The thing on the window-sill scrabbled with its fingers for a moment, then tore away the frame with a quick motion, leaving an ugly wound where the window had been. It dropped the already breaking glass with a catastrophic noise and stepped into the dark attic.

The room was very large and bare. A great glutinous wash of welcome and warning came from across the rubbish-strewn floor.

Opposite the newcomer were four of its kind. It was dwarfed by them, the magnificent economy of their limbs made its own look stunted, runtlike. They were shackled to the wall with enormous bands of metal around their midriffs and several of their limbs. Each had its wings fully extended, flat against the wall: each set was as unique and random as the newcomer’s. Below each of their hindquarters was a bucket.

A moment of tugging made it clear to the new arrival that those bands could not be shifted. One of those pinned to the wall hissed at the frustrated creature, imperiously bade it pay attention. It communicated in a psychic twittering.

The free, newly lowly thing backed away as instructed, and waited.

In the simple sonar plane, shouts and yells were sounding from the street below where the window had smashed. There was a confused rumbling from within the building below. From the corridor beyond the door came the sound of running. Chaotic snatches of conversation found their way through the wood.

“…inside…”

“…get in?”

“…mirrors, don’t…”

The creature backed away further from its tethered kin and moved into the shadows at the far side of the room, beyond the door. It folded its wings and waited.

Bolts on the other side of the door were thrown. There was a moment of hesitation, then the door flew open and four armed men burst in in quick succession. They all faced away from the trapped creatures. Two carried heavy flintlocks, primed and held ready. Two were Remade. In their left hands they held pistols, but from their right shoulders jutted huge metal barrels, splayed at the end like blunderbusses. These were fixed into position pointing directly behind each Remade. They hefted these carefully, and stared into mirrors suspended from a metal helmet before their eyes.

The two with conventional rifles also wore the mirror-helmets, but they were staring past the mirrors into the darkness straight ahead of them.

“Four moths, and all clear!” shouted one of the Remade with the strange backpointing rifle-arm, still gazing into his mirror.

“There’s nothing here…” answered one of the men looking forward into the darkness by the ruined window-hole, and as he spoke the intruding thing stepped out of the shadows and spread its incredible wings.

Both those whose eyes faced forwards looked aghast and opened their mouth to scream.

“Oh, Jabber fuck no…” one managed, and then both were silent as the patterns on the creature’s wings began to swarm like a pitiless dun kaleidoscope.

“What the fuck…?” began one of the Remade, and flickered his eyes briefly in front of him. His face collapsed in horror, but his moan died very fast as he caught sight of the creature’s wings.

The final Remade yelled his comrades’ names, and whimpered as he heard them drop their guns. He could see the faintest shape out of the corner of his eye. The creature before him could sense his terror. It stalked towards him, emitting little reassuring murmurs in an emotive vector. A phrase circled imbecilically in the man’s mind: There’s one in front of me there’s one in front of me…

The Remade tried to move forward, his eyes fixed on his mirrors, but the creature before him moved easily into his field of vision. What had been in the corner of the man’s eye became an inescapable, shifting field, and the man succumbed, dropping his eyes to those violently changing wings, and his jaw opened and shuddered tremulously. He dropped his gun-arm.

With a twitch of a skein of flesh, the free creature closed the door. It stood before the four men in thrall, and slobber drooled from its jaws. A snapped demand from its trapped kin interrupted its hunger and humbled it. It reached out and turned each of the men to face the four trapped moths.

There was a tiny moment when each man was no longer facing those wings, when his mind clutched at freedom for a moment, but then the awesome spectacle of four sets of those scudding patterns violently wrested control of his mind and he was lost.

Behind them now, the intruder pushed each man in turn towards one of the huge pinioned things, which reached out eagerly with the short limbs left free to them to grip their prey.

The creatures fed.

One of them fumbled for the keys at the belt of its meal, tore them from the man’s clothes. When it had finished its meal, it reached up with careful movements and pushed the key delicately into the lock of the bolt restraining it.

It took four attempts-fingers clutching the unfamiliar key, twisting it from an awkward angle-but the creature freed itself. It turned to each of its fellows and repeated the slow process, until all the captives were liberated.

One by one they stumbled across the room to the ragged window-hole. They paused and braced their atrophied muscles against the brick, spread those astonishing wings wide and launched themselves out and away from the sickly dry aether that seemed to seep from the Ribs. The last to leave was the newcomer.

It dragged itself after its comrades: even exhausted and brutalized, they flew faster than it could manage. They were waiting in a circle hundreds of feet above, extending their awarenesses, adrift in the senses and impressions that welled up from all around.

When their humble liberator reached them, they moved apart a little to let it in. They flew together, sharing in what they felt, licking the air lasciviously.

They drifted as the first to fly had done, north towards Perdido Street Station. They rotated slowly, five like the five railway lines of the city, buoyed by the massive profane urban presence below them, a fecund crawling place such as none of their kind had ever experienced before. They rocked above it, wings snapping, buffeted by wind, tingling with the sounds and energy of the growling city.

Everywhere they were, every part of the city, every dark bridge, every five-hundred-year-old mansion, every twisting bazaar, every grotesque concrete warehouse and tower and houseboat and squalid slum and manicured park, thronged with food.

It was a jungle without predators. A hunting ground.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Something was blocking the door into Isaac’s warehouse. He swore mildly, pushing against the obstruction.

It was early afternoon of the day after his success, which he already conceived of as his “cheese moment.” When he had reached Lin’s rooms the previous evening, he had been delighted to find her in. She had been tired but as happy as him. They had gone to bed for three hours, then stumbled out to The Clock and Cockerel.

It had been an unnervingly perfect night. Everyone Isaac could have wanted to see had been abroad in Salacus Fields, and all had stopped at the C amp; C for lobster or whiskey or chocolate laced with quinner. There were new additions to the clique, including Maybet Sunder, who had been forgiven for winning the Shintacost Prize. In return she was gracious about the arch comments Derkhan had made in print and others in person.

Lin had relaxed in the company of her friends, although her melancholia seemed to ebb rather than dissipate. Isaac had had one of his hissed political arguments with Derkhan, who had slipped him the latest issue of Double-R. The gathered friends had argued and eaten and thrown food at each other until two in the morning, when Isaac and Lin had returned to bed and warm, entwined sleep.