Barbile shrieked and wailed and begged for help, and Isaac and Derkhan stood paralysed, gazing into the mirror, transfixed.

With hands shaking violently, Derkhan reached into her jacket and brought out her pistol, primed and ready. Staring resolutely into the looking-glass, she pointed her gun behind her. Her hand wavered as she desperately sought to aim in this impossible fashion.

Isaac saw what she was doing, and reached quickly for his own gun. He was quicker to pull the trigger.

There was a sharp bang of igniting black powder. The ball burst from his muzzle and passed harmlessly over the slake-moth’s head. The creature did not even look up. Barbile screamed at the sound, and began to beg, eloquently and horrendously, for them to shoot her.

Derkhan set her mouth and tried to steady her arm.

She fired. The slake-moth whirled and its wings shook. It opened that cavernous maw and a foul, strangulated hissing emerged, a whispered shriek. Isaac saw a tiny hole in the papery tissue of the left wing.

Barbile cried out and waited a moment, then realized that she was still alive and began to scream again.

The slake-moth turned on Derkhan. Two of its whip arms flailed across the seven feet separating them and smacked petulantly across her back. There was an almighty cracking sound. Derkhan was thrown through the open door, her breath pushed violently through her lungs. She wailed as she fell.

“Don’t look round!” screamed Isaac. “Go! Go! I’m coming!”

He tried not to hear Barbile begging. He did not have time to reload.

As he made his way slowly for the door, praying that the creature would continue to ignore him, he watched what unfolded in the mirror.

He refused to process it. It was, for now, a mindless slick of images. Later he might consider it, if he left this house alive and found his way home, to his friends, if he survived to plan, he would think on what he was seeing.

But for now he carefully thought of nothing as he saw the slake-moth turn its attention back to the woman held fast in its arms. He thought of nothing as he saw it force open her eyes with slender simian fingers and thumbs, heard her scream until she vomited with fear and then stop all her noises very suddenly as she caught sight of the flexing patterns on the slake-moth’s wings. Saw those wings gently widen and stretch taut into a hypnotic canvas, saw Barbile’s entranced expression as her eyes widened to gaze on those morphing colours; saw her body relax and the slake-moth drool in vile anticipation, its unspeakable tongue unrolling again out of that gaping mouth and snaking its way up Barbile’s saliva-spattered shirt to her face, her eyes still glazed in idiot ecstasy at those wings. Saw the feathered tip of the tongue nuzzle gently against Barbile’s face, her nose, her ears and then shove suddenly, forcefully past her teeth into her mouth (and Isaac retched even as he tried to think of nothing), thrusting at indecent speed into her face, her eyes bulging as more and more of the tongue disappeared into her.

And then Isaac saw something flicker under the skin of her scalp, bulging and wriggling and rippling beneath her hair and flesh like an eel in mud, saw a movement that was not hers behind her eyes, and he watched mucus and tears and ichor pour from the orifices of her head as the tongue wriggled into her mind and just before he fled Isaac saw her eyes dim and go out and the slake-moth’s stomach distend as it drank her dry.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Lin was alone.

She sat in the attic, leaning back against a wall with her feet splayed like a doll’s. She watched the dust move. It was dark. The air was warm. It was sometime in the small hours, between two and four.

The night was interminable and unforgiving. Lin could hear-feel vibrations in the air, the tremulous cries and howls of disturbed sleep rocking the city all around her. Her own head felt heavy with portent and menace.

Lin rocked back a little and rubbed her headscarab wearily. She was afraid. She was not so stupid as to not know that something was wrong.

She had arrived at Motley’s some hours before, in the late afternoon of the previous day. As usual, she had been instructed to make her way to the attic. But when she had entered the long, desiccated room, she had been alone.

The sculpture loomed darkly at the far end of the room. After she had looked around, idiotically, as if Motley could be hiding unseen in the bare space, she had walked over to examine the piece. She had supposed, a little uneasily, that Motley would join her soon.

She had stroked the khepri-spit figure. It was half finished. Motley’s various legs had been rendered in curling shapes and hyperreal colours. It terminated about three feet from the floor in drooping, liquid undulations. It looked as if a life-size candle in Motley’s shape had been half burned.

Lin had waited. An hour had passed. She had tried to lift the trapdoor and open the door to the passageway, but both were locked. She had stamped on the one and thumped the other, loudly and repetitively, but there was no response.

There’s some mistake, she had told herself. Motley’s busy, he’ll be along shortly, he’s just tied up, but it was totally unconvincing. Motley was consummate. As a businessman, a thug, a philosopher and a performer.

This delay was no accident. This was deliberate.

Lin did not know why, but Motley wanted her to sit, and sweat, alone.

She sat for hours until her nervousness became fear became boredom became patience, and she drew designs in the dust and opened her case to count her colourberries, again and again. Night came, and still she was left.

Her patience became fear again.

Why is he doing this? she thought. What does he want? This was quite different from Motley’s usual playing, his teases, his dangerous loquacity. This was far more ominous.

And finally, at last, hours after her arrival, she heard a noise.

Motley was in the room, flanked by his cactacae lieutenant and a pair of hulking gladiator Remade. Lin did not know how they had entered. She had been alone seconds before.

She stood and waited. Her hands were clutching.

“Ms. Lin. Thank you for coming,” said Motley from a tumorous cluster of mouths.

She waited.

“Ms. Lin,” he continued. “I had the most interesting conversation with one Lucky Gazid the day before yesterday. I suspect you haven’t seen Mr. Gazid for a while. He’s been working for me incognito. Anyway, as you doubtless know, there’s something of a citywide drought of dreamshit at the moment. Burglary is up. As is mugging. People are desperate. Prices have gone quite mad. There simply isn’t any new dreamshit being released into the city. What all this means is that Mr. Gazid, for whom dreamshit is the current drug of choice, is in rather a state. He can’t afford the merchandise any more, even with an employee’s discount.

“So anyway, the other day I heard him swearing-he was in withdrawal and cursing anyone who’d come near, but this was a bit different. D’you know what he shouted as he gnawed himself? Fascinating. It was something along the lines of ‘I should never have given that ‘shit to Isaac!’ ”

The cactacae beside Mr. Motley unclasped his massive hands and rubbed his callused green fingers together. He reached up to his uncovered chest, and with a terrible deliberation, he pricked his finger on one of his own spikes, testing its point. His face was impassive.

“Isn’t that interesting, Ms. Lin?” continued Motley with a sickly jauntiness. He began to pace crabwise towards her on his innumerable legs.

What is this? What is this? thought Lin as he approached. There was nowhere for her to hide.