The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next 7)

“Not quite,” I replied slowly, as Landen’s career since winning the coveted Armitage Shanks Literary Prize had been in a somewhat downward trajectory.

“Why?” she asked.

“I guess he was looking after me,” I replied, as honestly as I could, “and the kids.”

“I would never have allowed that if he were my husband,” she scolded. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Has he still got one leg?”

I stared at her. “It’s not likely to have grown back.”

“He . . . he might have lost the other one.”

“He’s not that careless.”

“You had children?”

“Two.”

“What sort?”

“One of each.”

“A boy and a girl?”

“No, an ant and a whale.”

She glared at me, and a vein in her neck pulsed. “There’s no cause to be snippy.”

“I’ll stop being snippy if you stop making inane observations.”

“You were the one who stole my husband at the altar.”

I stared at her for a moment. Before she was Mother Daisy, she had been Daisy Mutlar and had almost ensnared Landen into marriage.

“He didn’t love you. He loved me, and technically speaking he was never your husband.”

“Only because of a short, meddling, plain-as-wallpaper, delusional ex-girlfriend with relationship issues and a borderline-personality disorder.”

“I’m not short.”

I could see Sister Henrietta tense, expecting another attack. There wasn’t one, however, and we moved on through a wide stone arch to the large building that I had seen attached to the tower. It was, as previously stated, enormous—perhaps more than seven hundred feet long and one hundred twenty feet to the roof. But what I hadn’t expected was that the interior was pretty much hollow and made of a delicate latticework of wood and steel that seemed to have an air of temporariness about it. Around the periphery of the chamber were workshops, rooms, scaffolding and the evidence of recently abandoned industry. Tools lay about, and large blocks of stone were lying on trolleys half finished. The focus of the centuries-old toil lay in the center of the room.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Finisterre.

The sculpture was about the size and shape of a carrier-class airship, but more flattened and clearly designed for longevity, not flight. At one end the sculpture had only just been begun, with the inner foundations constructed of blocks of limestone, while up near the finished end the limestone had been clad with delicately carved Portland stone, each piece set into position so finely it was difficult to see where the individual blocks lay. The surface was mottled, lumpy, and it was hard not to see what it was—the claw of an enormous rock-hewn lobster.

“Tremble before the might and majesty of the Great Lobster,” breathed Mother Daisy. “We had planned to build the entire Lobster. It would have been over a mile in length and made the pyramids at Cairo look like the work of uninspired amateurs.”

“How long did this take?” asked Finisterre.

“Five centuries. As soon as we were done with the claw, we were going to move the building shed to begin on the antennae and feeding mandibles. We estimated the whole thing might have been finished in as little as five thousand years.”

“It seems a shame,” I said, “after five centuries of toil.”

“Yes,” replied Daisy stoically, “we’ll grind it up and sell it as motorway hardcore. Shame, but . . . well, there you go. This way.”

We arrived at a large, steel-belted door. There was a bunch of keys on the rope tied around Daisy’s waist, and she paused, waited until Sister Henrietta wasn’t watching, then threw a punch in my direction.

I was more wary of her now and expertly sidestepped the blow, although it was so close I felt the air move on my face. She shrugged, cursed at me below her breath, then placed a key in the lock. It turned easily, and she pushed it open to reveal a long staircase that led upward into the gloom. Blast. Stairs.