Superior Saturday Read Free

looked back at Arthur, and in that moment saw him anew.
    ‘What?’ asked Arthur. ‘Hey, keep them walking or we’ll get a pile-up back here.’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Leaf. She hastily pulled the leading sleeper—her own aunt Mango—out of the line and held on to her arm. ‘It’s ... well, I just realised you look ... you don’t look the same as you used to.’
    Arthur looked down at himself and then up again, his face showing puzzlement.
    ‘You used to be a bit shorter than me,’ said Leaf. ‘You’ve grown at least three or four inches and got ... um ... better looking.’
    ‘Have I?’ muttered Arthur. Only a few weeks ago he would have been delighted to hear he was getting taller. Now it sent an unpleasant shiver through him. He glanced at the crocodile ring on his finger, the one that indicated just how far his blood and bone had been contaminated by sorcery. But before he could gauge how much of the ring had turned from silver to gold, he forced himself to look away. He didn’t want to confirm right then and there if his transformation into a Denizen had gone beyond the point of no return. In his heart, he knew the answer without even looking at the ring.
    ‘Never mind that now,’ continued Arthur. ‘We’d better get everyone settled down. What’s your name again? Vess, we’ll need your help getting all these sleepers back into bed, please. There’s about two thousand of them, and we’ve only got Martine and Harrison to help.’
    ‘Martine and Harrison?’ yelped Vess. ‘I haven’t seen them in ... I thought they were dead!’
    ‘Martine and Harrison have been ... looking after sleepers at Lady Friday’s retreat,’ Arthur reported. ‘Hey! Leaf, they’re running into the door!’
    Leaf gently spun her aunt around to face the wall and sprinted ahead to guide the leading sleepers through the door, pressing down the stopper to keep it open. Then she took a small silver cone from her belt and held it to her mouth. The cone was one of the tools Friday’s servants used to direct the sleepers. It amplified and changed Leaf’s speech, and Vess shivered as she caught the echo of Lady Friday’s voice.
    ‘Walk to an empty bed and stand next to it,’ ordered Leaf. ‘Walk to an empty bed and stand next to it.’
    The sleepers obeyed, though they tended to bunch at a bed and bump against one another before one firmly established himself or herself next to the bedhead. Only then would the others shamble off. Leaf ran back to her aunt, who was turning in circles trying to obey the command to find a bed.
    Arthur stayed back at the pool, repeating Leaf ‘s instruction to the sleepers as they came through. He didn’t need a silver cone to be obeyed, probably because he held the Fifth Key, or because the sleepers responded to the power in his voice, feeling the authority of his position as the Rightful Heir of the Architect.
    In outward appearance he looked just like a boy, but Arthur had wrested five Keys from five of the faithless Trustees. Now he ruled over the majority of the House, the epicentre of the Universe. In the process he felt he had grown much older, even if little time had actually passed. He also knew that he was becoming less human.
    The sleepers kept coming through, emerging out of the dark floor of the pool that was in fact a passage to another Secondary Realm, the secret retreat of Lady Friday, where she had been stealing humans’ memories, leaving them as mindless husks. The sleepers who were being returned had narrowly avoided that fate. They would wake in due course, knowing nothing of their ordeal.
    Martine, one of Lady Friday’s human staff, emerged and nodded at Arthur before starting up the ramp. She had an expression on her face that Arthur guessed was equal parts fear and excitement. Martine had been forced to stay and work in Friday’s retreat for more than thirty years.
    She would find the contemporary world a very strange place, Arthur thought. A world that was getting