Drowned Wednesday
Praise for
‘WOW! That’s all I can say – WOW.’ Theresa Chance, 14
‘I hope Garth Nix types quickly, because I want to read the
next six Keys to the Kingdom books immediately!’
Adam Richard, 33
‘
Mister Monday
is a complete and utter masterpiece;
one of the best books I’ve ever read. I fully recommend it for
readers of all ages and I can’t wait for the next one.’
David, 14
‘Magic splashes across virtually every page . . . with a likeable
unlikely hero, fast-paced plotting and a plethora of mystical oddities,
this series is bound to garner many fans.’
Publishers’ Weekly
‘. . . an epic journey of the imagination.’
Australian Bookseller & Publisher
‘. . . a ripping yarn that can be read by adults and children alike.’
Tim Cadman,
The Sydney Morning Herald
Grim Tuesday
‘is just as action-packed and fast paced a its predecessor .
. . Exciting, engrossing, humourous and deliciously creepy.’
Magpies
‘Captivating from the start . . . this novel has the lively
inventiveness, breathtaking suspense, and intriguing use of the
ordinary that are characteristic of Nix’s previous work.’
Viewpoint
The Keys to the Kingdom series
Mister Monday
Grim Tuesday
Drowned Wednesday
To come:
Sir Thursday
Lady Friday
Superior Saturday
Lord Sunday
Other books by Garth Nix
Shade’s Children
The Old Kingdom trilogy:
Sabriel
Lirael
Abhorsen
GARTH NIX
First published in Australia in 2005
Copyright © Garth Nix 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Nix, Garth, 1963– .
Drowned Wednesday.
For children.
ISBN 1 74114 417 8.
I. Title. (Series: Nix, Garth, 1963– Keys to the kingdom; bk. 3).
A823.3
Cover design by Sandra Nobes
Cover illustration by Hofstede Design
Text design and typesetting by Pauline Haas
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To Anna,Thomas, Edward and all my family and friends
Contents
A THREE-MASTED square-rigger with iridescent green sails that shone by day or night, the
Flying Mantis
was a fast and lucky ship. She sailed the Border Sea of the House, which meant she could also sail any ocean, sea, lake, river, or other navigable stretch of liquid on any of the millions of worlds of the Secondary Realms.
On this voyage, the
Flying Mantis
was cleaving through the deep blue waters of the Border Sea, heading for Port Wednesday. Her holds were stuffed with goods bought beyond the House and illnesses salvaged from the Border Sea’s grasping waters. There were valuables under her hatches: tea and wine and coffee and spices, treats for the Denizens of the House. But her strongroom held the real treasure: coughs and sniffles and ugly rashes and strange stuttering diseases, all fixed into pills, snuff, or whalebone charms.
With such rich cargo, the crew was nervous and the lookouts red-eyed and anxious. The Border Sea was no longer safe, not since the unfortunate transformation of Lady Wednesday several thousand years before and the consequent flooding of the Sea’s old shore. Wednesday’s Noon and Dusk had been missing ever since, along with many of Wednesday’s other servants who used to police the Border Sea.
Now the waters swarmed with unlicensed salvagers and traders, some who would happily turn to a bit of casual piracy. To make matters worse, there were full-time pirates around as well. Human ones, who had somehow got through the Line of Storms and into the Border Sea from some earthly ocean.
These pirates were still mortal (unlike the Denizens) but they had managed to learn some House sorcery and were foolish enough to dabble in the use of Nothing. This made them dangerous, and if they had the numbers, their human ferocity and reckless use of Nothing-fuelled magic would usually defeat their more cautious Denizen foes.
The
Flying Mantis
had lookouts in the fighting tops of each of its three masts, one in the forepeak, and several on the quarterdeck. It was their task to watch for pirates, strange weather, and the worst of all things — the emergence of Drowned Wednesday, as Lady Wednesday was now known.
Most of the ships that now sailed the Border Sea had incompetent lookouts and inferior crews. After the Deluge, when the Border Sea swept over nine-tenths of Wednesday’s shore-based wharves, warehouses, counting rooms, and offices, more than a thousand of the higher rooms had been rapidly converted into ships. All these ships were crewed by former stevedores, clerks, rackers, counters, tally-hands, sweepers, and managers. Though they’d had several thousand years of practice, these Denizens were still poor sailors.
But not the crew of the
Flying Mantis
. She was one of Wednesday’s original forty-nine ships, commissioned and built to the Architect’s design. Her crew members were nautical Denizens, themselves made expressly to sail the Border Sea and beyond. Her Captain was none other than Heraclius Swell, 15,287th in precedence within the House.
So when the mizzen-top lookout shouted, ‘Something big . . . err . . . not that big . . . closing off the port bow . . . underwater!’ both Captain and crew reacted as well-trained professionals of long experience.
‘All hands!’ roared the mate who had the watch. ‘Beat to quarters!’
His cry was taken up by the lookouts and the sailors on deck, followed only seconds later by the sharp rattle of a drum as the ship’s boy abandoned his boot polish and the Captain’s boots to take up his sticks.
Denizens burst out from belowdecks. Some leapt to the rigging to climb aloft, ready to work the sails. Some stood by the armoury to receive their crossbows and cutlasses. Others raced to load and run out the guns, though the
Flying Mantis
only had eight working cannons of its usual complement of sixteen. Guns and gunpowder that worked in the House were very hard to come by, and always contained dangerous specks of Nothing. Since the toppling of Grim Tuesday fourteen months before, powder was in very short supply. Some said it was no longer being made, and some said it was being stockpiled for war by the mysterious Lord Arthur, who now ruled both the Lower House and the Far Reaches.
Captain Swell climbed onto the quarterdeck as the cannons rumbled out on the main deck, their red wooden wheels squealing in complaint. He was a very tall Denizen, even in stockinged feet, who always wore the full dress coat of an admiral from a small country on a small world in a remote corner of the Secondary Realms. It was turquoise blue, nipped in very tightly at the waist, and had enormous quantities of gold braid on the shoulders and cuffs. Consequently Captain Swell shone even more brightly than the green sails of his ship.
‘What occurs, Mister Pannikin?’ Swell asked his First Mate, a Denizen as tall as he was, but considerably less handsome. At some time Pannikin had lost all his hair and one ear to a Nothing-laced explosion, and his bare skull was ridged with scars. He sometimes wore a purple woollen cap, but the crew claimed that made him look even worse.
‘Mysterious submersible approaching the port bow,’ reported Pannikin, handing his spyglass to the Captain. ‘About forty feet long by my reckoning, and coursing very fast. Maybe fifty knots.’