salute,
turned on his heel to get behind Arthur, and gave him a very hefty push. Arthur,
arms cartwheeling, went straight through the strange liquid barrier and once
more fell on his hands and knees on the cold stone floor. His left clog came off
and clattered away and his hood fell down over his face.
As Arthur struggled with his hood, a bright light shone on him. Arthur looked up
and shielded his eyes from a lantern held high by a short, broad figure. The light
was shrouded and blurred by the smoke, so for a second Arthur thought he was
looking at some sort of pig-man, then he realized it was the thrusting visor of a
helmet. The fellow also wore a bronze breastplate over a long leather coat and
had a broad, curved sword thrust naked through his belt. More peculiarly, he had
what looked like a miniature steam engine in a harness on his back that was
sending a steady flow of smoke up behind his neck, and small bursts of steam
from out behind his elbows.
That one small engine couldn't possibly be the cause of the thick smoke behind
the looming figure. It was like a fog, so heavy that Arthur could only make out
fuzzy lights and occasional blurry shapes moving in its midst. Noise was also
muffled. Arthur could hear a distant roar, as if there was a crowd somewhere, but
he couldn't see it, and there was also a kind of metallic thumping noise that
sounded like machinery.
"There's another loose one!" called the lantern-bearer to some unseen
companions back in the smoke. He sounded like he didn't have any teeth or there
was something wrong with his tongue. Or perhaps it has to do with the pigfile:///
K|/eMule/Incoming/Nix,%20Garth%20-%20The%...02%20-%20%20Grim%20Tuesday%20(v1.0)%20(html).html (59 of 261)22-12-2006 15:57:43

helmet.
"Get up!" ordered the steaming, smoking figure.
"You're in the Grim's service now and must stand in the presence of all
Overseers."
"I am?" asked Arthur as he slowly stood up, speaking in a quavering voice that
was only partly an act. "I hit my head… You're an Overseer?"
The Overseer swore in a language Arthur didn't know. The Key had enabled him
to speak all languages of the House, but without it, he had only kept the power to
understand the lingua domus that Denizens of the House spoke, not the
specialized dialects of each demesne.
"More damaged goods!" the Overseer continued. "Those other Days are always
trying it on. Follow me! Obey orders or you'll get steamed."
To demonstrate his warning, the Overseer pulled out a large-bore flintlock pistol
— the kind pirates and highwaymen had in films — but this one was connected
by a hose to the miniature steam engine on his back. He cocked the flintlock,
then pulled the trigger. The lock snapped down, sending a spray of sparks into
the air and a whistling blast of steam quite close to Arthur. The boy flinched and
jumped aside, to the Overseer's great delight.
"Har! Never seen the like before, have you? Behave and you'll keep some flesh
on your scrawny bones."
Arthur jumped again as the Overseer pushed him deeper into the smog. He only


had a moment to glance back over his shoulder, to try and fix his location for a
later exit. There was a door there, tall and imposing, easily thirty feet high. But it
didn't look like the Front Door. It was made of carved wood and showed scenes
of a tall, thin man — presumably Grim Tuesday — making things at a forge and
a bench, and being worshipped by hundreds of apron-clad disciples. But the
scenes were fixed and unmoving, stained with streaks of grime and pitted as if
acid had been sprayed across the surface. Nothing like the constantly shifting,
colorful, and vibrant images on the Front Door. Clearly this could be the Front
Door, because Arthur had come out of it, but it wasn't at the moment. There had
to be some secret to its use.
There would be no easy escape through there.
The Overseer pushed Arthur again, shoving him to the right. Arthur saw that he
was heading towards the back of a line of sad-looking Denizens that disappeared
into the eddying smog. The line was halted, but there was a sudden brief lurch
forward as Arthur joined it and a momentary lightening of the smog gave him a
brief glimpse of their destination: a long mahogany desk, little more than fifteen
yards away, where a Denizen was being presented with a leather apron and a
cape that looked even drabber than the one Arthur had.
"Get in line and get yer stuff," said the Overseer with a final push. None of the
Denizens looked around as Arthur joined the line. They simply shuffled along,
their eyes downcast.
Arthur almost called out that he already had his stuff but he kept his mouth shut.
The Overseer might not like his stupidity being publicly announced. Or perhaps
there was other stuff being given out as well as the leather aprons and capes.


When the Overseer had disappeared back into the deeper smog, Arthur hesitantly
tapped the Denizen in front of him on the shoulder. It was a woman, dressed in
the sort of strange combination of nineteenth-century clothing that Arthur had
seen in the Lower House. This woman had a long, torn dress as the basis of an
eccentric outfit that appeared to include at least a dozen scarves wound around
her arms and torso.
Arthur's tap on the shoulder didn't have the effect he expected. The Denizen
shrank beneath his touch, losing six inches in height without bending her knees.
She turned around fearfully, obviously expecting someone much scarier than
Arthur.
"Beg pardon, sir," she whispered, tugging at her fringe. "It wasn't my fault,
whatever it was."
"Uh, sorry," said Arthur. "I think you've got me confused with someone else. I'm
not one of the Overseers or anything. I'm… ah… one of you."
"An indentured worker? You?" whispered the Denizen in amazement. "Then
how?"
She made a gesture with her hand pushing down on her head. She was much
shorter than she had been before Arthur tapped her.
"Oh, that wasn't me," said Arthur hastily, almost babbling. "I don't know how
that happened. Don't think it was anything to do with me. I hit my head and I
can't remember anything. Where are we?"
"The Far Reaches," whispered the Denizen. She was still feeling the top of her


head and looking puzzled. "Your contract must have been assigned to Grim
Tuesday. You're an indentured worker now."
"Sssshhhh!" warned the next Denizen along. "Keep it down! The last person
talking got steamed and so did everyone next to him. / don't want to be steamed."
"Where are you from?" whispered Arthur to the woman ahead of him.
"The Upper House. I was a Capital Ornamenter Third Class. I don't understand
why I was sent here. I
must have done something wrong. Are you one of the Piper's children, or
unnaturally shrunk? It does happen here. I didn't think it would happen to me so
soon —"
"Quiet!" hissed two Denizens farther up. "Overseer!"
An Overseer lurched out of the smog. He stopped to gaze at the line of Denizens,
tapping on his steam-gun with thick, calloused fingers. Arthur saw a ripple of
fear pass through the whole line, a kind of slow hunching down that all the
Denizens did, while at the same time trying not to show any signs of movement.
The Overseer kept watching for a few seconds, then disappeared back into the
smog. As it closed around him, Arthur caught a glimpse of another two or three
lines of Denizens, all waiting to be given their basic outfit. There could be even
more lines beyond.
No one spoke after the Overseer left. They kept shuffling forward as their turns
came. Arthur didn't tap the woman on the shoulder again, fearful of shrinking her


even further, and she didn't look around.
When he came to the front of the line, the Denizen behind the desk stopped in
mid-action as he was about to hand Arthur a pile of clothing. He was short and
shaped rather like a turnip, so stopping made him almost topple over. In order to
keep his balance he dropped the clothes and grabbed the table, almost
oversetting the name plaque that said supply clerk in tarnished gold-leaf letters.
"You've already got yours!" the clerk gasped.
"Got what?" asked Arthur. Pretending to be stupid seemed the best defense.
"Your apron, leather, one of; cape, rain, stabilized mud with hood, one of; and
clogs, wood veneer, one pair," replied the Denizen. "So what do I do?"
"I don't know," said Arthur. "Just let me go on?"
Wherever "on" was. Arthur had been watching carefully, but hadn't been able to
work out what happened to the Denizens in front of him after they got their
aprons and capes. They marched around the left side of the table and disappeared
into still thicker smog. Arthur also couldn't work out where the aprons and capes
and clogs came from. The Denizen handing them out appeared to pull them from
the solid mahogany tabletop.
"But I don't know if that's allowed," muttered the supply clerk.
"You could ask," piped up the Denizen who was waiting behind Arthur.
"Ask?" hissed the clerk. He looked around nervously. "You never ask anything


round here. That only leads to trouble."
"Well, how about you pretend you never saw me and I just go?" suggested
Arthur.
"Next!" said the supply clerk, craning his neck to look to the next person in line.
Arthur hesitated for a moment, unsure of where to go. The supply clerk
scratched his nose and cupped his hand around his mouth so he could whisper,
"Around to the left, down the steps."
Arthur walked around the desk to the left and almost fell down the steps, since
he didn't see them until he was almost on them. They were broken in parts,
deeply coated with soot, and dangerously greasy. As Arthur cautiously made his
way down, he tried to dig up some thoughts out of his brain on how to escape.
But no bright ideas flared. All he could think of were the Lieutenant Keeper's
words: Take appropriate risks.
But what risks were appropriate?
Arthur was still wondering about that when he reached the bottom of the steps. It
looked no different from the area above — dark and smoggy, save for a diffused
light ahead that could be ten or fifty yards away. Arthur set out for it, his clogs
clacking on the stone floor, occasionally waving his arms to dissipate a thick
band of nasty-smelling smog. Fortunately, the spell the Lieutenant Keeper had
taught him was working and
Arthur was very relieved he'd done it, even though he'd felt stupid sticking his
fingers in his nose.


The light came from two lanterns on either end of another wide mahogany desk.
This desk was also bare, save for an identical gold-lettered sign that also said
supply clerk. The particular clerk behind the desk was even shorter and squatter
than the one before. He was so shrunken he only came up to Arthur's waist and
was barely visible behind the desk.
As Arthur stopped in front of him, he pulled a smoke-grimed lantern with a
badly mended handle out of the desktop, his fingers appearing to actually dip
into the wood.
"Strom lantern, self-oiling, one."
"Storm lantern, you mean," said Arthur.
"Says strom lantern in my book," replied the clerk. "Hurry along and join your
gang. Just follow the railway tracks behind me. Unless you hear a whistle, in
which case, get off the tracks for a while."
"This storm — sorry, strom — lantern is broken," Arthur pointed out.
"They're all broken," sighed the clerk, indicating the lanterns at each end of his
desk, which were identical. "That's the pattern. I suppose our lord and master has
+-82^
better things to do than fix up the pattern. No use complaining. I complained
once and look what happened."
Arthur stared at the clerk in puzzlement.


"Got downsized, didn't I? I was a foot taller and a Maker Fourth Class before I
was stupid enough to complain about badly made strom lanterns. At least I didn't
get sent down the Pit. Now off you go before I get into more trouble."
"What's your name?" asked Arthur. This clerk might be a useful contact. At least
he talked about Grim Tuesday and the Pit.
"Name! Supply Clerk Twelve Fifty-Two. Now get going before an Overseer
shows up! Around the desk and follow the rails."
Arthur turned to go, holding his smoking lantern high. But before he disappeared
into the smog, the supply clerk coughed. Arthur turned back.
"Mathias. That was my name," muttered the clerk. "I don't know who you are,
but something makes me want to tell you. Good luck in the Pit. You'll need it."
Chapter Six
There were railway tracks behind the desk, only ten yards away but unseen until
Arthur tripped over the first rail. Inspecting them with the lantern, Arthur saw
they were made of some dull metal that looked like bronze, and they were set
very wide apart, at least eight feet, which he thought was a wider gauge than any
railway back in his world. The rails ran on stone sleepers rather than wood or
concrete, and the rubble under and between the sleepers was of some strange
material that was the shape and color of wood chips but was very heavy and hard
— perhaps another kind of light stone.
The rubble was called ballast, Arthur remembered. Bob's ninety-four-year-old
uncle Jarrett — Arthur's great-uncle — had worked on the railways all his life


and liked his great-nephews and great-nieces to know the proper terminology for
everything from the tracks to the trains. He even had recordings of different
types of steam engines they'd had to listen to.
But Great-uncle Jarrett wasn't there to tell Arthur anything about this particular
railway, and the boy didn't know which way to go. The tracks ran to the left and
right, disappearing into thick smog in both directions. To try to get a better idea
of where he was, Arthur crossed the tracks and walked away at a right angle.
Having learned that visibility was effectively nil in the smog and general
weirdness of the place, he trod carefully, alert for another stairway or a sudden
drop.
Crouching down and raising his lantern, Arthur saw the stone floor simply ended
as if it had been sheared off clean by an enormous knife. Swirls of smog blew
along the edge of the precipice, cloaking how far down the drop might be.
Arthur couldn't see the other side at all.
He guessed that he had found the edge of the Pit. Slowly he backed away, not
feeling safe until he had returned to the other side of the railway.
Now that he knew he was on the edge of the Pit, Arthur realized that the railway
slanted down in one direction. That would be the way he was supposed to go.
But if he followed the rails, he would be drawn deeper and deeper into the
horrible life of an indentured worker in Grim Tuesday's realm. On the other
hand, if he followed the rails up, he'd probably get steamed… and unlike a
Denizen, would not survive the experience.
I'm in trouble.


It was really sinking in now that he was trapped in a very unpleasant part of the
House. He didn't have the Key, so apart from some faint lingering power in his
hands, he had no magic to help him and no weapon. He had no way to get out
and no way to communicate with his friends. No one knew he was here except
the Lieutenant Keeper — who couldn't tell anyone unless they asked first.
He'd rushed in to try to stop his family from suffering any more financial
assaults, but all he'd managed to achieve was to get himself into very serious
trouble.
Arthur sat down on the rail, put his head in his hands, and massaged his temples.
He felt slow and stupid and utterly defeated. He had to figure out a way to
escape. There was no way he could survive going farther down the Pit.
He started rocking back and forth. Somehow that slight motion made him feel
better, as if any movement might help him come up with an idea. As he rocked,
he felt a slight pain in his chest. Not the internal ache of a stiffening lung, but
something poking into him from his pocket.
The Atlas.
Suddenly full of hope, he got the green-cloth-covered book out and rested it in
his lap. Then he laid both hands flat on the cover and thought out his question.
How can I get out of the Pit?
The Atlas opened with less than its usual alacrity, and instead of growing to its
usual dimensions, only expanded to twice its pocket-sized form. It also kept
partially closed, so Arthur had to peer in. Clearly the Atlas didn't like the air in


the Pit either.
A single letter was slowly sketched out in ink, then the unseen hand grew faster
and wrote a word, then another. As in the first time Arthur had used the Atlas,
the words were not in English, and the letters were not any that he knew. But as
he looked at them, they changed into a more recognizable form.
Zhere are numerous ways to leave the fearsome Pit of Qrim Zues-day. Zhere are
the official ways, requiring suitable passes and permits. Zhey include:
a. by walking up the service road;
b. as a passenger upon Qrim Zuesday's train and
e. as one of the Qrim's messengers, with a wheel recalibrated
for ascent.
Zhere are the unofficial ways, which are dangerous or self-defeating. Zhese
include:
a. by flying, with its attendant risks, some specific to the Pit; and
b. by destruction at the hands ofaM'thling or an eruption of Nothing.
"No," said Arthur. "I mean specifically how can I get out of the Pit now?"
Nothing happened. The page of the Atlas remained still and frozen. No unseen
hand wrote, no ink shimmered.


Arthur slowly closed the Atlas and put it in his pocket. For a moment he had
thought it would give him some easy way out, some secret way to exit the Pit. It
had helped him back in his world, but it either couldn't or wouldn't help him here.
I suppose I could go to an Overseer and ask to see Grim Tuesday, Arthur
thought despondently. And just sign the stupid paper that would give him the
First Key and the Lower House . . .
"Excuse me! I think you're meant to go ahead of me," said a polite voice out of
the smog. Arthur looked around and saw the Denizen who'd been behind him in
the line.
"They seem quite keen on staying in line here. Name's Japeth, by the way.
Former name, I suppose."
"I'm Arthur," said Arthur. He extended his hand. Japeth took it, but before he
could close his hand, blue sparks erupted from Arthur's palm and lashed around
Japeth's wrist. The Denizen let go with a yelp and withdrew, sucking his fingers.
"You're not an indentured worker!" he exclaimed.
Arthur tensed for the Denizen to call out to the Overseers, who would surely be
somewhere near in the smog. Japeth might get a reward, or early release, or
something. So he mustn't be allowed the opportunity…
"Don't worry!" Japeth added quickly as Arthur bent down and picked up a piece
of the weird stone ballast from the train track. "I'm not a snitch, tattletale, dobber,
blabberer, squealer, fink, or indeed, easy-mouth. Whoever you are, I shan't
say a word, phrase, utterance, syntag —"


"You'd better not," warned Arthur. He tried to sound severe but was very
relieved as he dropped the stone. "I'm here… on a mission to help all the
indentured workers."
Japeth also seemed relieved. He bowed and doffed an imaginary hat. His courtly
manners were rather at odds with the extremely ragged velvet pants he wore
under his leather apron. His shirt was no longer white, but yellow, and the cuffs
were done up with string rather than buttons. Like most Denizens, he was
handsome, but his face looked a little squashed, as did his body. As if he'd been
pushed down and broadened, an imperfect clay model that had once come from a
handsome mold.
"I would be honored to assist," he said. "That is to say, aid, support, succor, abet,
reinforce, or give a leg up."
"Thank you," said Arthur. "Um, do you always talk like that?"
"You refer to my constant, even habitual use of a multiplicity of words and
terms?"
"Yes."
"Only when I'm nervous," replied Japeth. "I am… I used to be a Thesaurus
Minimus Grade Two. It is an occupational hazard, danger, or threat that we
sometimes become prolix, verbose, long-winded, longilo-quent… I fight against
it, I assure you. Shall we move on before someone comes looking for us?"
"I suppose we should," agreed Arthur, after a moment's hesitation. He needed


more time to think, and they couldn't stay where they were.
"After you," said Japeth, bowing and once again waving his imaginary hat.
"No, after you," replied Arthur, bowing a little himself. He didn't want the
Denizen walking close behind him, not with all the ballast stone about. He
sounded sincere, but Arthur didn't want to risk being hit on the head and handed
over unconscious to the Overseers.
Japeth inclined his head and strode off down the tracks, his clogs echoing
hollowly on the stone sleepers. Arthur followed, still thinking furiously and
occasionally tripping over his own clogs. If only he could get a message out to
the Lower House. Every idea he came up with had a flaw. He got all excited for
a second when he remembered that Monday's Noon had been able to summon a
telephone apparently out of nowhere in the House and the Secondary Realms.
But even if Arthur could do that, the Lower House's telephone service had either
been cut off or required cash payment up front, and he had no money.
But perhaps I could get some, he thought. Then I could call the Will, or Suzy, or
Monday's Noon…
"What currency do they use in the Pit?" asked Arthur as they continued down the
tracks without running into anyone or anything.
"I believe the Far Reaches used to have a very nicely minted gold noble, silver
real, and copper bice," replied Japeth. "However, Grim Tuesday has gathered all
actual coinage to himself, and everyone else must make do with ledger entries.
Like our indentures."


He pulled out a rectangular piece of card that he wore on a string around his
neck.
"Do you mind if I have a look?" asked Arthur.
"I can't take it off, remove, or displace it from my person," said Japeth. "But
please do take a glance, preliminary examination, indagation, or, indeed, look."
The paper looked like a label, with neat writing in a sickly green ink. It had one
column headed earnings and one headed owing. The earnings column had a
single line with On Or Ob. The owing column had 4n 6r 18b. As Arthur
watched, the owing column rippled and changed to 4n 7r lb.
"You see why no one ever earns their way free of their indenture. We are not
paid until we reach the bottom of the Pit and, even then, only if we find usable
amounts of Nothing. But we are charged for every breath of this foul air, and
ridiculous amounts for our meager equipment."
"So there is no money, I mean coins or notes, at all in the Pit?"
"So I have been told, informed, clued in," said Japeth. He started to walk along
the railway again. "Shouldn't we be getting on, moving along, advancing,
progressing?"
Arthur nodded. Japeth was clearly getting more and more nervous, and it was
infectious. Arthur hurried after the Denizen, the sound of their clogs clattering
faster and faster till they were almost running.
It was just as well they hurried. A hundred yards farther down the track, an


Overseer suddenly loomed up out of the smog. He was marching with purpose
along the railway, his steam-gun ready. When he saw them, he grunted and
waved them past, then followed. Clearly he had started to investigate the delay in
new arrivals.
The smog cleared a little in front of Arthur. He saw several groups of Denizens
marching away without Overseers. Another group was standing nearby, watched
by an Overseer who had his visor up and was polishing his teeth with a cloth and
an open tin of white paste. He was shorter than a head by the Denizens he
watched, but much broader across the shoulders. His face was really squashed
down and two of the teeth in his lower jaw protruded out like small tusks.
"Here you go," shouted the Overseer behind Arthur. "Couple of laggards."
The Overseer rubbed his teeth one last time, slipped the tin under his apron, gave
a surprisingly gentle sigh, and clanged down his visor. Immediately a change
came over him. He hunched forward, growled, and drew his steam-gun. His
backpack steam engine went from a purr to a harsh rattle, pumped out a heavy
cloud of black smoke, and vented steam to either side behind his elbows.
"Hurry up!" he shouted. "Get in line."
Arthur and Japeth ran to the group of Denizens, who were milling about, trying
to get into a line. But no one wanted to be closest to the Overseer, so whoever
ended up there ducked around the back and joined the end of the line. This went
on for a minute or so, till the Overseer blasted a jet of steam into the air.
"Stop!" he yelled. "You, stand there! You, stand there! Right, now stand in line."


When everyone was in line, the Overseer marched up to Arthur and Japeth and
roared, "Why were you late?"
"I fell on my head," said Arthur. It seemed to be an all-purpose excuse. "Where
are we?"
"You are on His Mightiness Grim Tuesday's Pit Railway Service Road!" shouted
the Overseer. "You are very lucky!"
"Why?" asked Japeth. "How come? On account of what —"
"Shut up! I ask the questions!"
Japeth shut up. The Overseer growled, then repeated, "I ask the questions! And
my first question is…"
His voice trailed off as he struggled to get a grimy piece of paper out from the
inner pocket of his leather coat. Having gotten the paper out, he had trouble
unfolding it. When it was finally unfolded, he held it up to his visor.
The question, when it finally came, was not what Arthur expected.
"You all been branded?" asked the Overseer.
Arthur nodded with the others and kept his head down, hoping to hide the fear
that he was sure showed in his face.
"Any swift healers?" asked the Overseer, obviously reading from the paper.
Everyone shook their heads. The Overseer looked across at them, then back at


the paper.
"Orright, let's see your soles, then," instructed the Overseer.
Our souls? thought Arthur in surprise. How can we show our souls?
He was particularly surprised when everyone stepped out of their right clog, took
off their right sock, and started hopping about, each presenting their right foot
towards the Overseer.
"Come on, then, no time to waste in the Grim's service," barked the Overseer.
"Don't hop about, you idiots! Lie on your backs and hold your soles out."
Arthur, still mystified, sat down with everyone else in a line along the cold stone
floor. But as he slipped off his right clog, he looked at Japeth's bare foot and saw
what the Overseer was looking for.
The brand was on the sole of the right foot! A brand that ran from the heel to the
ball and said in glowing green type: indentured to grim Tuesday.
Arthur froze for an instant, then pretended his clog was stuck, as he feverishly
tried to think about what he could do. The Overseer had a steam-gun, there was
the other Overseer somewhere back up along the railway, and certainly many
more on the platform above it.
"I knew it!" shouted the Overseer. "There's always one!"
Arthur snapped his head back. For a horrible second he thought the Overseer
was talking to him, then he saw the squat figure was standing over one of the


Denizens at the other end of the line.
"Swift healer for sure," declared the Overseer. "When were you branded?"
"Yesterday, when I arrived," replied the Denizen dejectedly. "But I don't always
heal swiftly, sir. Sometimes it takes days."
"Days! That brand's supposed to last a year. I'll have to ear- or nose-clip you
instead. Stand up."
"Oh, sir, please, I'd prefer another branding."
"We don't care wot you want!" roared the Overseer. He rummaged around in his
coat pockets and eventually pulled out a shiny metal disc that was several inches
in diameter. "Where do you want it?"
"Oh, the nose," grumbled the Denizen. The Overseer grunted and touched the
disc to the Denizen's ear. There was a small flash of light, a sizzling sound, and
the disc was hanging off the Denizen's earlobe just like an oversized earring.
"I said my —"
Before the Denizen could say any more he was clouted to the ground by the
Overseer's large fist.
Sensibly, the downed Denizen lay there, obviously struggling to keep his mouth
shut. The Overseer sighed again and rubbed his knuckles.
"Now then, anybody else a swiftie?"


Arthur thought very swiftly indeed and raised his hand. The Overseer lumbered
down the line.
"Oh, it's dropped-on-the-head. You sure you know what we're talking about?
Show us your sole."
Arthur lay back, slipped off his clog and sock, and showed his bare foot. The
Overseer bent down with considerable creaking and grunting and whistled
between his front teeth.
"Completely gone! Orright, get up and I'll give you a nose-clip."
"Great, I've always wanted a big round thing in my nose," suggested Arthur as
he stood up. He instinctively knew better than to ask for it in his ear straight out.
"Or… um… jangling on my lip."
"Keep yer lip to yerself," snarled the Overseer. He held the disc out and laughed
as Arthur flinched. Then he touched the disc to the boy's left ear.
Arthur felt a stab of pain that went right through his ear and into his head, where
it bounced around between his eyes. The pain was so intense, he staggered back.
He would have fallen if he wasn't caught by Japeth.
"Slow and sensitive!" roared the Overseer. "You have to stand on yer own feet
here!"
"He's one of the Piper's children," retorted Japeth. "They're different. They were
mortals once."


"No special cases here!" shouted the Overseer. He threw a punch at Japeth.
Strangely, though Japeth didn't move, the punch missed, as if the Overseer had
pulled it on purpose.
Despite his mind being mainly focused on the throbbing pain behind his eye
sockets, Arthur still managed to wonder why the Overseer was so loud. The
Denizen seemed to have only two modes of communication: loud and deafening.
"No more backchat or I'll steam the lot of you!" roared the Overseer. He
consulted his piece of paper.
"Orright! You lot are now called Gang 205117. Remember that! Gang 20 —"
He looked at the paper again.
"Gang 205117. You on the left, you're number one in the gang. You're number
two, and you're three, and four, and five, and six, and seven —"
"He counts well, doesn't he?" whispered Japeth, who was still holding Arthur up.
But the pain passed quickly, so Arthur managed to stand on his own as the
Overseer pointed at him and said, "You're thirteen."
Something about that number made the Overseer stop and scratch his head. He
looked at his paper again, but whatever he was looking for wasn't there.
"Ain't supposed to be thirteen," he said to himself after a long silence. "Always
twelve in a gang…"
"Maybe they throw the Piper's children in extra," said Japeth, as he put out a


hand to stop Arthur from swaying into him. "For free. As a bonus, premium, or
frill —"
"Shut up!" roared the Overseer. "You, Number Thirteen! You're one of the
Piper's children?"
"Y-yes," stuttered Arthur.
"You're not a messenger? Piper's children is always messengers down here."
"No," said Arthur. "I'm not a messenger."
"Thrown in as an extra, then," said the Overseer with satisfaction. His brow
cleared at having solved this mighty puzzle and he looked at his paper again and
slowly read out the next instruction, pausing every now and then to puzzle over a
word or pick off a spot that had obscured the type.
"Gang insert-number-here. You are about to begin your journey to the bottom of
the Pit! You will be put on the road and Number One will be given a time
candle. You must reach the First Way Station before that time candle burns out.
If you do not, you will be hunted down and punished. At the First Way Station
you will be given another time candle and you must go on to the Second Way
Station before it burns out. This system will continue until you reach Down
Station, when you will be put in new gangs to work in the Pit. Praise be to Grim
Tuesday!"
Finished, the Overseer folded up his paper and put it back in a pocket. Then he
fished around in almost every other pocket before finally dragging out a tall
white candle marked with red bands a fingerbreadth apart. As soon as the


Denizen who was now Number One took it, the candle burst into flame. The
Denizens all stared at it, their faces registering shock, horror, and distaste.
Arthur stared at the candle too. Its lighting had brought home to him, and
everyone else, that they really were on their way down to the unknown horrors
of the Pit.
"Get going," roared the Overseer.
But as Number One stepped out, the Overseer raised his visor and muttered
something. It took Arthur a second to realize that, like the Supply Clerk, what
he'd said was, "Good luck."
Arthur was surprised that an Overseer would wish them luck, and worried that
they would need it. He almost said something as he went past, but the Overseer
had already snapped his visor down and the next lot of downcast Denizens was
coming out of the smog from up the line.
Arthur's own gang was heading down, walking in single file next to the railway
tracks, with Number One setting a quick walking pace. Arthur hesitated for a
moment, but, as before, he had no real choice. He couldn't go back up. There
was only the edge of the Pit on the other side of the tracks.
He had to follow the rest of the gang and descend into the smoky darkness.
Chapter Seven
Number One didn't slacken his pace, and for several hours he didn't stop at all.
Arthur was hard put to keep up at a walk, and occasionally had to run to catch


up. As the wall of the Pit rose up on his left and the service road grew narrower
and closer to the railway, Arthur began to get an idea of just how vast the Pit
must be. The railway and the road that ran next to it were clearly cut into the side
of the Pit, following the edge around in one huge spiral from top to bottom. It
was impossible to see with all the smog, but the curve was so gentle that Arthur
eventually figured that the Pit must be miles in diameter.
Arthur had no idea how deep it was. He asked Japeth, who also didn't know.
Japeth asked Number Eleven in front of him, but that Denizen shook her head
and wouldn't answer. None of the other Denizens talked at all. They just
followed Number One with their heads bent, eyes fixed on their clogs or the
heels of the Denizen in front of them. Occasionally one would look up anxiously
and try to get a clear view of the bands remaining on the time candle.
They walked for hours without seeing anything of interest, save for occasional
piles of broken train parts piled up next to the line. The Grim's train clearly
suffered a lot of broken axles, snapped connecting rods, corroded pistons,
chipped wheels, and other damage. Probably because it was affected by Nothing
at the bottom of the Pit, Arthur guessed.
He would have liked to look at the various parts, but the gang's first stop only
came when Number Six tripped out of her own clogs and fell down, knocking
over Number Five, who knocked over Number Four. But they only stopped long
enough for the three Denizens to get up and get their clogs back on.
An hour later, Arthur deliberately kicked off a clog himself in order to get a rest,
but being right at the back no one noticed except Japeth, and the rest of the gang
didn't stop. So Arthur and Japeth had to run to catch up.


That took most of Arthur's remaining energy. He knew he didn't need food and
water in the House, but he still felt hungry, thirsty, and depressed. He tried to
shake off the depression, telling himself it was only because he was tired. But
that was the problem. He wasn't just tired. He was exhausted. He got wearier and
wearier, and they just kept on walking.
Thoughts of giving in and signing over the Key and the Mastery of the Lower
House started to well up as Arthur walked and walked and walked. He simply
couldn't think of anything else to do except give up.
He managed to beat those defeatist thoughts back for a while when they left the
smog behind and he felt a bit better. He even ran up to look at the time candle,
ignoring the glares of Number One for getting out of line. But the feeling better
only lasted for a few minutes. Arthur quickly fell back to his rear position,
disturbed to see that the candle had burned down to only the second band out of
twelve. According to his watch, which was going backwards but otherwise
seemed to be tracking time okay, they had been walking for six hours. With ten
bands of the candle to go, that was another thirty hours walking.
Even without the smog it was still pitch dark. The only light came from the
gang's Strom lanterns and the time candle. To make things worse, they soon
descended into wet, hanging clouds that were cleaner than the smog but cold and
clammy.
Thirty hours of walking to go. I can't do it. But I have to… I have to…
Arthur was already too tired to think about how he could get out of his current
predicament, but the thought of having to keep going for another thirty hours


made him try harder. He tried to look around more, just in case some opportunity
came up.
Perhaps I could hide, and sneak back up later, he thought. Or somehow ambush
an Overseer and take his clothes and disguise myself. Only I haven't seen any
Overseers down here so far… or there might be a telephone booth and some
coins the Grim didn't notice, and I could call up the Will and be rescued…
The sound of a clog falling off broke into Arthur's daydream. He realized he'd
fallen asleep walking and that Japeth wasn't in front of him, but next to him,
steering him by his elbow.
It was his own clog that had fallen off. He bent down to put it back on, moving
so slowly he felt like he was still in his dream.
"How long… asleep?" mumbled Arthur. Everything looked the same. Denizens
disappeared into clouds in front of him, led by an indistinct figure carrying a
flickering light. There was the railway track to the right. There was another pile
of broken wheels and bits and pieces.
"I don't know," said Japeth. "You are brave to be able to sleep here while
walking. I doubt if I will sleep again for weeks."
"I'm just worn out," mumbled Arthur. "Not a Denizen."
"Not a Denizen?" asked Japeth. "But even the Piper's children have become
Denizens, of a kind…"
"M' not even that. Mortal. Been in House only once before…"


"But you have power! I felt it when we shook hands. You said you were on a
mission —"
Arthur shook his head to wake himself up. He was so tired he couldn't even get
his mouth and tongue to form words properly. He slapped himself on the face
and felt a little spark zap across from his palms. It woke him up… a bit.
"It's hard to explain," he told Japeth. "Grim Tuesday is my enemy, and I really
do want to help everyone escape from this Pit. But I have to get out myself first."
"There can be no escape from the indenture," said Japeth gloomily, fingering the
string around his neck. "Indentured workers are always returned to the Far
Reaches, even if you could get into another part of the House. There is no
escape, getaway, deliverance, or emergence. We're down here for eternity.
Forever, plus the statutory day."
"There must be some way," said Arthur. He felt a little refreshed, either from
slapping himself or from his walking sleep. But only a little. A deep weariness
lurked in every bone and muscle, waiting to rise up and overwhelm him. "Can't
the indenture be cut off or something?"
"Quiet back there!" ordered Number One. He seemed to think he was in charge
because he held the candle.
"Stick your nose down your own apron!" retorted Japeth. "We'll talk as much or
as little as we like."
Number One grumbled something back, but said no more. However, he did
increase the pace, with the other Denizens obediently following. It was just fast


enough for Arthur to have to run every twenty paces or so, rather than every half
hour. Soon, he felt a familiar tightness in his right lung. His throat was also a bit
sore and his nose puffy. The spell the Lieutenant Keeper had taught him must be
wearing off.
"Even if you could cut off my indenture tag, it wouldn't help," said Japeth as he
easily ran next to Arthur. "Grim Tuesday has a master indenture roll, containing
every Denizen's contract and listing what we owe and earn. An individual tag
will simply re-form if it is damaged or destroyed. The only way out would be if
one of the other Days bought out our contracts. And that will never happen. Our
Days 'transferred' us to the Grim in the first place, though it would be more
accurate or to the point to say we were sold, traded, or bartered."
"There has to be a way," muttered Arthur. At least he wasn't indentured. Not that
it mattered when he was heading in precisely the wrong direction for any chance
of escape. He was also totally exhausted, with one lung seizing up, the other sore
from taking the load, and his nose streaming. It was all he could do to think
about putting one foot in front of the other, let alone anything farther ahead.
"By the way," Japeth asked, "where did you get your streaming nose? That
would be worth a fortune back in the Middle House."
"I told you I'm a mortal," sniffed Arthur. "I've got a cold."
"Oh," said Japeth. "A cold! Can you transfer it? Then maybe you could bribe an
Overseer —"
Arthur shook his head. He had no idea how to transfer his cold, besides maybe
sneezing on Japeth, which wasn't something he was about to do. He couldn't


understand why the Denizens were so keen to have mortal ailments. Except, of
course, that for them they were purely cosmetic, since they didn't feel sick.
Half an hour later the constant wetness of the cloud began to turn into actual
rain, and the gang paused briefly to put on their capes. The rain soon became a
steady drizzle, punctuated by the occasional heavy, stinging drop. One fell on
Arthur's hand, burning his skin as it slid off with a sizzling noise. But as with the
Scoucher's cut, the burn healed within a few minutes, leaving no sign.
Nothing rain, thought Arthur dully. That's all I need.
The stinging drops kept coming down every few minutes, but most fell on
Arthur's hood or cape, leaving pockmarks in the stabilized mud. Arthur was so
tired he hardly noticed them. He managed to keep going, but only because Japeth
was almost carrying him.
Even with Japeth's help, they were falling farther and farther behind, the candle
flame borne by Number One often out of sight, and Number Eleven a dim figure
occasionally glimpsed through the rain.
"I can't go any farther," Arthur finally gasped when they lost sight of Number
Eleven altogether. "You go. I'll catch up when I've had a rest. I can hide from the
Overseers behind all this junk."
Japeth lowered the boy down next to yet another pile of broken train parts.
Arthur leaned back against a pair of bogey wheels and his head sank down on his
knees. He halfheartedly wiped his nose on his sleeve and thought about casting
the breathing spell again. But he was so tired…


After a while, he realized that Japeth was still standing in front of him.
"Go!" said Arthur weakly. "I'll work out some way to catch up. You don't want
to get steamed."
"Perhaps a steaming is less to be feared than descending farther into the Pit,"
said Japeth slowly. "I have seen only despair and fatalism among the Denizens
here. But you offer some hope. You are not indentured. You have some latent
power. I shall take my chances with you. Rest, and I will watch. Stand guard.
Shelter. Shield you. Shepherd. Mind. Watch. Tend. Keep vigil. Watch and ward.
Patrol. Do the rounds…"
Japeth kept talking, but Arthur felt himself fall far away, the Denizen's voice
receding into some distant space. In less than a second, Arthur was asleep.
He woke up to a peculiar whirring sound and the hum of the railway lines.
Japeth was shaking him by the shoulder.
"Arthur! Wake up! Something is coming down the line!"
Arthur sat up and immediately started coughing. A racking cough that started
deep in his chest and rolled up through his throat. A cough that kept going and
going, as if his body was desperate to get something toxic out of his system.
Still coughing, Arthur plunged his fingers into his nose and his thumb into his
mouth. Then, in between racking coughs, he managed to sputter out the words of
the Lieutenant Keeper's spell. But the coughing continued, his nose kept running,
and Arthur was overcome by fear. The spell hadn't worked and he was going to
choke to death here in the ghastly Pit…


Suddenly the coughing stopped and Arthur's nose dried up at the same moment.
He took a deep breath, luxuriating as it spread through both lungs. He felt fine,
though very stiff in the legs. According to his backwards watch, he'd been asleep
for three hours.
"We must hide! Conceal ourselves! Take cover!" Japeth warned.
Arthur looked up the track and a large Nothing-laced raindrop hit his cheek,
almost splashing his eye. He swore and wiped it off, ignoring the painful
stinging sensation, and looked again, careful to keep his hood well forward.
He saw two fuzzy lights coming down the railway line, lights no stronger than
his strom lantern, and only about a foot apart. They were too close together and
didn't look bright enough to be the lights of a train. The whirring sound was also
too quiet, and the rails were only humming very softly, nothing like they would
for a full-sized locomotive and its load.
Nevertheless, Arthur hurried around the pile of scrap metal and hunkered down
with Japeth behind an upturned bench seat thrown from a carriage, its horsehair
stuffing sprayed out like a strange plant. They put their lanterns down the central
hole of a huge driving wheel, covered it with a steel damping plate, and sat
completely still in the darkness.
Arthur held his breath, fear rising as he stared at the lights and the dark shape
behind them.
Chapter Eight


Arthur peered over the upturned bench at the approaching vehicle. Shrouded by
the rain and disguised by a nimbus of diffused light, it was extremely hard to
make out what it was. Only one thing was for sure — it wasn't a train. In fact, as
it closed in, Arthur saw that it was a single wheel about six feet high and two
feet wide, running on only the inner rail of the track. Or more exactly, it was two
wheels, one inside the other. The inner wheel didn't move. The lights were fixed
to the sides of this inner wheel, and there was someone… or something… sitting
inside it. The outer wheel rotated around the inner wheel.
Arthur couldn't see any sign of a steam engine or anything else to make the
wheel go. Perhaps it simply ran downhill and could never return to the top. It
also seemed an unlikely conveyance for Grim Tuesday, which was a relief. It
would be hard for anyone much taller or fatter than Arthur to fit inside the wheel.
Mind you, Arthur thought, Grim Tuesday might not be like the picture on the
station door. . . . He might
really be small and slight… or not even have a human shape.
"What is that?" whispered Japeth.
"I don't know," Arthur whispered back. He stared at the approaching wheel. Was
it his imagination, or was it slowing down?
"It's stopping! Halting! Arresting! Ceasing to proceed forward!"
"Ssshhh! Don't panic," hissed Arthur. He bent down and picked up a long tube of
Nothing-pocked copper, perhaps a former steam-pipe or fire-tube. It was
slippery and wet, but felt comfortingly heavy in his hand.


"What if whoever's in it has a steam-gun?" Japeth asked.
"Ssshhh," Arthur hissed again. "Maybe it will go past."
But the wheel stopped about ten yards away. The rail stopped humming,
allowing Arthur to hear clearly the strange, low sound that still came from the
wheel. It took Arthur a moment to recognize it as the constant tick of clockwork.
That immediately brought unpleasant memories of the clockwork creatures from
the Coal Cellar…
The figure inside the wheel stretched one leg out, then another. The movements
seemed normal, not clock-work, but Arthur clutched his metal pipe more tightly.
Once again, defeatist thoughts rose up in his mind. Perhaps he should step out
and surrender, ask to be taken to Grim Tuesday…
No! Arthur fought back. I'm not giving in. I'm not surrendering, and I'm not
going to sit and wait to be steamed or cut to bits.
The wheel-rider slipped completely out and stood up behind the left lantern of
the wheel. The light, spread and blurred by the rain, made it impossible to gauge
the size of the person or what he or she was doing. But Arthur couldn't see any
steam wafting out or the shine of an unsheathed blade.
The dim figure raised one hand. Arthur tensed, then as a bright light flashed
from the end of the wheel-rider's index finger, he leaped up and rushed forward,
swinging the metal tube over his head.
"Haaahh!" he cried, attacking.


"Arthur!" a voice called out.
Arthur slid to a stop and almost fell over. He lowered his copper pipe and
squinted at the light, brushing away the rain from his face with the back of his
left hand.
"Suzy?" he asked.
"Of course it is, stupid! Who were you expecting?"
Arthur smiled and shook his head as Suzy Turquoise
Blue stepped in front of the lantern. She looked the same as ever, bright-eyed
and seriously disheveled. The ubiquitous apron of the Far Reaches was simply
thrown over her multiple shirts, and one corner of her mulberry-colored
waistcoat poked out from under the apron. Her battered top hat was missing, and
in its place she wore an odd little red pillbox with a shiny black strap under her
chin. There was also a large cleft stick thrust in her belt, with a piece of
parchment stuck in the cleft.
Arthur shook his head again, but his smile got wider. Suzy was not only a great
friend and ally, she had a knack for turning up just when Arthur really needed
some help. And as far as he could tell, she was never downhearted. Not even
here, in Grim Tuesday's Pit.
I wasn't expecting anyone friendly," Arthur said. "But I'm very glad to see you."
"'Course you are," said Suzy. "So would I be, down this dismal hole. Who's your
mate?"


Arthur looked over his shoulder to where Japeth was standing hesitantly behind
the upturned bench.
"Japeth. It's all right, Japeth, she's a friend of mine," Arthur called. "Come out."
He turned back to Suzy and added, "Japeth was in my work gang. He helped
me… stay alive, I guess. But what are you doing here?"
"Looking for you, of course," said Suzy. "Ow!"
A heavy drop of Nothing-tainted rain had fallen on the back of her hand. She
wiped it off with a grimace, ignoring the red welt it left behind. Unlike Arthur
and Japeth, she wasn't wearing a stabilized mud cape.
"Got to get my umbrella," she muttered, rummaging inside her shirts. She
brought out and opened up a small multicolored paper umbrella of the kind used
to ornament cocktails. For a moment it just looked ridiculous, then it exploded
into a full-sized umbrella, much as the Atlas did.
The Atlas!
Arthur had a momentary panic as he scrabbled under his cape and apron for his
shirt pocket. For an instant he thought he'd dropped the Atlas back on the
railway! A second later his hand closed on the rough cloth cover and he sighed
in relief.
"Heart attack?" asked Suzy curiously. "Thought you were too young."
"No, just checking the Atlas," said Arthur. He looked at Suzy again and for a


moment felt like giving her a hug, he was so relieved to see her. But the moment
passed. He offered his hand instead. Suzy took it.
"Delighted, I'm sure," said Suzy formally. "See, I've been learning me manners."
As they shook, the nail on her index finger suddenly shone with a very bright,
clear light, almost blinding Arthur. Suzy let go immediately and tugged on the
finger till the joints cracked and the light went out.
"Supposed to stop once I found you," she grumbled. "Dame Primus… that's her
as used to be Part One of the Will… fixed it so it would get brighter when you
were close."
"But how did you know I was here?" asked Arthur.
"That'd be telling," said Suzy, holding her index finger up to her nose. It lit up
once again and she flinched. "Stupid finger spells! That Will was a frog for too
long if you ask me."
"But how did you know?" Arthur repeated.
"Well, after the telephone was cut off I thought I'd nip over to your world, only
Dame Primus wouldn't let me go, cos of the Original Law. I said, 'It's a pretty
dumb Law when you can't do anything but everyone else can' and Dame Primus
said, 'You'll go to your room, young lady, for the next decade if you're not
careful, trouble or no trouble,' and I said, 'Arthur's the Master, he made me
Monday's Tierce, you're only the Steward,' and then she sent me to my room.
Only I climbed out through the chimney and Sneezer let me use Seven Dials to
have a look at what was going on, and I saw the Grotesques had gone through,


and then the Scoucher, and I wanted to warn you but your head is too thick or
something and won't receive waking dreams, so Sneezer helped me ask the Atlas
and it steered you to that girl Leaf who I met when we were on the Improbable
Stair, and then I sent a dream to her telling her where the Grotesques had opened
their side of the Door in your world, and I… Where was I?"
She took a deep breath and rushed on.
"Oh… we figured Leaf could tell you and then you could use that door to get
back into the House. But then I thought maybe I'd better go and help you out
anyway, so I went to see the Lieutenant Keeper and asked him to let me through,
but he wouldn't, so then I sneaked back into the Dayroom and looked through
Seven Dials again and saw you were going through the Door, so I went down to
the Atrium to meet you. But when you didn't show up, I knocked on the Door
and talked to the Lieutenant Keeper.
"I sez to him, 'Did Arthur come through the Door?' and he sez, 'Yes,' and then I
waited and he didn't say anything so I sez, 'Where did he go?' and he sez, 'The
Far Reaches,' and I sez, 'How long ago?' and he sez, 'Two hours by House Time,'
and then I sez, 'Let me go through too,' and he sez, 'No,' and I sez, 'Why?' and he
sez, 'Even if I could permit it, you can only use that door from the Secondary
Realms. Here, you have to go through the House.'
"So I went back to Dame Primus and after a bit of shouting and carrying on she
sez, 'Grim Tuesday deserves to have you on his doorstep,' and she fixed me up
with all the trimmings to help you out, like this fingernail thing."
"Right," said Arthur weakly. After having hardly spoken for a day it was almost
too much to listen to Suzy, who was clearly in a talkative mood. "So how did


you get into the Far Reaches and get that… that wheel and everything?"
"The Grim uses the Piper's children for messengers," said Suzy, brandishing the
cleft stick with the parchment in the end. "Monday's Noon, that used to be Dusk,
did a transfer for me to the Middle House, and then a friend of his there sold my
contract to Grim Tuesday so I could join his messengers. Then I swapped with
Ned to come down the line because my finger glowed when I went near the
railway."
Arthur shook his head, his new earring jangling an-noyingly against his neck. He
was still tired and sore and it was all a bit too much to take in. Then he realized
the significance of what Suzy was saying.
"You're indentured!" he said. "That means you're trapped here!"
"Only temporarily," replied Suzy with a shrug. "Once you find Part Two of the
Will and take over from Grim Tuesday, then you can release me from my
indenture."
"And me," said Japeth. "Sir. Excellency. Eminence. Highness. Majesty.
Whoever you actually are."
"He's Monday," said Suzy. "The Master of the Lower House."
Japeth choked on whatever he was going to say and immediately leaned into a
very deep bow that put his head almost at Arthur's feet.
"I'm not Monday!" said Arthur. Distress was clear on his face. He wasn't
Monday. He wasn't one of the Days. He was just a boy caught up in great events


and as soon as possible he would go back to his normal, uneventful life. "I'm
Arthur Penhaligon. I've handed over the Mastery of the Lower House to the… to
Dame Primus or whatever she calls herself. Please, get up!"
Japeth raised himself a little, but remained hunched over. He retreated several
steps, tripped over a broken piece of rail, and fell flat on his back. Arthur hurried
over to help him up, making the Denizen even more flustered.
As Japeth straightened himself out, Arthur turned back to Suzy.
"How am I supposed to find Part Two of the Will and take over from Grim
Tuesday anyway? I can't even free myself from this Pit! Ow! OW!"
A drop of Nothing-laced rain had fallen on his lip. Arthur frantically wiped it off
and hopped around clutching his face till the pain subsided. He didn't know
whether it was the Lieutenant Keeper's spell or some residual enchantment from
the First Key, but the burns from the Nothing rain healed in a matter of minutes.
But he still felt the pain…
"That's why I'm here," said Suzy. "To help you. You might want to look the
other way — this is a bit disgusting."
"What is?" asked Arthur, as Suzy reached into her mouth with two fingers.
"This!" said Suzy, ripping out a tooth from the back of her mouth, complete with
bleeding roots.
Arthur grimaced and stepped back as Suzy spat blood onto the train tracks.


"Had to smuggle it in as an extra wisdom tooth right at the back," she explained,
setting the tooth down on the ground, being careful to shield it with her
umbrella. "Got everything we need in it."
Arthur looked down at the tooth.
How could this ugly-looking molar have anything in it? he thought, but he was
wise enough in the ways of the House to keep silent for a moment.
As Arthur watched, the color from the bloody roots slowly spread upwards,
changing the tooth from white to a deep, even red. Then the tooth began to
shimmer and change, its outline becoming blurry and indistinct. An instant later,
Arthur was looking down at a fat little wooden doll about an inch high and two
inches around, with a smiling face, red cheeks, and a bright red-painted coat with
a black line around the stomach to mark where it could be opened. It looked like
the smallest doll from a set of Russian dolls, the kind that nested one within
another.
"Uh, you sure this is right?" asked Arthur.
"Open it up," said Suzy with a sniff. "See for yourself."
Arthur bent down and unscrewed the doll. When he lifted off the top half his
thumb and forefinger were savagely forced apart, nearly spraining them, as a
larger doll exploded out.
The second doll was five times the size of the tiny doll he'd just opened. Arthur
sighed as Suzy raised an eyebrow.


"Come on," she said. "There's three more dolls inside that one, then the one with
the stuff. Don't stick your head too close, mind."
"I'll do it, sir," offered Japeth.
"No, I'll do it," said Arthur. "And don't call me sir!"
"Very good, your sublime serenity."
"Don't call me that either," said Arthur as he gingerly unscrewed the head of the
second doll, leaning well back to allow the larger one inside to bound out
without doing him permanent damage.
The other dolls quickly followed, and in a few minutes Arthur was unscrewing
the head of the fifth and last doll, which was almost as tall as he was, and three
times as fat. This time, nothing exploded out.
Arthur warily looked inside the open doll, ready to jump back if there was some
delayed reaction or ghastly contents inside. But the doll was empty, save for a
canvas satchel at the bottom about the same size as Arthur's school backpack.
"Had to put it inside lots of dolls so the Grim's Sniffers didn't pick it up,"
explained Suzy. She stuck her umbrella upright in the spoke-hole of a leading
wheel, rolled the doll onto its side, and bent in to retrieve the satchel.
Her muffled voice continued from inside. "You probably missed 'em coming in
the back way. Horrid things, those Sniffers. Just the snout of a dog, without the
rest of the animal. A nose crawling about on hairy-bristle legs that I reckon the
Grim took off a cricket and sized up. Fair made me want to puke."

"One crawled over me when I arrived," said Japeth with a shudder. "A
disembodied snout with two tiny eyes and a shrunken mouth, sniffing at my
skin… I didn't know what it was, or what it was doing."
"They sniff out magic or forbidden powers," said Suzy. "Like wot's in 'ere."
She laid the satchel down under the umbrella and opened it up. It unfolded like a
picnic set, revealing two pieces of beautifully crisp, heavy white paper; a stick of
crimson sealing wax; four small coiled balls of twine; a box of matches (with a
picture of a duck smoking a pipe on it and the words danger matches — five
times as fiery, super easy to light); and two glass jars that were stuffed full of
what appeared to be green woolen frog finger-puppets.
"Two sets of Ascension Wings and two sets of stickit fingers," said Suzy. "The
wings take us up out of the Pit, all the way to the ceiling of the Far Reaches.
Using the stickit fingers, we then clamber across the ceiling to the spire of Grim
Tuesday's Treasure Tower. We drop onto the spire, raise the cockerel wind
gauge, and climb in as quick as you like, find Part Two of the Will, and set this
place to rights… At least, that's what Dame Primus reckons, so it'll go horribly
wrong for sure."
"What are Ascension Wings?" asked Arthur. "And why do we have to climb
across the ceiling? What's this Treasure—?"
"What's that noise?" asked Japeth. "Begging your pardon."
Arthur heard it too, and looked up into the darkness, pulling his hood forward to
shield his eyes. He could hear a really loud hissing that seemed to come from up


above. It took him a second to work out that it sounded like a firework fuse
being lit, magnified a thousand times, but also very far away.
"Uh-oh," said Suzy. She plucked the folded paper from the end of her cleft stick
and handed it to Arthur. "That'll be this. I'm supposed to have warned all the
gangs between Up Station and Way Stations One and Two___"
Arthur unfolded the note and quickly read:
IXAJ^QSK. All overseers, all gangs, all way stations, all workers, and all staff. A
sunburst is scheduled for Migh JVoonMouse Zime today, affecting top layers
from Up Station
to Way Station Zwo. All workers are hereby ordered to stop work or motion
at the sound of the thirty-second fuzee, which will be clearly audible. All workers
must shield their eyes and must not look up till the all-clear whistle is heard.
Should the sunburst reveal ftithlings, then the alarm must be sounded as per
Standing Orders 27, par. 4 or by screaming as loudly as possible in unison for
three seconds every nine seconds. %y Order, Tuesday's I/an.
What's a thirty-second fuzee, thought Arthur. Must mean fuse … thirty seconds
—
"Look down!" shouted Arthur as he grabbed his companions and pushed them
headfirst down towards the cold, wet stone.
Chapter Nine
Arthur had barely hit the ground, with Suzy and Japeth on either side, when


there was a sudden flash of light so intense that he had to shut his eyes even
though he was looking at the ground and his hood was pulled over his face.
Strangely, there was no heat or shock wave, though Arthur had flinched in
expectation. There was only the initial flash, then a slowly lessening but still
brilliant light.
A few seconds later, a faint but piercing whistle echoed down through the Pit,
like the cry of a distant bird. The all-clear whistle, Arthur presumed. Scrunching
up his left eye and keeping the right completely closed, Arthur risked a look.
What he saw astounded him. A giant glowing ball the size of a hundred hot-air
balloons hung in the air about a mile up and eight or nine miles away, like a
small, comfortably bright sun. It had banished all the rain clouds, the rain and the
smog, and its slowly fading light illuminated the upper reaches of the Pit in all
its vastness, a hole so big the far side was just a blurry smudge at least twenty
miles distant and so deep that even the sunburst's light could not penetrate its
depths.
"So that's a sunburst," said Suzy, with a sniff. "Thought it'd be better than that.
More like a big firework, you know, knock the dust out of yer ears with a bang."
"It's bigger than I thought… could have thought," whispered Arthur. He'd been
to the Grand Canyon and was thinking of the Pit on the same sort of scale. But it
was much, much wider than the Grand Canyon and much, much deeper. "The
Pit, I mean."
"It's still just a big rotten hole in the ground," said Suzy. "We'd better hurry and
get these wings on. Take advantage of the sunburst. Might not be another one for


months."
"What is that sunburst thing?" asked Arthur, pointing to the huge glowing ball. It
was much less bright than it had been, and the shadows from the Pit were
steadily climbing upwards, and faint wisps of rain cloud were re-forming high
above. "What does it do?"
"I dunno exactly," replied Suzy. "Ned told me it kind of clears up the Nothing,
gets rid of the rain for a while and so on. Grim Tuesday does it to different parts
of the Pit every few months. Like clearing out a drain with vitroleum, I 'spect.
But it's handy for us. Better to fly in the light. If we ever get around to it."
"Ah, I heard an Overseer say to another something similar to 'need a sunburst
soon, for track-checking,'" said Japeth hesitantly. "Which suggests that the track
is inspected during the season or interval of this sunburst, and as the sunburst's
light falls or descends upon us, we may soon be, ah, inspected…"
Arthur looked back up the railway. He had gone at least thirty miles along the
service road, around the edge of the Pit while slowly descending. Up Station had
to be roughly a third of the way anti-clockwise back around the side — about ten
miles — and about half a mile up. He peered in that direction, narrowing his
eyes against the sunburst, which was now only as bright as a highway streetlight.
But it had done its work, and, though beginning to darken and cloud over, the air
was still clear.
Japeth and Suzy looked too. At first no one could see anything, then everyone
spoke at once.
"Smoke —"


"Train —"
"Grim's train!"
They could all see the signs that revealed the presence of the train, though it was
too far away to see the train itself. The glitter of the sunburst's light on polished
metal, a tall spray of sparks, and a smudged column of black smoke rising
straight up. It had to be Grim Tuesday's train, starting down the railway.
"It'll take a few hours to get here," said Arthur rather doubtfully. "Or an hour, at
least. Won't it?"
"Right, we have to get the Ascension Wings on," said Suzy. She added, "And
they're called that because they only go up. You can lean to change direction, but
they only go up. They're a very weak magic, much weaker than regular wings.
Easier to smuggle in."
"What about Japeth?" asked Arthur.
"Sorry." Suzy shrugged. "Nothing I can do."
"Perhaps I could take your wheel, Miss Suzy, and catch up with my gang,"
suggested Japeth. "Then, when you defeat Grim Tuesday, sir, you might take the
trouble to release me from my indenture? And perhaps find employment suitable
for a former Thesaurus?"
"More like if than when," muttered Arthur. "And I can't just fly out on you. You
didn't run out on me."


"Nor will you run out on me, I'm sure," said Japeth, bowing again. "This is
merely a delay, postponement, deferment, or recess. I am sure you will be
successful and my release, rescue, deliverance, redemption, saving of my bacon
—"
"You said it," said Suzy. "Nice to meet you, Japeth.
Don't worry. Arthur's smarter than he looks. I reckon he'll see you right.
Tuesday'll be a pushover compared to Monday."
"Really?" asked Japeth.
"Nah, don't be soft," said Suzy. "I just said that to cheer you up. Shouldn't have
asked. Now, Artie, we need to get the wings and stickit fingers on. I'll have to
cut some holes in your coat and shirt."
"Don't call me Artie! And why do I need holes in my clothes?"
"Because the wings are stuck on with sealing wax to your shoulders," explained
Suzy, indicating the stick of red wax. "With a string through the wax, so when
it's time to drop the wings, you pull the string, break the seal, and down you
drop, nice as ninepence. Come on."
Still Arthur hesitated. He felt that he was once more being pushed into
something that he had no control over. But was there any real choice?
"That train is remarkably fleet, fast, light-footed," said Japeth, who was watching
the smoke plume from the Grim's train. "If I am to take the wheel, I perhaps
should set forth, depart, leave, or absent myself immediately."


"You're right," said Arthur. He forced a deep breath into his tired lungs and
stood up straighten He owed it to Japeth — and Suzy and everyone else — to do
his absolute best and then some more. Giving up was not an option. "I will
defeat Grim Tuesday and I will release you and all the other indentured workers.
No one should be a slave. Here, or anywhere else."
"That's more like the old Arthur," said Suzy. "There I was thinking this Pit had
sucked the guts out of you. In a manner of speaking."
"Thanks a lot," muttered Arthur. He held out his hand to Japeth. "Good luck. I'll
do my best to help you."
This time, there were fewer sparks when Japeth shook his hand. But Arthur felt a
surge of energy come out of his palm and travel up through his arm, and Japeth's
arm trembled as if he felt something similar. Then Arthur noticed that Japeth had
grown several inches, and his ragged shirt had restitched itself, even the string
holding together his cuffs transforming into mother-of-pearl links.
"I will serve you too, Arthur, when I can," said Japeth, letting go of his hand.
"Farewell for now, Master. Miss Suzy, if I may trouble you to explain, elucidate,
or illuminate the workings of this wheel?"
He hurried over to the wheel and climbed in. Suzy showed him the lever that
controlled its speed and the locked access hatch to the gearbox that could only be
opened by Grim Tuesday or one of the Grotesques, to allow the wheel to use its
stored clockwork power to go up the railway rather than down.
Japeth gently pushed the lever forward and the wheel moved off. The Denizen


waved as he passed Arthur, then pushed the lever as far as it would go. The
wheel accelerated away, and was soon lost in the rising shadows.
The rain had also just started again. Spotting drops, so far without the Nothing
taint. The clouds were spreading out from the edges of the Pit, drawing closer to
the fading sunburst.
Arthur stood still as Suzy sliced through his cape and shirt with a short, sharp
knife — the knife she'd picked up in Monday's antechamber. Standing still while
Suzy cut behind him reminded Arthur unpleasantly of being in the hospital,
about to be injected in the upper arm.
After cutting the slits in his clothes, Suzy picked up one of the pieces of paper
and quickly folded and tore it into two separate wings. The paper became fluffier
and more feathery as she worked.
"Lie down," she instructed Arthur. He lay down but craned his head to see what
she was doing.
Suzy put the wings on the ground and weighted them with a piece of ballast. She
unrolled two pieces of twine
-*-<
and set them next to the wings. Then she picked up the stick of sealing wax and
the matches.
"This'll sting a bit," she said as she struck a match against the ground. It flared
with a loud whoompah, and a flame about three feet long shot up out of the


match.
"Down," said Suzy. The flame receded. "Down some more. That's it."
Arthur couldn't see what she did next, but he felt it. A blob of hot sealing wax
went straight onto his shoulder blade, then he felt the paper wing brushing his
back and the string dangling past his neck. Suzy's thumb pressed hard into the
wax.
"Don't move!" she warned. "Got to do the next one quickly or they'll grow
unbalanced."
Arthur bit his lip to suppress a yelp as the wax dripped on the other side. It was
worse when he expected it, but it was only a momentary pain.
"Done!" exclaimed Suzy with satisfaction. "They take about ten minutes to
grow. I'll make mine, then you can stick them on for me."
"I don't know how!" Arthur protested.
"It's easy," replied Suzy as she quickly folded and tore the remaining paper into
wings. "Just heat the wax, drop a bit on my shoulder, whack the wing and the
string on, drop a bit more wax, then seal it with your thumb. There's already
holes in my clothes from my regular wings."
"OK," said Arthur doubtfully. He took the wings and weighted them down with
the same piece of ballast, and put the string next to them. Then he picked up the
matches. They looked normal enough apart from the cover of the box.


"Hurry up," said Suzy, who was lying on the floor scratching her back through
the holes in her clothes. "This stone is cold."
Arthur struck the match on the ground, flinching as it roared into life. The flame
was even longer than the one Suzy had struck, and dancing around in an excited
fashion that had nothing to do with any wind. It even seemed to have a tiny,
grinning face.
"Down," said Arthur. "Down a lot."
The flame slowly ebbed, the face losing its grin and becoming sad. When it was
only an inch or so high, Arthur picked up the sealing wax and quickly melted the
end to drop a dollop on Suzy's back. Being nervous, he got it a bit wrong, so
some wax fell on her coat and ran onto the skin. Arthur dripped a bit more on.
"What's the holdup?" asked Suzy. "It's not like it's a complicated spell or
anything."
Arthur frowned and dripped a whole lot more wax, then he carefully pressed the
wing and the string down, melted more wax on top, and pressed it down with his
thumb. He expected that this would leave a thumbprint in the wax, but it didn't.
Instead it made the wax glow in rainbow colors, followed by a perfect round
seal, with a profile of his own head wearing a crown of laurel, and words around
the outside in some weird alphabet that slowly changed into regular letters that
read dominus Arthur magister domus inferior and then changed again to lord
Arthur master of the lower house.
"What are you waiting for?" asked Suzy in an exasperated tone. "Grim Tuesday
to come and ask you to tea?"


"Sorry," said Arthur. He'd been briefly mesmerized by his own seal. Quickly he
put on the second wing. It had already grown a bit on the ground, and was much
more like feathers than paper. Clean, glowing white feathers, totally in contrast
to the soot-stained stone and the gathering darkness.
Arthur felt his own wings begin to flap, sending a draft around his ankles. But
they were still too small to lift him off the ground.
Suzy handed Arthur one of the jars of what looked like woolen frog fingerpuppets,
stuck the other in her apron pocket, then busied herself putting
everything else back in the satchel. She hung it over her neck at the front so it
didn't get in the way of her wings.
"There's six stickit fingers in the jar. Bung them on now, thumb and every
second finger," she instructed, unscrewing her own jar. "They won't stick till you
speak the spell, which is 'Stick by day and stick by night, stick for a minute each,
left and right.' Only one of your hands will stick at a time, so you can move
about. Just remember which is sticky and which is about to unstick. I'll tell you
how to take them off when we need to."
Arthur repeated the spell in his head to make sure he got it right, then put the six
stickit fingers on his thumbs and alternate fingers. They were just like little
woolen finger-puppets, only they wriggled and squeaked like little live mice as
he put them on, which made it quite difficult.
He was concentrating very hard on that task, so he got an awful shock when
Suzy suddenly picked up the copper rod he'd almost used as a weapon and
swung it at something that came flying in like a pitched baseball. It was about


the size of a baseball too, but black and fuzzy, almost like a lump of tar.
Suzy hit it. The end of the copper rod puffed into metallic mist as it struck, but
whatever it was batted over the edge of the Pit and went straight down.
"A gobbet of Nothing," said Suzy with a frown. "Trying to find other gobbets to
join to make a Nithling."
She looked up at the sunburst, which was very faint now. The clouds were
practically solid again all around it, and she and Arthur were in twilight that was
rapidly turning into darkest night. "I thought the sunburst would keep that sort of
thing down for longer. You'd better grab some kind of club. Copper's better than
steel, though neither's much use really against unformed Nothing. Need silver or
something special like one of them blades made from frozen moonlight or
burning with architectural fire, like Noon's. How're your wings? Can you reach
your strings? Don't pull 'em yet."
Arthur craned his neck to look. His wings now stretched from his shoulder
blades to his knees and were magnificently feathered and shining. They were
beating slowly, as if they were warming up. The air they washed around him was
cleaner, faintly orange-scented, and very refreshing. He felt for the strings,
which were hanging down his chest on either side of his neck.
"I can reach them," he confirmed. He looked around and saw another piece of
copper pipe, this one thicker and longer than the tube Suzy had appropriated. He
started for it, was lifted off his feet, and overshot by several yards.
"Be ready," warned Suzy. "They'll flap proper-like in a minute."


Arthur bent down and half-crawled, half-pulled himself to the copper pipe. Just
as his hand closed around it, his wings gave an almighty beat, lifting him ten feet
off the railway.
Suzy was still on the ground, her wings warming up.
"You can lean to change direction!" she shouted. "Aim for the center of the Pit to
start with. Harder to get shot at from the train or the road. If you get to the
ceiling before me, you have to somersault just before you hit. That'll confuse the
wings for a bit and they'll slow down. Use your stickit fingers to stick to the
ceiling. It'll be easy!"
Arthur's wings increased the depth and the speed of their beat again, and he
began to accelerate upwards. He looked down and saw a huge, only vaguely
human figure that had long, wet dragonfly-like wings trailing down its back. As
Arthur watched, it climbed up over the lip of the Pit and began to stalk towards
Suzy.
She was looking up at Arthur, and obviously could neither hear nor see the
Nithling.
"Suzy!" Arthur screamed. "Look out! A Nith —"
Chapter Ten
As the Nithling lunged at Suzy's back, the sunburst suddenly went out, plunging
the Pit back into total darkness, save for the pathetic circle of light from the
strom lantern clutched in Arthur's shaking hand.


Suzy didn't have a lantern — she'd only had the two fixed on the wheel taken by
Japeth. Arthur strained his eyes, desperately trying to see what was happening,
but to no avail. He couldn't hear anything either, over the beat of his wings and
the rush of air.
"Suzy!"
There was no answer. Arthur's wings beat inexorably on, taking him higher and
higher, faster and faster.
"Suzy!" he shouted again.
The only response came from above, a sudden swathe of rain. But Arthur's wings
repelled or blew the drops away and surrounded him with an envelope of warm,
dry air.
"Suzy!"
She must have escaped.
Arthur tried to recall that last split-second image before the sunburst died.
Suzy's wings had been fully extended, about to beat down, hadn't they? She
would have taken off an instant before the Nithling struck her.
Right?
Arthur remembered what Suzy had told him about Nithlings. It seemed like only
yesterday and he clearly recalled her words:


"A festering bite or scratch from a Nithling will dissolve you into Nothing. That's
why everyone's afraid of them."
It was only yesterday, Arthur realized. They'd both survived Monday, but
Tuesday was much worse. It had been bad enough to start with, but now —
Something flittered into the light of Arthur's lantern. Instinctively he hit at it with
his copper tube, knocking it back into the rainy darkness. Only after he'd done it
did he realize it was another one of those flying lumps of Nothing.
A gobbet. Seeking other gobbets to make a Nithling…
Arthur started to look everywhere feverishly, craning his head as far around as
he could to either side.
What if a gobbet of Nothing hits me in the back of the head? Or in the wings?
Another gobbet hurtled past Arthur's foot. He kicked at it, and the point of his
clog disappeared, sliced off as if by a guillotine. For a heart-stopping instant
Arthur thought his toes might have gone as well, till he wriggled them.
For the first time Arthur experimented with changing direction. As Suzy had
said, the wings only flew up, but he found he could quickly change the angle of
his ascent. To avoid any gobbets that were targeting him — which they might be
able to, he didn't know — Arthur leaned to the right, then the left, then
backwards and forwards, till he started to spiral and had to try and remain still
and straight to stop that.
Whatever he did, there were still gobbets flying around him. So far none had


come from behind, or if they had, they were blown away by his wings. Soon
Arthur was batting them away every few minutes with his rapidly diminishing
piece of pipe. Every time he hit a gobbet, it dissolved several inches of copper
and he had to be careful only to get them with the dissolved end.
Then one hit Arthur's lantern, boring a hole straight through it, extinguishing its
flame, or whatever actually shed the light behind the glass. Arthur groaned, but
the darkness only lasted a few seconds. A soft, mellow white light slowly grew
all around him, and the gobbets of Nothing were rimmed with luminescence as
soon as they got close.