Superior Saturday

EIGHT

THEY WERE TAKEN in a ship’s boat from the Rattus Navis IV to the Rattus Navis II. Rowed by eight salty Rats with blue ribbons trailing from their straw hats who kept in time to Watkingle’s hoarse roars of ‘Pull, Pull,’ the boat made a quick passage across the few hundred yards of open sea that separated the ships.

Arthur sat with his back against the bow, looking at the Rattus Navis IV and the ranks of Newniths on the deck. They were all facing the other way, studiously ignoring the departure of their brief fellow passenger. He was thinking about them, and where they might be going, and also thinking about where he was going, when a great spray of cold seawater splashed across his shoulders. He turned around just in time to cop the last of it in his open mouth, and saw that they were plunging down the face of a wave, having just cut through the crest of it, in the process taking on perhaps a third of a bucket of water. It would have been much more, save for Watkingle’s skill in steering the boat.

In that small amount of water, which had mostly fallen over Arthur, there was something else, which now lay wet and sodden in his lap. It was a fluffy yellow elephant – his toy elephant, which he’d already found once in the Border Sea, home of lost things, only to lose it again somewhere between the Sea and the Great Maze.

‘Elephant,’ he said dumbly, and clutched it to his chest, as tightly as he’d ever held it as a small child. Then he remembered who and where he was, and slowly lowered the toy back into his lap.

‘You need to be careful with that,’ said Dr Scamandros, looking at him over the top of his open copy of Xamanader’s Xenographical Xactions, a small scarlet-coloured book that looked too slim to have much sorcerous wisdom in it. ‘Childhood totems are very potent. Someone could make a Cocigrue from it, like the Skinless Boy, or perhaps a sympathetic needle to bring you pain.’

‘I won’t lose Elephant again,’ said Arthur. He put the small toy inside his tunic and made sure it couldn’t fall out. It made rather a strange lump, but he didn’t care.

‘I ’ad a toy when I was little,’ said Suzy. She frowned for a moment, then added, ‘Can’t remember what it was. It moved and made me laugh...’

‘Ahoy the boat! Come alongside!’

Suzy’s recollections were left behind as they scrambled up the rope ladder to the deck of the Rattus Navis II, where they were met by a nattily dressed Raised Rat whose uniform was much finer and considerably more decorative than any other Arthur had seen. Even the basic blue material of his coat had a swirling, silken pattern that caught the light.

‘Greetings, Lord Arthur! I am Lieutenant Finewhisker, commander of this vessel. Please, come below. We have our own small contingent of Newniths aboard, senior officers for the most part, who have been kind enough to foregather in the bow and take tea while you... ahem... visit.’

‘Thank you,’ said Arthur.

‘Follow me, please.’ Finewhisker moved quickly to the aft companionway and ushered them down to the captain’s great cabin. It was similar to the cabin in the Rattus Navis IV, but was much more elaborately decorated. There were red velvet curtains on the windows, and the chairs were upholstered in a bright patterned cloth that looked almost like a tartan.

Arthur hardly noticed the decorations. The cabin was dominated by an enormous green glass bottle that sat in a wooden cradle that was lashed to the deck. The bottle was at least eight feet long and five feet in diameter, and if it wasn’t for the neck being only as thick as his leg, he could have easily got inside without being turned into a Rat first.

The green glass was cloudy, but not entirely opaque, and something that looked like smoke or fog was swirling about inside, prevented from issuing out into the cabin by the Simultaneous Nebuchadnezzar’s huge, wire-wrapped, steel-bonneted cork.

‘Everything is prepared,’ said Finewhisker. ‘You need only enter the bottle, whenever you are... ah... made ready to do so. May I offer you a refreshing cordial, Lord Arthur, while your sorcerer prepares his spell?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Arthur. ‘How long will it take you, Doctor Scamandros?’

Scamandros was sorting out his various supplies on the bench. He glanced over at Arthur, blinked several times at the Nebuchadnezzar, and coughed.

‘Perhaps thirty minutes, Lord Arthur. If I may prevail upon someone to fetch me a large piece of cheese with the rind on, I would be grateful. I thought I had a slab of Old Chewsome, but I can’t lay my hand on it.’

‘I will have the cook deliver some,’ Finewhisker said. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable. I must go on deck for a few minutes, but I will be back in plenty of time to open the Nebuchadnezzar. Quite a specialised technique is required, so please do not attempt the cork yourselves. I should also warn you not to touch the glass. The exterior of the bottle is often very, very cold, and occasionally very, very hot. As neither the heat nor cold radiates, it can be a very unpleasant shock.’

‘Doesn’t radiate?’ muttered Scamandros. ‘How very interesting.’

He turned away from the plaster Rat footprints he had been holding and took a step toward the Nebuchadnezzar, then threw his hands up and turned back, the tattoo of a spinning ship’s wheel on his forehead indicating that he had recalled his immediate task.

‘So we go through this ’ere bottle,’ said Suzy thoughtfully. ‘Then we find Part Six of the Will, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur.

‘’Ow exactly do we do that?’ asked Suzy. ‘Reckon it might turn up like Part One and jump in me gob?’

‘I wish it would,’ said Arthur. ‘But it will be trapped somehow. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to feel its presence – I can kind of sense the Parts of the Will now. Or maybe it will be able to speak into my mind, as the other Parts did when I got close enough.’

‘I get a stomachache when Dame Primus is around,’ said Suzy. ‘Maybe that’ll help.’

‘Anything might help. We’ll have to be very careful. Presuming we can find and free Part Six, we’ll use the Fifth Key to head straight back to the Citadel-’

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ interrupted Scamandros. ‘You daren’t do that! Didn’t I explain? There’s always a working of sorcerers watching for sorcery in the Upper House. I daresay there’s even more of them than ever, these days. As soon as you start to use a Key, they’ll hit you with a confinement or encyst you-’

‘They will not dare cast a spell against the Rightful Heir, wielder of the Fifth Key!’ pronounced Arthur, in stentorian tones. He stood up and thumped his chest. ‘They are mere Denizens, it is I who-’

He stopped, wiped his suddenly sweating forehead, and sat down.

‘Sorry,’ he said, in his normal voice. ‘The Keys... they’re working on me. So how do we get out once we have Part Six, Doctor?’

‘I don’t know, Lord Arthur,’ said Scamandros. ‘I am not much of a strategiser... all I know is that if you use a Key, you will have only moments before they act against you. If you are very swift, you might be able to get out before they land a spell on you. And it is possible you might be too strong, even for hundreds or thousands of Saturday’s sorcerers. But if they can hold you for a few minutes, that would be enough for Saturday herself to join the working.’

‘And the Sixth Key is strongest in its own demesne,’ said Arthur. ‘What does getting encysted mean, by the way?’

Scamandros shuddered and his tattoos turned a sickly green.

‘You get turned inside out and trapped inside a... kind of bag... made out of your own bodily fluids... which are then vitrified, like glass.’

‘That’s awful! If that happened, wouldn’t I be dead?’

‘Not if you’re a Denizen. They can survive being encysted for a few months, maybe a year. Saturday used to have the cysts hung up here and there, as a warning. It was quite a rare punishment in my day.’

‘Sounds better than a hanging,’ said Suzy brightly. Then she frowned and added, ‘Only I can’t remember any hangings. We used to go to them, and my mum’d take our nuncheon wrapped up in a white cloth...’

Her voice trailed off as she tried to recall her long-ago human life.

‘I will also have to give you something to wrap the Fifth Key in,’ Scamandros continued. ‘To hide its sorcerous emanations. I have just the thing, somewhere... but first I must finish constructing this spell. If you would both be so kind as to remain totally silent and look the other way for a few minutes, I need complete concentration.’

Arthur and Suzy complied. Arthur twitched one of the fine curtains aside and looked out at the rolling sea. The waves came almost to the window, and spray splashed across every time the ship heeled over. But it was a tight window and didn’t leak. Arthur found it quite hypnotic just watching the mass of moving grey-green water topped with white. For a few minutes he could empty his mind of all his troubles and just watch the endless sea...

‘Done!’ exclaimed Scamandros.

Arthur and Suzy turned back. The plaster footprints and the Rat hair had disappeared and the bottle of activated ink was empty. Scamandros was holding the tin of grey paint in one hand and the large brush in the other.

‘Right, clothes off. I’ve got to get you painted up.’

Suzy took off her battered hat and started unbuttoning her coat.

‘Hang on, uh, wait a moment.’ Arthur’s cheeks coloured with embarrassment. He’d got used to mixed washrooms in the Glorious Army of the Architect, though they never really got completely undressed. But that was with Denizens. Suzy, though he could forget about it most of the time, was practically a normal human girl. ‘Why do we have to take our clothes off?’

‘The paint is transformative – it will prepare you to become a Raised Rat,’ Scamandros answered. ‘The activation I shall write upon the rind of the cheese, and then when you eat it, you will become a Raised Rat. I think.’

‘Okay,’ muttered Arthur. He turned back to look out the window and hesitantly undressed.

‘Least there’s ain’t no bibliophages wanting to have a nibble on any writing, like,’ said Suzy. ‘You had writing all over your other clothes, Arthur. Is that what they do back home these days?’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur. He took a deep breath and slipped off his underwear. ‘Start painting, Scamandros.’

‘He’s painting me,’ said Suzy. ‘You’ll ’ave to wait. Youch, that’s cold paint!’

Arthur bit back an order to hurry up and focussed on the view out the window. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Putting them on his hips seemed ridiculous when naked, but so did just letting them hang. Finally he folded them at the front, even though he thought that probably didn’t look too good either.

‘Right, Lord Arthur, here we go,’ said Scamandros. The next second Arthur felt a slap of cold fluid on his back, and flinched.

‘Steady!’ instructed Scamandros. ‘Haven’t any to waste.’

Arthur gritted his teeth and stood very still as Scamandros quickly brushed paint from his head to his heels.

‘Very good, Lord Arthur. Turn around, if you please.’

Arthur shut his eyes and slowly turned around. He heard a knock at the door at the same time, and a Raised Rat called out, ‘Got that cheese for you, sir. I’ll just put it here.’

‘Arms up, Lord Arthur,’ said Scamandros cheerily.

Arthur screwed his eyes shut even tighter and quickly raised his arms. He couldn’t help flinching as the paint went on some delicate areas.

‘You’re done!’ said Scamandros.

Arthur opened his eyes and looked down. He’d been expecting to see grey paint on himself, but instead he saw a fine coat of grey-black fur that covered him from ankle to wrist like a hairy wetsuit.

Though the fur went some way to preserving his modesty, Arthur quickly sat down, crossed his legs, and draped his coat across his lap.

‘You won’t have tails,’ said Scamandros sadly. ‘Couldn’t do it. But quite a few of the Rats go without, having lost them in sea fights and the like.’

He picked up the slab of cheese, broke it into two equal parts, and started writing with a peacock-feather pen he dipped in a tiny bottle of activated ink no larger than Arthur’s little fingernail.

‘I could get used to fur,’ said Suzy. ‘Saves washin’ and changin’ clothes.’

Arthur raised his eyebrows.

‘I do wash ’em,’ Suzy protested. ‘And change ’em. Lot of Denizen clothes clean themselves, you know. And change to fit. I wonder if this fur gets all manky in the rain...’

‘The cheese is ready,’ said Dr Scamandros. He held up the two pieces, each roughly triangular and about ten inches long.

‘Do we have to eat it all?’ Arthur didn’t sound excited by the prospect.

‘Um, perhaps not.’ Scamandros hesitated. ‘About two-thirds should do the trick... but it would be best to err on the side of completion.’

‘Right,’ said Arthur. ‘All we need now is Lieutenant Finewhisker to open the Nebuchadnezzar – oh, I almost forgot. You were going to give me something to hide the Key’s thingummies-’

Dr Scamandros nodded and fossicked about inside his coat for a few moments before bringing out a crumpled piece of glittering metallic cloth that looked rather like a crushed tinfoil hat. He smoothed it out and pushed the edges apart, revealing that it was a small rectangular bag.

‘Put the Key in there, and they won’t sniff it out,’ he said, handing it over. ‘At least not unless they’re very close and looking for it.’

Arthur took the mirror-shaped Fifth Key and put it in the bag. He pulled its drawstring tight, then opened it again, to put Elephant inside as well. Then after almost closing it, he added the Mariner’s medal that he’d been wearing on a makeshift dental-floss chain around his neck. With all three items safely in the bag, he finally drew the drawstring tight and tied the cord securely around his left wrist.

‘The cheese will complete your transformation,’ said Scamandros.

‘Except the Raised Rats usually wear clothes, so we’ll need some too,’ said Arthur. ‘We should get some of the sailor’s breeches or something. Is there anything in that chest over there?’

No one moved.

‘Have a look, please, Suzy,’ Arthur said.

Finally Suzy wandered over, threw open the chest, and rummaged about, retrieving several very fine uniforms that must have belonged to Lieutenant Finewhisker. Suzy threw a pair of breeches and a white shirt over to Arthur, and put on a similar set herself. She looked longingly at a long, swallow-tailed coat with its swirling azure patterns before reluctantly returning it to the chest.

‘Keep track of my gear, Doc,’ she said to Scamandros. ‘I’ll be wanting it, by and by.’

‘I guess we’re good to go,’ said Arthur. He looked across at Suzy and raised his cheese. She raised her lump back, as if making a toast.

‘Let’s eat!’ said Arthur, and he bit his cheese.

It wasn’t very tasty cheese. Arthur swallowed another huge mouthful and felt suddenly quite sick, the cabin spinning as it never had before. He started to say something about seasickness, and the change in the swell, but stopped. He was dizzy because he was shrinking and his eyes were moving in his head. His field of vision was changing – the things in front of him were harder to see, but he could see far more to the sides. The cabin was brighter than it had been too.

‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Scamandros. A tattooed torrent of Rats ran out from under his neckcloth and up the side of his face. ‘It works.’

‘Yes,’ said Arthur. He looked down at his odd, foreshortened arms and saw they ended in pink paws. ‘I’m a Raised Rat.’

His voice was higher-pitched and husky. He raised one paw to check that the bag with the Key and Elephant was still there. It felt much heavier than it had before, but it was securely fastened.

Arthur slowly began to get dressed, his paws fumbling till he got used to them, and to his different vision. He’d just finished doing up his trouser buttons when Lieutenant Finewhisker knocked and entered the cabin without waiting for a reply. He saluted Arthur, who inclined his snout in greeting.

‘Ready for the Nebuchadnezzar, Lord Arthur?’ Finewhisker asked.

‘Yes,’ Arthur replied.

‘Very nice clothes you have on, if I may say so,’ said Finewhisker cheerily. ‘Excellent taste. Now, a twist here, a twist on the other side...’

He deftly removed the wire cage that held the cork in place, and then gently turned the huge cork, easing it out. It made a screeching fingernails-on-the-blackboard noise as it slowly revolved out, and then a surprisingly small pop as it came free and Finewhisker staggered back with it in his arms.

A thin waft of smoke billowed out the neck of the bottle – black, choking coal smoke.

‘You need to jump straight through the neck,’ Finewhisker instructed. ‘A good strong jump with your paws forward. Avoid touching the glass if you can.’

‘Thank you, Finewhisker,’ said Arthur. ‘Thank you too, Doctor Scamandros. I will see you at the Citadel, I hope.’

‘Good luck, Lord Arthur,’ said the sorcerer. He bowed and added, ‘The spell will last a few hours, I should think.’

‘Come on, Arthur!’ said Suzy. She hopped over to the bottle and tensed, ready to jump at the neck. ‘Last one in is a stinking ra... um... rabbit.’

Arthur pulled her back by the scruff of her neck.

‘Not this time, Suzy,’ he said. ‘I go first.’

Suzy wriggled but didn’t really resist as he moved her aside. Even as a Raised Rat, he was unnaturally strong, though it didn’t occur to him that he shouldn’t be able to pick up someone who weighed as much as he did, using only a paw.

With Suzy out of the way, Arthur took a few practice hops across the cabin. Then he stretched his paws and backed up to stand in the open cabin doorway, facing the open neck of the Simultaneous Nebuchadnezzar. Smoke was still wafting out of it, and the interior was dark and cloudy.

Bravery and stupidity can be quite closely related, Arthur thought. I wonder what this is going to be...

He bent his legs, rushed forward, and dived straight at the open neck of the bottle.

He was in midair when a terrible last-minute thought slipped into his head:

What if the Raised Rats are lying? What if this bottle takes me somewhere entirely unexpected?