Mister Monday (The Keys to the Kingdom 1)

'Hello, my boy,' he said. 'Let's have a bow for Mister Monday.'

Arthur stared at him. It must be an unknown side effect, he thought. Oxygen deprivation. Hallucinations.

A moment later, he felt a hard bony hand grip his head and bob it forward several times, as Sneezer made him bow to the man in the bath-chair. The shock and unpleasantness of the touch made Arthur cough and lose all his hard-won control over his breathing. Now he really was panicking, and he couldn't breathe at all.

'Bring him here,' instructed Mister Monday. With a languid sigh, he leaned over the side of the bath-chair as Sneezer dragged Arthur effortlessly over, using only two fingers to pick the boy up by the back of his neck.

'You're sure this one will die straight away?' Mister Monday asked, reaching out to lift Arthur's chin and look at his face. Unlike Sneezer, Monday's hands were clean and his nails trimmed. There was hardly any force in his grip, but Arthur found he couldn't move at all, as if Mister Monday had pressed a nerve that paralysed his whole body.

Sneezer rummaged in his pocket with one hand, not letting go of Arthur's neck. He pulled out half a dozen scrunched-up pieces of paper, which hung in the air as if he'd laid them on an invisible desk. He sorted through them quickly, smoothed one out, and held it against Arthur's cheek. The paper shone with a bright blue light and Arthur's name appeared on it in letters of gold.

'It's him, no doubt at all,' said Sneezer. He thrust the paper back in his pocket, and all the others went back in as if they were joined together on a thread. 'Arthur Penhaligon. Due to drop off the twig any minute. You'd best give him the Key, sir.'

Mister Monday yawned again and let go of Arthur's chin. Then he slowly reached inside the left sleeve of his silk robe and pulled out a slender metal spike. It looked very much like a thin-bladed knife without a handle. Arthur stared at it, his mind and sight already fuzzy again from lack of oxygen. Somewhere in his head, under that fuzziness, the panicked voice that had told him to use his inhaler was screaming again.

Run away! Run away! Run away!

Though the weird paralysis from Monday's touch had gone, Sneezer's grip did not lessen for a moment, and Arthur simply had no strength to break free.

'By the powers vested in me under the arrangements entered into in the blah, blah, blah,' muttered Mister Monday. He spoke too quickly for Arthur to make out what he was saying. He didn't slow down until he reached the final few words. 'And so let the Will be done.'

As he finished, Monday thrust out with the blade. At the same time, Sneezer let Arthur go and the boy fell back on the grass. Monday laughed wearily and dropped the blade into Arthur's open hand. Instantly, Sneezer made Arthur wrap his fingers around it, pushing so hard that the metal bit into his skin. With the pain came another sudden shock. Arthur found that he could breathe. It was as if a catch had been turned at the top of his lungs, unlocking them to let air in.

'And the other,' said Sneezer urgently. 'He has to have it all.'

Monday peered across at his servant and frowned. He also started to yawn, but quashed it, taking an angry swipe across his own face.

'You're very keen for the Key to leave my possession, even if only for a few minutes,' said Monday. He'd been about to take something else out of his other sleeve, but now he hesitated. 'And to give me boiled brandy and water. Too much boiled brandy and water. Perhaps, in my weariness, I have not given this matter quite the thought . . .'

'If the Will finds you, and you have not given the Key to a suitable Heir –'

'If the Will finds me,' mused Monday. 'What of it? If the reports be true, only a few lines have escaped their durance. I wonder how much power they hold?'

'It would be safer not to put it to the test,' said Sneezer, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Anxiety obviously made his nose run.

'With the complete Key in his possession, the boy might live,' observed Monday. For the first time he sat up straight in his bath-chair and the sleepy look was gone from his eyes. 'Besides, Sneezer, it seems odd to me that you of all my servants should have come up with this plan.'

'How so, sir?' asked Sneezer. He tried to smile ingratiatingly, but the effect was repulsive.

'Because generally you're an idiot!' shouted Monday in a rage. He flicked a finger and an unseen force struck Sneezer and Arthur, sending them tumbling roughly across the grass. 'Whose game are you playing here, Sneezer? You're in league with the Morrow Days, aren't you? You and that Inspector, and the Will safe as ever? Do you expect to take over my office?'

'No,' said Sneezer. He slowly stood up and began to advance upon the bath-chair. With each step, his voice changed, becoming louder and clearer, booming into the distance. Trumpets sounded as he trod, and Arthur saw letters of sharp black ink form upon his skin. The letters danced and joined into lines of type that rushed across Sneezer's face like living, shining tattoos.

'Into the trust of my good Monday, I place the administration of the Lower House,' said both the type and the booming voice that came out of his mouth, but was not Sneezer's. 'Until –' Arthur couldn't believe the languid Monday could move so fast. He drew something from his sleeve, a glittering object that he pointed at Sneezer as he shouted deafening words that sounded like thunderclaps, the vibration of them smashing through the air and shaking the ground where Arthur lay.

There was a flash of light, a concussion that shook the earth, and a stifled scream, though Arthur did not know who it came from, Sneezer or Mister Monday.

Arthur shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Monday, bath-chair, and Sneezer had disappeared, but there was still black type running in a thread through the air, moving too quickly for him to read the words. The letters twirled above Arthur into a spiral, a whirlwind of shiny letters. Something heavy materialised between the lines of type and fell down, striking him sharply on the head.

It was a book, a slim notebook, no bigger than Arthur's hand. It was bound in green cloth. Arthur absently picked it up and slid it into his shirt pocket. He looked up and around again, but the lines of type were gone. They had slowed down just long enough for him to make out only four words: Heir, Monday, and The Will.

Arthur could see Mister Weightman sprinting towards him now, a phone at his ear, and the school nurse running much more slowly from the direction of the gym, an Oxy-Viva case in her hand. Behind Weightman came the whole of Arthur's gym class. Even the walkers were running.

Arthur looked at them and would have groaned if any air could have got out of his lungs. Not only was he going to die, it would be in front of everybody. They would all be interviewed on TV and say things that sounded sort of nice but really meant they thought he was a stupid loser.

Then he noticed that he could breathe. For a while there his brain had been tripping out from lack of oxygen, with visions and everything, but the inhaler had worked sufficiently well to get him over the worst . He could breathe a bit, and it was worth the pain in his hand – Arthur looked at that hand. It was still clenched in a fist, with a trickle of blood running out below his little finger. He'd thought he was clutching his inhaler, but he wasn't. He was holding a weird strip of metal, sharp-pointed on one end with a circular loop on the other. It was heavy and was made of silver with fancy gold inlay, all swirls and curlicues.

Arthur stared at it for a second before he realised what it was. It was the minute hand of some sort of antique clock. It was real and so was the notebook in his pocket. Mister Monday and Sneezer had been there. It wasn't all an oxygen-deprivation dream.

Weightman and the nurse would be on him in a minute. Arthur looked around wildly, trying to think of somewhere he could hide the clock hand. It would be taken away from him for sure.

There was a patch of discoloured grass a few paces away. Arthur crawled over to it and plunged the minute hand into the earth, until only the hollow circle remained, hidden by some tufts of yellow grass.

As soon as he let the hand go, he felt his chest tighten. That catch had snapped shut again, and there was no more air. Arthur rolled over, trying to put some distance between himself and the minute hand. He didn't want anyone else to find it.

He'd come back to get it as soon as he could, he thought.

If he lived.

Two

ARTHUR WAS STILL in the hospital twenty-four hours after the strange events of Monday morning. He had spent most of that time unconscious and still felt dazed and confused. Though he was breathing reasonably well again, the doctors wanted to keep him in for a few more days because of his history.

Fortunately Arthur's mother was a very important medical researcher who worked for the government, so not only did the whole family have the best medical insurance, doctors all around the country knew Dr. Emily Penhaligon and her work. Arthur always got good treatment and was kept in the hospital even when they made other sicker people leave. He usually felt bad about that later, but when he was actually in the hospital he was too ill to think about it.

Arthur's father was a musician. He was a very good musician, but not always a very commercially minded one. He wrote brilliant songs and then forgot to do anything with them. He'd been the guitar player in a famous band called The Ratz thirty-five years ago, and sometimes people still recognised him. He'd been called Plague Rat then, but had long since gone back to his original name, Robert 'Bob' Penhaligon. He still got a lot of money from his time in The Ratz, since he'd written most of the songs, some of which were multiplatinum sellers. They still got played on some radio stations quite a lot and new bands used samples from them, particularly Bob's guitar parts.

These days, Bob Penhaligon looked after the family and noodled away on one of his three pianos or one of his twelve guitars, while Emily Penhaligon spent more time than she wanted to in her laboratory doing things with DNA and computers that benefited the whole human race but took her away from her own family.

Arthur had six brothers and sisters. The eldest three, two boys and a girl, were from Bob's liaisons with three different women when he was on tour with The Ratz. The fourth was from Emily's first marriage. The next two were both Bob and Emily's.

Then there was Arthur. He was adopted. His birth parents had both been doctors who worked with Emily. They'd died in the last really big influenza epidemic, the one that had finally been controlled by a new anti-flu drug they'd helped to discover – as part of Emily's team. Arthur had only been a week old when they died. He'd lived through the flu, but he was probably an asthmatic because of it. Besides his parents, he had no immediate family, so Emily and Bob had been successful in their application to adopt.

It didn't worry Arthur that he was adopted. But every now and then he would leaf through the photo album that was almost all he had to remember his birth parents. The other thing was a short video from their wedding, which he found almost unbearable to watch. The influenza plague had killed them only eighteen months later, and even to Arthur they looked ridiculously young. He liked that as he got older he looked more like both his birth parents, in different ways. So they lived on in him.

Arthur had known he was adopted since he was little. Bob and Emily treated all the children the same way, and the children considered themselves all brothers and sisters. They never introduced one another as 'half brother' or 'half sister' and never explained the fact that there were twenty years between the eldest, Erazmuz (born in Bob's rock music heyday), and the youngest, Arthur. They also didn't explain the difference in looks, skin colour, or anything else. They were simply all part of the family, even if only the youngest three were still at home.

The four eldest were Erazmuz, who was a major in the army and had children of his own; Staria, a serious theatre actress; Eminor, a musician, who'd changed his name to Patrick; and Suzanne, who was at college. The three at home were Michaeli, who was at a local college; Eric, who was in his last year of high school; and Arthur.

Arthur's father, Michaeli, and Eric had already been to see him the night before, and his mother had popped in early in the morning to check that he was okay. Once she was sure of that, she lectured him about it being better to look like a total loser in everyone's eyes than to be dead.

Arthur always knew when his mother was approaching, because doctors and nurses would appear from all over the place, and, by the time she arrived, Emily would be trailing eight or nine white-coated people behind her. Arthur was used to her being a Medical Legend, just as he was used to his father being a Former Musical Legend.

Since all of his family in town had already visited once, Arthur was surprised when two more people came to see him early on Tuesday afternoon. Kids his own age. He didn't recognise them for a second, since they weren't wearing black. Then he realised who they were. Ed and the girl who had helped him use the inhaler. This time they were in regular school uniform, white shirts, grey trousers, blue ties.

'Hi,' said the girl from the door. 'Can we come in?'

'Uh, sure,' mumbled Arthur. What could these two want?

'We didn't meet properly yesterday,' said the girl. 'I'm Leaf.'

'Leith?' asked Arthur. She'd pronounced it strangely.

'No, Leaf, as in from a tree,' said Leaf reluctantly. 'Our parents changed their names to reflect their commitment to the environment.'

'Dad calls himself Tree,' said the boy. 'I'm supposed to be Branch but I don't use it. Call me Ed.'

'Right,' said Arthur. 'Leaf and Ed. My dad used to be called Plague Rat.'