Superior Saturday by Garth Nix Page B

several interested officers to stand next to Arthur. The tattoos on his face were of painted savages dancing around a bonfire, under the direction of a witchdoctor in a ludicrous feathered headdress. ‘This poor chap need not feel his immediate past merely for us to see it! I see also that you, sir, have used a quite discredited spell for the preservation of a head, and I must ask you to relinquish care of this individual to someone who knows what they are doing!’
    ‘Mister Skerrikim is quite adequately trained,’ said Dame Primus smoothly. She did not look at Dr Scamandros, but spoke to Arthur. ‘As Sir Thursday’s Chief Questioner, Skerrikim has conducted many showings from Denizens’ minds, and as you know, Arthur, Denizens do not really feel much pain. Marson will be well rewarded when his new body grows.’
    ‘I thought Doctor Scamandros was the only sorcerer not in Saturday’s service,’ said Arthur.
    ‘Mister Skerrikim is not exactly a sorcerer,’ Dame Primus clarified. ‘It is true he is a practitioner of House sorcery, but his field of specialisation is quite narrow.’
    ‘Jackal,’ hissed Scamandros quietly.
    ‘Blowhard,’ retorted Skerrikim, not so quietly.
    Arthur hesitated. He wanted to see what Marson had experienced, but he didn’t want the dismembered Denizen to suffer.
    ‘Scamandros, can you show us what we need to see, without hurting him?’
    ‘Indeed I can, sir,’ said Scamandros, puffing out his chest.
    ‘Skerrikim is an expert,’ said Dame Primus. ‘Far better to let him—’
    ‘No,’ Arthur said quietly. ‘Scamandros will do it. That will be all, thank you, Mister Skerrikim.’
    Skerrikim looked at Dame Primus. She did not move or give any signal that Arthur could see, but the skullcapped Denizen bowed and withdrew.
    Scamandros knelt by the side of the suitcase and used a red velvet cloth to wipe off whatever Skerrikim had written on Marson’s head. Then he took out his own bottle of activated ink and a peacock-plumed pen and wrote something else.
    ‘Move aside,’ Scamandros instructed several officers. ‘The vision will form where you’re standing. I trust you feel no pain, Marson?’
    ‘Not a thing,’ Marson reported. ‘‘Cept an itch in the foot I don’t have anymore.’
    ‘Excellent,’ said Dr Scamandros. ‘Open your eyes a little wider, a touch more ... very good ... hold them open there ... Let me get these matchsticks in place, and we will commence.’
    The sorcerer stood back and spoke a word. Arthur could almost see the letters of it, see the way the air rippled away from Scamandros’s mouth as he spoke. He felt the power of the spell as a tingle in his joints, and some small part of him knew that once, long ago, he would have felt pain. Now, his body was accustomed to sorcery and used to power.
    Two tiny pinpricks of light grew in Marson’s eyes, and then two fierce beams shot forth, splaying out and gaining colour, dancing around madly as if a crazed and manic artist were painting with streams of light.
    An image formed in the air by the table, an image projected from Marson’s propped-open eyes. A broad, cinematic view some twelve feet wide and eight feet high, it showed a part of the floor of the Pit in the Far Reaches, the great, deep hole that Grim Tuesday had dug in order to mine more and more Nothing, no matter how dangerous it was, and no matter how much it weakened the very foundations of the House.
    Arthur leaned forward, intent on the scene. Even though what he was to see had already happened, he felt very tense, as if he were actually there ...
     

 

     
     

Chapter Six
     

 

     
     

     
    ‘The memory is blurred,’ said Dame Primus. ‘We should have had Skerrikim do it.’
    ‘Merely a matter of focus, milady,’ said Scamandros. He bent down and adjusted Marson’s eyelids, the shadows of his fingers walking across the lit scene like tall, dark walking trees. ‘There we are.’
    The picture became sharp, and sound came in as