Garth Nix - Mister Monday

Mister

Monday

To Anna and Thomas, and to all my family and friends.

Mister Monday

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Grim Tuesday

About the Author

The Keys to the Kingdom series

Copyright

About the Publisher

A flash of light suddenly distracted Arthur from his slow, counted breaths. It hit the corner of his eye and he swung around to see what it was. For a moment he thought he was blacking out again and was falling over and looking up at the sun. Then, through half-shut eyes, he realised that whatever the blinding light was, it was on the ground and very close.

In fact, it was moving, gliding across the grass towards him, the light losing its brilliance as it drew nearer. Arthur watched in stunned amazement as a dark outline became visible within the light. Then the light faded completely, to reveal a weirdly dressed man in a very strange sort of wheelchair being pushed across the grass by an equally odd-looking attendant.

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, sulphur 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 swivelled 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 favourite, 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 practised 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.