A doorless opening to her left led Derkhan down steep stairs towards the sunken slaughterhouse.

The spring warmth was magnified here as if by infernal energy. Derkhan sweated and picked her way through swinging carcasses and slicks of congealing blood. At the back of the room a raised belt dragged heavy meathooks along the ceiling in a remorseless circuit, disappearing into the darker bowels of the charnel-house.

Even the glints of light from knives seemed filtered through ruddy gloom. Derkhan held a posset to her nose and mouth and tried not to gag at the rancid, heavy stench of blood and warm meat.

At the far end of the room, she saw three men congregated below the open arc she had seen from the street. In this dark and stinking place, the Dog Fenn light and air that spilt through from above was like bleach.

At some unspoken signal, the three slaughtermen stood back. The pig-men in the alley above had got hold of one of the animals, and in the midst of a rising wave of curses and grunts and terrified sounds, they hurled her enormous weight through the opening. The pig screamed as she pitched into the darkness. She was rigid with terror as she hurtled towards the waiting knives.

There was a sick-making crack and snap as the sow’s stiff little legs shattered on flagstones slimy with blood and shit. She collapsed on legs bleeding from bone-shards, thrashing and screeching, unable to run or fight. The three men moved forward with practised precision. One leaned on the pig’s rump in case she jack-knifed, another pulled back her head by those lolling ears. The third man split the skin of her throat with his knife.

Her cries ebbed quickly with the gouts and wash of blood. The men hauled her huge, twitching body onto a waiting table by which a rusted saw leaned. One man saw Derkhan. He nudged another.

“Ay ay, Ben, you dark horse, you rogue! It’s your fancy tart!” he shouted good-naturedly, loud enough for Derkhan to hear. The man he spoke to turned and waved at her.

“Five minutes,” he yelled. She nodded. Her posset was clamped to her mouth as she swallowed back bile and spew.

Again and again the massive, terrified pigs dropped from the alley in a flailing organic mess, legs folded in unnatural angles against their guts, again and again they were cut open and bled dry on ancient wooden stands. Tongues and flaps of ragged skin dangled, dripping. The channels cut in the abattoir floor burst their banks as a swamp of dirty blood lapped against buckets of giblets and bleached, boiled cows’ heads.

Eventually, the last pig had fallen. The exhausted men swayed where they stood. They were awash with gore, and steaming. There was a brief conference and raucous laughter, and the one called Ben turned away from his fellows and approached Derkhan. Behind him, the two remaining men split the first carcass and swept innards into a huge trough.

“Dee,” said Flex quietly, “I’ll not kiss you hello.” He gestured briefly at his saturated clothes, his bloody face.

“I’m obliged,” she replied. “Can we get out of here?”

They ducked under the jerkily progressing meathooks and picked their way towards the dark exit. They took stairs up towards ground level. The light became less livid as the blue-grey tint of the sky filtered through dirty skylights in the narrow corridor’s ceiling, a long way above.

Benjamin and Derkhan turned into a windowless room filled with a tub, a pump and several buckets. Some tough robes hung behind the door. Derkhan watched quietly as he stripped off his fouled clothes and threw them in a pail with water and powdered soap. He scratched himself and stretched luxuriously, then pumped water vigorously into the tub. His naked body was streaked with oily blood as if he was newborn. He shook some of the soap under the sputtering pump, swirled the cold water to make suds.

“Your mates are very understanding about you just up and taking a fuck-break, aren’t they?” said Derkhan mildly. “What have you told them? Did I steal your heart, you mine, or are we in a purely business arrangement?”

Benjamin sniggered. He spoke with a strong Dog Fenn accent, in distinction to Derkhan’s uptown tones.

“Well, I’ve been working an extra shift, ain’t I? I’m already working over my time. I told them you’d be along. Far as they’re concerned you’re just a tart who’s taken to me, and I to you. That wig, afore I forget, is a marvel.” He grinned lopsidedly. “Suits you, Dee. You look a smasher.”

He stood in the tub, slowly lowered himself into it, goose-bumps peppering him. He left a thick scum of blood on the surface of the water. Gore and grime lifted slowly from his skin and billowed lazily towards the surface. He closed his eyes a minute.

“I won’t be long, Dee, I promise,” he whispered.

“Take your time,” she replied.

His head slid below the bubbles, leaving thin fronds of hair to coil on the surface and be sucked slowly under. He held his breath a moment, then began to scrub his submerged body vigorously, coming up and sucking air, then ducking below again.

Derkhan filled a bucket with water and stood behind the bath. As he broke the surface she poured it slowly over his head, rinsing him free of bloody soap stains.

“Oooh, lovely,” he muttered. “More, I beg you.”

She obliged him.

Eventually he stepped out of the bath, which looked like the site of violent murder. He tipped the slimy residue into a sluice hammered into the floor. They heard it slosh through the walls.

Benjamin stepped into a rough robe. He wagged his head at Derkhan.

“Shall we get down to business, love?” He winked at her.

“Just tell me what services you require, squire,” she replied.

They left the room. At the end of the passage, picked out in the wash from the skylight, was the little room where Benjamin slept. He closed and locked the door behind them. The room was like a well, far taller than it was wide. Another grubby window was set into the square ceiling space. Derkhan and Benjamin stepped over the flimsy mattress to the ramshackle old wardrobe at its foot, a relic with a decaying grandeur at odds with the slum setting.

Benjamin reached inside and swept a few greasy shirts out of the way. He reached into the fingerholds drilled strategically in the wardrobe’s wooden back, and with a little grunt, lifted it away. He turned it gently sideways and laid it on the cabinet’s floor.

Derkhan looked into the small brick doorway Benjamin had uncovered while he reached onto a little shelf in the wardrobe and took down a matchbox and a candle. He lit the candle in a burst of sulphur, shielding it from the cool air that wafted from the hidden room. With Derkhan behind him, he stepped through the wardrobe and lit up the office of Runagate Rampant.

Derkhan and Benjamin lit the gaslamps. The room was large, dwarfing the adjoining bedroom. The air inside was heavy and sluggish. There was no natural light. High above, the frame of a skylight was visible, but the glass was painted over in black.

Around the room were dotted tumbledown chairs and a couple of desks, all covered in paper and scissors and typewriters. On one chair sat an inactive construct, its eyes dim. One of its legs was crushed and ruined, bleeding copper wire and splinters of glass. The wall was papered with posters. Stacks of mouldering Runagate Rampants lined the room. Against one damp wall was the unwieldy-looking press, a huge iron thing coated in grease and ink.

Benjamin sat at the largest desk and tugged a chair over next to him. He lit a long, drooping cigarillo. It smoked profusely. Derkhan joined him. She jerked her thumb at the construct.