‘I am the Rightful Heir, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘I want to know exactly what the situation is. Then I will decide what we are going to do.’
Dame Primus met his gaze for a full second, then slowly inclined her head.
‘Very well, Lord Arthur,’ she said. ‘As you command, so it shall be.’
‘Right, then,’ said Arthur. ‘First things first. What actually happened to the Lower House? Did Nothing break through in the Far Reaches?’
‘I will show you, through the eyes of someone who was there.’ Dame Primus gestured with the baton, and all the lamps in the room suddenly dimmed. ‘Mister Skerrikim, I trust you still have the survivor?’
A Denizen in a dark frockcoat, black cravat, and embroidered silver skullcap answered in the affirmative from the back of the room and made his way over to Dame Primus, lugging a large and rather battered leather suitcase fastened with three straps.
‘An elevator operator was just closing his doors when it happened,’ said Dame Primus to Arthur. ‘He managed to get most of the way out of the Far Reaches before the Nothing caught him. By holding on to the ceiling light of the elevator with his teeth, his head and a small remnant of the elevator actually arrived here. Fortunately Mister Skerrikim was just in time to prevent his total dissolution.’
Mr Skerrikim, who Arthur had never seen before, laid the suitcase down on the floor, undid the straps, and opened it up. The case was full of rose petals, and in the middle of the petals lay a disembodied head swathed from temple to chin in clean white bandages, like an old-fashioned treatment for a toothache. The head had its eyes shut.
Mr Skerrikim picked up the head by the ears and propped it against the open lid so it faced Arthur and Dame Primus. Then he took a small bottle of activated ink out of his pocket, dipped a quill pen into it, and wrote something in extraordinarily tiny letters on the forehead of the survivor.
‘Wake up, Marson!’ instructed Mr Skerrikim cheerfully.
Arthur started as the head’s eyes flicked open. Dr Scamandros, who was a step or two behind the boy, muttered something that did not sound very friendly.
‘What is it?’ Marson’s head asked grumpily. ‘It’s hard work growing a new body. Not to mention painful! I need all my rest.’
‘You shall have plenty of rest!’ declared Mr Skerrikim. ‘We’re just going to have another look at what happened down that pit, near the dam wall.’
‘Must you?’ asked Marson. The head’s mouth quivered and tears formed in the corners of his eyes. ‘I just can’t relive it again – the pain of the Nothing as it ate away my limbs-’
‘This is entirely unnecessary!’ protested Dr Scamandros as he pushed past several interested officers to stand next to Arthur. The tattoos on his face were of painted savages dancing around a bonfire, under the direction of a witchdoctor in a ludicrous feathered headdress. ‘This poor chap need not feel his immediate past merely for us to see it! I see also that you, sir, have used a quite discredited spell for the preservation of a head, and I must ask you to relinquish care of this individual to someone who knows what they are doing!’
‘Mister Skerrikim is quite adequately trained,’ said Dame Primus smoothly. She did not look at Dr Scamandros, but spoke to Arthur. ‘As Sir Thursday’s Chief Questioner, Skerrikim has conducted many showings from Denizens’ minds, and as you know, Arthur, Denizens do not really feel much pain. Marson will be well rewarded when his new body grows.’
‘I thought Doctor Scamandros was the only sorcerer not in Saturday’s service,’ said Arthur.
‘Mister Skerrikim is not exactly a sorcerer,’ Dame Primus clarified. ‘It is true he is a practitioner of House sorcery, but his field of specialisation is quite narrow.’
‘Jackal,’ hissed Scamandros quietly.
‘Blowhard,’ retorted Skerrikim, not so quietly.
Arthur hesitated. He wanted to see what Marson had experienced, but he didn’t want the dismembered Denizen to suffer.
‘Scamandros, can you show us what we need to see, without hurting him?’
‘Indeed I can, sir,’ said Scamandros, puffing out his chest.
‘Skerrikim is an expert,’ said Dame Primus. ‘Far better to let him-’
‘No,’ Arthur said quietly. ‘Scamandros will do it. That will be all, thank you, Mister Skerrikim.’
Skerrikim looked at Dame Primus. She did not move or give any signal that Arthur could see, but the skullcapped Denizen bowed and withdrew.
Scamandros knelt by the side of the suitcase and used a red velvet cloth to wipe off whatever Skerrikim had written on Marson’s head. Then he took out his own bottle of activated ink and a peacock-plumed pen and wrote something else.
‘Move aside,’ Scamandros instructed several officers. ‘The vision will form where you’re standing. I trust you feel no pain, Marson?’
‘Not a thing,’ Marson reported. ‘’Cept an itch in the foot I don’t have anymore.’
‘Excellent,’ said Dr Scamandros. ‘Open your eyes a little wider, a touch more... very good... hold them open there... Let me get these matchsticks in place, and we will commence.’
The sorcerer stood back and spoke a word. Arthur could almost see the letters of it, see the way the air rippled away from Scamandros’s mouth as he spoke. He felt the power of the spell as a tingle in his joints, and some small part of him knew that once, long ago, he would have felt pain. Now, his body was accustomed to sorcery and used to power.
Two tiny pinpricks of light grew in Marson’s eyes, and then two fierce beams shot forth, splaying out and gaining colour, dancing around madly as if a crazed and manic artist were painting with streams of light.
An image formed in the air by the table, an image projected from Marson’s propped-open eyes. A broad, cinematic view some twelve feet wide and eight feet high, it showed a part of the floor of the Pit in the Far Reaches, the great, deep hole that Grim Tuesday had dug in order to mine more and more Nothing, no matter how dangerous it was, and no matter how much it weakened the very foundations of the House.
Arthur leaned forward, intent on the scene. Even though what he was to see had already happened, he felt very tense, as if he were actually there...
SIX
‘THE MEMORY IS blurred,’ said Dame Primus. ‘We should have had Skerrikim do it.’
‘Merely a matter of focus, milady,’ said Scamandros. He bent down and adjusted Marson’s eyelids, the shadows of his fingers walking across the lit scene like tall, dark walking trees. ‘There we are.’
The picture became sharp, and sound came in as well. They were seeing what Marson had seen. The Denizen was looking out through the door of his elevator, his finger ready to press one of the bronze buttons that would take it up. Beyond the door, there was a rubble-strewn plain, lit here and there by an oil lamp hanging from an iron post. Some fifty yards away, a group of Denizens had gathered at the base of a great wall, a vast expanse of light grey concrete that had rods of shimmering iron protruding from it at regular intervals.
‘Hey, that’s the part I fixed up!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘With Immaterial-reinforced concrete.’
The Denizens were looking at something. All of a sudden they backed away, and one of them turned to call to someone out of sight.
‘Sir! There’s some sort of curious drill here! It’s boring a hole all by itself! It’s-’
Her words were cut off by a sudden, silent spray of Nothing that jetted out of the base of the wall. All the Denizens were cut down by it, instantly dissolved. Then more Nothing spewed out, and there was a terrible rumbling sound. Cracks suddenly ran from the ground up through the wall, cracks that began to bubble with dark Nothing.