Then, as the Lieutenant Keeper went on the defensive, continually retreating upward, Suzy wondered whether she should try to get away. But she still couldn't see anywhere to retreat to. Instead, she followed the combat, her wings straining to keep up.
Suddenly the Lieutenant Keeper stopped retreating and flung himself forward. The other Denizen tried for a stop-thrust but missed, and the two closed, blades locking. The Lieutenant Keeper was the slighter and shorter of the two, but his wings must have been stronger, for he pushed his opponent back at least twenty feet. At the same time he shouted something, a word that Suzy couldn't understand but still felt through every bone in her body, like a ripple of ague.
With that word, a circle of white light appeared directly behind the silver-winged Denizen. He must have sensed it, for his wings thrashed even harder to keep his place – but the Lieutenant Keeper was too strong for him.
"This does not end –" shouted the Denizen as he fell back into the circle of light. It was a doorway out, Suzy saw, with a gold-panelled room on the other side and an elephant's-foot umbrella stand. Once the Denizen was through, the circle closed like a bursting soap bubble. Again there was nothing but featureless space all around.
"Cripes," said Suzy. "Who was that?"
"Superior Saturday's Dusk," said the Lieutenant Keeper. "We are old adversaries, he and I. Not all the Days or their servants follow the compact of the Door to the letter, and Saturday's minions are the slipperiest of all."
The Lieutenant Keeper brushed back his long white hair with his fingers and wiped his face with the sleeve of his blue coat. He still looked harried; his waders were dripping with water and there were more dried blue bloodstains on his right sleeve. "Doubtless he will return soon, possibly with others. I have closed many of the doors in the House, but this is of little avail when Saturday orders them open again and Sunday does not say yea or nay. Where do you wish to go, Suzy?"
"The Lower Hou –" Suzy started to say. Then she stopped.
"Can I go anywhere within the House?" she asked.
"The Front Door opens in all parts of the House, in various guises," the Lieutenant Keeper informed her. "Not all those doors are safe. Some are stuck, and some are locked, and some are lost, even from me. But I can show you a door to any of the demesnes, within certain bounds."
"Do you know where Arthur is now?" asked Suzy. She'd planned to take the pocket back to Monday's Dayroom, but it would be better to get it straight to Arthur so he could destroy it without delay.
"I do not," said the Lieutenant Keeper. "Come, decide where you would go. My work is never done, and I cannot tarry."
"The Great Maze," said Suzy. "I want to go to the Great Maze."
"The only door I might open there is in the Citadel. That is where Sir Thursday resides. Are you sure that is where you want to go?"
"Sure," said Suzy.
"There is great trouble in the Maze," warned the Lieutenant Keeper. He looked directly at Suzy, his pale ice-blue eyes meeting hers. "It is possible that soon all doors to and from the Maze will be closed. Elevators too."
"Why?"
"Because a Nithling Army stands on the brink of conquest there. If they defeat Sir Thursday's forces, then the Great Maze will be cut off in order to save the rest of the House. So I ask again: are you sure you want to go there?"
"I got to get this to Arthur," Suzy answered, patting the container under her waistcoats. "So I reckon I do have to go there. Besides, it can't be as bad as all that. I mean, Nithlings never get on with one another, do they?"
"These ones do," said the Lieutenant Keeper. "Here, as you insist, is the door to the Great Maze and Sir Thursday's Citadel."
He gestured with his sword, and once again spoke a word that made Suzy's stomach flip over and her ears ring. A circle of light formed, and through it she could see a wooden walkway along a stone wall. A Denizen in scarlet uniform was marching along the walkway with his back to her, a musket on his shoulder.
"Thanks!" said Suzy. She flapped her wings and was about to dive headfirst into the hole when she felt herself held back by her tip feathers.
"No wings in the Great Maze," said the Lieutenant Keeper. The wings detached themselves from Suzy, dropping into his hands. "They attract too much lightning. Something to do with the tile changes."
"But I have to give them baaa –"
Before Suzy could finish talking, the doorway moved toward her and she fell through, emerging into late-afternoon sunlight and a cool wind, high on the battlements of one of the bastions of the Star Fort, an inner defence of Sir Thursday's Citadel.
As Suzy clattered onto the walkway, the sentry suddenly stopped, stamped his feet, and did an about-turn. He took another two or three paces, staring right at Suzy, before the sight of her percolated into his brain. He stopped and fumbled with his musket, eventually bringing it to bear as he stuttered out, "Halt! Who goes there! Call the guard! Alarm! Guard! Corporal!"
Twenty
THE NEW NITHLING patrol was easily evaded, the Not-Horses stretching their legs to gallop without the burden of the double-ride sack. Arthur, experiencing this for the first time, was at first terrified and then, after it became clear he wouldn't just fall off, exhilarated.
The Not-Horses had much greater stamina than earthly horses, but even they could not sustain a gallop for long. After the Nithling force was nothing but a distant speck on the horizon, beyond the low hills of the current tile, Troop Lieutenant Jarrow raised his hand. His Not-Horse slowed down to a canter, then to a brief trot, and finally a walk, with Arthur's and Fred's mounts following their leader.
They continued at a walk for the rest of the day, with half an hour's rest at noon, amid the ruined city of the last tile they needed to cross. It wasn't much of a ruined city. There were only outlines of old buildings, one or two bricks high, and grassy barrows that might or might not contain interesting remnants. Troop Lieutenant Jarrow explained that there had never actually been a city there. It was built as a ruin, when the Architect had made the Great Maze to be a training ground for the Army.
The officer also showed them how to recognise a tile border – an important thing to know, because anyone within a few yards of a border at sundown ran the risk of having different portions of their body simultaneously transported to different places.
Not all tile borders were marked in the same way, Jarrow explained, but most borders were obvious from a change in the colour of the vegetation or the soil, showing up as a continuous line. The border from the jungle to the ruined city, for example, was very clear, as every vine-hugged tree on the southern edge was almost yellow instead of a healthy green.
The border from the ruined city tile to the marsh was not as evident, since there was no clear line of colour change or difference in vegetation. But Jarrow pointed to a low cairn of white stones in the middle of an area where the ground slowly changed from a short green grass to low shrubs that were almost blue. Significantly, the cairn was a semicircle, round on the northern side and sheer on the south. It had been built to show the southern border of that tile.
The marsh proper began soon after. Jarrow let the reins slack, and his Not-Horse picked a way through the spongy sedge and the tea-coloured pools of water, the others following in single file.
In the middle of the tile, or near enough by Jarrow's estimation, they found an island of slightly drier, somewhat higher ground, and here they set up camp. Jarrow again kept watch as Arthur and Fred removed the Not-Horses" harnesses, wire-brushed and oiled them, and polished their ruby eyes. Then they rubbed down their lightning-charged tulwars, sharpened them, and rubbed grease on their boots and their mail hauberks. All in all, this took till dusk.