The itch was an ache now, and the twitches almost convulsions. Harry tried to turn his head towards the speaker, but it wouldn't move. All he could do was shift his eyes, and there on the periphery of his vision he saw the boy from the crossroads. His pallid face was bruised and bloodied.

"Let him go, Owen," he said. "Please."

Buddenbaum made a sound Harry couldn't'quite interpret. was it perhaps a sob? "Stay away from me, Seth," he said.

"What happened?" the boy wanted to know.

"I was cheated," Buddenbaum replied, his voice thickening with tears. "I had it in my grasp-"

"And this man took it?"

"No!"

"So, what? You're just killing anybody who gets in your way? You're not that cruel."

"I will be," Buddenbaum said. "From now on, no mercy, no compassionate'

"No love?"

"No love!" he yelled. "So you stay away from me or I'll hurt you too!"

"No you won't," Seth said, his words a gentle certainty Harry felt the pain in his body easing, and the power over his muscles was returned to him. He made no sudden movements, for fear of inflaming Buddenbaum afresh, but slowly turning his head he saw that Seth had lifted the man's hand off Harry's shoulder and had drawn it up to his lips.

"We've all been hurt enough for one lifetime," he said softly, kissing the broken hand. "We've got to start healing, Owen."

"It's too late for that."

"Give me a chance to prove you wrong," the boy replied. Harry looked round at Buddenbaum. His ragc had passed, leaving his face drained of expression.

"You'd better go," Seth said to Harry.

"Will you be all right with him?"

"Sure," Seth replied gently, slipping his arm around Buddenbaum's shoulder. "We'll be fine. We go way back, him and me. Way back." There was no time for further exchange. Leaving the pair to make what peace they could, Harry headed on down the street. In the minute or so since he'd last looked the lad's way it had advanced against the largest building in the vicinity: either the courthouse or the Town Hall, Harry guessed. The site was no more than a hundred and fifty yards ahead of him, and now with every step the lad's pernicious influence grew. He felt its needles at the base of his skull, and the corners of his eyes; heard its witless noise behind the din of the world.

It was almost welcome, that witlessness, given the alternative: the shrieks and screams coming from those trapped in the besieged building. He was puzzled as to why the victims didn't escape out the back until he saw Gamali6l running down the side of the building with something that looked like a human head in his hand. If Gamaliel was here, so were his brothers, and probably the surviving members of Zury's clan too: all here to enjoy the spectacle.

So where was Kissoon? He'd masterminded this night of retribution; he was surely here to witness it.

Shouting for Kissoon as he went, Harry broke into a run. It sounded strange to be calling a man's name in the midst of such utter bedlam, but hadn't it been Kissoon himself who'd said that whatever the lad looked like they'd have a human heart? Men were not nameless. Every one of them had a past; even Kissoon, who had spoken so fondly of being nobody: just eyes on a mountain, looking down on a world of fishes...

The walls of the Town Hall were cracking, as the great wheel of the lad pressed against it. The closer Harry came to the place, the more the lad's name made sense. Uroboros, the self-devouring serpent, encircling the earth while it ate its own tail. An image of power as a self-sufficient engine: implacable, incomprehensible, inviolate.

This time there were no hallucinations in its proximity-no Father Hess accusing from a makeshift grave, no demon spouting enigmas-just this ring of malice, cracking the shell that kept it from its victims. He saw it more clearly all the time. It seemed to him it was displaying itself, tormenting him with the fact that despite the clarity there was no comprehension to he had; no place where its intricacies resolved themselves into something recognizable: a head, a claw, an eye. Just shapes in nauseating abundance, flukes and scraps and scabs; hard forms of indeterminate color (bluish here, reddish there, or neither, or nothing); all soul less, all passionless.

There was, of course, no human face here either. Only repetition, like a scrawl caught between mirrors, its echoes looking like order, like meaning, but being neither.

He had to find the heart. That was his only hope: Find the heart.

The noise in his head had grown so loud now he was sure it would burst his skull, but he kept walking towards its source, and the closer he came-sixty yards, fifty, forty@e more clearly he heard a whisper beneath the din, It was calm, this whisper.

It's nothing to be afraid of... he was telling himself.

He was surprised at his own courage.

Nothing you haven't seen before... Surprised and reassured.

Just let it embrace you... Wait, he thought; where did that idea come from?

There'll only be the two of us, very soon...

That isn't me. It's the lad.

Oh, but there's no way to divide us... the whisper replied, receding now that it had been identified, you know that, in your heart... it said, in your human heart...

Then it was gone, and he was ten yards from the vast, slow wheel, the screams from the building drowned out by the mindless noise in his head. Off to his right he saw Gamaliel striding in his direction. It would slaughter him on the instant, he knew. No prayer, no hesitation. Just the killing stroke.

He had seconds to live. Seconds to bring Kissoon to him.

He drew a deep breath, and though he could no longer hear his own voice, yelled into the bedlam. "I'm looking for Clayton O'Connell!"

There was no response at first. The wheel kept moving, senseless form upon senseless form passing in front of his exhausted eyes. And then, with Gamaliel a yard from him, its hands stretched to fip out his throat, the lad's motion began to slow. Some unheard order must have gone out, because Gamaliel stopped in mid-stride, and then retreated a little way.

The din in Harry's head retreated t@though it didn't disappear-and he stood before the lad gasping like a prisoner whose restraints had been loosened enough to let him breathe. There was some movement amid the lad's anatomy. It unknotted itself, parted. And there, enthroned in its entrailswhich were the same incomprehensible stuff of its outward appearance-was Kissoon.

He looked much as he had on the mountain: simple and serene.

"How did you work out who I was?" he said. Though there was a considerable distance between them, his voice sounded as intii-nate as the lad's whispers.

"I didn't," Harry said. "I was told."

"By whom?" Kissoon wanted to know, rising and steppino out of the living sanctum down onto the street. "Who C, told you'?"

"Your mother."

The face before him remained impassive. Not a twitch.

Not a flicker.

"Her name's Maeve O'Connell, in case you've forgotten," Harry said, "and she was hanged on a tree, alongside your father and you."

,,You talk to the dead?" Kissoon said. "Since when)'

"She's not dead. She's very much alive."

"What kind of trick is this?" Kissoon said. "You think it's going to save anybody?"

"She escaped, Clayton. The bough broke, and she found a way through to Quiddity."

"Impossible."

"The door was always up there, open just a crack."

"How could she have got through it?"

"She had suits of her own, didn't she? And the will to make them work. You should see what she's done at the crossroads." Harry glanced back over his shoulder. "That light. - - " he said. There was a noticeable glow in the sky around the region of the whorehouse. "That's her handiwork."