Mister Monday: Chapter Ten (Part I)

[pangolin20]

Chapter Nine (Part II) | Table of Contents | Chapter Ten (Part II)

(Corneille Blanche comes in. They are wearing a plain white robe now, and it can be seen that they are a white anthro crow.)

Corneille Blanche: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Mister Monday! Last time, Arthur spent some time in a city in the House, we had quite some description, and he got himself trapped by Nithlings. Let us see what happens now!

 

We open on Arthur retreating until he reaches the door of the office. He pushes on it with his shoulder, but it does not move. He continues to look at the creature and tries to twist the doorknob, but that does not work either, so he cannot escape that way. I think he could use the Key to open the door? Then again, that might risk the creature attacking, so I will accept this for now.

Arthur looks around for another way out, but the Nithlings have spread out to cover the other buildings, and the one-eyed Nithling is coming up the steps. It drools and licks its lips, “its one eye looking hungrily at [Arthur]”. Arthur shouts at it to get back, and pulls out the Key (might have done that earlier), gets it entangled in his shirt, and then points it at the Nithling “like a dagger”.

Hmmm. Does anyone else get the impression that Arthur is somewhat too easily caught here? He might have run away when this began, but instead he waited on the stairs; he could try to use the Key to open the door, but he does not for some reason; he could use the Key more effectively here, but he just points it at the Nithling. I guess I know why Nix would have written it this way, but this goes on for far too long in my opinion.

The Nithling hisses when it sees the Key, and it turns its head and its “misshapen mouth quiver[s]”. It stops going up the stairs and calls out to its companions. Arthur wishes he does not understand what the Nithling says, but he does. And what does this Nithling say, then?

“Treasure! Danger! Come and help me!”

Ah, so the Nithling wants to steal the Key from Arthur! Good luck with that, I would say. The creatures all stop and turn back to Arthur. The main Nithling hisses again and slowly approaches Arthur, much more carefully, while looking at the Key. Arthur sees that it is glowing again, with “light gathering at the point”. It gathers its power as the Nithlings gathers its allies.

Notably Arthur is doing nothing at the moment. Just saying. The Nithling suddenly crouches and Arthur knows it is about to jump. He points the Key at it and shouts, “a wild cry that [isn’t] a word at all, but a mixture of anger and fear”.

“A stream of what look[s] like molten gold” shoots out of the Key and hits the Nithling head-on. Woo! It “squeal[s] and hisse[s] like a steam train coming to an emergency stop”, twists aside and falls to the street. There it lies dying, “smoke rising from a hole in its chest”. Well, that is one way to do it.

But there are more Nithlings, of course. They have slowed down after seeing their “forerunner” die, but he knows they can get him if they rush him all at once. He thinks he will “take out as many as he [can]”, and points the Key at the closest one. Just then, we have the rescue!

Someone calls out to him: “Hey! Idiot! Up here!” (I think calling him an idiot is quite justified here.) Something soft hits Arthur on the back of his head. He looks up, and he sees a “small, grimy face” peeking out over the gutter on the roof. Beneath “that face and a thin, ragged-clad arm” is a rope “made of knotted pieces of material”. The end of the rope has just hit him.

I know what Nix means, but the way he wrote it is really quite bad. It is just so… awkward, and the rope made out of “pieces of material” is not doing it for me.

The person tells him to climb, and calls him “stupid”. Again, no argument. Then we are told the next bit in… a sort of flashback? It says that Arthur was, “[a]fterwards”, not sure how he managed to do what he did. I think it would be nicer to have this written in the present. Either way, Arthur puts the Key through his belt, “jump[s] about eight feet off the ground”, and climbs most of the four stories to the top of the building before the Nithlings are halfway up the front steps.

I think that the Key allowed him to do this? I do not think this will become much clearer later on, and it would have been nice to have some confirmation.

The person tells him to go faster, because Nithlings can climb. Arthur looks behind him as he “frantically pull[s] himself up”, with a “speed that would have surprised any gym teacher”. He thinks that Weightman ought to see him now.

We are then told that the Nithlings can climb. (Because it is not like we were just told that already.) One of them is already on the rope, “swarming up” (?) faster than Arthur. Another one is “swarming up” the brick wall. And why are we using “swarming” here? These are individual Nithlings; they do not form a swarm.

Well, this Nithling can stick its fingers in the gaps between the bricks, but it is slower. Arthur now reaches the top and gets on the roof. He sees “a flash of steel” as his rescuer cuts the rope. There is a cry of pain as the Nithling falls to the ground. His rescuer tells him to grab “a piece of tile and throw”.

Sure enough, Arthur sees a pile of tiles, grabs one, and leans over the gutter to throw. His rescuer is also throwing, “with considerably greater accuracy”. Arthur looks at “him… no…. her” from the corner of his eye as he throws another shard. So… he threw the first tile? That was never said.

Well, the rescuer is a girl who is about as old as he is. She is dressed as a boy in the same old-fashioned clothing everyone in the city wears. And then we get a description of the clothing.

Three things:

1) How can Arthur see this from the corner of his eye? Or is he supposed to be fully looking at her? Where was the editor here?

2) Why do we get a block of description in the middle of what is supposed to be a tense scene?

3) Why do we get much more description of her clothing than of what she looks like?

As for the description itself… well, here it is:

A crushed and battered top hat. A coat several sizes too large, mostly dark blue but patched with black. Knee-length breeches striped in several shades of gray, and very odd mismatched long socks or stockings that ended in one ankle-high and one shin-high boot. She had on several shirts of various sizes and colors and a mulberry-colored waistcoat that looked, if not new, better kept than the rest of the ensemble.

It is not… that bad, but there are still some things off. Why does this use fragments? What is up with “socks or stockings”? Why does Arthur use “mulberry” to describe her clothing? To be fair, that last word does reappear later, but only in reference to her waistcoat, so…

Arthur asks who she is (so I guess he did look directly at her?). She says she is “Suzy Turquoise Blue”. And I love her. She throws one last tile at the Nithling, which throws it back to the street, on top of another one who had just started climbing.

She then says they have to get out of there “before the Commissionaires lumber into view”. “Lumber into view”? That… does not fit very well. Arthur asks who they are, and Suzy insists that they are Commissionaires. She tells him to listen to the whistles, because that means that they will be sorting out the Nithlings and then go to arrest him.

Arthur tells her to hold on, and we are told the whistles are now closer. He thanks her for “helping and everything”, and then asks who he should not just talk to the Commissionaires, and who or what Nithlings are.

Are we actually doing this? Arthur read in the Atlas about Nithlings earlier, so I would expect him to ask “can you tell me more about Nithlings” rather than this. Also, why does Arthur need to be made such an idiot here? It does not fit with him at all.

Suzy rolls her eyes and says that he is an idiot and there is “no time for quizzing”. So you expect him to just go along without any kind of questions, even though he is not in immediate danger? That’s not very logical, either. Arthur asks why he should go with her and refuses to move.

Suzy speaks again, only this time it is not her voice. It is much deeper, and also has a rasp in it. He says it sounds much like how Sneezer sounded when he “fought with Mister Monday” at the beginning of the book. The voice says that the Will has “found a way” and Arthur is part of it, so this is “not the time for whims and obstinacy” and he has to follow Suzy.

Why, it seems we have found the Will again, and it does not seem very charming.

Arthur is shaken by this and caves. Suzy then turns around and goes to climb the roof. It is steep, but the tiles are rough, so climbing is not too hard. Arthur follows at a slower pace. The “ridge of the roof” is flat, though it is only a foot wide. Suzy runs to a chimney stack, which she skirts around, “hanging on to the chimney pot and leaning out in a way that [makes] Arthur’s stomach do little flips. It was a long way to the ground.”

Yes, thank you for explaining that. And thank you for “little flips”, because that certainly fits the scene.

He goes around the chimney. Suzy is on the other side, looking at a balcony that “project[s] from the next building”, which is “about ten feet away and six feet below them”. Arthur starts to protest, but Suzy jumps, “landing perfectly on the balcony in a nimble crouch”. She does not wait for him, but instead goes to work on the door, “either picking the lock or forcing it open”.

Arthur looks down. The street is a long way down, and, for a moment, he is “terribly afraid” that he will fall. But that fear disappears as he sees that there is a “full-scale battle” in progress below. The whistles have been replaced by “shouts and cries, howls and screams, yelling and a low rumble like constant thunder.”

So we get a description of the battle. The Nithlings have been trapped in the middle of the street by “a well-disciplined band of large, burly men” who are wearing “shining top hats and blue coats”. Many of the coats have “gold sergeant’s stripes” on their sleeves. Arthur realises they must be the Commissionaires (so the police agents).

The Sergeants are “well over eight feet tall” (impressive), and the ordinary ones are “around seven feet tall”, and less fluid. The Sergeants use “sabers that flicker[] with internal light”, and the ordinary ones “wooden truncheons that flash[] with tiny bolts of lightning and boom[] with thunder as they [strike] their targets”.

Well, how impressive. And I see that the next paragraph suddenly improves quite a bit. I… have no idea what has happened here. I get the impression that the editor simply did not proofread the first bit of this chapter, and it shows. At least the rest will be better…

The Nithlings are certainly not an easy mark for the Commissionaires. They “[bite] and scratch[] and wrestle[]”, and from time to time, a Commissionaire reels back, “blood streaming from his wounds”. One would think they would be a bit better at this, given that the Nithlings seem to be a regular occurrence. Also, if the people in charge here were competent, they ought to have done something about the Nithlings coming up long ago. So this is a nice way to show just how incompetent the leaders are, I would say.

Arthur says he presumes it as blood, as that of the Sergeants is “bright blue” and the common Commissionaries have “silver” blood, which flows like mercury. The former can certainly be blood, though I would guess it has a dye in it. For the latter… I do not think that is blood in the common sense. (Also nice way to have this worldbuilding!)

Suzy yells at him to come on, which seems like a very good idea, given that he is in full sight of lots of police at the moment. Arthur looks away and focuses on the balcony. He says he knows he can do it, but the depth of the fall makes it hard to do. (Nice moment to have here.) Suzy calls out for him to hurry, and Arthur crouches, readying himself to jump.

Then he remembers the Key and pulls it out. He says the last thing he needs is for him to injure himself on it. As soon as he holds it, he feels “more confident”. He crouches again, then “leap[s] far into space”, and “drift[s] down like a feather” to land on the balcony, “hardly needing to bend his knees”. Well, that went very smoothly.

Suzy has just run inside, and Arthur gets up and follows, while tucking the Key beneath his shirt. The room “behind the balcony” looks like “an old-fashioned office”, which Arthur is not surprised by. (All the plaquettes with names were for offices, after all.) As he runs, he gives a bit of description. There are “low, wide desks of polished wood with green leather tops”, which are “strewn with papers”. There are bookcases with more papers and books.

There seem to be “gas lanterns” in each corner, and under a small table at one of them, he sees the first sign of food anywhere. And that is “a bronze hot-water urn with many taps and spigots, a silver teapot, and several china cups”. Um, I think that is a sign of drink instead of food, but still interesting to see.

There are also people working. They look up as Arthur and Suzy run past, but do not do anything further. Even when Arthur knocks “a large pile of parchments” off a corner of a desk, the man behind it keeps writing with his quill, “though he [does] look up and frown”. Seems like this is a regular occurrence, then.

They run out of the office and down “the central stairs”. At the bottom, Suzy turns away from the “main door”, goes through a “narrow hall”, opens the door of “what appear[s] to be a broom closet”, and goes in. Arthur follows her and sees it actually is a broom closet. Or, “to be strictly accurate”, a mop closet, as it holds several mops. The closet smells “dank and musty”.

Suzy tells Arthur to close the door, and he does so, which plunges them into darkness.

And here I would like to stop, as I am about halfway through the chapter by now. Until next time, then!