Drowned Wednesday (The Keys to the Kingdom 3)

'It's . . . it's a book,' said Arthur. 'It won't be of any use to you.'

'I'll be the judge of that!' Scamandros exclaimed. He reached forward to Arthur's pocket, and Sunscorch tightened his grip on the boy's arms. 'What have we -' As he touched the top of the Atlas, there was a loud report, like a pistol shot. Scamandros's hand came back so quickly Arthur didn't even see it, and then the navigator was hopping around the deck with his fingers thrust into his armpit, screeching, 'Ow! Ow! Ow! Throw him overboard!'

Sunscorch hesitated, then picked up Arthur in a bear hug and tottered to the starboard rail, crashing into it with considerable force.

'Sorry, lad,' he said as he lifted Arthur up and prepared to heave him into the waiting sea. 'We need the Doctor.'

Six

'NO! ' SCREAMED ARTHUR. Then, as Sunscorch continued to lift him up, 'I'm a friend of the Mariner! Captain Tom Shelvocke!'

Sunscorch lowered Arthur to the deck.

'Prove it,' he said coldly. 'If you're lying, I'll carve you a set of gills before I throw you over.'

Arthur reached with a shivering hand into his pyjama top and pulled out his makeshift floss-chain. For a dreadful moment he thought the disc was gone, then it slid free and hung on his chest.

'What are you waiting for, Sunscorch?' yelled Doctor Scamandros angrily. 'Throw him overboard!'

Sunscorch looked closely at the disc, flipped it with his finger, and looked at the other side. Then he sighed and let go of Arthur. Just then, the ship rolled to port and back again, almost sending Arthur over the side anyway.

'Do as the Doctor says, Mister Sunscorch!' called Catapillow. 'We must have a course to get away!'

'I can't, Captain!' shouted Sunscorch. 'The boy has the mark of the Mariner. If he asks for aid, as sailors we must give it.'

'I am asking,' said Arthur hastily. 'I don't want to be thrown overboard. I only want to send a message to the Lower House. Or the Far Reaches.'

'He has the what? The who?' asked Catapillow.

Sunscorch sighed again and helped Arthur along the sloping deck to the group gathered around the wheel. Doctor Scamandros still had his hand under his arm. He scowled at Arthur.

'No seaman will go against the Mariner,' said Sunscorch. 'The boy has the Mariner's medal, so you'll have to figure something else out, Doc. He ain't going over the side.'

'The Mariner,' said Scamandros. 'A figure of reverence for the nautically inclined. One of the Old One's sons, I believe?'

'Yes,' said Arthur, though the question hadn't been asked of him. 'And the Architect's.'

'Perhaps I was a little hasty,' Scamandros continued. 'I thought perhaps you had something in your pocket we wouldn't want aboard. But any friend of the Mariner . . . please do accept my apology.'

'Sure,' said Arthur. 'No problem.'

'Well, ah, welcome aboard,' said the Captain. 'We're delighted to have you here. Though I fear that our voyage is, um, about to be cut short.'

Everyone looked back over the stern. The Shiver had closed in, and was now less than a mile away.

'She'll be firing her bowchasers soon,' said Sunscorch. 'If they've any powder. They've the weather gauge too. We'll have to fight it out.'

'Oh,' said Concort. He swallowed and frowned at the same time. 'That doesn't sound very good.'

'Can you get us a better wind, Doctor?' asked Sunscorch. 'Untie one of your knots?'

'No,' replied Scamandros. 'Feverfew is already working the wind, and his workings are stronger. There is no escape within the Border Sea.'

'And is there, er, no plausible course out to the Realms?' Catapillow pulled his sword partly out of its scabbard as he spoke, and almost cut his nervous fingers on the exposed blade.

'There is one possibility that I may have overlooked due to extreme pain in my hand,' said Scamandros. 'I cannot cast the haruspices because of magical interference. But the young have natural ability, so this boy may be able to. Can you read portents of the future in the strewn intestines of animals, young sir?'

'No,' said Arthur with a grimace of revulsion. 'That sounds disgusting!'

'They don't use actual intestines anymore,' whispered Ichabod. 'Just magical jigsaw puzzles of intestines.'

'Indeed, the art has grown more orderly and less troublesome for the laundry,' said Scamandros, who clearly had very superior hearing. 'Though personally I believe it is best to be trained the old way, before coming to the puzzles. So you are not a haruspex or seer?'

'No . . .'

'Then you shall cast the pieces and I will read them.' Scamandros took a large box out from under his coat - bigger than the one he'd put away before - and handed it to Arthur. There was a picture of an ox on the box, the back half cross-sectioned to show its innards. 'Quickly now. Take the box and empty the pieces into your hands.'

As Arthur opened the box, something shrieked overhead. It sounded like a cross between a train whistle and a terrified parrot. Sunscorch looked up, then muttered, 'They've got powder! That's a ranging shot!' and started to shout more commands to the helmsman and crew. The Moth lumbered and rolled to port as the wheel spun and the crew hauled on lines to trim the yards (the horizontal spars on the mast that the sails were attached to).

Arthur knelt down on the deck and put his hands in the box. Though all he could see were pieces of coloured cardboard, he recoiled as he touched them.

'Ugh! They feel like raw mince or . . . or worse!'

'Ignore that!' instructed Scamandros. 'Pick them up and cast them on the deck! Quickly now!'

Arthur shuddered and hesitated. Then he heard the whistling again, and a huge plume of water exploded just behind the Moth, showering them all with freezing water.

'Over and under,' said Sunscorch grimly. 'They'll have the range inside a minute.'

Arthur took a deep breath and plunged his hands into the box. Picking up the pieces was like picking up handfuls of dead worms. But he got them all, raised them up, and threw them at Scamandros's feet.

As before, the jigsaw came together as it fell. But this time all the pieces joined to make a perfect rectangle. The colours ran and shimmered like spilled paint, then formed into lines and patterns. In a few seconds, a picture appeared. A picture of a rocky island, a mound of tumbled yellow stones, surrounded by a sea of curious colour, more violet than blue.

Scamandros looked at the picture, muttering to himself, then he rolled up the chart at his feet and immediately unrolled it again, revealing a completely different map.

'Forlorn Island, Sea of Yazer, on the planet we call Gerain,' said Scamandros . 'That'll do!'

'Err, Mister Concort . . .' said Catapillow.

'Ah, Mister Sunscorch . . .' said Concort.

'Prepare to Cross the Line!' roared Sunscorch. 'Idlers take a hold!'

Catapillow and Concort rushed to the rail and gripped it. Sunscorch joined the two Denizens on the wheel. Scamandros picked up the jigsaw, which didn't fall apart, and stood by them.

'Grab hold of a rope or the rail,' Ichabod instructed Arthur. 'When the Doctor shouts, look down and close your eyes. And whatever you do, don't let go!'

Arthur did as he was told, taking a firm grip on the portside rail. He looked back at Doctor Scamandros, who was holding the jigsaw and muttering to himself, with occasional instructions to Sunscorch.

'Port five, steady,' he said. 'Starboard ten and back again amidships, hold her as she goes, port five, port five, starboard ten . . .'

The Moth rolled and tilted first to one side and then the other, but didn't seem to change its actual direction very much for all the turning of the wheel this way and that. But Doctor Scamandros kept ordering small changes of direction.

Arthur heard a muffled bang come from behind them and looked astern, just in time to see the flash of the Shiver's bowchasers, followed by that same whistling screech. This time, it didn't end in a waterspout or a pass overhead. Just as Doctor Scamandros shouted something unintelligible and threw the jigsaw in the air, Arthur heard a terrible splintering, crashing noise that momentarily blotted out all other sounds.

But he didn't look. He closed his eyes and bent down as instructed, hoping that whatever the cannonball had hit wasn't going to fall down on his head.

There was a moment of silence after the terrible sound of some major part of the ship breaking, immediately followed by a flash so bright Arthur's eyes were filled with white light, even through shut eyelids. That flash was accompanied by a crash of thunder that shook the whole ship and stirred a vibration so strong it made Arthur's limbs and stomach ache.

Arthur knew what was happening at once. His hand went to the invitation card in his pocket and he hunkered down as low as he could, still clutching his pocket.

They were about to pass through the Line of Storms again!

The thunder was so deafening that its echoes lingered in Arthur's ears and head, so even when it ceased it took him awhile before he stopped trembling and his hearing started to return. The afterimage of the lightning remained in patches, and dark spots danced around his eyes.

Arthur opened his eyes to a scene of destruction and wonder. One of the huge horizontal spars from the Moth's mainmast had been struck by the cannonball and broken off. Half of it was sprawled over the deck, and half was in the water, a tangled mass of timber, ropes and canvas.

Arthur only glanced at that. His attention was drawn ahead of the ship. There, extending upward from the sea into the sky, was a huge gilt picture frame, easily four hundred feet long and three hundred feet high. It bordered an enormous, brightly glowing version of the jigsaw picture Arthur had made, with the yellow stone island and the violet sea. But this didn't look like a picture. The sea was in motion, there were purple-tinged clouds drifting above the island, and birds or birdlike things were flying around. Arthur could still see the jigsaw piece outlines - much narrower and more wriggly pieces than in a normal jigsaw - but the lines were very faint.

'Starboard Watch! Cut away that yard! Quickly now!'

The Moth rolled as Sunscorch spoke, sending its sails flapping, to make a sound like sarcastic applause.

'Helm! Hold her steady!' shouted Sunscorch.

The Moth was trying to sail straight for the framed image, Arthur saw. He understood it was not an image. It was a doorway to another world, out in the Secondary Realms.

'Did we lose 'em?' asked Sunscorch to the Doctor.

Scamandros looked astern, lowering his smoked glasses over his eyes to stare at the now surprisingly distant Line of Storms.

'I'm not . . . no!'

Arthur looked back, too, blinking at the still-bright flashes of lightning, though they were now several miles away. At first he couldn't spot anything, then he saw the silhouette of the Shiver's dark sails. She had dropped back but would soon catch up again, particularly with the Moth slowed by the broken spar over the side, which acted like a large and clumsy sea anchor.

'They'll try and follow us through the portal,' said Sunscorch.

'Um, is there anything. . . some manoeuvre or other?' asked Catapillow anxiously.

'Get that spar cut away!' roared Sunscorch. Arthur winced. Clearly Sunscorch got louder the more anxious he was.

Doctor Scamandros looked ahead at the vast gilt-framed doorway to the violet-hued sea. It was several hundred yards away. He looked back at the pursuing ship, took out a pencil, and made some calculations on the cuff of his big yellow coat.

'At our current speed Feverfew will board us short of the portal,' he said. 'Even if they don't take down a mast or hole us below the waterline.'

'He won't fire again,' said Sunscorch. 'Don't need to, does he? We're slow enough now. Anything more might damage the loot.'

This confident assessment was immediately undermined by the report of a cannon astern, resulting in another plume of water, this time well short.

'Then again, he might sink us for sport,' added Sunscorch. He looked down at the main deck where the Denizens were hacking ineffectually with axes at the fallen yard. 'Cut away! Don't slap at it! Cut! Doctor, if there's anything you can do, do it. No seamanship can save us now! I'm for an axe!'

'Carry on!' Catapillow called out as Sunscorch leapt down the companionway to the waist of the ship.

Arthur looked at the rapidly gaining pirate vessel, then at the living picture in its vast gilt frame. Even without calculating anything, it was clear the Shiver would catch them before they could get to the transfer portal. It was too far away. . .

Arthur suddenly had an idea.

'I don't know any sorcery or anything,' Arthur said. 'But that big painting is like a transfer plate you step on, isn't it?'

Scamandros nodded distractedly.

'So if we can't get to it in time, can it somehow be moved to us?'

Scamandros frowned, then cocked his head as if struck by Arthur's suggestion. Arthur noticed that all the small tattoos on the doctor's face were showing scenes of trouble. Storms at sea. Sunken ships. Exploding suns. Imploding planets.

Just as the Doctor opened his mouth to speak, the Shiver fired again.