Disclaimer: The Keys to the Kingdom series does not in any way belong to me, it's the property of Garth Nix, etc.

Notes: The Piper's children were brought into the House fairly recently (by House standards, anyway) by the Piper, so I always found it kind of strange that the Gilded Youths would patrol the Middle House. I mean, who did the job before the Piper's children showed up? Why would Grim Tuesday have to make some of them into Gilded Youths for Lady Friday in the first place? And also, why is Friday's Dawn male when all the other Dawns introduced in the series were female? What reason would Dawn (traditionally, the 'left hand' of the Morrow Day in question) have for disapproving of Lady Friday's experiencing?

Of course, my mind went to angsty places to explain these discrepancies! :)

Title from Death Valley, by Fall Out Boy.

I need your (broken) promises

None of them will wake, no matter how he shakes them, or shouts at them, or-

They will not wake, and nothing happens when he tears the thin strip of sorcerous paper off one of his comrades' forehead either.

He places an urgent call to the High Guild; he doesn't remember what he says, but it must have been something to get one of those perennially lazy sorcerors at the Gilded Warriors' barracks down in Aurianburg less than ten minutes later.

"Where's Noon?" he demands of the Denizen who strides out of the elevator, for he knows that Dawn's counterpart is the most skilled sorceror in the Middle House, apart from Lady Friday herself.

"Busy," the sorceror says, peering down his nose at him. "I am Jakem, 1000th in precedence within the House, and directly beneath Friday's Noon."

He clenches his fists. "Fine," he snaps. "Just- fix them." He gestures at the massive, ornately-carved door which leads to the common room. The barracks of the Gilded Warriors is the finest building in Aurianburg, befitting the protectors of the Flat.

Jakem sniffs and strides through, affecting a beleaguered air. He does not care what the sorceror pretends, so long as he fixes whatever is wrong with his comrades and leader.

"Oh my," Jakem says, stopping just inside the doorway. He gazes at the rows of Gilded Warriors laid out on the floor in obvious shock; all except one has the innocuous strip of experience on their foreheads. "When did they begin to experience?"

"Yesterday afternoon," he says shortly, clenching his hands into fists. The sorceror's reaction is not encouraging, but he is a seasoned soldier; he does not allow his fear to overcome him. "Dawn said it would last a few hours; the patrol begins in less than an hour, it was not supposed to last this long-!" He stops himself, bites the inside of his lower lip. He will not show weakness in front of this sorceror.

"Interesting," Jakem says, walking towards the nearest Warrior. He kneels beside her, lifts an eyelid. "You removed one of the papers? Do you still have it?"

He relaxes his fists, tugs the crumples strip out of his pocket. "I didn't know- should I not have?"

"Removing the experience before it ended would be inimical," Jakem says calmly, smoothing the paper out. "However, as you said, the experience ought to have been finished." He pulls a monocle out of his pocket and peers through it at the paper. "This spell seems straightforward enough, if not applied with any particular skill."

He bristles at the slight to his leader, but it is not inaccurate. Friday's Dawn was- is no sorceror. Anything she knows was taught to her by Noon, as far as he knows. Certainly she was never formally educated, as Noon and the sorcerors of the High Guild were.

"Everything seems in order," Jakem says, rising smoothly. He tucks the crumpled paper into his pocket, alongside the monocle. "Is that all?"

"What do you mean?" he demands, hand going to his sword. "Fix them!"

Jakem looks at him pityingly. "There is nothing to fix, Warrior. Your... comrades are beyond fixing. The condensed experience was too much for them to absorb. This is why an experience is generally spelled to last around a year. They are catatonic. Their body lives but their mind is dead."

He stares at Jakem, but it is as if his own mind is overloaded. He is aware of the external stimuli in a series of individual snapshots: the haughty expression on Jakem's face; the roaring of blood in his ears; the clammy sweat gathering in his palms; the sudden dryness of his mouth.

"What do I do?" he asks, lost.

Jakem shrugs, brushes nonexistent dust off his shoulder. "Carry out your patrol, Warrior."

"I cannot- the entire Flat, on my own? It's impossible," he says numbly.

"You are the only one left?"

Despite himself, his gaze is drawn to the rows of his comrades; their faces are slack, forms still as if in repose. But they will never wake again, if the sorceror is to be believed. And what reason would there be to lie?

"I am," he agrees.

"A pity," Jakem says briskly. "However, the day is about to begin in Binding Junction and I must be there. Good morning." The sorceror strides past him, heels clicking against the floor.

He hears the ding of the elevator, signalling Jakem's return to the Top Shelf, and then silence descends.

He is alone.

He flies the patrol alone; fortunately there are no incursions of Nithlings. He would not have been able to fend them off, in any case; he is much too distracted, and even though he is one of Dawn's deputies, he doubts he could have held his own if it came to a fight, no matter how weak the Nithlings might have been.

None of the Denizens off duty from the mills will even consider temporarily aiding him while he waits for a reply from Lady Friday. He has called her, Noon and Dusk a total of seven times altogether. None of the calls have gone through. He also dispatched a brief missive to each of them with the Paper Pushers, but it will take time for his notes to arrive.

"'Ey," a high voice says. "Did I 'ear that right? You recruiting for the Warriors?"

He turns, then looks down at the speaker. And frowns at her. "I am seeking temporary replacements," he says, stiffly. "Until Lady Friday or Friday's Noon arrives to set my comrades to rights." He feels like this is a futile hope; Jakem is a step below Noon, surely he would know if the other Gilded Warriors could be restored even if he could not do it himself.

The Piper's child, an older girl perhaps in her early teens, grins. "Right. That. Me an' my crew wanna join up."

"You are too small," he says.

"Yeah? You got enough applicants that you can refuse us? 'Cause the way I see it, you ain't got much of a choice in the matter. Unless them regular Denizens suddenly decided a life of fighting Nithlings was for 'em."

He scowls as she smirks; they both know she's already won. The Piper's children have this way with logic that makes it nigh impossible to argue with them.

"Very well," he concedes. In any case, he is just glad to have some aid, no matter how ill-suited he thinks they will be.

He locks the door to the common room and gives the Piper's children a brief tour of the rest of the barracks: the washrooms, the kitchen and dining room, the sleeping rooms, the smaller meeting rooms like the parlours.

"What about that room?" the girl from before asks, indicating the common room. She seems to be the children's informal leader. Her name is Annabelle, though the other children call her Annie.

"The other Gilded Warriors are in there, recovering. Don't disturb them," he says flatly.

"Recovering from what?" another child asks.

"An accident," he says. "Now come along, I have to outfit you with armour, and wings."

The prospect of shiny gold armour and quality wings goes a long way to distracting them, but Annie looks thoughtful.

Fortunately, the suits of armour and wings size themselves to their wearer automatically; it's simply a matter of assigning a set of each to all of the children.

"Before you take off-" He doesn't bother finishing. Most of the children have launched themselves into the air of the training courtyard and are displaying a surprising skill for flying. Those that seem to be having trouble are being cajoled through it by their more capable peers.

"Don't worry, Captain," Annie says brightly, swooping around above his head. "We'll figure 'em out. We're a bit more adaptable than the average Denizen, eh?"

"That is not my title. You may refer to me as Warrior," he says. Then adds, grudgingly, "Yes, you children do seem to be... adapting quickly."

Annie grins at him and starts an impromptu game that, as far as he can tell, involves one person chasing the others around until they touch someone, at which point that person commences chasing.

He sits on one of the benches and watches, occasionally barking warnings about flying too close which are mostly ignored. It is... nice, he thinks, to have the barracks alive again. The children laugh much more freely and their voices are generally higher than his fellow Warriors', but the noise is a welcome distraction from the deafening silence that had descended.

The short swords that some of the Warriors had used are just the right size for the Piper's children. The older ones are big enough to make use of the short bows as well, so that every child on patrol ends up with a weapon of some sort, even if they have to share with off-duty children.

He is worried the first time a patrol runs into some Nithlings, though the intruders are not especially strong. Still, the children are so small, even if they have proven themselves to be cunning and viciously protective of their own.

The Nithlings are dispatched without a problem, only a few minor injuries sustained. As are the next ones. And the next.

The only problem is that Piper's children require more rest than Denizens; he already has less than a full complement of troops at his disposal, and the patrols are undermanned as is.

"You could try recruiting up in the Middle, or the Top Shelf," Annie suggests, catching him alone in the corridor that leads to the private rooms. Only he, Dawn and her other lieutenant had warranted one; now his is the only one occupied.

He looks at her, surprised. He had not voiced his concerns; in fact, he had been trying to keep them hidden.

"Plenty of Piper's children all over the Middle House," she adds. "It's boring enough down 'ere, can't imagine 'ow they deal with all that politics malarkey up there. Filling in for the Gilded Warriors'd be like a dream come true. I know it was for us."

He stares at her, some unnameable feeling rising within him. It is suddenly too much; he can't stand the uncertainty, and he can't pretend he doesn't know that his comrades won't be returning for duty any longer.

"That is a good idea," he says, finally, turning away. Something inside of him aches, a phantom pain that will not be assuaged. "I will see about it tomorrow, after the day's patrol." His voice is more rough than he intends.

"Everything all right, Warrior?" Annie asks, grabbing his arm in a surprisingly strong grip. "You're working harder than us Piper's children. I'd bet you 'aven't taken a day off since the... accident."

"I will be all right if I can get sufficient rest tonight," he says.

"Oof. Message received, loud and clear. Good night then, Warrior." She releases him and walks away, her steps nearly silent.

"Good night," he says, to the empty hallway, and walks into his room.

If he thinks that recruiting Piper's children in the Middle of the Middle is bad, venturing to the Top Shelf is worse. The Illustrators and Augmenters look down their noses at him, or attempt to; he is still of a higher precedence, after all. The sly comments about his fellow Denizens that the Piper's children make go a long way to cheering him up; it is as Annie suggested, most of them are as eager to leave their mundane jobs and help him patrol as their counterparts on the Flat.

This is not the case on the Top Shelf. Jakem is taller, as are several of the other ranking sorcerors; the rest are of a height with him.

"You are still patrolling?" Jakem asks, astonished. As if the sorceror would have expected him to abandon his duty and leave the Middle House unprotected in the morning.

"Of course," he says, stiffly, rather than making some unbecoming comment about responsibility and the utter disregard for it that those on the Top Shelf tend to display.

Jakem looks at him as if he is some interesting, slightly repulsive specimen. "Well, none of the sorcerors can be spared. You will have to look elsewhere."

He grits his teeth. "I was not asking about your sorcerors." He manages to keep from spitting the word out like a curse, somehow. "You must employ Piper's children in some capacity. They have shown themselves to be suitable replacements for my comrades, in the interim. I would like to ask them if they wish to join."

Jakem laughs; he wants nothing more than to punch that smug face, but he refrains. "Piper's children? How absurd. There are a few laying about here somewhere, certainly. Digby, assemble the Piper's children for the Warrior."

Digby is a few inches taller than himself. If the other Denizen is disgruntled to be treated with much less respect than his precedence ought to bestow him, he gives no sign as he goes out to do as Jakem bids.

Sorcerors.

He tries to rein in his temper. It is not really the sorcerors' fault, what has befallen his comrades. Though he had passed rows of experiencing Denizens on the way to Jakem's office, they are merely a symptom of what has gone so wrong in the Middle House.

The source of the cancer is higher than them. If Lady Friday had not begun to use the Fifth Key to experience at all-

He stops himself there; he is a loyal Denizen. Thinking such things about his superiors is... unacceptable.

(No matter how true they might be.)

He is badly injured on a routine patrol. He doesn't know what Annie and the rest of the Piper's children do, but Lady Friday and Friday's Noon are both in his private room in the barracks when he wakes. He has no memory of falling, though he must have - he was midair when he took the injury - much less of being brought back to the Flat.

His throat aches; his voice is rough, when he speaks, and the muscles in his neck twinge. He presses his fingers to the slight scar that is all that remains of the throat-slitting he had received when he took a blow meant for a Piper's child.

"Lady Friday," he says, bowing as best as he can in a bed. The sight of the two highest-ranking Denizens in the Middle House makes him uneasy; he keeps his head lowered, sorting through his thoughts.

"Warrior," Lady Friday says. There is a strange quality to her voice; she seems distracted, almost impatient. She is his mistress, and so he pushes aside his own discomfort and squares his shoulders.

"How may I be of service?"

Lady Friday blinks, a brief look of bewilderment crossing her face. "I have come to deal with the issue you mentioned in your letters," she says.

It is his turn to blink, confused. Then he remembers - yes, the increasingly terse missives he had sent to the Scriptorium, before he had decided it was futile. It has been months since the accident. "Ah," he says. "I have made some attempt to remedy the... issue." He cannot help the bitterness that suffuses the word, but she seems not to notice. The loss of the rest of the Gilded Warriors is more than an issue. He is still weak, though; he can't quite muster the anger that such a pathetic euphemism rightly deserves. "The Piper's children-"

"Yes, they have done an adequate job," Lady Friday agrees. "But they have their duties as well. The sorcerors need them as pages on the Top Shelf, and I am sure the other Guilds are feeling their loss as well."

He looks at Noon. "I spoke to Jakem, and he did not seem to consider them essential or even needful to the functioning of the High Guild," he says. He does not add that the Guilds got on fine before the arrival of the Piper's children within the House.

"An oversight," Noon says briskly. "I will be taking a number of them back."

"Who will patrol in the morning?" he demands.

"The remainder," Lady Friday says. "I will be taking them to Grim Tuesday to be outfitted properly."

"Even with better equipment, they still require more rest than the average Denizen. I recruited Piper's children from the upper terraces because they could not patrol day after day, Lady Friday," he says.

"It will be taken care of," she says, impatiently. "We have already selected the Piper's children that will be remaining under your command."

"Will a new Friday's Dawn be appointed?" he asks. Perhaps he can appeal to her (or him, though Dawns have always, as far as he knows, been female) to recruit more of the Piper's children back once Lady Friday loses interest in the Flat again.

"Of course. You are the new Friday's Dawn. Congratulations." Lady Friday's smile should be beautiful, but it looks fake; a poorly-placed mask that does little to conceal the true face beneath. She does not want to be here, and she is impatient to leave.

"I- thank you," he says blankly, overwhelmed.

"I will be taking the Piper's children shortly," Lady Friday adds. "They would not consent to leave until they wished you goodbye, however." She frowns briefly.

"They are spirited," he agrees. "If you will give me a moment, I will be out directly."

"The courtyard," she says.

"I will be taking over the morning's patrols, during your convalescence," Noon adds.

He looks at the other Denizen. "Indeed. That is generous."

Noon's upper lip curls back ever so slightly; he resists the urge to bare his teeth in return.

The Piper's children crowd around him, grasping at him with their small hands as if to assure themselves that he is all right.

"I thought 'is 'ead was gonna come off," one of the youngest ones says anxiously, before the others sternly hush him.

"I am still intact," he says, amused. Predictably, they exclaim over his newly-rough voice. He pats hands and ruffles hair, until every child present has been seen to. Lady Friday lingers near the exit, looking increasingly annoyed.

"Well, I think that is enough messing about," he says, finally. "Lady Friday is waiting."

The Piper's children make a show of contrition, but it is not terribly sincere. He bites his lip to keep from smiling. They shuffle over to join her, chattering excitedly amongst themselves.

"Wait!"

Annie runs back to him, grinning, incandescent.

"You never did tell us your name, Warrior."

He blinks, astonished. Indeed, he did not. He is so used to simply being called Warrior now that it seems strange to remember that he was once referred to as something else, that there used to be others who bore the designation Warrior.

He tells Annie his name.

His name sounds alien, exotic, when rendered in the high, excited accent of the Piper's children. They all grin at him and wave, shouting goodbyes to him. They are as blithely unaware of Lady Friday's impatience as they are of most things.

He stands in the empty courtyard until Noon's sorcerors arrive, then retreats to his room to preserve his good mood; he cannot stand those Denizens, and even overhearing their petty conversations is enough to annoy him.

The children come back but they are no longer his. They are no longer children. They are some twisted, macabre reflections; physical manifestations of how the Middle House has fallen.

"These are the Gilded Youths, Dawn," Friday says.

"All of them?" he asks, numbly.

Friday either does not understand his question or purposely misconstrues it. "Well, a few were damaged by the process and disposed of. These are what remains," she explains reasonably.

He stares at her. At her side, Noon looks... uncomfortable. Tense. As if he senses how close his newly-appointed counterpart is to forgetting his place and lashing out at their mistress.

"Orders commander Friday's Dawn," one of the children- one of the Gilded Youths says, expectant. Even their voices are changed, strange and crackly and horrifying.

He looks at it- her. He looks at her, and realizes. This is Annie: what has become of her.

"What is your name?" he asks, past the grief that threatens to choke him.

"Designation self Fifteen," Annie says.

"Fifteen," he repeats. His voice cracks. "You will be my deputy, Fifteen."

"Acknowledged commander Friday's Dawn."

"Well, we will leave you to it," Friday says. "I'll expect you to accompany Noon, Dusk and I to the Secondary Realms within the month, once you've gotten the children settled."

"The Gilded Youths," he says, before he realizes it. "They are not children any longer."

Friday looks at him, eyes narrowed.

"And I will not be accompanying you to the Secondary Realms," he adds, before she can speak. "If anything should happen, one of the administrators of the Middle House should be present to deal with the situation."

"Your tone verges on insubordinate," Noon says.

Something ugly stirs within him. "Your pardon. I have been so long without a superior's supervision, I forget myself."

Friday catches Noon's arm when the other Time makes to strike him. "Dawn has made his position clear. Such dedication to duty is admirable, if misguided. You will remain in the Middle House at all times, Dawn."

The Youths press close after Noon and Friday depart, introducing themselves. He tries to commit their names (numbers) to memory, but all he can think of is who they used to be. The armour conceals everything that they once were (he wonders how much of the original child remains) but he cannot help thinking that he knows the Youths' former identities nevertheless.

The Youths require the same amount of rest as he does; they are stronger and faster, but lack the initiative that made the Piper's children so effective. They follow his orders to the letter and do not presume to make improvements. They are disciplined at all times.

The barracks are silent; the Youths do not eat, nor do they devise games with which to amuse themselves. They tend to remain in their rooms when not required.

He sits alone in the courtyard, watching the sunset. They used to enjoy playing games that were largely incomprehensible to him, cavorting around outside in their spare time.

Annie- Fifteen- walks over and sits on the bench beside him. "Trouble Friday's Dawn?" she asks.

"That is not my name," he says, because apparently he is a masochist.

"Commander?" She peers up at him, though the angle of her helmet is such that he cannot see through the eyeholes. He does not know if he would want to see what remains in any case.

"Do you not remember my name?" he asks.

"Friday's Dawn." Her voice is becoming more crackly; it is almost incomprehensible, a clear sign of her mounting confusion. The Youths do not deal well with confusion. They require order, stability.

Both things have long been absent in the House.

"That is my title," he says, "not my name."

Silence. And then, "Orders Friday's Dawn?"

"That is not my name," he repeats, for the third time. "Call me by my name!" He is shouting by the end of it, voice cracking, his nails digging into his palm sharply enough to draw blood with how hard he is clenching his fists.

"Apology Friday's Dawn," she says, distressed. "Apology Fri- Apology apology apologyapo-"

"Stop," he says. "Annie-"

The word has run together, a garbled babble that he can barely understand, Annie stammering out an apology that she should not have to give. It is not her fault. She is not at fault and it is unjust for him to punish her.

"Stop," he repeats, wrapping his arms around her small, cold frame. It is a cool evening, but her body should have generated some heat and warmed the armour. That it has not- he cannot follow that line of thought. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispers as she shakes mutely in his arms.

He does not know what he is apologizing for, anymore.

If someone - probably Annie, she was the only one who would have cared about the answer - had asked who he liked working with better, the Gilded Warriors or the Piper's children that replaced them, he wouldn't have been able to give that person a straight answer.

He misses the camaraderie with his fellow Warriors, the understanding that comes from working together towards the same purpose. But the Piper's children had their own sort of camaraderie, even if they were sometimes undisciplined and childish; especially towards the end, it had felt as if they had pulled him into their ranks rather than the other way around, as it should have been; but he had not minded. They were fiercely protective, passionate in a way that Denizens like himself could not really comprehend.

The intense feeling of grief at losing both of those groups is the same. It tastes all the more bitter when he must see what remains, day after day. The Gilded Youths move with the discipline and precision that he had characterized with the Gilded Warriors, but lack the closeness that he had with the Warriors. He is very clearly their superior, no matter how he might wish it were different. He misses the sometimes patronizing way that the Piper's children would humour his requests, misses turning a blind eye to their pranks and hearing their laughter echo through the barracks.

It cannot be different, for the Youths were created (twisted) in such a way that they seem to have all the negative attributes he had associated with both groups while lacking the positives.

He settles into the role of Friday's Dawn with alacrity; as ever, he has a duty to uphold and who will fulfill it if not him? The Gilded Youths cannot function without his guidance, and Nithlings have been bubbling up in the Middle House with increasing frequency. The Middle House (and, he suspects, the rest of the House) is steadily declining despite his best efforts. All he can do is continue to struggle, even if some days hearing 'Friday's Dawn' in the characteristic crackle of the Youths makes him want to run away and pretend that everything is well when it is so very clearly not.

There are rumours within the House, of change. He does not know if they are true; but surely all rumours have some grain of truth within them.

There is a Rightful Heir, the rumours say. The Lower House has fallen.

But he sees the Very Grand Canal every day; the records are jammed at the waterfall on the border of the Middle and Lower Houses, that is how far behind the Lower House is with its duties. The Lower House has fallen? It had already fallen long before this Arthur Penhaligon appeared.

He directs the Gilded Youths and oversees the Guild and patrols the Middle House. He waits. The Rightful Heir is coming, and even if he thinks that the Trustees must have had some reason for breaking the Will, he also thinks that helping the Rightful Heir cannot be worse than this shambles.

He waits for Lord Arthur to arrive.