It rained but it was a different rain. The sun’s rays were frozen in each drop like insects in amber, so it seemed to rain light. The Hiddentowners waved them gone.

Susullil smiled at Cutter and nodded. “Never did understand each other, did we, boy?” Cutter said with true humour. Qurabin’s voice, the odd androgynous hooting, gusted good-bye. No one seemed distraught that their god was leaving.

Of course Cutter had no notion of what Qurabin was saying. “You are your own people now, you have no need of gods,” he thought. Or “Be true to my memory or I’ll come back to blind you with my rage,” or “I was never a god, I’m a bloke like you, got lost because of an idiot religion.”

The travellers went northwest and north. A day, and another, through the slowly cooling forest. The ground rose and the canopy fell.

Trees became more sparse. By pools creatures like spindly bears and serrated wasps the size of cats came to drink. Cutter thought he saw things; he thought they were watched.

In the unseen company of the monk, they moved very differently. It was Drogon who saw it first. “We’re travelling too fast,” he told Cutter. He pointed down, toward where an ancient Y-shaped tree poked clear of the surrounds. “Keep it in sight,” he whispered.

Cutter tried to watch his feet but it disoriented him; the terrain changed uncertainly as if the path were skittish. Ahead a half mile he saw the tree by a river; he heard Qurabin move and speak loudly and Cutter ducked below a thorny branch and when he released it he walked on two more steps then stopped while Drogon whispered, “I told you.”

The water was behind them. Cutter could see it through the growth, and there was the tree, black-barked, its boughs spread and thrusting skyward like supplicating arms. It was behind him too.

There had been no dislocation. He had only walked. His companions looked consternated, except Judah. “What does it cost you?” the golemist said to Qurabin. “To find these ways?”

“These are hidden ways, shortcuts-lost paths,” said the monk. “Sometimes the Moment’ll let me take them. Sometimes.” The monk sounded tired. “I said I’d take you.”

Why so fast, monk? Cutter thought. You don’t have to travel like this. What’s this costing you, all these secrets?

So they sped up though they walked, and shucked their packs and scrambled at the same pace they ever had. The everyday uncanny of the monk’s trails took them at increasing speeds. They passed pillars of rock in the middle of trees, and rounded them to emerge in dry plateau. The woods were threadbaring; it was as if they trod through an old and thinning tapestry.

“Through… here I think,” Qurabin would say, and their compass needles yawed haywire as they crossed leagues. They went faster than horses.

Qurabin’s efforts, Cutter understood, were apostate. Qurabin was wrenching things from the Moment’s domain of lost and hidden things. Every day Qurabin sounded lessened.

“You want to disappear.” Cutter spoke it in a tiny voice. The monk was displaced, renegade, renounced by history and home. You want to disappear. Every lost route you uncover, you lose something-something’s hidden from you. You’ve had enough. And this is how you’ll do it. To make it mean something. Their journey was Qurabin’s protracted suicide.

“You know what the monk’s doing,” Cutter said to Judah. “We better hope Qurabin don’t be all hidden or lost before we get where we’re going.”

“It’s close,” said Judah. He smiled then, a look of such joy that Cutter could not help but smile back.

The land was deep in grasses. Kettled glacial till, sloughs and dustbeds intermitted the low slopes. There had been so many weeks of journey. They saw mesquite copses and ruins. With the wind, the wild crops moved like sea. The monk grew weaker, more hidden, but cajoled and led them past water, past animal herds, python-sized centipedes wrapped around trees.

One day they saw things leave a trail of pollen and dust and shake the grasses like whales in shallows. Borinatch, strider, the ungulate plains nomads. A family clan, young at the front, the queen behind. The striders stood much taller than a man. They careered by with their tottering gallop, their legs unbending and swinging like crutches.

One of the sows turned a friendly bestial face and saw them, waved as she thundered past. Borinatch hands worked in strange ways. It looked as if her limb appeared and disappeared.

The travellers had become a tough crew. Their muscles were bunched; they were expert shots. Pomeroy’s cuts had stained inside, so he wore splendid dark scars. Elsie fastened a bandana about her wild hair. The men’s beards were long, their shag tied back with leather: only Drogon defied this, shaving dry every few days. They husbanded their dwindling bullets, carried fire-hard spears. They looked, Cutter thought, like adventurers, the continent’s merce-nary freebooters.

We ain’t though. There’s a damn reason for all our travels.

“It must be nearly Sinn, ain’t it?” he said. “Or is it already? I’ve lost track.” They tried to work through the weeks on their fingers.

One night Judah made four little figures from the earth, and with muttered cantrips he had them dance while his companions clapped to give them music. When they were done he had them bow; then they fell back into earth.

He said: “I want to tell you all that I’m grateful. I want you to know that.” They drank a toast in water. “I want to tell you… we’ve been going so long, it’s like the journeying’s what it’s for. But that’s not so.

“I don’t even know for sure if you believe in the Iron Council.” He smiled. “I think you do. But maybe for some of you it isn’t even about that anymore. I think you’re here because of the time in the claphouse, Elsie,” he said, and she met his eyes and nodded. “I know why you’re here,” he said to Cutter.

“Even you, maybe, Drogon… A stravager like you… Myths and hopes are your currency, right? That’s what you trade in; that’s what keeps horse-tramps moving. Are you here because you think Iron Council’s like the Marzipan Palace? Are you looking for a heaven?”

“It’s not why I’m here, Judah Low,” said Pomeroy. Judah smiled. “You mean the most to me, Judah, I’d die for you, but I’d not die now. Not with what’s happening in New Crobuzon. There’s too much at stake. I’m here because of what you say’s coming for the Council. And because I think you can stop it. That’s why I’m here.”

Judah nodded, and sighed. “That’s what I want to say. This is greater than any of us. Iron Council…” He was silent for very long. “It’s tough, because that’s how it’s had to be. But it’s the Council. It’s Iron Council. And the governors of New Crobuzon-I don’t know how-they’ve found it. My contact, my erstwhile friend, he had every reason not to tell me but he did, thank Jabber. They’ve found it, after all this time. Long enough that plenty of citizens aren’t sure it ever existed, and thousands more think it’s long gone.

“Chaverim… friends… We’re going to save Iron Council.”

The next day Qurabin had a long conversation with the Moment. The unfindable monk cried, supplicated, made a desolate sound.

At last Cutter spoke. “Monk,” he said. “Monk, what happened? Are you there? Are you gone?”

“It’s not hidden anymore,” Qurabin said in a voice that was deadened. “I know where to find it. But it cost… I lost my own language.”

Qurabin had been left only with Ragamoll, the brash infant tongue of the travellers.

“I remember my mother,” Qurabin said quietly. “I remember what she whispered to me. But I don’t know what it means.” There was no horror in the voice. Only a passionless assent. “One thing is lost, another found. I know where to go.”