Throughout the tedious warmth of the day, Isaac and Derkhan sheltered in the little hut.

When they had arrived, they saw that the construct was no longer waiting where they had left it. There was no sign of where it might be.

Lemuel left to see if he could link up with his comrades. He was nervous of venturing out while he was at war with the militia, but he did not like being isolated. In addition, Isaac thought, Lemuel did not like being around Derkhan and Isaac’s shared misery.

Yagharek, to Isaac’s surprise, left as well.

Derkhan reminisced. She chastised herself constantly for being maudlin, for making the feeling worse, but she could not stop. Derkhan told Isaac about her late-night conversations with Lin, the arguments about the nature of art.

Isaac was quieter. He toyed mindlessly with the pieces of his crisis engine. He did not stop Derkhan talking, but only occasionally did he interject with a remembrance of his own. His eyes were unfixed. He sat back dully against the crumbling wooden wall.

Before Lin, Isaac’s lover had been Bellis; human, like all his previous bedfellows. Bellis was tall and pale. She painted her lips bruise-purple. She was a brilliant linguist, who had become bored with what she had called Isaac’s “rumbustiousness,” and had broken his heart.

Between Bellis and Lin had been four years of whores and brief adventures. Isaac had curtailed all of that a year before meeting Lin. He had been at Mama Sudd’s one night, and had endured a shattering conversation with the young prostitute hired to service him. He had made a chance remark in praise of the amiable, matronly madame-who treated her girls well-and had been perturbed when his opinion had not been shared. Eventually the tired prostitute had snapped at him, forgetting herself, telling him what she really thought of the woman who hired out her orifices and let her keep three stivers in every shekel she made.

Shocked and ashamed, Isaac had left without even removing his shoes. He had paid double.

After that he had been chaste for a long time, had immersed himself in work. Eventually a friend had asked him to the opening show of a young khepri gland-artist. In a small gallery, a cavernous room on the wrong side of Sobek Croix, overlooking the weather-beaten sculpted knolls and copses at the edge of the park, Isaac had met Lin.

He had found her sculpture captivating, and had sought her out to say so. They had endured a slow, slow conversation-she scribbling her responses on the pad she always carried-but the frustrating pace did not undermine a sudden shared intimation of excitement. They drifted from the rest of the little party, examined each piece in turn, their twisted forms and tortured geometry.

After that they met often. Isaac surreptitiously learnt a little more signing between each time, so that their conversations progressed fractionally quicker every week. In the middle of showing off, laboriously signing a dirty joke one night, Isaac, very drunk, had clumsily pawed her, and they had pulled each other to bed.

The event had been clumsy and difficult. They could not kiss as a first step: Lin’s mouthparts would tear Isaac’s jaw from his face. For just a moment after coming, Isaac had been overcome with revulsion, and had almost vomited at the sight of those bristling headlegs and waving antennae. Lin had been nervous of his body, and had stiffened suddenly and unpredictably. When he had woken he had felt fearful and horrified, but at the fact of having transgressed rather than at the transgression itself.

And over a shy breakfast, Isaac had realized that this was what he wanted.

Casual cross-sex was not uncommon, of course, but Isaac was not an inebriated young man frequenting a xenian brothel on a dare.

He was falling, he realized, in love.

And now after the guilt and the uncertainty had ebbed away, after the atavistic disgust and fear had gone, leaving only a nervous, very deep affection, his lover had been taken from him. And she would never return.

Sometimes in the day he would see (he could not help himself) Lin quivering as Motley, that uncertain personage Lemuel described, ripped her wings from her head.

Isaac could not help moaning at that thought, and Derkhan would try to comfort him. He cried often, sometimes quiet and sometimes very fierce. He howled with misery.

Please, he prayed to human and then khepri gods, Solenton and Jabber and…and the Nurse and the Artist…let her have died without pain.

But he knew that she was probably beaten or tortured before she was dispatched, and the knowledge made him mad with grief.

The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments. Birds and wyrmen lingered in the sky like particles of filth in water. Church bells rang desultory and insincere praise for Palgolak and Solenton. The rivers oozed eastward.

Isaac and Derkhan looked up in the late afternoon when Yagharek returned, his hooded cloak fast bleaching in the scouring light. He did not speak of where he had been, but he brought food, which the three of them shared. Isaac composed himself. He battened down his anguish. He set his jaw.

After unending hours of monotonous daylight glow, the shadows moved across the faces of the mountains beyond. The west-facing sides of buildings were stained a slick rose by the sun before it slid behind the peaks. The valedictory spears of sunlight were lost in the rock duct of Penitent’s Pass. The sky was lit for a long time after the sun had disappeared. It was still darkening when Lemuel returned.

“I’ve communicated our predicament to a few colleagues,” he explained. “I thought it might be a mistake to make hard plans till we’ve seen whatever we’re going to see tonight. Our appointment in Griss Twist. But I can call on a little aid, here and there. I’m using up favours. Apparently, there’s a few serious adventurers in town right now, claiming to have just liberated some major trow haul from the ruins in Tashek Rek Hai. Might be up for a little paid work.”

Derkhan looked up. Her face creased in distaste. She shrugged unhappily.

“I know they’re some of the hardest people in Bas-Lag,” she said slowly. It took some moments for her to turn her mind to the issue. “I don’t trust them, though. Thrill-seekers. They court danger. And they’re quite unscrupulous graverobbers for the most part. Anything for gold and experience. And I suspect if we actually told them what we’re trying to do, even they’d balk at helping. We don’t know how to fight these moth-things.”

“Fair enough, Blueday,” said Lemuel. “But I tell you, right at the moment I’ll take whatever the fuck I can get. Know what I mean? Let’s see what happens tonight. Then we can decide whether or not to hire the delinquents. What d’you say, ‘Zaac?”

Isaac looked up very slowly and his eyes focused. He shrugged.

“They’re scum,” he said quietly. “But if they’ll do the job…”

Lemuel nodded. “When do we have to go?” he said.

Derkhan looked at her watch. “It’s nine,” she said. “An hour to go. We should leave half an hour to get there, for safety’s sake.” She turned to look through the window, out at the glowering sky.

Militia pods rushed overhead as skyrails thrummed. Elite units of officers were stationed throughout the city. They carried strange backpacks, full of odd, bulky equipment hidden in leather. They closed the doors on their disgruntled colleagues in the towers and struts, waited in hidden rooms.