Quickly she scanned the shelves and was immediately rewarded. Most of the colours overlaid on the various items of linen were cool greens and blues. But one shelf stood out like a beacon. It was lit inside by a deep, fierce red.

Leaf sprang at it, pulling away a rampart of pillowcases. There, behind this linen wall, was a clear plastic box the size of her palm that had formerly been used to store sterile bandages. Now it had a single square of white cloth in it, but with the aid of the glasses, Leaf could see rows and rows of tiny letters across the cloth, each letter burning with an internal fire.

She snatched the box and backed away, pausing to tip another shelf full of towels over the nurse, who was staggering to her feet.

Leaf was out the door and in the corridor when the nurse got her head free and shouted after her, her voice a strange mixture of a woman’s and a boy’s. Whatever she said – or the Skinless Boy said through her – was lost as the door slammed shut on Leaf’s heels.

Though Leaf couldn’t hear the exact words, she caught the tone. The Skinless Boy knew she was infected with the mould. Sooner or later, it would control her mind and she would have no choice but to bring the box and the pocket back.

After all, there was nowhere for her to go.

Nine

AFTER THE IRONING lesson, Corporal Axeforth tediously demonstrated how to smear a kind of white clay over the recruits’ belts, preferably without getting it anywhere else. This was followed by painting their boots with a hideous tarry mixture and then sanding the very black but rough result back to a smooth finish before applying a glossy varnish that was the stickiest substance Arthur had ever encountered.

Following the demonstrations, when they got to practise what they’d been shown, Arthur talked quietly with the Piper’s child, whose name was Fred Initial Numbers Gold. He was a Manuscript Gilder from the Middle House and had been drafted the day before.

Fred was optimistic about their future Army service and even welcomed it as a change from his nitpicking job of applying gold leaf to the numbers in important House documents. He’d heard – or he remembered, he wasn’t sure which – that Piper’s children were usually employed in the Army as drummers or other musicians, or as personal aides to senior officers. This didn’t sound too bad to him.

After the final lesson on preparing their recruit uniforms, the section was dismissed for dinner. Only there wasn’t any – and there wouldn’t be any, Corporal Axeforth explained, for six months. Food was a privilege and an honour to be earned by good behaviour and exemplary duty. Until they had earned it, the dinner break was merely an hour to be used to prepare for the evening lessons and the next day’s training.

Arthur missed the food, though like everyone else in the House he knew he didn’t actually need to eat. He spent the hour going through all his equipment and the uniforms that were laid ready on his bed and in his locker. The most useful item of the lot was a thick, illustrated book called The Recruit’s Companion, which, among its many sections, listed and illustrated every item and had short notes on where and how each would be used, though Arthur still had to ask Fred to explain some of its contents.

‘How come we have so many different uniforms?’ he asked.

Fred looked down at the segmented armour and kilt, the scarlet tunic and black trousers, the buff coat and reinforced leather trousers, the forest-green jerkin and leggings, the long mail hauberk and coif, and the bewildering array of boots, pieces of joint-armour, bracers, and leather reinforcements.

‘The Army’s made up of different units and they all wear different uniforms,’ Fred explained. ‘So we got to learn the lot, case we get sent to the Legion, the Horde, or the Regiment … or one of the other ones. I forget what they’re all called. That armour there, the long narrow pieces that slide together and you do up with the laces, that’s Legionary wear. Scarlet’s for the Regiment, and the Horde wear the knee-length ironmongery. They’ve all got different weapons too. We’ll learn ’em all, Ray.’

‘I guess I’d better sort them out according to this plan,’ said Arthur. He put The Recruit’s Companion down on the bed and unfolded the poster-sized diagram out of it that showed the correct placement of every one of the 226 items Arthur was now personally responsible for. ‘Though I don’t see anyone else putting their stuff away.’

‘They’re ordinary-grade Denizens,’ said Fred, whose bed and locker were patterns of military order. He said this as if it explained everything.

‘What do you mean?’ Arthur asked, since it didn’t really explain anything to him.

‘They won’t do anything until they’re told to,’ said Fred, with a puzzled glance at Arthur. ‘Are the ordinary Denizens different in the Lower House? All this lot are from the Middle. Paper-cutters, most of them, though Florimel over there, she was a Binder, Second Class. Have to watch out for her. She thinks she ought to be Recruit Lance-Corporal because she’s got the highest precedence in the House of the lot of us. I guess she’ll find out that doesn’t matter here. All of us recruits are equal in the eyes of the Army: low as you can go. The only way from here is up. I reckon I might be able to make General by the time my hitch is up.’

Fred liked to talk. Arthur listened to him as he packed away his equipment, a process that was much more difficult than the illustration indicated. Though Fred had only been at Fort Transformation for a day longer than Arthur, he had already found out a lot about their training, the training staff – or training cadre, as they were supposed to be called – and everything else.

‘The first week is all getting to know how to look right and some marching about and such-like,’ Fred explained. ‘At least, that’s what’s on the schedule. Over there.’

He pointed at the door. It was so far away, and the light from the hurricane lights so dim, that Arthur couldn’t tell what he was pointing at.

‘On the noticeboard, next to the door,’ continued Fred. ‘Let’s go take a look. We’ve got five minutes till dinner’s over and we’ll need to be over there anyway.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Arthur. His watch had disappeared when the recruit uniform had swarmed up his arm.

‘Axeforth just went out the back door. He’ll march around to the front, come in, and shout at us to line up there like he did before. It’s called “falling in”. Don’t ask me why. You need your hat on.’

Arthur picked up his pillbox hat and put it back on, grimacing at the feel of the chinstrap under his mouth rather than on his chin, which he felt was the proper place for something called a chinstrap. But everyone else wore theirs the same way, under the bottom lip, and the strap wasn’t long enough to do anything else.

‘Ready?’ Fred stood at attention next to Arthur. ‘We have to march everywhere, or we’ll get shouted at.’

‘Who by?’ asked Arthur. The other twenty Denizens in the platoon were all lying down on their beds, staring at the ceiling.

‘Sergeants, corporals … noncommissioned officers they’re called,’ said Fred. ‘NCOs. They appear mysteriously. Best not to risk it.’

Arthur shrugged and when Fred marched off, fell into step with him. After the first dozen paces, he felt like he was getting the hang of it and stopped worrying about his feet and concentrated on swinging his arms.

Stopping in the right way – or halting, as Sergeant Helve called it and had explained to him at length – was somewhat more difficult.

‘I’ll give the command, shall I?’ asked Fred as they approached the wall and the noticeboard. ‘Got to give it as the right foot comes down, we take one step with the left, hang on … no … oops. Halt!’

Fred had waited too long and both of them did funny little steps to avoid hitting the wall, which made them halt completely out of time. Arthur turned to laugh at Fred, only to freeze his smile into a grimace as Sergeant Helve loomed up out of the shadows.

‘What misbegotten disgrace of a movement do you call that?’ screamed the sergeant. A brass-tipped wooden pace-stick appeared in his hand and whistled through the air to point back towards the beds. ‘Double-back to your bunks like soldiers, not like some prissy paper-pushing puppets!’

Fred spun around and was off like a shot, still marching, but at a much faster rate. Arthur followed him more slowly, till he was suddenly accelerated by Sergeant Helve’s voice bellowing so close and so loud that it felt like it was inside his ear.

‘Double! When I say double, I mean at the double. Twice as fast as normal marching, Recruit Green!’

Arthur doubled, Sergeant Helve running backwards from him at a rate that Arthur supposed must be triple or quadruple time or some other measure only possible to sergeants.

‘Back straight, chin just so, swing those arms! Not that high!’

When Arthur was halfway back, Helve spun forwards and out of the pool of light from the hurricane lamp overhead. Before Arthur could take more than two steps, the sergeant appeared next to the closest bed, striking his pace-stick on the boot soles of the resting Denizen and yelling something that sounded like a single word:

‘Stand fast for inspection you dopy dozy disgraceful lump of leftover Nothing!’

The Denizen stood extremely fast, spare equipment cascading off the bed. His movement was like the first in a line of dominoes, as every Denizen along the row leaped from his or her bed.

‘Fall in on this line in order of height!’ commanded Sergeant Helve. He gestured with his pace-stick and a glowing white line appeared on the floor. ‘You will not be seen on the parade ground of Fort Transformation until I am sure you will not disgrace me! You will parade inside here instead! Every evening after dinner and every morning at one hour before sunrise, dressed and equipped as per the training schedule that you will find posted by the south door. Atten-hut!’

Arthur barely managed to reach the end of the line in time to brace at attention. Since Fred was slightly taller, he fell in on Arthur’s right. Both boys stared at a spot in space ahead of them as Helve marched along, pausing to pull Denizens out and rearrange them. When he got to Arthur, Helve looked down his nose at him, then marched out to the front, did an about-turn that seemed to Arthur as if it relied on him being suspended by invisible wires from the ceiling, and shouted, ‘Stand at ease!’

Only half the Denizens moved, the other half remaining at attention. Of those that moved, most moved the wrong leg or waved their arms or otherwise did things that attracted the displeasure of Sergeant Helve, who proceeded to tell them what they had done wrong and just how displeased this made him.

Two hours later, after hundreds of commands of ‘Atten-hut’ and ‘Stand at ease’, Arthur fell over from sheer exhaustion. Though his crab-armoured leg had stood up well, his entire body could not cope with the constant activity.

Helve marched over and looked down at him. When Fred bent to help Arthur up, the sergeant ordered him to stand fast.

‘You are a weak reed, Recruit Green!’ Helve shouted. ‘Weak reeds make for badly woven baskets! This platoon will not be a badly woven basket!’

What? thought Arthur. Grimly, he struggled to his feet and tried to straighten up. Helve stared at him, his jaw thrust out aggressively. Then the sergeant spun about and resumed his place in front of the platoon.

‘Reveille is one hour before dawn,’ he announced. ‘You will parade in Number Two Recruit Field Uniform at that time, unless detailed for a special parade, in which case you will wear Number One Recruit Dress Uniform. Platoon! Dismiss!’

Arthur turned to the left, stamped his foot, and marched off, as did Fred and eight of the platoon. The others turned right or completely around and crashed into their neighbours and fell over.

‘You all right?’ asked Fred. ‘I wouldn’t have thought a bit of foot-thumping would knock you out. Not like we’re proper mortals anymore.’

‘That’s the problem,’ said Arthur, very wearily. ‘I … I got kind of … a bit affected by sorcery. So I am more mortal now than most of the Piper’s children.’

‘Cripes!’ exclaimed Fred with extreme interest. ‘How did that happen?’

‘I’m not allowed to talk about it.’

‘I knew there’s been something going on in the Lower House,’ said Fred. ‘What with the mail being cut off and all. But we never heard what happened. Has Mister Monday been doing something he shouldn’t?’

‘Mister Monday?’ asked Arthur. ‘Then you haven’t heard –’

‘Heard what?’ Fred seemed eager for news. ‘I haven’t heard anything, that’s for sure. No mail for two years, and no newspaper neither. All the fault of the Lower House, least that’s what my boss said.’

Arthur didn’t reply. Fred was a good guy and he thought they would be friends. But Arthur couldn’t afford for his real identity to get out and he didn’t want to tell Fred too much too soon.

‘Heard what?’ Fred repeated.

‘I can’t talk about it,’ Arthur replied. ‘Sorry. If … if I get permission, I’ll tell you.’

‘Permission from who?’

‘Look, I really can’t talk about it. I just want to get to sleep. We’ve got to get up … I don’t know … soon.’

Arthur clutched at Fred’s shoulder as the ground shifted under his feet. He was so tired it took him several seconds to process that it wasn’t the ground moving. He was swaying where he stood, so exhausted he couldn’t even stand still.

‘We’d better check the schedule first,’ said Fred patiently. ‘I don’t like the sound of “special parades”.’