He hoped that was a good thing to visualise. At the back of his mind was a nagging worry that Leaf hadn’t been actually rescued but had gone from one trouble to another. What would the Denizens do to her? They would have been after him, not her. He hoped that since Lady Wednesday had sent him an invitation instead of an attack squad, she might be at least kind of friendly. But maybe that was just a sneaky plan to get him where she wanted. In which case, Drowned Wednesday might take out her bad feelings on Leaf . . .
If Leaf survived that line of lightning, Arthur thought guiltily. Surely that ship would have had some protection …
The bed gurgled under his feet and sank a bit more, reminding Arthur of his immediate problem.
‘A ship!’ he called out. ‘I need a ship! Or a boat! A better raft! Anything!’
His voice sounded alone and empty, lost amid the waves. He was answered only by the sloshing of the sea under, through, and around the mattress.
‘Land would do,’ said Arthur. He said this directly to the Captain’s disc, but once again it didn’t appear to do anything. It was just a carving of a boat on a piece of whalebone.
No land came in sight. Though he still couldn’t see any sun, it got warmer, and then positively hot. Even the seawater now constantly washing over Arthur didn’t cool him down. It was tepid and very salty, as he found when he tasted some on the end of his finger. He was getting very thirsty, and had started to remember all kinds of terrible stories about people dying of thirst at sea. Or going crazy from thirst first and hurling themselves into the water or attacking their friends and trying to drink their blood. . .
Arthur shook his head several times. It looked like he was already starting to go crazy, thinking of stuff like that. Particularly since he knew he couldn’t die of thirst in the House. He might feel like he was, and of course he could still go crazy. . .
Better to think of something positive to do. Like send a signal, or catch a fish. If there were any fish in this strange sea within the House. Of course, if there were fish, there might also be sharks. A shark would have no trouble pulling him off the bed. It hardly qualified as a raft anymore, it had sunk down so far.
Arthur shook his head again to try and clear away the negative thoughts.
Stop thinking about sharks! he told himself.
Just at that moment, he saw something in the water not far away. A dark, mostly submerged shape. A shadow largely under the surface.
Arthur yelped and tried to stand up against the headboard, hopping as his immobilised leg got caught under a fold of sheet. This violent action changed the balance of the bed, and one corner went down several feet, releasing a huge air bubble.
This downward progress halted for a few seconds as air bubbles continued to pop to the surface, then the bed sank like the Titanic, one end briefly sticking straight up before it subsided beneath the waves. Arthur let go of it just in time and pushed himself away. He thrashed out a rough backstroke for a few yards to make sure he wouldn’t be sucked down, then trod water with one leg and his arms circling, as he frantically looked around for the dark shadow again.
There it was, only a few yards away! Arthur braced himself for the shock of a shark’s attack, his body rigid. His head sank under the water as he stopped moving, then broke free again as he instinctively struggled to swim again.
The dark shape didn’t attack. It didn’t even move. Arthur stared at it and saw that it wasn’t a shark. He swam closer to confirm that it was, in fact, a dark green ball about six feet in diameter. It had an irregular surface rather like matted weeds and was floating quite deep, so that only a curve fourteen inches or so high rode above the sea.
Arthur splashed over to it. On closer inspection, it was clearly a buoy or some floating marker, totally covered in green weeds. Arthur reached out to touch it. A huge strand of green weeds came away in his hand, revealing a bright red surface beneath.
Arthur touched that. It felt slightly sticky, and some of the red stuff came away on his hand. It was like chewing gum, impossible to get off. Arthur crossly wiped his hands but that only smeared it across his fingers, and his head dipped under. His broken leg wasn’t weighed down that much by the cast, but he couldn’t bend his knee and he couldn’t tread water well enough just with one leg to really try and clean his hands, since he had to make swimming motions as well.
Arthur started to clear the weeds away with one hand. While doing that, he noticed that the buoy didn’t move far with the swell. Each time one of the bigger waves came past, it swept Arthur five or six yards away and he had to swim back. The buoy didn’t move anywhere near as much.
It had to be fixed to something. Arthur duck-dived down and, sure enough, a barnacle-encrusted chain led down from the buoy, down through the sunlit water and into the dark depths.
He resumed cleaning the weeds away with new enthusiasm and so got a lot more of the sticky stuff on his hands. It was tar, or something like tar, though it didn’t smell.
The buoy has to mark something, Arthur thought. It must be used by someone, who’ll come past. I might even be able to climb up on it.
When the buoy was almost clean it rode much higher in the water. Arthur had hoped he might find some handles on it, or projections he could hold on to, because he was getting very tired. But there weren’t any. The only part of the buoy that was of any interest was a small brass ring right near the top. Arthur could only just reach it.
The ring was about the size of the top joint of Arthur’s little finger, far too small for him to hold on. It also felt a bit loose. Arthur gave it a pull, hoping that it might come out and he could somehow make the hole bigger to create a handhold.
It came out with a very loud popping sound, followed immediately afterwards by a ten-foot-high shower of sparks and a loud ticking noise as if a large and noisy clock had started up deep within the ball.
Arthur started frantically backstroking away from it, his body almost reacting faster than his brain, which had rapidly processed the fact that this floating ball was some sort of floating bomb — a mine — and it was going to explode.
A few seconds later, with Arthur only ten yards away, the buoy did explode. But it was not the lethal blast Arthur feared. There was a bright flash, and a rush of air above Arthur’s head, but no deadly rain of fragments.
Smoke poured out of the ball, dark black smoke that coiled up into the air in a very orderly fashion, quite unlike any smoke Arthur had seen before. It started to whip about like a snake, dancing all over the place. Eventually its ‘head’ connected with its ‘tail’ to form a giant smoke ring that hovered ten feet above the buoy, which was still intact, though its upper half had broken open into multiple segments like a lotus.
The smoke ring slowly closed in on itself to become an inky cloud that spun about for a minute or so, then it abruptly burst apart, turning into eight jet-black seabirds that shrieked ‘Thief!’ above Arthur’s head before they each flew off in a different direction, covering the eight points of the compass rose.
Arthur was too tired to worry about what the seabirds were doing, or who they might be alerting. All he cared about was the fact that now the top half of the buoy was open, he could pull himself up on it and have a rest.
Arthur had only just enough energy to drag himself over and into the buoy. It was full of water, but he could sit in it quite comfortably and rest. That was all he wanted to do for a while. Rest.
But after only twenty minutes, according to his still-backwards but otherwise reliable and waterproof watch, Arthur found that he had rested enough. Though there was still no visible sun, it felt like one was beating down on him. He was really hot, and he was sure he was getting sunburned and that his tongue had started to swell from lack of water. He wished he’d managed to keep a sheet from the bed to use as a sunshade. He took his dressing gown off and made that into a makeshift turban, but it didn’t really help.
At that point, Arthur started to hope that whoever the birds were supposed to alert would show up. Even if they thought he was a thief. That implied there was something to steal here, which didn’t seem to be the case. The buoy was just a big, empty, floating ball with the top hemisphere opened up. There was nothing inside it except Arthur.
Another baking, uncomfortable hour passed. Arthur’s broken leg began to ache again, probably because the painkillers he’d had in the hospital were wearing off. The high-tech cast didn’t seem to be operational anymore and Arthur could see distinct holes in it now.
Arthur picked at one of the holes and grimaced. The cast was falling apart. He was definitely sunburned as well, the backs of his hands turning pink, as if trying to match the bright red stain on his palms. According to Arthur’s watch it was nine o’clock at night, but there was no change in the light. Without being able to see any sun, he couldn’t tell whether night was approaching. He wasn’t even sure there would be a night. There was in the Lower House, but that didn’t mean anything. There might not be any relief from the constant heat.
He wondered if he should try and swim somewhere, but dismissed the idea as quickly as it came up. He was lucky to have found this buoy. Or perhaps it wasn’t luck, it was the Mariner’s disc that had led him here. In any case, Arthur couldn’t swim for more than half an hour at the most, and there wasn’t much chance of finding land in that time. Better to sit here and hope that the smoky seabirds brought someone.
Two hours later, Arthur felt a much cooler breeze waft across the back of his neck. He opened his puffy eyes to see a shadow passing across the sky. A veil of darkness advanced in a line across the horizon. Stars, or suitable facsimiles of them, began to twinkle as the light faded before the approaching line of night.
The wind and the lapping sea grew cold. Arthur turned his turban back into a dressing gown, shivered, and hunched up into a tighter ball. Clearly he was going to be sunburned during the day and then frozen at night. Either one would kill him, so not dying of hunger and thirst was no great bonus.
As he had that thought, Arthur saw another star. A fallen star, quite close to the sea, and moving towards him. It took another moment for his heat-addled brain to recognise that it was in fact a light.
A light fixed to the bowsprit of a ship.
Four
THE FALLEN STAR grew closer, and the ship became more visible, though it was still little more than a dark outline in the fading light. A rather rotund outline, for this ship looked to be very broad, wallowing its way through the waves. It had only two masts, rather than the three of the ship that had picked up Leaf, and its square-rigged sails were definitely not of the luminous variety.
Arthur didn’t care. He stood up gingerly, his muscles cramping from weariness and confinement in the buoy, and waved frantically.
‘Help! I’m over here! Help!’
There was no answering shout from the ship. It rolled and plunged towards him, but he could see some of the sails being furled, and there were Denizens rushing about on the deck. Somebody was shouting orders, and others were repeating or questioning them. All in all, it didn’t appear very organised.
Particularly as the ship sailed right past him. Arthur couldn’t believe it. He shouted himself hoarse and almost fell out of the buoy from jumping up and down. But the ship kept on its way, till Arthur could only see the glow of the single lantern that hung from its stern rail.
Arthur watched till the light disappeared into the darkness, then he sat down, totally defeated. He rested his head in his hands and fought back a sob.
I am not going to cry, he told himself. I will work something out. I am the Master of the Lower House and the Far Reaches. I am not going to die in a buoy in some rotten sea!
Arthur took a deep breath and lifted his head up.
There will be another ship. There must be another ship.
Arthur was clutching at this hope when he saw the light again, followed by another.
Two lights!
They were a hundred feet apart and perhaps two hundred yards away. It took Arthur only a second to understand that he was looking at the bow and stern lights of the ship. He’d lost sight of the stern light as the vessel turned, but now it was heaved-to, broadside on to him.
A few moments later, he heard the slap of oars in the water, and Denizens chanting as they rowed a small boat towards him. Arthur couldn’t make out the words till they were quite close, and the light of a bull’s-eye lantern flickered across the water, searching for Arthur and the buoy.
‘Flotsam floats when all is sunk.
Jetsam thrown isn’t just junk.
Coughs and colds and bright red sores
Waiting for us, so bend yer oars!’
The yellow beam of light swept over Arthur, then backtracked to shine directly in his face. Arthur raised his arm to shield his eyes. The light wasn’t bright enough to blind, but it made it hard to see the boat and its crew. There were at least a dozen Denizens aboard, most of them rowing.
‘Back oars!’ came a shout from the darkness. ‘Yarko was right! There is a Nithling on that buoy! Make ready your crossbows!’
‘I’m not a Nithling!’ shouted Arthur. ‘I’m . . . I’m a distressed sailor!’
‘A what?’
‘A distressed sailor,’ replied Arthur. He had read that somewhere. Sailors were supposed to help one another.
‘What ship? And what are you doing on that treasure marker?’
‘Uh, my ship was the Steely Bed. It sank. I swam here.’
There was a muttering aboard the boat. Arthur couldn’t clearly hear all the words, but he heard ‘claim,’ ‘ours,’ ‘stick ’im and sink ’im,’ and the sound of someone being knocked on the head and grunting in pain. He hoped it was the Denizen who said ‘stick ’im,’ since he was fairly sure he was the ‘’im’ being referred to.
‘Give way,’ shouted the Denizen in charge. The oars dipped into the sea again, and the boat moved forward. As it came alongside the buoy, Arthur got his first real look at the crew, with the Denizen holding the bull’s-eye lantern opening its shutters to spread the light around.