‘Excellent!’ cried Saturday, a smile rippling across her shining, blue-painted lips. ‘I trust the Front Door remains closed, and the elevators secured? I want no interference from Primus or the Piper.’
‘The Front Door remains shut, though the Lieutenant Keeper has petitioned the Court of Days for it to be reopened. So if Lord Sunday-’
‘Sunday immures himself in the Gardens,’ Saturday interrupted. ‘He cares not for anything else. He will not interfere – at least not until it is too late for him to do anything.’
‘As you say, Majesty,’ said Dusk diplomatically. ‘All elevator entrances into the Upper House have been sealed and are guarded, but it is believed that renegade operators have opened some services in other parts of the House.’
‘Let them run about the ruins,’ said Saturday. ‘The sorceries against the Improbable Stair and the Fifth Key remain constant?’
‘Four shifts of nine hundred sorcerers each maintain the wards. Twenty-eight hundred executive-level sorcerers wait at ready desks, should they need to counter any workings of the Keys held by the Pretender or a sorcerous attack from the Piper.’
‘The Piper!’ Saturday spat. ‘If only I had managed to finish him centuries ago! At least he blames his brother. What is the latest news of the Piper? Have we got rid of his blasted rats?’
Dusk proceeded with caution. ‘We are not absolutely clear on what the Piper is doing. His forces have withdrawn from the Great Maze, presumably to the worldlet he made for his New Nithlings. But we have not yet located that worldlet, nor do we know if he masses his forces there against us or against Dame Primus.’
‘Our defences will hold as well against the Piper as they will against the Pretender,’ Saturday stated confidently. ‘They cannot enter via elevator, Stair, Front Door, or by use of the Fifth Key. There is no other way.’
Saturday’s Dusk did not speak, but the faintest frown line appeared on his forehead, just for a moment, before he smoothed it away.
‘And the Rats?’ prompted Saturday.
‘None have been spotted in five days. We have lost fourteen lower-level Clerks and some Piper’s children to the Ratcatcher Automatons, and there have been requests that they be recalled.’
‘No,’ said Saturday. ‘Keep them at it. I do not want those creatures sneaking about here.’
‘Speaking of Piper’s children, we employ a large number of them as grease monkeys and chain-hands, but there was a report that some of Sir Thursday’s Piper’s children were turned against him by the Piper. We would not want our Piper’s children to be similarly turned against us.’
‘Yes,’ said Saturday. ‘He has power over his creations, and they must answer to his pipe. It is not an eventuality that should arise, if he is kept out of the Upper House, and we need those children to maintain our building speed. However, we should be prepared. Tell Noon to detail a suitable number of Sorcerous Supernumeraries to shadow the Piper’s children – and slay them, if I so command.’
‘Very good, Majesty,’ said Dusk. ‘There is one other matter...’
‘Yes?’
‘The Pretender, this Arthur Penhaligon. We have just had a report that he has returned to the Secondary Realms, to Earth. Do we implement the contingency plan?’
Saturday smiled.
‘Yes, at once. Do we know if he has a Key with him?’
‘We do not know, Majesty, but circumstance suggests he has at least the Fifth Key.’
‘I wonder if that will protect him. It will be interesting to see. Tell Pravuil to act at once.’
‘Ahem...’ Dusk coughed. ‘I regret to say that it is not yet Saturday on Earth, Majesty. It is some forty minutes short of Friday’s midnight, and the House and that Secondary Realm are in close temporal step.’
Saturday hesitated, weighing the situation. The Accord between the Trustees was effectively broken, but the treaty still existed, and there could be sorcerous implications if she or her agents acted outside their allotted span of power in the Secondary Realms.
‘Then Pravuil must strike as the twelfth chime of midnight fades,’ she instructed. ‘In the first second of Saturday. No later. See to it at once.’
‘Yes, Majesty,’ replied the new Dusk. After an elegant bow, he retreated to the silver spiral stair that led down to the desk cube immediately beneath the viewing chamber.
As soon as he was gone, Superior Saturday’s gaze was once again drawn to the sky, the parting clouds, and another infuriating but tantalising glimpse of the underside of the Incomparable Gardens.
ONE
IT WAS DARK outside the small private hospital, the streetlights out and the houses across the road shut up tight. Only the faintest glowing lines around some windows indicated that there were probably people inside, and that the city still had power. There were other lights in the sky, but these were the navigation lights of helicopters, tiny pinprick red dots circling high above. Occasionally a searchlight flickered down from one of the helicopters, closely followed by the harsh clatter of machine-gun fire.
Inside the hospital, a flash of light suddenly lit up the empty swimming pool, accompanied by a thunderclap that rattled every window and drowned the distant sounds of the choppers and gunfire. As the light from the flash slowly faded, a slow, regular drumbeat echoed through the halls.
In the front office, a tired woman clad in a crumpled blue hospital uniform looked away from the videoscreen that was carrying the latest very bad news and jumped up to flick on the corridor lights. Then she grabbed her mop and bucket and ran. The thunderclap and drumming announced the arrival of Dr Friday, and Dr Friday always wanted the floors cleaned ahead of her, so she could see her reflection in the glossy surface of the freshly washed linoleum.
The cleaner ran through the wards, turning on lights as she passed. Just before the pool room, she glanced at her watch. It was 11:15 on Friday night. Dr Friday had never come so late before, but her servants sometimes did. In any case, the cleaner was not allowed to leave until the day was completely done. Not that there was anywhere to go, with the new quarantine in force and helicopters shooting anyone who ventured out onto the streets. The news was now also full of talk of a "last-resort solution" to the "plague nexus" that existed in the city.
Outside the pool room, the cleaner stopped to take a deep breath. Then she bent her head, dipped her mop, and pushed it and the bucket through the doors, reaching up to flick the light switch without looking, as she had done so many times, on so many Fridays past. She had learned long ago not to look up, because then she might meet Friday's gaze, or be dazzled by her mirror.
But it wasn't Friday or her minions who were emerging from the dark portal in the empty swimming pool and climbing up the ramp.
The cleaner stared at their bare feet and the blue hospital nightgowns. She dropped her mop, looked up, and screamed.
"They're coming back! But they never come back!"
The sleepers that she had seen enter the pool only that morning, led by Dr Friday herself, were shambling their way up, arms outstretched in front of them in the classic pose of sleepwalkers seen so often in films and television.
But this time Dr Friday wasn't there, and neither were any of her ridiculously tall and good-looking assistants.
Then the cleaner saw the girl, the one who had been awake that morning. She was shepherding the very first sleeper, a woman at the head of the line, steering her to the centre of the ramp. The sleepers weren't as obedient as they had been going out, or as deeply asleep.
"Hi!" called the girl. 'remember me?"
The cleaner nodded dumbly.
"My name's Leaf. What's yours?"
"Vess," whispered the cleaner.
"Give us a hand, then, Vess! We've got to get everyone into bed, at least for tonight."
"What .В .В . what about Dr Friday?"