Isaac and Derkhan joined him. They were utterly drained. Derkhan’s face was white, and she dabbed in miserable pain at her missing ear. As they were about to disappear behind the shifting walls of crushed rubbish, the avatar called out.

When Isaac heard what the avatar said, he began to frown, and did not stop while he turned away and walked out of the Council’s presence with his companions, nor did he stop all the while he wound his way through the channels in the industrial midden and out into the slowly illuminated estates of Griss Twist. The Construct Council’s words stayed with him, and he thought them over, carefully.

“You cannot hold on safely to everything you carry, der Grimnebulin,” the avatar had said. “In future, do not leave your precious things beside the railway.

“Bring your crisis engine to me,” it had said, “for safekeeping.”

Chapter Forty-One

“There is a gentleman and a…a young boy to see you, Mr. Mayor,” said Davinia, through the speaking tube. “The gentleman told me to tell you that Mr. Rescue sent him regarding the…plumbing in R amp;D.” Her voice faltered nervously over the obvious code.

“Let them in,” said Rudgutter instantly, recognizing the handlinger passwords.

He was fidgeting in his seat, moving from side to side in agitation. The heavy doors to the Lemquist Room swung ponderously open, and a well-built, harrowed young man stumbled in, leading a terrified-looking child by the hand. The child was dressed in a collection of rags, as if he had just stepped off the street. One of his arms was covered with a large swelling, coated in filthy bandages. The man’s clothes were of decent quality, but a bizarre fashion. He sported a pair of voluminous trousers, almost like those worn by khepri. It made him look peculiarly feminine, despite his build.

Rudgutter looked at him with an exhausted, angry glance.

“Sit,” he said. He waved a sheaf of papers at the odd pair. He spoke rapidly. “One unidentified headless corpse, strapped to a headless dog, both complete with dead handlingers. One pair of handlinger hosts, strapped back to back, both drained of intellect. A-” he glanced down at the militia report “-a vodyanoi, covered in deep wounds, and a young human woman. We managed to extract the handlingers-killing the hosts, actual biological death, not this ridiculous half-thing-and we offered them some new hosts, put them in a cage with a pair of dogs, but they didn’t move. It’s as we suspected. Drain the host, you drain the handlinger with it.”

He sat back and watched the two traumatized-looking figures before him.

“So…” he said slowly, after a little silence. “I am Bentham Rudgutter. Suppose you tell me who you are, and where is Mont-John Rescue, and what happened.”

In a meeting room near the top of the Spike, Eliza Stem-Fulcher looked across the table at the cactacae opposite her. His head towered over hers, rising neckless from his shoulders. His arms lay motionless across the table, enormous weighty slabs like the boughs of a tree. His skin was pocked and marked with a hundred thousand scratches and tears that had scarred, in the cactacae fashion, into thick knots of vegetable matter.

The cactus pruned his thorns strategically. The insides of his arms and legs, his palms, wherever flesh might rub or press against flesh, he had plucked the little spines. A tenacious red flower remained on the side of his neck from the spring. Nodules of growth burst from his shoulders and his chest.

He waited silently for Stem-Fulcher to speak.

“It is our understanding,” she said carefully, “that your ground-based patrols were ineffectual last night. As were ours, I might add. We have yet to verify this, but it appears that there may have been some contact between the slake-moths and a small…aerial unit of ours.” She flicked through her papers briefly. “It seems increasingly clear,” she ventured, “that simply scouring the city will not yield results.

“Now, for many reasons that we have discussed, not least our somewhat different working methods, we don’t believe it would be particularly fruitful to combine our patrols. However, it most certainly does make sense to co-ordinate our efforts. That is why we have extended a legal amnesty for your organization during this collaborative mission. In similar vein, we are prepared to offer a temporary waver of the strict rule against non-governmental aerostats.”

She cleared her throat. We’re getting desperate, she thought. But then, so, I wager, are you.

“We are prepared to loan two airships, to be used after discussion with us on suitable routes and times. This is in an effort to divide up our efforts to hunt, as it were, in the skies. Our conditions remain as previously stated: all plans to be discussed and agreed in advance. In addition, all research into hunting methodology to be pooled.

“So…” she sat back and dropped a contract across the desk. “Do you have authority with Motley to take this kind of decision? And if so…what do you say?”

When Isaac, Derkhan and Yagharek pushed open the door of the little shack by the railway and fell into its warm shadows, exhausted, they were only a little surprised to see Lemuel Pigeon waiting for them.

Isaac was surly and foul. Pigeon was unapologetic.

“I told you, Isaac,” he said. “Don’t get confused. Going gets hot, I’m gone. But here you are and I’m glad to see it, and our deal still stands. Assuming you still insist on hunting those fuckers, I’m going to own you, and until then you get my help.”

Derkhan glowered, but she did not indulge anger. She was tense with excitement. She glanced at Isaac quickly and frowned.

“Can you get us into the Glasshouse?” she said.

She told him, briefly, about the immunity of the Construct Council from slake-moth attack. He listened in fascination as she described how the Council had swivelled the crane behind the moth’s back, released it and pinioned the thing mercilessly under tons of rubbish. She told him how the Construct Council was sure the moths were in Riverskin, hiding in the Glasshouse.

Derkhan told him the tentative plans.

“Today we have to find some way to make the helmets,” she said. “Then tomorrow…we go in.”

Pigeon’s eyes narrowed. He began to scribble designs in the dust.

“This is the Glasshouse,” he said. “There are five basic routes in. One involves bribery, and two almost certainly involve killing. Killing cactacae’s never a good idea, and bribery’s risky. They talk and talk about how they’re independent, but the Glasshouse survives on Rudgutter’s sufferance.” Isaac nodded and glanced at Yagharek. “That means there’s loads of informers. Secrecy’s safer.”

Derkhan and Isaac leaned over him, watched his hieroglyphs take shape. “So let’s concentrate on the other two, see how they pan out.”

After an hour of talk Isaac could not stay awake any longer. His head slumped as he listened. He began to drool on his collar. His tiredness spread out and infected Derkhan and Lemuel. They slept, briefly.

Like Isaac, they rolled unhappily in the muggy air, sweating in the close air of the shack. Isaac’s sleep was more disturbed than theirs, and he whimpered several times in the heat. A little before noon, Lemuel pulled himself up and roused the others. Isaac awoke moaning Lin’s name. He was fuddled with exhaustion and bad sleep and misery, and he forgot to be angry with Lemuel. He hardly recognized that Lemuel was there.

“I’m going to get some company,” said Lemuel. “Isaac, you better get ready to prepare those helmets that Dee tells me about. We’re going to need at least seven, I reckon.”

“Seven?” mumbled Isaac. “Who’re you getting? Where you off to?”