"I wonder why they want us at GHQ," said Fred. "Troop Lieutenant Jarrow said the order came from Sir Thursday himself."
"He probably found out I was here as a Piper's child," said Arthur, without conscious thought.
"What?" Fred looked under his Not-Horse's belly to stare up at Arthur.
"He probably found out I was here as a Piper's child," repeated Arthur slowly. His words had the ring of truth, but he didn't know what they meant. He just couldn't remember …
Before he could think any further, Jarrow came scrambling down the slight slope.
"Mount up!" he called softly, cupping his mouth with his hands, so his voice did not travel. "New Nithlings!"
Nineteen
AT HER CURRENT speed of over 180 miles per hour, Suzy was only nine hundred feet and four seconds away from the door when one of the Nithlings finally spotted her. It shrieked, surprising its comrade, who crashed into the helicopter it was playing chicken with. The Nithling, invisible to the pilot, smashed through the canopy and caused enormous damage as it thrashed around the cockpit while trying to get out again. In the process it accidentally killed both pilots. The attack helicopter reared up on its tail, hung there for an instant, then plunged down into the parking lot and exploded, showering the hospital front, the surrounding soldiers, and FBA agents with burning debris.
Suzy spread her wings at eight hundred feet, the shock of their opening momentarily blacking her out. Too effective, the wings brought her to a hover within a second, still a few hundred feet above the Front Door, with two Nithlings flapping up towards her as fast as they could manage.
Suzy dove down again, straight at the Nithlings as if she were going to attack. They stopped to receive her assault, raising their tridents, but at the last second Suzy dipped one wing, slid sideways and down through the air, and landed on one foot on the hospital roof. The Front Door was right in front of her, but with the Nithlings now diving after her, Suzy didn't think there was time to knock.
She angled towards the Front Door, shut her eyes – and went straight through it.
Expecting an impact, Suzy wrapped her arms around her head. But after a few seconds of not hitting anything, she cautiously opened her eyes and lowered her hands.
She was floating, or possibly falling, in total darkness. Her wings weren't moving, but she had a sensation of movement in her inner ear. She couldn't see a thing, not even when she frantically craned her neck around to see if she could catch sight of the Front Door she'd just come through.
"Uh-oh," she whispered. Not having used the Front Door before, she'd thought that she would just come out the other side on Doorstop Hill. Evidently it was not as simple as that.
Suzy thought about her situation for a moment, then whispered, "Wings, shed light."
She was relieved both to be able to hear herself and, a little later, to see herself, as the wings slowly began to glow, casting a pearly nimbus of light all around her.
Even with the light, there was still nothing else to see.
Suzy looked up, down, and all around, hoping for some indication that there was somewhere … or even something … else in this strange absence.
Seeing nothing, Suzy experimentally flapped her wings. Again, she felt the sensation of movement, but without any way to get her bearings, she couldn't be sure that anything was happening. For all she could tell, she might be stuck like a fly in jam, flapping her wings and getting nowhere.
Suzy shrugged, chose a direction at random, and started flapping her wings in earnest. A considerable time later – perhaps hours – Suzy started to wonder if she had managed to get herself seriously lost somewhere inside the Front Door, or some area in between the House and the Door that wasn't Nothing but wasn't much of anything else either.
She stopped flapping her wings. The sensation of movement remained, and Suzy thought about the situation. Just flapping about aimlessly had produced no results, so she had to do something else.
"Hey!" Suzy called out. Her voice sounded very loud in the quiet. "Lieutenant Keeper! I'm lost in your stupid Door! Come and help!"
There was no answer. Suzy crossed her legs and took a cheese, mustard, and watercress sandwich out of her hat. Like the hat, the sandwich was rather squashed, but Suzy ate it with gusto. She had rarely had access to any food at all as an Ink Filler. Since becoming Monday's Tierce and gaining greater access to the larders of the Dayroom, she had rediscovered the enjoyment of food, even though it was not a necessity for life.
"Miss Turquoise Blue."
Suzy jumped up and dropped her crust. Whirling around, she saw a tall, extremely handsome Denizen in a high-collared dove-grey morning coat, his black trousers knife-edge-creased above shining top-boots. His top hat was so glossy it reflected the light from Suzy's wings like a mirror. He held a silver-topped cane in his kid-gloved hand. His wings, furled behind him, were of beaten silver.
"Who are you?" asked Suzy suspiciously.
"That would be asking," said the Denizen pleasantly. His tongue, Leaf noted, was an even brighter silver than his wings. "I'll trouble you to hand me our Spirit-eater's treasure. We can't have his work interrupted, can we?"
"Your Spirit-eater?" Suzy's eyes flickered from side to side, hoping to see where this Denizen had come from, or some other potential point of escape.
"Ours," said the Denizen. His voice was extremely musical and pleasant to listen to. "Come now. Give me the pocket, and I shall show you a point of egress from the Door."
Suzy blinked and found her hand reaching under her waistcoats.
"I'm not giving it over to you!" she said through gritted teeth.
"Yes, you are," instructed the Denizen. He yawned and patted his mouth with his left glove. "Hurry up."
"I'm not!" insisted Suzy, but to her horror, she found that she was taking out the container with its scrap of precious material.
"Very good," said the Denizen approvingly. He reached out his hand to take the box as Suzy stared at it and tried to will herself to move away, to withdraw her hand.
Just as his fingers were about to close on the box, the Denizen's wings suddenly exploded out behind him and he twisted up and away, snarling in rage. Suzy fell back and somersaulted over twice before her own wings spread out and steadied her.
High above her, the silver-winged Denizen was in a furious duel with an electric-blue-winged Denizen that Suzy did not at first recognise as the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door. His blue-fire sword was met by the silver flash of the other Denizen's sword-cane, the two of them swooping, turning, and diving as they exchanged lunges and blows and blurringly-fast parries and dodges.
Suzy watched openmouthed as the two combatants fought. They used their wings as weapons as much as a means of movement, blocking swords, slicing with the tips, and delivering buffets which if they hit, sent the targeted Denizen somersaulting through space. Sometimes the two were upside down relative to Suzy, or perpendicular, and she got quite dizzy trying to reorient herself before she gave up and just watched.
The swordplay was very fast and very dangerous. Many times one or the other only just managed to parry or weave aside or leap backwards as a thrust went home. Steel clashed on steel so quickly it sounded like a constant jangle of fallen coins. Suzy, who was being taught to fence by Monday's Noon, felt her eyebrows going up and down in constant surprise as she saw wing-assisted feats of sword-fighting that were in none of the manuals Noon had lent her.
Apart from watching, all Suzy could do was stuff the container with the pocket back into her waistcoat and stay out of the way. She contemplated trying to intervene, but the two combatants moved too quickly and were so focused on the fight that she concluded any move on her part would only put the Lieutenant Keeper off.