A chorus of “ayes” and “yes, sirs” with a “probably” and an “I hope so” answered him as Suzy tapped him on the shoulder. Fred spun round and smiled. “Wotcher, boss,” he said. “Hello, Leaf.”

“Hi, Fred.” Leaf had only met him briefly at Friday’s secret fastness in the Secondary Realms, but like everyone else, she’d liked him immediately.

“You got the message from Bren, Shan and Athan then?” asked Leaf.

“Yep,” said Fred. “We’ve got sixty-six Raiders here. Almost all the Piper’s children around Binding Junction, not counting the Gilded Youths. There’s more coming in with the Fleet, but I’m told they won’t be here for hours.”

“Only sixty-six,” said Suzy. “There should be a lot more survivors from the other demesnes.”

“That’s all that’s here,” said Fred. “I sent word to the camp at the canal-head, but no one’s come in.”

“I hope Old Primey isn’t up to her tricks,” said Suzy darkly.

“What do you mean?” asked Leaf.

“She wanted to kill us all off,” said Suzy. “In case the Piper got a hold of us. Arthur stopped her, but I don’t know…she’s tricky.”

“Yeah,” said Leaf, unable to suppress a shiver. The embodiment of the Will had become much scarier, and certainly Leaf didn’t feel Dame Primus could be trusted.

“Where are Bren, Shan and Athan?” asked Suzy, surveying the crowd.

“Uh, they got arrested,” said Fred in a loud voice. “Something about a missing cannon and a Nothing-powder wagon. Marshal Noon caught them, or they’d have got out of it.”

“Hmmph,” Suzy sniffed. “They’ll have to cool their heels till we get back. No time to sort things out for them now. ’Ere, hand these around.”

She passed the bag of earplugs over, first taking a pair for herself and Leaf. Leaf sheathed her sword to take them, upon discovering that she had a scabbard at her side, and was relieved that she was able to let go of the sword.

The earplugs were balls of waxed paper that had tiny writing all over them. Suzy stuffed hers into her ears and, after a moment’s hesitation, Leaf followed suit, as did the Piper’s children, who were quickly taking their earplugs from Fred.

“I can still hear perfectly well,” said Leaf. “They don’t seem to do anything.”

“They are not supposed to,” said Dr Scamandros. “However, they should block most of the suggestive power of the Piper’s pipe. Still, they will not last long in that circumstance and immediate removal from the vicinity of the Piper is advised. Particularly as…ah…”

“What?” asked Suzy.

“They may suffer spontaneous conflagration if subject to a concentration of the Piper’s sorcery,” said Dr Scamandros. “That is, if the sound is too close.”

“You mean they’ll catch fire?” asked Leaf. She felt the ball of paper in her left ear and frowned.

“More of an explosive burst of fire,” said Dr Scamandros. “Nothing that would kill a Piper’s child. If you do hear the Piper, keeping away would be advisable in any case.”

“Great,” muttered Leaf. “Do you know if I even need them? I’m not a Piper’s child, and I certainly wouldn’t survive an explosion in my ear hole.”

Dr Scamandros peered at Leaf. “Hmmm. I believe the Piper’s music has considerable power over mortals in general, given that is how he brought the children here in the first place,” he said. “But since you are the Lieutenant Keeper, it would perhaps be a greater risk to wear the earplugs.”

“Right,” said Leaf. She took the earplugs out and put them in the stupidly small, tight pocket at the top of her white breeches.

“Is the elevator that’s taking us up ready?” asked Suzy.

“Ah, I’m not sure,” said Dr Scamandros. “I prepared one earlier to go to the Upper House, but Dame Primus didn’t tell me who it was for, or how many. It will need a little expansion—”

“Orright, you nip off and expand it,” said Suzy. “Giac, you go with ’im, give ’im a ’and.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Giac.

“A hand,” said Suzy, forcing herself to pronounce the h.

Giac looked at his hands.

“It means help him,” said Leaf.

“Oh, I knew that,” said Giac. “Forgot!” He hurried off after Dr Scamandros.

“Where did you get Giac?” asked Leaf.

“Upper House,” said Suzy. “’E’s a good sort. Bit forgetful. Needs his self-confidence built up a bit.”

“So, where is Arthur?” asked Leaf. “Last time I saw him was on Earth, but he was going back to the House.”

“Tell you on the way to the elevator,” said Suzy. She raised her voice and addressed the gathered Raiders. “Orright! We’re going to zip up to the Upper House and help Doc Scamandros and Colonel Giac open some elevators for the Army to come through. Likely we’ll be fighting Saturday’s lot and the Piper’s Newniths, but if we can make them fight each other, that’ll be better. Any questions?”

A Piper’s child near the front raised his hand. “What do ye call a Denizen with a sore foot?”

“I dunno,” said Suzy. “What do you call a Denizen with a sore foot?”

“Well, I dunno either,” said the Piper’s child. “That’s why I asked. I heard someone tell the first half of the joke in the elevator on the way up here but never the rest.”

“Anyone?” asked Suzy as Leaf groaned and ran her hand through her hair, unable to believe she was about to go on an incredibly dangerous mission with a bunch of ancient lunatics, who looked like children and who all had the same sense of humour as a seven-year-old.

No one knew the actual punch line, though there were several suggestions, including “whatever you like, because they won’t be able to run fast enough to catch you” and “an angler”, which provoked questions about what fish had to do with sore feet, and not very well received explanations about double meanings and “not being able to walk straight”.

“Best ask Dr Scamandros,” Suzy concluded. “Any other questions? About what we’re going to do, I mean?”

She waited for a few seconds, but there were no more questions.

“Let’s go then,” said Suzy with a negligent wave of her hand. The watching sergeants scowled as Suzy’s Raiders ambled off after her, in no particular order and with no one purposefully in step with anyone else.

As the crowd opened up a little, Leaf saw that in addition to their many and varied personal armaments – and some of them were liberally festooned with weapons – a trio of hooded-and-cloaked Piper’s children who’d come out from the shadow of the inner wall were pushing a small cannon and a wheelbarrow loaded with small Nothing-powder kegs and cannonballs. Suzy saw them too and looked at Fred, who winked.

“Guess they didn’t stay arrested,” he said quietly.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The hour hand of the clock moved to the two as the minute hand passed twelve. Two hours had gone by since Elephant had left to climb the hill in search of the silver net and the Fifth and Sixth Keys.

Arthur sat cross-legged near the nine on the clock. He had been trying to distract himself by thinking of nice things, but had only become alarmed at how much of his own life had become hard to remember. Important memories – of his family life, his friends, the schools he’d been to – they were fading, and he could only remember them with great effort, tracking down scant threads of memory and binding them together.

He was afraid, but not of the puppets and the blinding that might be waiting in ten hours. Arthur was afraid because he felt his human life slipping away from him. Unless he really concentrated, he had difficulty even bringing an image of all his brothers and sisters into his head. Apart from Michaeli and Eric, whom he had seen most recently, he could not easily visualise the others, or recall such simple things as the exact colour of their hair.

He was concentrating on remembering his room in the old house, the one he’d lived in longest, when a very faint and distant noise distracted him. He stood up, the chains at their maximum extension, and listened.

The sound came again, and Arthur clenched his fists and strained against the chains. It was the trumpet call of Elephant coming from far, far away. He sounded distressed and in pain. It came again twice more, weaker each time, then there was silence, save for the ticking of the clock.

“Elephant!” Arthur screamed, throwing himself at the rim of the clock. Golden blood streamed from his wrists as he raged against the chains, the manacles cutting deep even into his toughened skin.

But it was no use. Arthur could not shift the manacles or the chains, and at last he fell down and lay sobbing in a pool of his own blood, oblivious to the pain.

“Elephant…” he whispered.

I never should have sent you, he thought bleakly. I never should have brought you to life.

Slowly he staggered to his feet and stared up at the next terrace, hoping against hope that he would see a small yellow elephant appear on the crest and come stomping down towards him.

Elephant did not appear. But Arthur heard a humming noise, like but not exactly the same as the sound of one of Sunday’s dragonflies. He looked around urgently, but there was no dragonfly in sight.

The humming grew louder and louder, as if whatever made it was coming straight for him. Arthur turned wildly, chains clanking, as he tried to work out where and what it was.

Then he saw it. The silver net that Sunday had used to trap his Keys was zooming towards him, only a foot above the grass. Like some demented hovercraft it whooshed down the slope, jumped the number twelve on the clock and smashed into Arthur, knocking him to the ground.

Arthur grabbed it as it hit, but it flopped around in his grasp until it disgorged its contents – a mirror and a quill pen that leaped into his hands.

As Arthur touched the Fifth and Sixth Keys, he felt power flow into him, and all his self-doubts and fears were washed away. He stood up and, holding both Keys above his head, spoke in a deep and commanding voice that was only slightly reminiscent of his own.

“Release me!”

He felt resistance in the sorcerous steel, and from the clock under his feet. The manacles shrieked like train wheels locked and sliding on wet rails, and fought against him. Arthur focused all his will, concentrated all his power and spoke again.

“Release me!”

One manacle popped open and fell to the clock, but the other, though it spun around and writhed under his glare, did not open. Arthur howled in frustration and hit it with the Sixth Key, shouting for the third time.

“Release me!”

The manacle exploded into droplets of molten steel that sprayed the lawn beyond the clock. Arthur dropped to his knees, gasping for breath, totally exhausted by the struggle.

But he only had a second before the trapdoor suddenly sprang open and the woodchopper puppet vaulted out, swinging his axe at the boy.

Without thinking, Arthur blocked the blow by grabbing the puppet’s forearm, in the process dropping the Fifth Key.

He tried to wrest the axe away, but the puppet was unnaturally strong, as strong as Arthur himself, and the axe was actually part of its arm. Its wooden teeth clattered in manic laughter as its mate came out of the trapdoor and lunged at Arthur with an oversize corkscrew. As always, it aimed for his eyes.

Arthur suddenly let go of the woodchopper and, as the creature stumbled forward, stabbed him in the head with the point of the Sixth Key.

“Drop dead!” he yelled, and he felt a savage pain flow through his body and out into the puppet.

The woodchopper didn’t drop dead, but it fell back. Arthur kicked it into the corkscrew puppet and both fell over. Before they could get up, Arthur picked up the loose chain and whipped it around their legs, crossed it back on itself and then quickly wrote on a link with the Sixth Key.

“Join,” Arthur said as he wrote the word.

The chain joined together as the puppets scrabbled desperately to get their entwined legs out of the loops of steel.

Tighten, wrote Arthur, and the chain shrank around the puppets’ legs so that no matter how they pulled and struggled they could not get free.

“See how you like it,” said Arthur wearily. He picked up the mirror and staggered off the clock. The puppets rattled the chain angrily and glared after him, their overlarge eyeballs rolling in their sockets and their teeth grinding.

Arthur took no more than a minute to get his breath and think, then he raised his head and shouted, careless of whoever might hear him.

“I’m coming, Elephant!”

Arthur broke into a run, taking great strides. He knew he had very little time before Lord Sunday found out his prisoner was free. He had to find Elephant and the Will.

Next time I meet Lord Sunday, things will be different, Arthur thought.

The next terrace was similar to the one below, a green expanse bordered by flowering shrubs and dotted here and there with stands of trees and other carefully arranged and unusually colourful plants. Arthur ran through a border of chest-high red and pink azaleas and across the well-tended lawn towards another set of steps cut into the slope that led to the next terrace beyond. But he was only halfway across when he heard the buzzing hum of a dragonfly.

He slowed and looked behind him. Even as he turned his head, he cried out in pain as he was struck by several arrows. One went through his right arm and another through his chest. The heads were glass, shattering as they went in, sending Nothing-poison into his bloodstream.