Suzy braced against a wingbeat, then slapped both hands against the ceiling and pulled back. One hand stuck by the thumb and two fingers. Immediately Suzy used her other hand to grab both strings that hung around her neck. She pulled them. Wax seals cracked and her two wings instantly blew into a cloud of confetti that was whisked away by the breeze.
Suzy hung from the ceiling and turned to Arthur. She smiled, despite her two black eyes and a bruise on her chin, evidence of the damage done by being constantly beaten into the ceiling.
"That's a relief! I'll be dropping in about forty seconds, so you jump now, Mister Soot, and make sure you keep your distance on the pyramid."
Suzy punctuated her instruction by drawing the copper tube out of her belt.
Soot needed no encouragement. With a single flexing motion, accompanied by lots of tiny popping noises like exploding bubblewrap, it launched itself straight down. Caught a little by the breeze, it plopped onto the eastern face of the pyramid, about thirty feet below the apex.
"Good luck, Arthur," said Suzy. She quickly thrust the copper tube back through her belt to leave her hand free. "I reckon you should -"
The stickits on her right hand suddenly stopped squeaking and sticking.
Arthur watched Suzy fall. He almost couldn't bear to see her hit the pyramid, but she landed on her feet, then bounced and rolled down for a few seconds before she arrested her descent by slapping her sticky left hand on the glass.
She lay still for a few seconds, then rolled back and waved up at Arthur, shouting something he couldn't hear, the words carried away by the breeze and the beat of his wings.
Arthur looked back up, stopped himself yet again from being pushed into the ceiling, and took a deep breath. Then, propping himself so his hands didn't touch the ceiling, he spoke the words of the stickit finger spell. With the last word, he felt the ends of his fingers tingle, and the stickits on his left hand began to squeak.
Arthur used his right hand to pull the right string. He heard the wax crack, then confetti blew up past his ears. A second later, he began to fall, while his remaining wing beat harder and harder, trying to maintain its single-minded upwards thrust.
Arthur expected to corkscrew, but he didn't. Instead his single wing threw him head over heels, which rapidly became a series of wild somersaults.
An eye-blink later, Arthur hit the glass face of the pyramid.
Very, very hard.
Chapter Thirteen
Arthur screamed as he hit. There was an unbearable pain in his left leg, and he was sliding down the glass, faster and faster, while his single wing thrashed around his head so he couldn't see anything.
Then he managed to slap his sticky hand on the glass and came to a sudden stop. He pulled the string and almost choked on a sudden mouthful of confetti as it shot up all around him.
Arthur started to slide again as his hand became unstuck. He slapped his other hand down and stopped again. He could hear Suzy shouting something, and Soot too, but couldn't give them any attention. He had to see what was wrong with his leg. The pain was deep inside, but stabbing up into his body and down to his feet. He hardly dared to look.
But he made himself. Both his jeans and the pajama-like trousers the Lieutenant Keeper had given him were ripped. He could see some blood and what he had feared - something protruding that could only be bone.
He'd broken his tibia or fibula, the bones in the lower leg. Maybe both of them, in a complex fracture. A bad one.
Arthur felt a terrible, sudden coldness sweep over him. He began to shiver. He tried to quell the shivers as he drew his leg up for a closer look. It made him feel sick to see his leg looking all lumpy and wrong, with that piece of bone thrust out through the skin.
Arthur gulped in a deep breath. He could feel his lungs tightening as panic set in.
I will not have an asthma attack, he told himself. I can't have one. I'm in the House. Things are different here. Everything heals quickly. Even a broken bone will heal in time? but I haven't got time? can't stand the pain for long? I have to do something?
Hesitantly, he laid his hand lightly over his shin, only just touching the lumpy broken part. Even so, it sent another stab of pain up his leg and into his head. He almost blacked out.
"By the power of? of the First Key? the power that remains in my hand," Arthur whispered. "Heal me. Fix the broken? bone."
His hand stopped shaking, though the rest of his body didn't. Then he felt it grow hot. As Arthur watched, the bone retreated back through the skin, which rejoined itself.
The pain remained for what seemed like several minutes but could only have been seconds, for it faded just as Arthur's right hand lost its stickiness and he had to slap his left hand onto the glass.
His leg still felt very strange, but Arthur was able to look around and refocus on what was going on. A moment later Suzy slid down next to him, stopping herself a little short with her sticky hand. Soot watched from a distance, silver eyes twinkling amid its black hair.
"What happened?" asked Suzy. "Are you sorely hurt?" Arthur shook his head. The shakes were slowly subsiding but it took an effort to find his voice.
"I? I broke my leg. But I think I fixed it?"
Suzy raised her eyebrows and grimaced when it made her black eyes hurt.
"Not bad. Don't's'pose you could fix up my bruises while you're at it?"
"Uh, I don't really know what I did," said Arthur. He lifted his leg and flexed it a few times. It felt stiff and clumsy, and Arthur experienced a stab of fear. The bone was healed all right, but his leg now looked and felt a bit crooked.
It hasn't set straight, he thought. I'll be lame. No running ever. No baseball. No soccer.
"Uh-oh," said Suzy, interrupting Arthur's thoughts. "Overseers."
Arthur looked down and started to slip. Quickly he changed hands again and temporarily forgot about his leg. Suzy was pointing to a band of Overseers that had emerged out of the smog down below and were running towards the base of the pyramid.
"Don't think their steamguns'll reach us," said Suzy. "But they might have other weapons. We'd better start. It won't be quick with the stickit fingers."
"Yes! Yes!" called out Soot. It started undulating to the top of the pyramid. "We must get inside and join? see the treasures!"
Arthur nodded and pulled himself up as far as he could above his sticking hand and reached out to plant his other hand. Then he had to wait until it stuck, then repeat the process.
After ten minutes, they were still short of the top. Almost a thousand feet below and several hundred feet to the east, at the base of the pyramid, the group of Overseers was busy putting together something that looked suspiciously like a weapon. They had wheeled a steam engine in from somewhere out in the smoggy regions and were stoking it furiously, as other Overseers set up a long bronze barrel on a tripod mount and connected it to the engine by a hose of some silver-metal mesh.
"Steam-cannon," said Soot, looking down from its perch on the very apex of the pyramid. "Hurry, before they blast us off!"
"We are hurrying!" said Arthur as he pulled back on one hand to see if it was sticking yet. He kept looking down, not at the Overseers, but at his leg. As far as he could tell, it worked fine, but from a point several inches below his knee the leg was definitely not straight and it felt weird.
Suzy reached the top before Arthur. Soot immediately held out the diamond in his tongue
"Wait," said Suzy. "I'll have to time my stickits carefully."
She took out her pocket watch, left it hanging down the front of her apron, and waited till her stickit fingers swapped. Then she extracted a once-white handkerchief from her sleeve, used it to receive the gem, and gave it a good polish before she touched it.