Scales

Chapters Nineteen and Twenty | Table of Contents | Chapters Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four

Vermaanti: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Mister Monday! Last time, Arthur and Suzy stumbled through all kinds of time periods on the Improbable Stair, and we saw that Suzy’s family is dead. Now… we’ll finally get to see the plan to do something about Monday, when we’re 78% of the way through.

We last left off with Arthur and Suzy about to leave the Stair again. The next second, they “[fall] sprawling across a pile of cushions”. So they’ve reached the Antechamber! When they come to rest, they can see a “small green frog” sitting opposite them, on top of “a silver cakestand that [has] several chocolate eclairs and four macaroons on the other levels”. Oooh, tasty! I’m not exactly happy to see the Will back, though…

They say that it’s an “opportune arrival” and welcome Arthur and Suzy to the Antechamber. Arthur looks around: they’re in a round “silken tent”, with a wooden pole in the middle. It’s at most “fifteen feet in diameter”. He asks if this is the Antechamber. (This does fit well with the Will’s sketch, I see. And they actually got where they were to be via the Stair!)

The Will then looks where Arthur does with one eye while keeping the other on Suzy. Neat! They explain that it is a tent (duh), one of thousands in the Antechamber, which makes for “an excellent place of concealment”. They say they have some choices of disguises, and tells Arthur and Suzy to get some “clothes and hair” from a chest and put them on. They believe the hair is “self-adhesive”, and then indicate a “bronze-bound chest” in the corner with their tongue. The narration says “his tongue”, which is inconsistent.

Well, Arthur and Suzy go to the chest and get “at least a dozen” coats, shirts, hats and wigs (including “beard-wigs”) out. A few minutes later, Arthur goes to put on a “long-haired white wig” and he asks if the hear will really come off, and why they’re even disguising themselves.

The Will says that you only need to say “Hair today, gone tomorrow” three times and it will fall off. (We’re told they seem “more impatient than usual”; little wonder.) They see Arthur needs to be disguises because they’ll cross “a large part of the Antechamber” and, since his escape from the Coal Cellar has been reported, there will be “many watchers and searchers” looking for the three of them. I wonder how long traversing the Stair took, then.

So Arthur puts on a coat “that appear[s] to be made out of three-inch-thick felt”. It fits the best of the coats he’s tried, and there’s a pocket on the inside of the sleeve, so he takes it. I also think some extra protection can’t hurt. He notes some kind of label hanging from the sleeve and goes to cut it off, but the Will tells him not to, because it’s his “waiting ticket”. Arthur looks at it: it’s made of paper with “98,564” written on it with blue ink. As he moves the label, the ink changes to red and orange and then back to blue. (So it’s a holographic one? Nice.) Suzy looks at her own, which has a similar number.

The Will explains that everyone at the Antechamber is waiting to have an appointment with Monday. You need to have a ticket to wait, and when it is called, you can go in and talk with Monday. Arthur says it’s a big number, and he asks if only “the last two digits” count, and how many people he sees per day. The Will says all the digits count, and Monday completes perhaps two appointments per year. So… at the current rate, it would take 49272 years to handle everyone’s requests. That is quite a problem, then. The Will got these tickets yesterday, “in another guise”.

Arthur can’t quite grasp the amount of people who are waiting here. The Will complains about “sloth” once again, and that there must be at least a hundred thousand things wrong “with the operations of the Lower House” (not per se, since multiple people can complain about the same thing). After all, nothing can be done without Monday’s approval, and Monday won’t grant it. …I think it might help not to have all the approvals be done by a single person? I’d think Dawn, Noon, or Dusk would often be just as good… but I guess Monday just likes having this power.

Arthur now complains that he can’t waste time in the queue, because he needs to get the cure! The Will says they won’t be in the queue at all, and now that they’re disguised, they can go out into the Antechamber. Some distance away, “an ally” will meet up with them, who claims to know something called a “weirdway” which leads to the Dayroom. They will take it, Arthur will get the Greater Key, and “all will be well”. Yes, because it’s not like Monday will have implemented any security measures or will be watching in case Arthur comes. And it’s also not like Noon might catch him in his way there. Suzy snorts at this (yep).

Arthur asks who this “ally” is. The Will says it’s Monday’s Dusk (which does fit). After Suzy left with their message, Dusk found them, and after “some minor contretemps”, the Will discovered he’s “a loyal servant of the Architect”. Arthur suggests he might be a “particularly clever enemy”, but the Will just says that he “sees the true way”.

I mean, Dusk might be an enemy, but why bother to go to these lengths, then? It would have been easier to send a force after them in the Efficiencer General’s office, then have Dusk appear as an ally and lead them into a trap.

Well, the Will now jumps to Arthur’s shoulder (after asking, how nice) and settles by his neck. Arthur asks if the Will will get in his throat. The Will says it won’t be necessary to “inhabit anyone” (good to see that that is what the Will calls outright possessing people). They only ask that Arthur hides them behind his collar, which he does. The Will feels strange against his skin, he says, “like a cold glass straight out of the fridge”.

Arthur asks if they’re all ready, and looks back at Suzy. He thinks she looks rather like “a dwarf from a fantasy book” now, as she has swapped her hat out for “a weird-looking pointy cloth cap with earflaps” and has put on “a bristling moustache and sideburns that [come] down to the corners of her mouth”. Looks like they had fun dressing up, then! Arthur notes Suzy still has her wings, and she says she’s tried everything, but she can’t get them off. Arthur then… randomly thinks about her using “soap and water”, and then feels bad about it and realises it doesn’t even make sense.

The Will tells them to leave it, because it’s not uncommon to have wings here. Many “petitioners” fly from the lower waiting rooms to the Antechamber, after all. They then tell Arthur to go on, and to turn to the right when he leaves the tent. So Arthur opens the tent. It’s light outside, “the pseudo-sunlight cast by the bright elevator shafts”. He steps outside and looks around (finally!). Though he’s learned not to expect a normal room, he’s still very surprised. So what is it…?

It’s “an enormous veranda built two-thirds of the way up a mountain”! Oh, that’s really cool! Actually, as Arthur sees, it’s a volcano (which is still a mountain), as the rim of the crater is visible “several hundred yards up the slope”. The veranda is some two to three hundred yards wide, and extends straight out from the volcano, and Arthur thinks it must be supported underneath, by beams or maybe by magic. He can’t see what the veranda itself is made of, because of the sheer volume of petitioners, who’ve all brought “tents and carpets and rugs and straw mats” to make the long wait comfortable. (Oh, Arthur also says they might wait for “centuries”, which is quite optimistic.)

There is “talking, laughter and just plain noise” everywhere around, even from above, where large numbers of Denizens are flying around. Arthur finds them an odd sight in their Victorian clothing. He notes that, though some of them fly very high, none of them near the volcano’s mouth. (Then that’s where the Dayroom is.)

The Antechamber also seems rather like “a carnival”. Unlike in the Atrium, where everyone pretends to be busy, the Denizens here “[have] an excuse to wait or amuse themselves however they want[]”. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the people here just filed a request to get to the Antechamber and have a fun time for once. Just from what Arthur can see, Denizens (and Arthur has a digression where he thinks he needs to call them people, even though they aren’t, but they are), are “reading, playing board games or cards, practising fencing, juggling, writing, doing strange calisthenics, drinking tea, eating cakes and scones”, and even staring at him…

Arthur looks back at this last person. There’s “something familiar” about the way he stands, though Arthur doesn’t think he’s seen him before. The man is dressed in “matching pale pink coat, waistcoat and pantaloons”, and has “long, drooping mustachios”. As the man notes Arthur looks at him, he quickly looks away and “scuttle[s] back into the crowd”. This scuttle “[gives] him away”.

Arthur says it’s Pravuil from the Coal Cellar. Um, we never saw him “scuttle”, so why is this reveal set up like this? The Will calls him a spy, which naturally explains all his weird behaviour in the Coal Cellar. I do think Pravuil was a quite poor spy: he clearly did not bother learning about the Coal-Collators, he didn’t bother acting like one, he had things, like his candle, which a Coal-Collator wouldn’t have, and his story was full of holes. Either way, they now need to do something about it.

The Will tells them to go right and head “for the crimson tent with the golden ball atop the central pole”. Arthur heads toward it. As he pushes through the crowd, with Suzy close behind, he says that Pravuil said he was working for Dusk. The Will says he might be, but they still need to be careful. Now they need to go into the crimson tent, then go to the left and follow a passage to the back door and go out. They’ll emerge into a passage between “stacked crates”.

So they go into the tent, which is dark on the inside and hung with dividers. Arthur goes to the left and follows the wall of the tent. He then sees that Suzy has a knife and wonders where she got it. I guess she just stole it from someone? He whispers that he hopes she won’t need it, and we’re told the tent is quite big, perhaps “as big as a circus big top”. Suzy explains that it’s for cutting out of the tent if necessary, because that’s quickest. Against a Denizen, it’d hurt, but nothing more than that.

The Will tells them to be quiet, though they notably speak considerably louder than Arthur or Suzy. Arthur wonders why they even bother with this warning, or if they can’t hear themself well, being a “jade frog”. They’re definitely not great at practicality (again). So they exit the tent into a narrow lane between “two huge and precarious-looking stacks of wooden crates”, which are each as large as tea chests. There are thousands of them, and the stacks are “twenty to thirty feet high”.

When Arthur looks closer, he sees that they actually are tea chests (as is only to be expected, given how much everyone loves tea). They’ve also got text like “Best Ceylon” and “High Grown Dimbola” on them. Let me see… I see that “Dimbola” likely refers to a tea plantation on Sri Lanka. Also, this tea probably comes from the Victorian era.

There are more crates with inscriptions Arthur can’t read, at least until he touches the Key. Then the symbols they’re written with transform into the Latin alphabet, and he can read things like “Terzikon Marilor Blackwater” and “Oggdriggly No. 3”, which he’s quite sure are not from Earth. The Will complains that it’s “[l]oot from the Secondary Realms”, and this shows Monday’s interference.

So they reach the end of the passage, where it ends against the volcano. Arthur touches the “cool, smooth surface” (then this is clearly an artificial volcano), and asks what now. The chapter ends with this:

‘Now you hand over the Key or I will visit whatever torments I can upon you, and many more upon your friends,’ declared a familiar voice from above, as a shadow of wide-swept wings fell upon Arthur’s face.

Well, I certainly like this after we spent so much time this chapter on disguising and looking at the Antechamber! It’s also great to see Noon let loose once again; this is the same person who lit a library on fire early in the book, after all. And now things have to come to a head!

So… it’s time for Corneille Blanche now!

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Corneille Blanche: So, the next chapter opens with Arthur pulling out the Key and him and Suzy backing up against the “stony side of the volcano”. Noon spreads his wings further and lands. As he does so, the crates are pushed aside, which starts a landslide that goes all the way back down the passage. That is a nice way to make an entrance, I would say. Behind him, “[d]ozens of metal Commissionaires and Commissionaire Sergeants” ram their way through the crates to form a “wedge behind Noon”. Noon then raises his hand and creates a “flaming sword”. Dusk had better show up soon, then.

Noon smiles and tells Arthur to hand him the Key, or he will burn Suzy. I do not doubt he would actually do so, given that he was willing to let Ms. Banber die like that… Also, it is good to see that has learned to attack Arthur indirectly. So Arthur tells the Will that it is a trap (as if the Will could not understand that themself), and asks what they should do now. Another voice says they all should “step forward a little”. Arthur looks over his shoulder and sees that a “dark, shadowed doorway” has appeared in the side of the volcano. He can just see Dusk within.

Arthur and Suzy step forward, and Dusk comes out along with some Midnight Visitors. He tells them to “be more trusting”, and then instructs them to go through the doorway. My, they finally have someone who they can actually trust and who can actually back that trust up! I certainly appreciate it after so much of this book.

Well, Noon does not smile so much any more as Dusk goes to stand in front of Arthur. He frowns when Dusk draws out a sword of his own, which has “a blade of darkest night, sprinkled with stars”. Ooh, they are going to fight! Noon demands to know what this is, since he is to have the Key. Dusk “gently” tells him no, and says they will let Arthur and Suzy go on their own way. Noon calls him a traitor and tells him to move aside. Dusk again tells Noon no, and says he is loyal to “the Architect and Her Will”.

I think this confrontation has been brewing for quite a while, and I imagine it must have taken Dusk quite some courage to be willing to stand up to Noon. Case in point, Noon screams and throws his sword “straight at Suzy”. I… forgot he had done this, and I frankly had not expected it. Arthur tries to intercept it with the Key, but he only manages to get it halfway up. When the sword is a few inches from Suzy’s throat, Dusk manages to deflect it. Yay! The sword ricochets off the volcano and returns to Noon, setting several tea chests alight on the way. So Noon might just have set the Antechamber on fire, if the fire spreads. Good going!

Noon calls for the Commissionaires to charge and runs forward to cut at Suzy again. Dusk parries, and he and Noon exchange blows “almost too fast to follow”. A “thin line” of Midnight Visitors meets the charging Commissionaires, and they fight (where we learn that the Visitors’ whips give off “sonic booms”). Tea chests explode and burst into flame and smoke begins to spread. So the Antechamber likely is going to burn.

Arthur says they need to help, while “brandishing the Key”. Noon and Dusk are “evenly matched”, but there are much less Midnight Visitors than Commissionaires. Dusk can still flee if it is really necessary, though, and you would only endanger yourself. Further, if you manage to defeat Monday, you could easily defeat Noon with the whole Key. Finally, you will soon be in the middle of a fire, so…

The Will, quite sensibly, says they need to go in the weirdway, because there is no time. Arthur hesitates. At that moment, Dusk ducks beneath a cut of Noon’s and grabs his arm. Before Noon can pull free, he gets “spun into a somersault and hurled up into the air”. Dusk unfurls his wings and flies up. He tells Arthur, Suzy and the Will to go, because he and the Visitors will hold Noon as long as they can. Arthur still hesitates, and I wish the Will would just push him into the weirdway already.

Noon “streak[s] up like a rocket”, then turns and plunges to meet Dusk, and they both fall down, trading blows and parries even while they do so. The Will shouts that they should get in the weirdway, and then Dusk and Noon hit the deck “like a shooting star”, right in the middle of the fight. The force of their impact rocks the whole Antechamber. Arthur and Suzy are thrown into each other, and most of the fighters, along with the remaining tea chests, are knocked down.

As Arthur gets up, he sees Noon burst out of the debris, “rage distorting his handsome face”. He turns and then leaps toward Arthur, but falls as Dusk grabs his ankle. Then they both get to their feet and go fighting again. As the Commissionaires begin to get up from the “splintered piles of wood and burning wreckage”, Noon tells them to kill Suzy and close the weirdway. Four Commissionaire Sergeants then smash through the Visitors and rush toward Arthur and Suzy. This finally spurs Arthur to action. He runs into the doorway, dragging Suzy by the hand. A “red glow of fire” streams in behind him (that will be quite a problem), followed by the boom of a Visitor’s whip. Then the doorway closes, and suddenly everything is “quiet and dark” apart from the Key’s glow. Well, at least they managed to get out in time!

In the glow from the Key, Arthur can see that they are in an “upwards-sloping tunnel” which is not made of lava. Arthur lets go of Suzy, and quickly walks ahead. He does not like how the ground feels, as it “ripple[s] and move[s]”, which he compares to “walking on a trampoline”, and the walls of the tunnel are also soft. That is why it is called a “weirdway”, after all.

Suzy sees him “slide his finger along the wall for the third time” and says that all weirdways are like this. This one is quite big, though, as you need to crawl along most. And if they close down, you get “squelched”, since they are made with, or through, Nothing. The Will further explains that weirdways use “interstices of Nothing” in the structure of the House, and there is little danger, provided that they are well-made. They now go on to the further plan.

When they come out of the weirdway, they need to get as close to Monday as possible. Then, while holding the Minute Hand, Arthur should recite the following incantation: “Minute by minute, hour by hour, two hand as one, together the power”. That works well, I would think. Then the Hour Hand will fly to Arthur, and he has to catch it. Then… he should “immediately prick [his] right thumb with the Hour Hand and prick [his] left thumb with the Minute Hand and smear a drop of blood from [his] left hand on the Hour Hand and from [his] right thumb on the Minute Hand”. This explanation sucks a fair bit. Let me try:

Arthur needs to have the Minute Hand in his right hand so he can catch the Hour Hand with his left. Then he needs to stab each into the opposite thumb, and then smear the blood from that thumb on the Hand he is holding with that hand. This is the easiest way to do it.

So, once Arthur has done this, he needs to hold both together, and recite another “simple” incantation: ‘I, Arthur, anointed Heir to the Kingdom, claim this Key and with it the Mastery of the Lower House. I claim it by blood and bone and contest, out of truth, in testament and against all trouble’. That is quite a mouthful. They ask if Arthur has understood it. Arthur says he has not, and asks which thumb goes with which clock hand, and what if Monday is holding the Hour Hand?

The Will says “breezily” that he will not, since he will be asleep or in a “steam bath” (and that means he cannot hold on to it how…?). The Dayroom is “full of steaming pools”, after all. They begin to go over the instructions again, but Arthur interrupts to ask what they do when Monday is not asleep or in a steam bath. The Will replies like this:

‘We shall improvise,’ said the Will. ‘I shall instruct you as required.’

That is not exactly encouraging, especially because of the Will’s not-so-great “improvisation” skills. I would suggest something like distracting Monday long enough for Arthur to claim the Key like this, which I think would lie within the power of Suzy and the Will.

Well, there is silence because this is not encouraging, then Suzy punches Arthur in the arm to cheer him up and says that Monday will probably “be flat out snoring” anyway. Arthur says that there is no choice, and he has to “go through with it”, while thinking about the Sleepy Plague. He further thinks that he will improvise, and will “keep on fighting and thinking and trying, no matter what”. That is a nice attitude to have, at least.

The Will finds this excellent and goes over their instructions again. Arthur reads them back (smart!) and after four times, he is quite sure he can remember what to do. He cannot help thinking about what can go wrong, though. He first thinks about Monday being “ready and waiting” at the other end of the weirdway. (I do not think Noon would have made such a weirdway…) Surely Noon will have warned Monday already… or maybe Dusk has stopped him? Going by what we will see later, I am quite certain Dusk has; after all, he has had quite some time to think about how best to foil Noon.

The Will now asks if they are ready. The weirdway narrows and they are about to emerge into the Dayroom. Except that they are not by a long stretch, but alright. Suzy wants to lose the hair first, which the Will reluctantly agrees to. If you do not have anyone on your tail by now, I would say this is safe to do. So Arthur and Suzy recite the spell and their hair falls to the floor. The Will asks if they are ready now. I do get your impatience, Will, but now they are getting on with it.

Arthur and Suzy say they are ready, and then they go ahead again. The weirdway is getting narrower. Arthur first needs to duck his head and then crawl the last few meters. He cannot see an exit as such, but there is a “circular patch of darkness ahead” that the Key does not light. When Arthur touches it, his hand disappears, and he likens it to Monday’s Postern. The Will confirms this is the door, and tells Arthur to go through, but not too quickly, because there is a narrow ledge on the other side. Arthur carefully goes through and stops so suddenly that Suzy bumps into him.

He has come out on a “very narrow ledge”. It is about as wide as he is and is only about ten feet wide. It is also quite a way up the crater wall. When he looks down, he can see, “through billowing clouds of steam”, a “bubbling lake, lit deep within by red and yellow plumes of molten magma”. Then that lake is probably magical, or it has water constantly poured into it. Either way, I think it would be quite deadly to fall in. The whole crater is filled with the lake, and Arthur sees no way to leave the ledge aside from flying, and Suzy is the only one with wings…

Nevertheless, he knows this can be misleading, so he moves aside to let Suzy on. Then they both huddle on the ledge, staring down into the lake and watching the steam. Above them, we are told, there is a “golden net” that keeps flying visitors from going in. The light from the elevators reflects from it, and for the first time, Arthur wonders where those go to. He has always thought the Dayroom must be at the top of the House, but naturally this is only the Lower House, and the Morrow Days must govern the regions above. Good to see that he does think about other regions!

…And then he immediately thinks he should not be thinking about this instead of the current problem. Alright, then. He finds it hard to think because of how hot it is, and he is “sweating furiously” under his coat. Suzy now points out “something in the middle”. The steam clouds part, and Arthur can see an island in the middle, with a “sprawling building” on it. It is a “low, spread out, L-shaped house complex” with red-tiled roofs that Arthur recognises as belonging to a “Roman villa”.

The Will says this is indeed the Dayroom. On the other side, there is a “fine bridge”, but they will need to take “the spiderwire”. They say it may be somewhat difficult to see at first, and tell Arthur to look by his left foot. Arthur does so, and after a bit, he sees “the faintest shine of some gossamer thread”. He reaches down and touches it. It is a “taut wire”, about as thick as his finger, but “almost completely translucent”. Oh, so it is actually a strand of spider silk! Arthur plucks it and it gives off “a soft harmonic note”.

He asks how they will use it. The Will says it will stick to the soles of their feet, and they will simply walk down it to the Dayroom. Suzy wants to fly, though. The Will reacts with ‘No, you—’ So they were about to curse at Suzy for not realising this plan would not work… even though she could not know that? That does nothing to improve my regard for them.

The Will explains that, if people fly close to the island, they “attract targeted bursts of steam that will strip the flesh from your bones”. That is something to avoid at all costs, then! They say the only way down is via the spiderwire and they cannot procrastinate (why?). They tell Arthur to step on. Arthur asks what happens if he loses his balance, because his soles might stick, but he is hanging upside down. The Will says he will have to walk upside down the whole way then. Arthur needs to hurry, they say, and it is “easier than it sounds”.

…Maybe you could tell them why they need to hurry? That might make them believe you instead of thinking you are up to your usual antics.

Suzy complains that the Will is a frog and does not have soles, so how do they know this? Arthur shushes her, then stands up and puts the Key in his sleeve, which he puts a handkerchief around to stop it from falling out. Then he spreads his arms, takes a deep breath and takes his first step on the spiderwire. And there this chapter ends!

It is quite amazing how much more enjoyable this was to do than the previous chapters. Now we have stuff actually happening, and Arthur and Suzy get to do something to help stop Monday. There is also more of the setting than the same hole, so I think that also helps.

Anyway, I will see you again in chapter 25. Until then!