Garth Nix - Keys to the Kingdom Series - Mister Monday

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Mister Monday by Garth Nix

Prologue

They had tried to destroy the Will, but that proved to be beyond their

power. So they broke it, in two ways. It was broken physically, torn apart,

with the fragments of heavy parchment scattered across both space and

time. It was broken in spirit because not one clause of it had been fulfilled.

If the treacherous Trustees had their way, no clause of the Will would

ever be executed. To make sure of this, all seven fragments of the Will had

been hidden with great care.

The first and least of the fragments was fused inside a single clear

crystal, harder than diamond. Then the crystal was encased in a box of

unbreakable glass. The box was locked inside a cage of silver and

malachite, and the cage was fixed in place on the surface of a dead sun at

the very end of Time.

Around the cage, twelve metal Sentinels stood guard, each taking post

upon one of the numbers of a clock face that had been carved with

permanent light in the dark matter of the defunct star.

The Sentinels had been specially created as guardians of the fragment.

They were vaguely human in appearance, though twice as tall, and their

skins were luminous steel. Quick and flexible as cats, they had no hands,

but single blades sprang from each wrist. Each Sentinel was responsible

for the space between its own hour and the next, and their leader ruled

them from the position between twelve and one.

The metal Sentinels were overseen by a carefully chosen corps of

Inspectors, lesser beings who would not dare question the breakers of the

Will. Once every hundred years one of these Inspectors would appear to

make sure that all was well and that the fragment was safely locked away.

In recent aeons, the Inspectors had become lax, rarely doing more than

appear, squint at the cage, box, and crystal, salute the Sentinels, and

disappear again. The Sentinels, who had spent ten thousand years in

faithful service marching between the chapters of the clock, did not

approve of this slipshod attention to duty. But it was not in their nature to

complain, nor was there any means to do so. They could raise the alarm if

necessary, but no more than that.

The Sentinels had seen many Inspectors come and go. No one else had

ever visited. No one had tried to steal or rescue the fragment of the Will.

In short, nothing had happened for all of that ten thousand years.

Then, on a day that was no different from any of the more than three

and a half million days that had gone before, an Inspector arrived who

took his duties more seriously. He arrived normally enough, simply

appearing outside the clock face, his hat askew from the transfer, his

official warrant clutched firmly in one hand so the bright gold seal was

clearly visible. The Sentinels twitched at the arrival and their blades

shivered in anticipation. The warrant and the seal were only half of the

permission required to be there. There was always a chance the

watchwords delivered by the previous Inspector would not be uttered and

the Sentinels' blades would at last see blurring, slicing action.

Of course, the Sentinels were required to allow the Inspector a minute's

grace. It was not unknown for a transfer between both time and space to

briefly addle the wits of anyone, immortal or otherwise.

This Inspector did seem a bit the worse for wear. He wore a fairly

standard human shape, that of a middle-aged man of rapidly thickening

girth. This human body was clad in a blue frock coat, shiny at the elbows

and ink-stained on the right cuff. His white shirt was not really very white,

and the badly tied green necktie did not adequately disguise the fact that

his collar had come adrift. His top hat had seen much service and was

both squashed and leaning to the left. When he raised it to acknowledge

the Sentinels, a sandwich wrapped in newspaper fell out. He caught it and

slipped it into an inside pocket of his coat before speaking the

watchwords.

"Incense, sulfur, and rue, I am an Inspector, honest and true," he

recited carefully, holding up the warrant again to show the seal.

The Twelve O'Clock Sentinel swiveled in place in answer to the

watchwords and the seal. It crossed its blades with a knife-sharpening

noise that made the Inspector tremble and waved a salute in the air.

"Approach, Inspector," intoned the Sentinel. That was half of

everything it ever said.

The Inspector nodded and cautiously stepped from the transfer plate to

the curdled darkness of the dead star. He had taken the precaution of

wearing Immaterial Boots (disguised as carpet slippers) to counteract the

warping nature of the dead star's dark matter, though his superior had

assured him that the warrant and the seal would be sufficient protection.

He paused to pick up the transfer plate because it was a personal favorite,

a large serving plate of delicate bone china with a fruit pattern, rather

than the more usual disc of burnished electrum. It was a risk using a

china plate because it could be easily broken, but it looked nice and that

was important to the Inspector.

Even the Inspectors were not allowed to pass the inner rim of the clock

face, where the feet of the numerals were bordered by a golden line. So

this Inspector gingerly trod past the Twelve O'Clock Sentinel and stopped

short of the line. The silver cage looked as solid as it should, and the glass

box was quite intact and beautifully transparent. He could easily see the

crystal inside, just where it was supposed to be.

"All, ah, seems to be in order," he muttered. Relieved, he took a small

box out of his coat pocket, flicked it open, and with a practiced movement

transferred a small pinch of snuff to his right nostril. It was a new snuff, a

present from a higher authority.

"All, ahhh, ahhh, in order," he repeated, then let out an enormous

sneeze that rocked his whole body and for a moment threatened to

overbalance him over the gold line. The Sentinels leaped and twisted from

their regular positions, and the Twelve O'Clock Sentinel's blades came

whisking down within an inch of the Inspector's face as he desperately

windmilled his arms to regain his balance.

Finally he managed it, and teetered back on the right side of the line.

"Awfully sorry, terrible habit!" he squeaked as he thrust his snuff box

securely away. "I'm an Inspector, remember. Here's the warrant! Look at

the seal!"

The Sentinels subsided into their usual pacing. The Twelve O'Clock

Sentinel's arms went back to its sides, the blades no longer threatening.

The Inspector took out a huge patched handkerchief from his sleeve

and mopped his face. But as he wiped the sweat away, he thought he saw

something move across the surface of the clock face. Something small and

thin and dark. When he blinked and removed his handkerchief, he

couldn't see anything.

"I don't suppose there is anything to report?" he asked nervously. He

hadn't been an Inspector long. A decade short of four centuries, and he

was only an Inspector of the Fourth Order. He'd been a Third Back Hall

Porter for most of his career, almost since the Beginning of Time. Before

that —

"Nothing to report," said the Twelve O'Clock Sentinel, using up the rest

of its standard vocabulary.

The Inspector politely tipped his hat to the Sentinel, but he was

concerned. He could feel something here. Something not quite right. But

the penalty for a false alarm was too horrible to contemplate. He might be

demoted back to being a Hall Porter or, even worse, be made corporeal —

stripped of his powers and memory and sent somewhere in the Secondary

Realms as a living, breathing baby.

Of course, the penalty for missing something important was even

worse. He might be made corporeal for that, but it would not be as

anything even vaguely human, or on a world where there was intelligent

life. And even that was not the worst that could happen. There were far

more terrible fates, but he refused to contemplate them.

The Inspector looked across at the cage, the glass box, and the crystal.

Then he got a pair of opera glasses out of an inner pocket and looked

through those. He could still see nothing out of order. Surely, he told

himself, the Sentinels would know if something had gone amiss?

He stepped back outside the clock face and cleared his throat.

"All in order, well done, you Sentinels," he said. "The watchwords for

the next Inspector will be 'Thistle, palm, oak and yew, I'm an Inspector,

honest and true.' Got that? — excellent — well, I'll be off."

The Twelve O'Clock Sentinel saluted. The Inspector doffed his hat once

more, swiveled on one heel, and set down his transfer plate, chanting the

words that would take him to the House. According to regulations, he was

supposed to go via the Office of Unusual Activities on the forty-fifteenth

floor and report, but he was unsettled and wanted to get straight back to

the twenty-tenth floor, his own comfortable study, and a nice cup of tea.

"From dead star's gloom to bright lamp's light, back to my rooms and

away from night!"

Before he could step on the plate, something small, skinny, and very

black shot across the golden line, between the legs of the Twelve O'Clock

Sentinel, across the Inspector's left Immaterial Boot, and onto the plate.

The blue and green fruit glazed on the plate flashed and the plate, black

streak and all, vanished in a puff of rather rubbery and nasty-smelling

smoke.

"Alarm! Alarm!" cried the Sentinels, leaving the clock face to swarm

around the vanished plate, their blades snickering in all directions as the

sound of twelve impossibly loud alarm clocks rang and rang from

somewhere inside their metal bodies. The Inspector shrank down before

the Sentinels and started to chew on the corner of his handkerchief and

sob. He knew what that black streak was. He had recognized it in a flash of

terror as it sped past.

It was a line of handwritten text. The text from the fragment that was

supposedly still fused in crystal, locked in the unbreakable box, inside the

silver and malachite cage, glued to the surface of a dead sun and guarded

by metal Sentinels.

Only now none of those things was true.

One of the fragments of the Will had escaped — and it was all his fault.

Even worse, it had touched him, striking his flesh straight through the

Immaterial Boot. So he knew what it said, and he was not allowed to

know. Even more shockingly, the Will had recalled him to his real duty.

For the first time in millennia he was conscious of just how badly things

had gone wrong.

"Into the trust of my good Monday, I place the administration of the

Lower House," the Inspector whispered. "Until such a time as the Heir or

the Heir's representatives call upon Monday to relinquish any such offices,

properties, rights, and appurtenances as Monday holds in trust."

The Sentinels did not understand him, or perhaps they could not even

hear him over the clamoring of their internal alarms. They had spread out,

uselessly searching the surface of the dead star, beams of intense light

streaming from their eyes into the darkness. The star was not large — no

more than a thousand yards in diameter — but the fragment was long

gone. The Inspector knew it would already have left his rooms and gotten

into the House proper.

"I have to get back," the Inspector said to himself. "The Will will need

help. Transfer plate's gone, so it will have to be the long way."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a grimy and bedraggled pair of

wings that were almost as tall as he was. The Inspector hadn't used them

for a very long time and was surprised at the state they were in. The

feathers were all yellow and askew and the pinions didn't look at all

reliable. He clipped them into place on his back and took a few tentative

flaps to make sure they still worked.

Distracted by his wings, the Inspector didn't notice a sudden flash of

light upon the surface of the clock, or the two figures who appeared with

that flash. They wore human shapes too, as was the fashion in the House.

But these two were taller, thinner, and more handsome. They had on neat

black frock coats over crisp white shirts with high-pointed collars and very

neat neckties of somber red, a shade lighter than their dark silk

waistcoats. Their top hats were sleekly black, and they carried ornate

ebony sticks topped with silver knobs.

"Where do you think you're going, Inspector?" asked the taller of the

two new arrivals.

The Inspector turned in shock, and his wings drooped still further.

"To report, sir!" he said weakly. "As you can see. To… to my immediate

superiors… and to… to Monday's Dawn, or even Mister Monday, if he

wants…"

"Mister Monday will know soon enough," said the tall gentleman. "You

know who we are?"

The Inspector shook his head. They were very high up in the Firm, that

was obvious from their clothes and the power he could sense. But he didn't

know them, either by name or by rank.

"Are you from the sixty-hundredth floor? Mister Monday's executive

office?"

The taller gentleman smiled and drew a paper from his waistcoat

pocket. It unfolded itself as he held it up, and the seal upon it shone so

brightly that the Inspector had to shield his face with his arm and duck

his head.

"As you see, we serve a higher Master than Monday," said the

gentleman. "You will come with us."

The Inspector gulped and shambled forward. One of the gentlemen

swiftly pulled on a pair of snowy white gloves and snapped off the

Inspector's wings. They shrank till they were no larger than a dove's wings

and he put them in a buff envelope that came from nowhere. He sealed

this shut with a sizzling press of his thumb. Then he handed the envelope

to the Inspector. The word evidence appeared on it as the Inspector

clutched it to his chest and cast nervous glances at his escorts.

Working together, the two gentlemen drew a doorway in the air with

their sticks. When they'd finished, the space shimmered for a moment and

then solidified into an elevator doorway, with a sliding metal grille and a

bronze call button. One of the gentlemen pressed the button, and an

elevator car suddenly appeared out of nowhere behind the grille.

"I'm not authorized to go in an executive elevator, not up past Records

by any means, stair or lift or weird-way," gabbled the Inspector. "And I'm

definitely not… not authorized to go down below the Inking Cellars."

The two gentlemen pushed back the grille and gestured for the

Inspector to step into the elevator. It was lined with dark green velvet and

one entire wall was covered in small bronze buttons.

"We're not going down, are we?" asked the Inspector in a small voice.

The taller gentleman smiled, a cold smile that did not reach his eyes.

He reached up and his arm clicked horribly as it stretched, growing an

extra couple of yards so he could press a button on the very top right-hand

side of the lift.

"There?" asked the Inspector, awed in spite of his fear. He could feel the

Will's influence working away inside of him, but he knew there was no

hope of trying to help it now. The words that had gotten away would have

to fend for themselves. "All the way to the top?"

"Yes," said the two gentlemen in unison as they clanged shut the metal

grille.

Chapter One

It was Arthur Penhaligon's first day at his new school and it was not

going well. Having to start two weeks after everyone else was bad enough,

but it was even worse than that. Arthur was totally and utterly new to the

school. His family had just moved to the town, so he knew absolutely no

one and he had none of the local knowledge that would make life easier.

Like the fact the seventh grade had a cross-country run every Monday

just before lunch. Today. And it was compulsory, unless special

arrangements had been made by a student's parents. In advance.

Arthur tried to explain to the gym teacher that he'd only just recovered

from a series of very serious asthma attacks and had in fact been in the

hospital only a few weeks ago. Besides that, he was wearing the stupid

school uniform of gray pants with a white shirt and tie, and leather shoes.

He couldn't run in those clothes.

For some reason — perhaps the forty other kids shouting and chasing

one another around — only the second part of Arthur's complaint got

through to the teacher, Mister Weightman.

"Listen, kid, the rule is everybody runs, in whatever you're wearing!"

snapped the teacher. "Unless you're sick."

"I am sick!" protested Arthur, but his words were lost as someone

screamed and suddenly two girls were pulling each other's hair and trying

to kick shins, and Weightman was yelling at them and blowing his whistle.

"Settle down! Susan, let go of Tanya right now! Okay, you know the

course. Down the right side of the oval, through the park, around the

statue, back through the park, and down the other side of the oval. First

three back get to go to lunch early, the last three get to sweep the gym.

Line up — I said line up, don't gaggle about. Get back, Rick. Ready? On my

whistle."

No, I'm not ready, thought Arthur. But he didn't want to stand out any

more by complaining further or simply not going. He was already an

outsider here, a loner in the making, and he didn't want to be. He was an

optimist. He could handle the run.

Arthur gazed across the oval at the dense forest beyond, which was

obviously meant to be a park. It looked more like a jungle. Anything could

happen in there. He could take a rest. He could make it that far, no

problem, he told himself.

Just for insurance, Arthur felt in his pocket for his inhaler, closing his

fingers around the cool, comforting metal and plastic. He didn't want to

use it, didn't want to be dependent on the medication. But he'd ended up

in the hospital last time because he'd refused to use the inhaler until it

was too late, and he'd promised his parents he wouldn't do that again.

Weightman blew his whistle, a long blast that was answered in many

different ways. A group of the biggest, roughest-looking boys sprang out

like shotgun pellets, hitting one another and shouting as they accelerated

away. A bunch of athletic girls, taller and more long-legged than any boys

at their current age, streamed past them a few seconds later, their noses

in the air at the vulgar antics of the monkeys they were forced to share a

class with.

Smaller groups of boys or girls — never mixed — followed with varying

degrees of enthusiasm. After them came the unathletic and noncommitted

and those too hip to run anywhere, though Arthur wasn't particularly sure

which category they each belonged to.

Arthur found himself running because he didn't have the courage to

walk. He knew he wouldn't be mistaken for someone too cool to

participate. Besides, Mister Weightman was already jogging backwards so

he could face the walkers and berate them.

"Your nonparticipation has been noted," bellowed Weightman. "You

will fail this class if you do not pick up your feet!"

Arthur looked over his shoulder to see if that had any result. One kid

broke into a shambling run, but the rest of the walkers ignored the

teacher. Weightman spun around in disgust and built up speed. He

overtook Arthur and the middle group of runners and rapidly closed the

gap on the serious athletes at the front. Arthur could already tell he was

the kind of gym teacher who liked to beat the kids in a race. Probably

because he couldn't win against other adult runners, Arthur thought

sourly.

For three or maybe even four minutes after Weightman sped away,

Arthur kept up with the last group of actual runners, well ahead of the

walkers. But as he had feared, he found it harder and harder to get a full

breath into his lungs. They just wouldn't expand, as if they were already

full of something and couldn't let any air in. Without the oxygen he

needed, Arthur got slower and slower, falling back until he was barely in

front of the walkers. His breathing became shallower and shallower and

the world narrowed around him, until all he could think about was trying

to get a decent breath and keep putting one foot approximately in front of

the other.

Then, without any conscious intention, Arthur found that his legs

weren't moving and he was staring up at the sky. He was lying on his back

on the grass. Dimly, he realized he must have blacked out and fallen over.

"Hey, are you taking a break or is there a problem?" someone asked.

Arthur tried to say that he was okay, though some other part of his brain

was going off like a fire engine siren, screaming that he was definitely not

okay. But no words came out of his mouth, only a short, rasping wheeze.

Inhaler! Inhaler! Inhaler! said the screaming siren part of his brain.

Arthur followed its direction, fumbling in his pocket for the metal cylinder

with its plastic mouthpiece. He tried to raise it to his mouth, but when his

hand arrived it was empty. He'd dropped the inhaler.

Then someone else pushed the mouthpiece between his lips and a cool

mist suddenly filled his mouth and throat.

"How many puffs?" asked the voice.

Three, thought Arthur. That would get him breathing, at least enough

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ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedbyApocangel.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheetandalittlemorebyApocangel.MisterMondaybyGarthNix PrologueTheyhadtriedtodestroytheWill,butthatprovedtobebeyondtheirpower.Sotheybrokeit,intwoways.Itwasbrokenphysically,tornapart,withthefragmentsofheavyparchmentscattere...

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Garth Nix - Keys to the Kingdom Series - Mister Monday

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