‘I’ll have to get the full story later,’ Arthur interrupted. He was desperate to hear all the details, but he had to concentrate on the problems immediately at hand. ‘We’ve only got a few minutes. Sir Thursday knows who I am. He’s ordered me not to free the Will, which I think is in that cap badge he wears. The snake. And the Key is the sword.’

Suzy scratched her head. ‘That’s a bit of a poser. I thought he’d be the sort who’d just cut your head off.’

‘He follows orders and regulations,’ said Arthur. ‘But I reckon if I show any insubordination he will kill me. Besides, I think he’s planning to get me killed anyway, during this attack on the spike.’

‘He’s bound to,’ agreed Suzy, which wasn’t very encouraging. ‘What are you going to do?’

Arthur looked around to check that no one had come within hearing distance.

‘The Will spoke to me, in my head. It said it could free itself if Sir Thursday is sufficiently distracted. Once it’s free, I guess it can help me get the Key. Only … I have to admit, even if I do get the Key and the Will helps, I’m a bit … nervous … about taking on Sir Thursday.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Suzy.

‘Also, since I’ve been ordered not to try to free the Will, I can’t even try to distract Sir Thursday myself,’ said Arthur.

‘Why not?’ asked Suzy. ‘Just disobey orders. I do it all the time, with Old Primey.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ Arthur explained. ‘I can feel a sort of pressure in my head when I think about disobeying orders, and find it hard to even imagine going against a direct order from Sir Thursday. I think it’s from recruit school, and it’s gotten even worse since I was commissioned. That must be why Sir Thursday made me an officer.’

‘I’ll distract him,’ said Suzy. She had a thoughtful look in her eyes. ‘I reckon I’ve had so much practice disobeying orders I can manage.’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Arthur hurriedly. ‘We have to wait until Sir Thursday has destroyed the Nothing spike. If it isn’t destroyed, we won’t have a chance against the New Nithlings … though now that I think about it … ’

‘What?’ Suzy took a power-spear from a rack and mimed throwing it, to test its weight. Arthur ducked as she swung it around but kept talking.

‘I wonder if anyone has tried talking to the New Nithlings and their commander,’ said Arthur. ‘I know they’re the enemy, but they’re not like normal Nithlings that just want to kill and destroy. Who knows what these ones really want? Maybe I could negotiate with them.’

‘Negotiate with Nithlings?’ asked Suzy. ‘You can’t negotiate with Nithlings –’ ‘Five minutes!’ called the sergeant who’d shown Arthur to the armoury. ‘Five minutes!’

‘Five minutes!’ repeated Arthur. ‘I’d better get ready.’

He ran over to a rack of Legionary armour and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled out a junior centurion’s bronzed cuirass rather than the segmented armour of an ordinary Legionary. He put it on, and wedged the plastic box with the sorcerous pocket into the sheath under the armhole of his cuirass, meant to hold a last-resort dagger. ‘Can you get me a savage-sword, Suzy? One of the medium-sized ones.’

‘Yes, sir!’ said Suzy, snapping a salute.

‘You don’t have to –’Arthur started to say. He stopped when he saw Suzy’s eyeline. She was looking over his shoulder. At the same time, someone shouted, ‘Atten-hut!’

Arthur spun around, cuirass straps flapping loose. Sir Thursday had entered the armoury. He was still wearing his scarlet Regimentals but had on an iron Legionary helmet instead of a beret, without the badge. He was holding a very long, broad sword that Arthur instantly knew was the Fourth Key. He could feel its power through his bones, a kind of shivery ache that travelled from his fingers to his backbone and down his legs.

The sword had a very wide hilt and handle, so it could be swung with two hands … or by one if the wielder was very strong. There was a decorative metal snake wound around the plain brass hilt. All in all, the sword was a much larger twin to the one that had been on Sir Thursday’s cap badge.

‘Mister Green!’ snapped Sir Thursday. ‘Fall the troops in and check their equipment.’

‘Yes, sir!’

Arthur hurriedly fastened the cuirass straps up under his arms, buckled on the savage-sword that Suzy handed him, and slapped on an officer’s helmet, complete with its scarlet horsehair crest. For a few seconds after that he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he remembered what the officers always did: Tell a sergeant to take care of it. He looked around and located the closest Piper’s child sergeant, a Borderer with three black chevrons on her arm. Arthur quickly marched over to her.

‘What’s your name, Sergeant?’

‘Quicksilver,’ said the sergeant. ‘Sir.’

‘You’ll be the troop … platoon … whatever-we-are sergeant, Sergeant,’ said Arthur. He was a bit flustered, talking to a sergeant like this, after his weeks in recruit school on the receiving end of orders. ‘Have everyone fall in, and we’ll both check their equipment.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the girl. She looked quite a lot like Suzy, Arthur noticed. She had the same kind of narrow face, though Sergeant Quicksilver had very short black hair and her eyes were brown. ‘Suggest we call the unit a raiding party, sir.’

‘Good – carry on, Sergeant,’ said Arthur. That was what officers said when they didn’t know what to do.

‘Raiding part-eeeee!’ yelled Quicksilver. ‘Fall in! One rank!’

The Piper’s children quickly formed up, automatically sorting themselves into line in order of height and shuffling sideways to get the right separation, measured by holding out a clenched fist against the shoulder of the soldier to the right. They were an odd-looking bunch. Nearly all of them had combined different kinds of armour, weapons, and equipment from the various standard items used by soldiers of the Regiment, Legion, Horde, or the Borderers. Arthur realised that all of them except for him had at least two weapons, and often three or four. He also realised that none of the Artillerists had volunteered, which perhaps explained why that unit was called the Moderately Honourable Artillery Company.

‘Raiding party ready for inspection, sir!’

Arthur exchanged salutes with Quicksilver, then walked along the line, looking over each soldier. If he’d felt more confident he would have commented on their weapons or equipment, but instead he just asked their names. He didn’t feel like a real officer, but even as a fellow soldier he wanted to know who they were. After the battle at Fort Transformation, he knew that at least some of them would probably not be coming back. He wanted to know the names of his comrades, and he tried to fix their faces in his mind as well, so he would have something to remember if he survived the coming battle and they did not.

He repeated the names in his head as they were spoken, memorising them. He’d always had an excellent memory, particularly for words and music.

The eight Piper’s children apart from himself, Suzy, Fred and Quicksilver were Gluepot, Yellowbristle, Awning, Jazebeth, Halfcut, Sable, Fineold, and Ermine. They didn’t tell him their first names. Four were girls and four were boys, and they looked between the ages of nine and thirteen.

At the end of the line, Arthur wheeled around and marched over to Sir Thursday, who was waiting patiently. Again, there was an exchange of salutes as Arthur declared the raiding party ready. Sir Thursday nodded, then marched over to address the soldiers directly.

‘I will enter the Improbable Stair first,’ announced Sir Thursday. ‘You will bring up the rear, Mister Green. The soldier following me will hold the back of my belt, and the soldier behind him his belt, and so on. If anyone lets go, he or she will fall out of the Improbable Stair wherever we happen to be at that instant, and anyone holding on will also go. Therefore it is essential that everyone keep a good grip.

‘The Improbable Stair is … improbable … so though we are travelling a very short distance within the House, it is possible that we may emerge upon a landing of the Stair, which may be anywhere and anywhen. If this occurs, do not let go! We shall embark upon the Stair again immediately. No one must let go until I give the order. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir!’ shouted the raiding party.

Twenty-four

SIR THURSDAY DIDN’T waste any time. As soon as he’d finished talking, he walked over to the right-hand side of the line of Piper’s children and took his place. ‘Raiding party!’ he ordered. ‘Right turn! Take hold of the belt of the soldier in front of you!’

Arthur hurriedly joined the end of the line as everyone turned right. He barely had time to grab Fred’s belt before Sir Thursday sketched out a series of steps with his sword, its point leaving glowing lines in the air.

‘No need to stay in step!’ called out Sir Thursday as he raised his boot and improbably trod on the first of those glowing, insubstantial steps he’d just drawn. ‘You may find it helpful to shut your eyes – but you must hang on!’

Though Arthur had used the Improbable Stair before, he’d never seen anyone else disappear into it. When he’d travelled on the Stair he had been totally focused on imagining a stair where there wasn’t one, a series of steps made of brilliantly white marble, stretching up forever.

But that wasn’t what he saw now. Sir Thursday ascended the glowing step he’d drawn and then his head disappeared as if it had been suddenly erased, and then his shoulders too and, all too quickly, the rest of him. The Piper’s child following gasped as her arm disappeared, then shut her eyes and was dragged onwards, apparently into disintegration.

It was hard being last, though the line moved very quickly. Arthur noticed that not one of the Piper’s children held back, though most of them turned their heads at the last second as if to avoid something happening to their faces. And their eyes were closed.

Arthur kept his eyes open. He wanted to be aware of any tricks Sir Thursday might try on the Stair.

He should have been relieved to find himself surrounded by white light, with the marble steps under his feet and a curling line of soldiers ascending the Stair ahead of him. But he wasn’t.

The Stair had not been a spiral when he’d climbed it before. Now it was tightly coiled.

Arthur realised he’d stopped for a second when he was jerked forward. For a horrible instant he thought he was about to lose his grip on Fred’s belt. But his fingers were jammed through and he closed them again tightly, looking only at the steps as he staggered forward.

‘Hang on!’ exclaimed Fred as quietly as he could while still being emphatic. ‘Sir.’

Arthur hung on and concentrated on the steps under his feet. For the first twenty or thirty or so he kept expecting Sir Thursday to do something, but then he remembered how hard it had been for him to lead just Suzy Blue up the steps. The Trustee wouldn’t be able to do anything unless he put himself at risk of falling off the Stair as well – and in the case of the Improbable Stair a fall meant ending up somewhere you’d almost certainly not want to be.

This realisation allowed Arthur to start worrying about what was going to happen when they came out at the other end. Even if Sir Thursday did only need five or six minutes to destroy the Nothing spike, a lot could happen in that time. In the battle at Fort Transformation, scores of Denizens and New Nithlings had been killed or wounded in the first thirty seconds, let alone the first five minutes.

There was also the possibility that something would happen to Sir Thursday. If he wasn’t able to lead them into the Improbable Stair, then they’d be trapped, easy pickings for the New Nithlings.

Unless I can lead everyone back into the Improbable Stair, thought Arthur.

He wondered if using the Stair would increase the sor-cerous contamination of his blood and bone. The crocodile ring was in his belt pouch, but there was no point thinking about it, or about the contamination. Arthur knew he would have to do whatever it took for them to survive.

Something caught Arthur’s eye, and he looked up. The Stair stretched on forever, disappearing in a haze of bright white light. But Sir Thursday was gone, as were the two Piper’s children behind him. The third was disappearing, in mid-step.

‘We’re coming out!’ said Arthur. ‘Hold on!’

He felt a bit silly as he said ‘hold on’ because almost everyone had disappeared by the time he said it, so only Fred heard, and he knew Arthur was the one who hadn’t been holding on properly.

Then Fred was gone, and this time Arthur did instinctively shut his eyes. When he forced them open only a microsecond later, he saw the line of Piper’s children ahead of him, with Sir Thursday at the head. Only a few feet beyond Sir Thursday was a huge, rapidly spinning cone of utter darkness, shot through with occasional coruscations of blinding white.

It was the spike – and not only was it spinning, it was bigger than Arthur had thought it would be. The part he could see was about thirty feet high and twenty feet in diameter at the top, but it looked like it was half-buried in the ground, the point having long since bored its way through the topsoil and into whatever material lay beneath the organic layer of the five hundred/five hundred tile.

‘Let go!’ roared Sir Thursday. ‘Take up defensive positions.’

Arthur let go and looked around. They were on an earthen ramp reinforced with cut timber that had been built to emplace the spike. It was ten feet wide and perhaps sixty feet long. The raiding party was at the top of it, right next to the spike.