"Saturday betrayed me! The other Trustees, save that somnolent fool Monday, called me to a meeting. I was ambushed, five Keys against my one. They stripped me of my power and I was cast down into the Border Sea, my shape lost, my appetite unsuppressed!"
She punctuated her last remark by eating an entire watermelon, rind and all, washing it down with a huge flagon of ale that spilled down her front.
"Ahh! Since then, I have not been fully able to wield the Key. All the power I have is directed at growing no larger, else I eat up everything in the Border Sea and beyond!"
"What about the Will?" asked Arthur. "Why didn't you just release it like you were going to?"
"Stolen!" roared Wednesday as she slavered over a side of suckling pig. "They reached into my mind and stole out the secret of its location, then Saturday or one of the others sent that pirate Feverfew to take it. But you will get it back, Lord Arthur! You will get the Will, and I shall give you the Key, and all will yet be well. Oh, how I long not to... eat! Eat! Eat!"
She threw herself on the table, sliding along with her mouth gaping open like some sort of awful giant vacuum cleaner, scooping up food, plates and all. As she ate her way along the table, her torso grew larger and larger, and her arms and legs shrank back into her body.
"Where did Feverfew take the Will?" Arthur shouted. He started to back even farther away from the feeding frenzy, darting glances at Dawn, who did not look at all ready to fly away.
"Aaaarrch homp homp ugh," Wednesday gurgled and spat, bits of mangled silver falling from her jaws. "Don't know! The pirates have a secret harbour. I know it is in my very own Border Sea, I feel it in my gut! But I cannot find it. You must! Now run! Run!"
She focused on the last few yards of piled-high food on the table and swallowed the lot down in one sweep of her now enormous mouth. Then she turned towards Arthur and slid onto the deck, a huge blubbery cylinder that was not yet whale but no longer human, her now vestigial arms and legs writhing and her vast mouth chomping, the ridges of bone that had once been teeth making a hideous clattering sound.
Arthur wasn't on the deck anymore. He was halfway up the main mast, almost jumping from ratline to ratline. He climbed so quickly that he made it to the cross-trees and was working himself onto the small platform there when Dawn caught up with him and plucked him away and into the air.
Below them, Wednesday continued to grow and grow, threshing and rolling in her hunger, biting at the timbers of the ship until her own rapidly increasing weight broke the vessel's back and sent it to the bottom.
Dawn did not waste any time letting Arthur have a look at Wednesday's transformation. She started flying directly away, her wings beating rapidly and full, gaining height as well as speed. It took Arthur a moment to understand that even now they might not get away, that Dawn was pushing herself to the limit in order to escape Wednesday's remarkable growth and even more remarkable hunger.
Neither of them spoke for some time, till it was clear that their flight had taken them out of Drowned Wednesday's ravening path.
"Where do you wish to go?" asked Dawn finally. "I will do as promised, and take you to a place of safety, if you so desire."
Fifteen
ARTHUR DIDN"T REPLY immediately. He felt himself at an important crossroads, and his choice here would decide not only his own fate but the fate of many others as well.
"If safety is your prime concern," Dawn continued, 'then I must take you to Port Wednesday. It is the only place in the Border Sea where there are elevators to take you elsewhere within the House, and thence wherever you wish to go."
Arthur was silent, thinking this through. It would be so easy to go to Port Wednesday, take an elevator to the Lower House, and then go home through the Front Door or Seven Dials. That would be the safe course to follow. But deep inside he felt that there were no safe courses for him anymore. Not in the long run.
"How far are we from the Triangle?" he asked.
"A half-day's journey, by way of an ocean in the Secondary Realms," replied Wednesday. "Or a week or more if we stay within the House. Port Wednesday is even closer, only a few hours away, again by way of a suitable sea on another world in the Secondary Realms. There's nothing for you at the Triangle."
"My friend Leaf is there, and some Raised Rats. Have you asked them to try and find the pirates" secret harbour?" asked Arthur.
"No," said Dawn. "We do not deal with Rats. Milady Wednesday wished to ban them from the Border Sea, but they possess a patent of authority from the Architect herself, allowing them to roam where they will within the House. What can you possibly want with the Raised Rats?"
"They're expert finders and searchers," said Arthur, thinking back to the vision he'd seen of Leaf and the Commodore. "Or they say they are."
"They are braggarts and not to be trusted," Dawn scoffed. "They sell their services and the secrets of others. They have never answered to any authority within the House, save the Architect's, and since her disappearance I doubt they have grown more obedient to anyone, not even Lord Sunday."
"He's ultimately in charge of everything, right?"
"After a fashion," replied Dawn. "Superior Saturday has the day-to-day management of affairs, as it were. Lord Sunday's mind dwells upon higher things, not for any lesser beings to know."
"They're both traitors to the Architect," Arthur stated boldly. "Saturday and Sunday, and all the other Morrow Days."
"Where do you wish to go?" asked Dawn, her tone even frostier than usual.
"The Triangle," Arthur answered firmly.
"The Triangle," Dawn confirmed. "I cannot approve of this desire to deal with the Rats, but does this mean you will go in search of the Will? To aid milady?"
"Yep," said Arthur. Somehow yep seemed the most positive thing he could say. Stronger than yeah and more heroic than yes. He hoped he could live up to it.
He pushed on. "I'm going to rescue Leaf and get the Raised Rats to help find the pirates" secret harbour. Then I guess I'll work out some way to release the Will and set everything straight. Including Lady Wednesday."
Dawn was silent for a while, save for the sound of her constant wingbeat. In a small voice that sounded strange and half-strangled, she finally said, "Thank you."
Then she folded her wings and dove towards the sea, with Arthur just managing to take a breath and put his nosepeg back on before they plunged through a slow rolling wave.
The journey to the Triangle was much quicker than Arthur had thought it would be. Even the Line of Storms didn't bother him this time. He just shut his eyes and put his fingers in his ears. He figured that if the lightning hadn't fried him the first few times it wasn't going to now.
Shortly after crossing the Line, the sea suddenly changed colour and temperature, and they were swimming through lukewarm, orange-tinted seas full of tiny floating flowers. Sometime later the orange sea transformed to a body of freezing, black water, full of small, regularly shaped chunks of faintly luminous ice. It was as if millions of radioactive ice cubes had been dumped into the sea. Fortunately Arthur did not feel the full effect of the cold, for the golden radiance of Wednesday's Dawn surrounded him and kept him warm. In any case, they were not in this chill sea for long, leaving it abruptly for the blue waters of the Border Sea and, very soon after, another crossing of the Line of Storms.
Somewhere just past the Line, the clothespeg suddenly fell off Arthur's nose. Without meaning to, he breathed in a large amount of water and panicked. He had no idea how deep they were swimming, or how long it would take to get to the surface. He just wanted air immediately and instinctively threshed around in the grip of Dawn's tentacle, fighting against her as he tried to push up to where he imagined the surface was.