Free Lord Sunday by Garth Nix

couple of the nearer Denizens happened to be looking back at that moment.
    “Treachery!” shouted Xagis. He raised his umbrella, which spat a bolt of fire at Suzy. She dodged, but it would have hit her if Giac hadn’t sprung forward and opened his own black umbrella, the fire bolt splashing harmlessly across the stretched fabric.
    “To the elevator!” shouted the Will. It launched itself off Suzy’s shoulder, bounced off the ceiling and ricocheted into Xagis, turning into something resembling a bowling ball just before it hit.
    Suzy and Giac slowly walked backwards towards the elevator, with Giac holding his umbrella open in front of them both. The Will bounced off the floor and ceiling to cover their retreat, knocking more Denizens over like bowling pins. But there were many more rushing over to the elevators, hundreds of sorcerers baying, “Treachery!” with those closest and with a clear line of sight shooting out fire bolts from their umbrellas.
    Suzy and Giac got to the grille door at the same time the Sorcerous Supernumerary’s umbrellacollapsed, burning shreds of material hanging from its steel and ivory bones. Suzy wrenched open the grille and the door behind, but a fire bolt caught both of them as they dived in, and they rolled around on the floor, shrieking and smoking, until the Will flew in, slammed the door shut and turned itself into a blanket that smothered the flames.
    “Ow! Ow! Double ow!” said Suzy as she slowly got to her feet. She was about to add another “ow” when the door shook, and through the window she saw the face of a Denizen who was trying to slide the outer grille door open again.
    “Where’s the operator?” shouted Suzy. She looked round wildly, but apart from herself, Giac and Part Six of the Will, the elevator was empty. There was no operator and the small bandstand in the corner was also vacant.
    Suzy looked at the tall panel of buttons to the right of the door. There were hundreds of small brass buttons arranged in rows of twelve that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, some four or five feet above Suzy’s head. From Suzy’s waist down, these brass buttons were green, blackened and covered ina rather nasty-looking verdigris. Some of the buttons in the middle were also affected by this blight and were generally dull. Only the top rows, above Suzy’s head, were bright and shiny, the way they were meant to be.
    “Giac, hold the door shut!” ordered Suzy. She looked up at the Will, who was flapping near the ceiling. “Which button’s for the Great Maze?”
    “This one,” said the raven, hitting a button a foot above Suzy’s head with its beak. “I hope,” it added as the elevator fell away and the window in the door instantly clouded over, becoming uniformly grey.

C HAPTER SEVEN
    A fter her decontamination, Leaf was given new clothes to put on. Scratchy underwear and a desert-patterned camouflage tracksuit weren’t what she would have chosen, but it didn’t really matter, since she was going to wear a protective suit over the top. Unlike the military or FBA suits, it was bright yellow and had EVACUEE printed on the front and back. Ellen showed her how to put the suit on, which was to step backwards into the connected overboots and then pull up the front inner toothless zip and pull down the outer zip, before folding over the bigVelcro tabs. The gas mask was next. It was a simpler version of the military ones, without a radio or other electronics, and it smelled rubbery and disgusting. Ellen demonstrated how to put it on and clear it, closing the intake valves and breathing out hard.
    Leaf was trying it for herself for the third time when Ellen got a call from outside.
    “Roger,” said Ellen. Then to Leaf, “OK, you’re good to go. Major Penhaligon is waiting for you outside.”
    Leaf turned to go back out the way she had come in, but Ellen tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to another air-lock-style door. “One way in, one way out,” she said.