“Oh, that’s all right,” said Phineas. “I’ll swap it for another one. I just have to have one to hand in.”

He climbed through the hole.

Arthur looked around the kitchen and glanced up at the ceiling, to the room above where his mother was trapped in a small circuit of time.

At least I know where Mum is, he thought heavily, then stepped through the hedge.

He found himself in a cool green alley between two hedges that were at least fifty feet tall. Above them he could see a perfect blue sky with a faint touch of white clouds – it looked like it might have been painted by some old master, and possibly was. He couldn’t see a sun, but there was a source of illumination somewhere above for the sky was very light. Probably the sun moved along a track, just like the suns in other parts of the House, though Arthur guessed that the one here would be more impressive and move more smoothly than in any other demesne.

“Which way?” asked Arthur. “Left or right?”

“Oh, this way,” said Phineas, pointing with his fork. “Four hedge junctions this way, then we take a left, go three junctions, take a right, two junctions, left again, straight on past four junctions, and then through another hedge and we’ll be at the Garden Path, which the dragonflies fly along all the time and sometimes the guard beetles run along, though you wouldn’t be scared of them.”

Arthur thought of the beetles he’d seen fighting Lady Friday’s forces. He’d almost been bitten in half by one himself.

“How many beetles, and how often do they go along this path?”

“Oh, half a dozen at a time, I guess,” said Phineas. He started walking along the alley, idly thwacking the hedges on either side with his fork. “But you don’t see them around that often.”

They walked in silence for a while after that. It was pleasantly cool between the hedges, with the dappled green light and the beautiful blue sky above. They combined to almost lull Arthur into a sense of peacefulness, but he knew it was only an illusion. He was thinking hard about what he could and should do.

“Are there telephones here?” he asked as they approached the first junction, where two hedge-bordered alleys crossed at a broad, paved plaza. Arthur stayed close to the hedge, keeping in its shadow.

“Telephones?” asked Phineas. “Sure. There’s one in Karkwhal’s shed. That’s how he gets the weeding orders.”

“Where is this shed?” asked Arthur. He didn’t look at Phineas as the boy replied, but stared around and looked up and along the hedges. He had the unpleasant feeling that he was being watched and there was a slight sick-making ache in his bones, a sign that sorcery was being practised somewhere nearby.

“Karkwhal’s shed?” asked Phineas. “That’s back the other way. It’s closer than the Garden Path, if you want to go there. Don’t know why you would, with only old Karkwhal and me there—”

“Quiet!” ordered Arthur. He reached into his pouch and drew out the Fifth and Sixth Keys. “I can hear something.”

“What?” whispered Phineas, not very quietly.

Arthur held up his hand to silence Phineas again, then listened. There was something – a rustle in the hedge, as if a large rat was wriggling through the tight-packed greenery. But he couldn’t see anything and the sound stopped as he slowly turned his head, trying to fix the position of the noise.

“It’s gone.” Arthur hesitated, returned the Keys to his pouch and turned round to follow Phineas.

At that moment, two enormous, green-skinned Denizens burst out of the greenery, as if the hedge itself had come to life. They grabbed Arthur’s arms and began to twist them behind his back.

Arthur shouted in fury and tried to throw them forward, but they held on tight, and their long, gnarled toes dug into the earth like tree roots, to hold him fast.

“Keys!” roared Arthur, and flexed his fingers. His pouch flew open, and the mirror and the pen flew up towards his hands.

But the Keys never reached Arthur’s waiting grasp. They were caught in midair by a bright silver net – a net wielded by Phineas the Second Assistant Sub-Gardener’s Aide Fourth Class Once Removed. Only he no longer looked like a Piper’s child. In that same instant the tall green Denizens had erupted from the hedge, Phineas had grown and changed. He was now a commanding figure some ten feet tall. He stood above Arthur, holding the writhing Keys in the net with his left hand, while his right was held tight around a small object that he wore on a chain around his neck.

The only thing that was not altered was the intense darkness of his eyes.

“Bind him with the chains,” instructed Lord Sunday. “Be careful. He is very strong.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Are you sure this is safe?” asked Giac. He was holding on nervously to Suzy’s shoulder as they descended on the South-West Big Chain. While the grease monkeys regularly used the various moving chains to go between floors of the tower, Sorcerous Supernumeraries usually took the elevator, so this was a new experience for Giac.

The South-West Big Chain was like a greatly oversize motorcycle chain that ran the thousands of feet from the unseen nether regions of Saturday’s tower to a vast bronze guide wheel that was situated near the top. The Chain ran in a broad shaft, going up one side and down the other. Each link was six feet tall and six feet wide, and had a flat space in the middle where the grease monkeys stood, sat or even slept as the Chain rattled up or down.

“Course it’s safe,” said Suzy. “Provided you don’t fall off.”

“Oh,” said Giac. He peered a little towards the edge and gulped. “Where are we going? And whose side am I on again?”

“We’re going to the elevator control floors,” said Suzy. “And you’re on Lord Arthur’s side. Unless we meet up with the Piper’s forces first. Then we tell ’em that we’re on the Piper’s side, though we’ll still really be on Arthur’s side. It’d be a thingummy, a rose of war.”

“A subterfuge,” suggested Part Six of the Will, who was lurking inside Giac’s partially furled umbrella so that only the top part of his beak was visible, and that only on close inspection. “A legitimate ruse.”

“But will Lord Arthur want me?” asked Giac anxiously. “You said that I can decide to change sides, but the other side has to take me on. Will Lord Arthur take me on?”

“As it ’appens, I am Arthur’s right-hand man,” said Suzy. “Or left-hand girl, I can’t remember where I stood last time. Anyhow, me and Arthur is like two fingers of a gauntlet. Or at least the thumb and the little finger. I mean, I’m his top General and all. So if I say you’re in, you’re in.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Giac.

“None of that,” admonished Suzy. “Call me Suzy.”

“As you command, Lady Suzy,” said Giac. “Oh, the floor below is manned!”

They had been passing floor after empty floor as the Chain descended, the desks abandoned by sorcerers who had been drafted to fight the Piper below or join the invasion of the Incomparable Gardens above. Suzy had begun to think they might be lucky and find that the floor they needed, where the desks that controlled the elevators were located, was also abandoned. But they were now passing floors that were still fully staffed with thousands of sorcerers at their desks, their blue umbrellas now furled at their sides since the ten-thousand-year rain had stopped. Fortunately they were intent on their work, and the few that glanced across did not find the sight of what appeared to be a grease monkey and a Sorcerous Supernumerary on the passing Chain to be of any interest.

“Do you have a plan, Lady Suzy?” asked the Will. “As to how we will activate the elevators?”

“Course I do,” snorted Suzy.

“Good,” said the Will.

There was silence as they descended several more floors, then the raven poked its head out of Giac’s umbrella a little more, so that one sharp eye stared up at Suzy.

“As we will shortly arrive at our destination, would you like to share this plan?” the Will asked.

“I’m thinking,” said Suzy. She certainly looked thoughtful, staring at each passing floor and hardly blinking. “Will, I’ve seen you turn into a ball – can you turn into anything else?”

“Within certain limits, I can change my outward form.”

“Could you turn into a message capsule?” asked Suzy. “What colour umbrellas do they have on floor 6879?”

“Green,” said Giac.

“And if they got promoted to the next level?”

“Blue,” said Giac dreamily. “Beautiful shades and patterns of blue. We’re going past the blue floors now.”

“So you’ll need to be a blue capsule,” Suzy told the Will. “I’ll come out and say there’s going to be a mass promotion of a bunch of sorcerers and I’ve come to check out the offices for such a big move. They’ll all be looking at me…and you, who’ll be the message capsule. I’ll walk around measuring and so on, and then…and then…I’ll put you down on a desk, Will, and when they’re not looking at you, you slither down and use the desk to open an elevator—”

“That’s not much of a plan,” interrupted the Will. “Even I could do better than that.”

“I couldn’t,” said Giac. “What do I do?”

“You follow me around,” said Suzy. “Like the Sorcerous Supernumeraries always follow the grease monkeys. Maybe if we need a distraction, you do something.”

“We’re almost there,” said the Will. “And I really think this is a rotten plan…”

“Three floors to go,” Giac announced.

“Rotten!” exclaimed the Will, but nonetheless it flew to Suzy’s hand and transformed into a blue message capsule. Only close examination would show that it was made of tiny squirming letters of blue type rather than the usual glazed bronze.

“Two floors.”

“Get ready to step off the Chain,” Suzy said. She took Giac’s hand, ready to drag him off if he faltered.

A foot above the next floor, she stepped down off the Chain. Giac followed, but got his umbrella caught in his legs and almost knocked both of them over. They staggered forward, Suzy brandishing the blue message capsule above her head.

All the nearer sorcerers looked across from their desks, their eyes intent on the capsule. Some kept up their two-handed writing, but most stopped. A second later, whispers began to cross the floor, and Suzy saw a ripple of movement spread out from the Chain shaft through the open offices as sorcerers all the way to the far western side of the tower turned to look.

“Grease monkey…”

“Blue capsule…”

“Promotion…”

“Promotion…”

“Promotion…”

“Mass promotion message!” shouted Suzy. “A dozen sorcerers going up to blue, special wartime rules. I’ve got twelve gangs coming up in fifteen minutes, but first I need to measure where the offices are going up.”

She raised the blue capsule above her head and waved it around a few times, then sauntered through the closest offices. The sorcerers there stared at her, the mirrors they were supposed to watch forgotten, the spells they were meant to be inscribing temporarily abandoned.

Suzy walked further in, towards the nearest bank of elevators. She could see the iron grille doors of the closest elevator, but there was only empty space behind it, rather than the usual wood and glass door of a House elevator.

As Suzy and Giac passed by the closer desks, the muttering behind them changed. The whispers grew louder and sounded angry.

“Not me…”

“Where’s the brat going?”

“It can’t be them…”

Suzy sped up a little and drew the message capsule close so she could whisper. “I forgot to ask…Will any desk do?”

“Close to the elevators,” replied the Will very softly. “As soon as I’m done, we’ll have to run.”

Suzy changed direction, the movement eliciting a gasp of expectation from the sorcerers ahead of her, and a groan of disappointment from the ones behind.

“They’re getting ready to throw things at the chosen ones,” muttered Giac, looming close behind Suzy’s shoulder. “And at us, of course.”

Suzy didn’t answer. She’d fixed her eye on a desk immediately in front of the closest elevator. The sorcerer there was watching her, like all the others, but she thought he looked just a shade shorter than his neighbours, which probably meant he had been recently promoted to the green levels. Choosing him for another promotion would likely create the biggest possible uproar.

As she got closer, the noise behind her increased and the tone of it sounded considerably uglier. Suzy ignored it and stopped in front of the desk with the slightly shorter Denizen. He looked up at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Yes?”

“You are Mmmph Bltthh?” asked Suzy, turning her head so as to make her garbled words even harder to figure out. As she spoke, she put the message capsule on the desk.

“I am Sorcerer Seventh Class Xagis,” said the Denizen.

“Right,” said Suzy. “Then it’s you and two more desks in that direction and three in that direction.”

“I’m getting promoted?” asked Xagis in disbelief. “Again?”

“Yep,” said Suzy. “You are—Ow!”

A flying inkwell bounced off her shoulder. Suzy ducked a more deadly letter-opener and ran around to the far side of the desk. Xagis was already crouching underneath it. Giac, on the other hand, was capering up and down and pointing out towards the exterior of the building.