The Emperor of All Things

16

A Whole Different Order of Drowning



QUARE LOST NO time in rising from the bath. He wrapped himself in a towel and called to whoever was knocking at the door. A liveried servant entered the room.

‘His lordship requests that you join him downstairs,’ the man said.

‘I’ll not be long,’ Quare said.

‘If I may assist,’ the man began.

But Quare interrupted. ‘I’m capable of dressing myself. If you wait in the hall, I’ll be out directly.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the man, and left a bow.

Quare rubbed himself dry, his thoughts racing. If anyone had told him that he would one day converse with a dragon, he would have called that person a lunatic, yet he did not for a second doubt what had just occurred. The experience had left him drained in every way. His hands trembled, and his legs felt boneless as he stumbled to a nearby chair and collapsed into it. The only illumination in the room was from burning candles; the windows had gone dark behind their curtains; it appeared that he had been in the bath for some hours, though it had not seemed longer than a few minutes.

The dragon – Tiamat – had said that the hunter had marked him. There was a small cut on his finger, where Master Magnus had jabbed him, spilling his blood, but he did not think that was the mark Tiamat had been referring to. No, the dragon had been speaking of a deeper marking, a connection binding him to the watch, and the watch to him.

It has tasted your blood and will tug at you no matter where it may be, the dragon had said. It will answer to you now, protect you … but do not imagine yourself its master.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel that connection. But, as with the link that Grimalkin had mentioned, he detected no tug, no hint of a presence pulling at him the way a lodestone might pull at a nail, or as the house had pulled at him when he’d stepped from the rooftop back into the Otherwhere. No, what he felt was weak. Empty. And afraid.

Whether you fight it or not, whether you believe it or not, you answer to me now.

And as if to prove that claim, Tiamat had demonstrated just how little Quare controlled his own body. What if, when the moment came – if it came – and he held the hunter in his hand, a similarly irresistible compulsion took hold of him, and, despite his intent, he called out to Tiamat, summoned the dragon to him and gave up the watch? He did not believe that the dragon intended to destroy so powerful a weapon. Nor was he at all convinced that the creature was not one of Doppler’s minions.

He was in over his head. That much was plain. Had been for some time now. But this was a whole different order of drowning. He was used to the idea that he could not trust anyone else. But now it seemed he could no longer trust himself. He had to tell Longinus. Explain that he could not accompany him back to the guild hall. It was too dangerous. Too risky. They could recover the watch only to lose it again, and everything with it.

He dressed and belted on his sword. The servant led him down to the same room in which he and Longinus had breakfasted that morning. As before, enough food for a feast had been laid out. There, too, his host was waiting.

‘Ah, Mr Quare,’ Longinus said as he was ushered into the room, which was ablaze with light from a chandelier that bristled with creamy white candles. ‘I trust you had a good rest?’

It certainly appeared that Longinus had. The man – who had been sitting at the table, a plate of roasted chicken and a glass of red wine before him – rose to greet Quare energetically. He was wearing a bright green robe de chambre with a red cap that stood up like the crest of a bird, and beneath the gown a ruffled white shirt, forest green breeches, and white stockings. The beauty mark that had been on his left cheek earlier in the day had migrated to the other side of his face.

‘Actually,’ Quare began … but got no further.

‘Capital,’ Longinus said. ‘Capital.’ He dismissed the servant with a gesture as he advanced to take Quare by the arm and guide him to a sideboard loaded with dishes of food: there were meats and pies, cheeses, soups, and pastries. ‘Refresh yourself, sir.’

‘I-I’m not hungry,’ Quare said.

‘Nevertheless, eat,’ Longinus directed. ‘You will be glad of it later, I assure you. We shall need all our strength.’ As he spoke, he prepared a plate of roast chicken for Quare.

Quare had no appetite; indeed, the sight of so much food, along with its attendant odours, was making him queasy. Yet even more unsettling was the fact that he had not succeeded in broaching the subject of the dragon. And not for lack of trying. From the point Longinus had dismissed the servant, leaving the two of them alone in the room, Quare had been attempting to tell his host about his monstrous visitor and what had passed between them. At first it had seemed that what prevented him was the difficulty of framing the event intelligibly, of finding the right words. But it soon became obvious that he could not speak of it at all. His will was not his own.

You answer to me now …

He clenched his fists at his sides, struggling to break free of the dragon’s influence, the geis laid upon him.

‘Are you well, Mr Quare?’ his host inquired with curiosity and concern.

I have just been visited by a dragon called Tiamat, he said … but only in his mind.

I am ill; I fear I cannot accompany you tonight, he tried to say … but again, the words remained unspoken.

‘I … did not get much rest,’ he forced out at last.

Longinus nodded and steered him back towards the table. ‘I was the same when I first began my career as a regulator. Too anxious to eat or sleep before a mission. But I learned better, and so will you.’ He set the plate upon the table and guided Quare to a seat, then returned to his own place, where he tucked into his meal with relish.

Quare watched glumly.

‘Wine?’ Longinus inquired, his mouth full.

Quare shook his head. If he could not speak openly about the dragon, or refuse the mission outright, perhaps he could accomplish both aims in a more oblique fashion. ‘Ever since I spoke with Grimalkin,’ he said, trying to hurry the words past whatever internal censor the dragon had set up in his mind; and, indeed, the strategy seemed to work, for nothing impeded him now, ‘or, rather, the woman who went by that name, I have wondered about the business of three questions. Is that something you encountered in Märchen?’

‘I had remarked on that aspect of your tale as well,’ Longinus said and took a thoughtful sip of wine. ‘I confess I did not experience any such thing in my time there. It is most curious. She mentioned an ancient compact, did she not?’

‘Yes,’ Quare affirmed. And attempted again to evade the censor – again with success. ‘The Law of Threes.’

‘I have heard of no such law,’ Longinus said. He paused, then continued: ‘Yet it strikes me that the number three is ubiquitous in the world. In religion, we have the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and this threefold divinity is repeated in pagan systems as well: the three Fates, for instance. In natural science, Newton’s three laws of motion are paramount, and there are as well the three states of matter: gas, liquid, and solid. In alchemy, the Emerald Tablets of Toth at once elucidate and obfuscate the esoteric mysteries of that number. And in fairy tales there are three wishes – indeed, there is something very like a fairy tale about your encounter with this imposter. It may be that such old tales, passed on by word of mouth, preserve an ancient wisdom civilized man has long forgotten. They are ripe, I have often thought, for systematic scientific study, as opposed to the purely literary approach of Monsieur Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and their imitators. Much might thereby be revealed. But as to the compact of which the imposter spoke, I must confess ignorance. Only, I do wonder at one thing.’

‘What is that?’

‘With whom was this compact entered into?’

‘Why, surely with us – that is, with human beings.’

‘Perhaps. Yet why should creatures of the Otherwhere deign to bargain with us? What could compel them to lower themselves so? Surely nothing in our power. Is it not more likely that the compact, though it may include us in its terms, is not really about us at all – that we are, as it were, incidental to it?’

‘But if not us, who is the other party?’

‘You have put your finger on it, Mr Quare. Until now, I have conceived of the struggle in binary terms, with Doppler and his risen angels on one side and the rebels whom Corinna sought to join on the other. But what if there is a third party in this war? Indeed, the Law of Threes, whatever it may be, would at least seem to imply the involvement of another power. And is that not the case in our earthly war, which, as we have both been told, mirrors the war in heaven? England and her allies fight against France and her proxies, but on the outside, waiting its opportunity, sits Russia.’

‘But who, then, would this third power be?’

‘That I do not know. But if my experiences in Märchen are any indication, Doppler, if he was ever a party to this compact, feels no need to comply with it now. That the false Grimalkin behaved otherwise with you suggests that the unknown third power remains a factor – that she, or, rather, whoever it is she represents, either the rebels or this third party itself, still consider themselves bound by the compact. More than that, I do not think we can infer. And even this much, frankly, seems speculative. Yet it would explain much.’

On this point, Quare could not agree. Rather than simplifying matters, it seemed to complicate them. Who – or what – was this mysterious third power? Had Tiamat been its representative? Grimalkin? Even more disturbing was the idea that now came to him: namely, that he had not, after all, managed to sneak his question past Tiamat’s internal guard or geis but, rather, had been compelled, not so much against his will as beneath his very notice, to ask it. If that were true, then Tiamat had encouraged these speculations – if speculations they were. For what if Longinus, whether he knew it or not, was also subject to a geis and was acting as Tiamat’s agent – or even Doppler’s? Perhaps in grafting the unnatural foot upon him, Immelman – Wachter, rather – had also grafted something less visible, a mechanism purely interior, which Longinus remained unaware of … even as he conformed in word and action, in thought itself, to whatever strictures that interior grafting imposed. Indeed, for all he knew, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Longinus could be as artificial in his whole person as he was in the matter of his foot. Yet if that were the case, and the man sitting opposite him at the table, eating with every appearance of an appetite, and seeming to savour every sip of wine, was not a being of flesh and blood but rather some kind of automaton – which seemed ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous as he would have thought a few days or even hours ago – then how could he be sure of anyone else? The servants, for instance. Or Master Magnus, whose dead body he had never seen.

Or, for that matter, himself. For was he not still alive – at any rate, continuing to function – despite a wound that would have proved fatal to any living person? And now Quare recalled something else the dragon had told him. When he had asked how he could have survived such a mortal injury, Tiamat had replied, All men die. That is their nature, and the nature of all time-bound things.

He had interpreted this as a confirmation of his death – an indication that, as Longinus had suggested, it was only the mysterious blood-engendered power of the hunter that was keeping him alive. Yet now Quare realized that there was another interpretation. All men die – did that not imply, since he had not died, that he was not a man? That he was not, in the dragon’s suggestive phrase, ‘a time-bound thing’?

The notion shook Quare to his very core. A ball rolling down a slope was subject to absolute laws whose operation continued in effect regardless of whether or not the ball had a destination in mind, knew that it was rolling, or even conceived of itself as a ball: Newton’s law of threes! Wasn’t he, too, in motion, subject to the same or similar laws? He could no more halt his descent than could the ball, of its own accord, decide to stop rolling downhill or reverse its course and roll back up the slope.

This was a disheartening realization, to be sure, as if he were a pendulum in a clock. Yet it was also liberating. Quare felt a kind of peace settle over him, a despairing yet nonetheless welcome numbness as soothing to his distressed mind as it was to his weary body and anguished heart. He need not fight, need not worry, need do nothing at all. Far from shameful, this surrender seemed like the beginning of a hard-earned wisdom. It was, he realized, an embrace of a sort of faith … though one that rejected reason as much as it did religion. This was a new faith, a faith without hope of redemption or resurrection, yet without fear of damnation, too. It was a clockwork kind of faith.

Longinus, meanwhile, glanced at one of his assortment of pocket watches and declared that it was time to get started.

‘So, at least one of your timepieces keeps the correct hour,’ Quare observed.

‘Only one,’ Longinus answered with the ghost of a smile as he pushed his chair back from the table and stood. ‘And of course no hour can be in and of itself correct, but merely in greater or lesser accord with a measurement arbitrarily fixed and agreed to by others. As the Bard wrote, “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all.”’

Longinus did not lead him out of the room but instead to a wall where, with a touch to the moulding, he caused a hidden door to spring open, revealing a small candlelit chamber that Quare recognized at once as a stair-master.

He entered at Longinus’s invitation. ‘Will this take us back to the guild hall?’

Longinus stepped in behind him, closed the door, and tugged at the bell pull. The chamber gave a shudder and began to glide sideways. ‘The mechanism does not extend so far as that,’ Longinus said. ‘Though Magnus spoke of one day establishing a network of stair-masters linking disparate parts of the city. Imagine the ease and comfort of travelling from one end of London to the other without ever setting foot upon a crowded, filthy street!’

‘But where would this network run?’

‘Why, below the streets, of course, in rooms much larger than this one – big enough to accommodate dozens or even hundreds of people. Magnus even had a name for this interior network of his: the internet.’ As Longinus spoke, the stair-master shifted course from the horizontal to the vertical, dropping smoothly but with a speed that left Quare’s stomach aflutter. ‘Alas,’ his host continued without missing a beat, ‘I doubt we shall see the internet implemented now – not without the force of Magnus’s genius and personality behind it. Such a project could only be brought to fruition by the government – no private fortune, even one so large as mine, could accomplish it. I covered the costs of installing the system in the guild hall, and here, in my own home, but nowhere else. Perhaps some day Magnus’s dream will be realized, but I dare say not for many years yet, until another such outsized intellect emerges.’

Quare’s grieving was twofold. First, for the death of the man who had been friend and mentor, albeit distant and stern, and second for loss of a mind whose quicksilver workings he had observed with awe and envy. Though he had, on occasion, mocked to himself the impracticality or sheer eccentricity of Magnus’s ideas, he had far more often found himself inspired by their example to greater efforts of his own. It was Magnus who had first recognized his potential and encouraged it, Magnus who had pulled him from obscurity and brought him to London, providing him with the opportunity to better himself and advance his position in the guild and the wider world. Yet it was also Magnus who had set him in pursuit of the hunter, who had pricked his finger and used his blood to bring the watch to life, or a semblance of life, who had, in short, embarked him down the perilous road whose twists and turns had brought him to this place, this moment. Could he not thereby infer that Magnus, too, had been either an active agent of some greater power or, like himself, its helpless tool? He shrugged the question aside. What did it matter now?

The stair-master came to a halt. The door slid open, revealing a corridor lit by candles burning in bronze sconces upon the wall. Longinus gestured for Quare to step out. He did so, and his host came out behind him.

‘Follow me, Mr Quare,’ he said. ‘I am about to show you something no one else has ever seen.’ The corridor was lined with doors on both sides; a hodge-podge of timepieces cluttered the walls, gleaming in the candlelight. The corridor ended in another door, which Longinus opened with a key produced from a pocket in his robe. Quare, looking over Longinus’s shoulder, saw the vague outlines of a room but could make out nothing of its dimensions or contents in the wavering light from behind. Then, plucking a candle from one of the sconces, Longinus entered the room, where he lit other candles, revealing all.

‘Behold Grimalkin’s lair,’ he said with a theatrical flourish.

The room was smaller than his room at Mrs Puddinge’s establishment but far more luxurious in its appointments. Yet it was not the furnishings that left him most amazed. A veritable armoury covered one wall: swords and daggers, crossbows, pistols, and other, less ordinary weapons: a pair of sticks joined by a chain; a sharply hooked, flat but wide wooden blade something like the hands of a clock frozen at the hour of three; a flute-like instrument with tiny feathered darts alongside; small, thin silver discs like gears with teeth as cruel as a shark’s. Everything was immaculate: the metal shone, the wood gleamed. On the adjoining wall, to Quare’s right, hung items of clothing – breeches, shirts, boots, cloaks, hoods, kerchiefs … all in the same shade of ash grey. A long table of dark wood against the wall to his left displayed as many glass vials and clay pots as an apothecary’s shop or an alchemist’s laboratory. Interspersed with everything on the walls were still more clocks, all of them ticking busily, none of them showing the same time.

‘Come, sir,’ said Longinus. ‘Let us dress and arm ourselves. Then we shall be off!’

Quare stepped into the room. ‘So it’s true,’ he said. ‘You really are Grimalkin.’ He had not entirely believed it until now.

‘Was,’ Longinus corrected. ‘And will be again, for tonight, at least. As will you; we shall both be garbed as Grimalkin, the better to— Why, what is so amusing?’

For Quare had begun to chuckle. ‘How strange!’ he said. ‘When I told Master Magnus of my rooftop encounter, and revealed that the great Grimalkin, as I thought then, was a woman, he advanced a hypothesis I considered most unlikely – so unlikely that I argued against it … with as little success as, knowing him, you may imagine.’

‘What was this hypothesis?’ inquired Longinus with an expression of interest.

‘Magnus believed you had been confronted by not one but two Grimalkins. The real one and a disguised confederate, the object being to sow confusion and apprehension in their target – that is, in you. And now here we are, adopting the very strategy ourselves!’

Longinus did not appear to share Quare’s amusement. ‘A coincidence, no more. Or less even than that, for two generals, after all, may employ the same means to achieve an objective; it is the circumstances that dictate a particular tactical approach. Magnus may have been wrong in his hypothesis – though strictly speaking he was not, for there were two Grimalkins in the attic that night: myself and the imposter! – but the logic behind his reasoning was sound. Grimalkin has a fearsome reputation, as you know. He is rumoured to be a ghost, a devil. No walls can keep him out; no weapons, it is said, can harm him. That reputation will aid us, giving us an advantage over our adversaries, even if it is only a matter of seconds. In such situations as we are about to enter, Mr Quare, life or death, success or failure, hinges upon seconds. The one who best exploits them will almost invariably win.’

‘You speak as if it were a game.’

‘Why, and so it is – like a game of chess, which can be won in an instant, through checkmate, or the sudden capture of a queen, or more slowly, by the accumulation of lesser pieces, even lowly pawns. Gain enough pawns, or seconds, as the case may be, and victory becomes that much more likely.’

‘A game of time,’ Quare said; then added bitterly: ‘Only, we are not the players. We are the pawns.’

‘That is so,’ Longinus agreed. ‘But do not forget that pawns may be promoted.’

‘To other pieces,’ said Quare. ‘They cannot become players themselves.’

‘In chess. But this is not chess, Mr Quare. In this game, as you have seen, we can rise up from the board and move into the world beyond it, the world of the true players: the Otherwhere. Once there, why should we not become players? It is our right, as thinking beings and as Englishmen, to determine our own destiny, or at least to have a say in it, just as our representatives in Parliament act as a check on the powers of the king. Tonight we take the first, indispensable step towards that goal.’

Quare was unimpressed. ‘You think that gaining possession of the hunter will make us the equal of Doppler and the others?’

‘Obviously not,’ Longinus granted. ‘But it will, at the very least, improve our position.’

‘Or simply make us more of a target than we are already.’

‘Faint heart never won fair lady, Mr Quare! To do much, one must dare much. When Corinna held the hunter in her hand, neither Adolpheus nor the dragon Hesta dared to strike us down: the one with an army at his back, the other mightier still. There is power in that watch, a power feared even by those we must regard as nearer to gods than to men. Should we, for that reason, bow our heads meekly and offer up our surrender? No, sir. That I will never do! Not while I have the strength and wit to seek a better outcome.’

Quare felt ashamed. ‘I am merely trying to be realistic.’

‘It is our plain duty to deny this infernal device to anyone who might trigger it, whether purposely or by accident. Doppler seeks it still. The Old Wolf possesses it – who can say what mischief he is up to even now? Nor is it likely that the French have given up their pursuit; the villain who stabbed you and murdered eight people in cold blood is still at large. Doppler I fear because of his knowledge; the others because of their ignorance. No, Mr Quare. I mean to have that watch – with your help, if you will give it, but alone if I must.’

‘And once you have it – what then? Anything we attempt with the hunter is as likely to have a catastrophic as a beneficial result. We do not know how to use it safely, or, indeed, how to use it at all, beyond the fact that it has a taste for human blood. I, for one, do not care to give it any more of mine than it has drunk already.’

‘We do not need to do anything with it,’ Longinus persisted. ‘Possession alone will give us a seat at the game … and guarantee our safety as well.’

‘How so?’

‘We know that there are at least three factions vying for the hunter: Doppler and his risen angels; another group of angels – let us call them rebels – who oppose him; and a third party, whose identity and interests we do not precisely know but whose existence we have inferred from certain hints dropped by the false Grimalkin, who may or may not have been sent by them. If we possess the hunter, and any one of those parties should seek to move against us, the self-interest of the others must compel them to intercede on our behalf, so as to maintain the status quo. The logic is impeccable, Mr Quare.’

‘Is it? Men are not logical creatures, Longinus. We do not act according to the cold dictates of reason, nor out of enlightened self-interest – not in the small events of our everyday lives, and still less in the pursuit of such power as this. It has always been thus. And, from what you have told me, and my own small experience, I judge that things are no different among the angels, risen or rebel.’

‘I would be a fool to deny it,’ Longinus said. ‘Still, I will go regardless. Are you with me, Mr Quare? You have misgivings, it is plain. That is understandable. But if you mean to withdraw, do it now. If that is your decision, I will respect it – though I confess I would think less of you.’

‘I will go,’ he answered, feeling again the iron compulsion laid upon him by Tiamat. ‘I have no choice.’

‘Good man.’ Longinus grinned. ‘Master Magnus would be proud.’

Quare knew better, but could say nothing.

After they had dressed – Longinus transferring from his old clothes to his new ones the array of timepieces he always carried, and supplying Quare with ten watches he had brought for that specific purpose; shirt, breeches and boots all had pockets sewn to hold them – the two men regarded themselves in a full-length mirror.

‘Why, we are as alike as two peas in a pod,’ Longinus exclaimed, delighted.

Indeed, with hoods raised and masking kerchiefs in place, the two Grimalkins reflected in the glass were indistinguishable. In height, there was not an inch of difference between them; in build, both were slender as whippets; the eyes that peered out beneath the hoods were the same ghostly greyish blue. Longinus had divested himself of his powder and beauty mark, so even the exposed skin of their faces was the same pale hue.

Faced with this resemblance, Quare experienced a sudden and shocking surmise. ‘Longinus,’ he said, then paused and removed his mask. He took a breath and began again. ‘Lord Wichcote … forgive me, but there is no discreet way to ask, and I must know. Are you my father?’

At this, Longinus removed his own mask. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You said yourself we are alike as two peas in a pod,’ Quare said.

‘But why should that make you think I might be your father?’ Longinus seemed baffled. ‘Many men resemble each other without there being a drop of blood between them.’

Quare could not keep a tremor of emotion from his voice. ‘Surely you must know that I am a bastard – it is no secret. All the guild knows. But Master Magnus once told me that my father was still alive. Indeed, he promised to help me find him if I agreed to become a regulator. Now I cannot help but wonder if that is why he sent me here, to you, for my first assignment. Why, before his death, he had planned to bring us together – you told me so yourself!’

‘That is true. But I am sorry, Mr Quare … Daniel. I would be proud to have such a son as you. And if somehow you were my son, and I had been in ignorance of your existence, I would make up for it by acknowledging you before the world, gladly and without hesitation. Yet the fact remains that I am not.’

‘How can you be certain?’

‘Do you recall what Corinna told me as we were making our escape from Märchen? She warned me to be careful of what I said, because words spoken in the Otherwhere had a way of coming true. And so it has proved. I swore to her that I would desire no other woman, and that is exactly what has come to pass. I am not your father, sir. I am no one’s father and shall never be. I am impotent, you see – and have been ever since my return from Märchen.’

Quare studied the man’s face, but there was no hint of anything there but sincerity. He swallowed his disappointment. ‘I am sorry, sir.’

‘I am sorry as well,’ Longinus said, still holding his gaze. He laid a gentle hand on Quare’s shoulder. ‘I meant what I said about being proud to have you as a son. Any man would be.’

‘Save for my father, apparently.’

‘In fairness, he may not know. I have no doubt that Magnus would have uncovered the truth, had he lived. But I am not without resources of my own. I will look into the matter, sir. I give you my word.’

Quare, unable to speak, nodded.

Longinus returned an encouraging smile and clapped him upon the shoulder. ‘Now, sir, let us arm ourselves.’

Longinus took a sword, a dagger and a crossbow, strapping the latter, with a brace of bolts, across his back. He took a handful of the silver stars, which he explained were for throwing, and the flute-like instrument with its collection of small, feathered darts; this, he said, was a blowpipe, a weapon he had come across in his travels. The darts were tipped with a poison that would swiftly paralyse their target. The throwing stars, blowpipe and darts he tucked into the underside of his cloak. Finally he took down a pair of pistols and slid them into holsters strapped to his thighs. These trim guns were unlike any Quare had seen before.

‘Another of Magnus’s inventions,’ Longinus said. ‘They require no priming and are always ready to fire, even in the most inclement weather.’

‘No primer? How, then, does the pistol discharge?’

‘The primer is already added, part of the projectile itself. What’s more, each pistol can fire four shots without reloading.’

‘Why aren’t His Majesty’s troops equipped with these weapons?’ Quare wondered. ‘They could turn the tide in the war.’

‘As to that, you must ask Mr Pitt. But I can hazard a guess. The problem with such innovations as this is that they represent a kind of Pandora’s box. If we were to make thousands of these guns, and equip our soldiers with them, it would not be long – perhaps even before the first shot was fired on a battlefield, for England is riddled with spies – before the enemy had learned of it, analysed the mechanism, and introduced an equivalent or even superior weapon. I believe, then – though I have no first-hand knowledge of it – that we are holding this and other, similar inventions in reserve, in case the French cross the Channel in force. I certainly hope that is the case. For if that should ever come to pass, we would be in desperate straits indeed.’

Turning to the table, Longinus filled a number of glass or clay containers with an assortment of powders and liquids, which he then slipped into small grey pouches and attached to his belt; here were smokescreens, bomblets, gases to burn the eyes and the lungs.

‘You seem prepared for any eventuality,’ Quare said, impressed.

‘One endeavours to anticipate,’ Longinus said. ‘But one invariably encounters the unexpected. No doubt that will be as true tonight as any other night, if not more so. I dare not supply you with any of my potions or powders, Mr Quare; you would be as likely to use them accidentally against us as against any enemy we may encounter. The same goes for my more exotic weapons. When we have sufficient time, I will train you in their use. But for tonight, you will carry only your sword, a dagger and a crossbow. And, if you like, one of Magnus’s pistols.’

‘I should like that very much. Only, I hope I shall have no cause to fire it.’

‘As do I. But if the need arises, do not hesitate. You will find the recoil somewhat more than you are used to, but the accuracy substantially improved.’

Once Quare was fitted out – this included pouches attached to his belt, each filled with another pocket watch, so that his appearance matched that of Longinus in every outward detail, at least upon casual examination – Longinus drew a close-fitting pair of grey silk gloves onto his hands, completing his transformation into Grimalkin, then presented another pair of gloves to Quare, who found them a tight squeeze but no impediment to his manual dexterity.

‘Now let us pay the Old Wolf a visit,’ Longinus said with a grin.

Quare nodded, his mouth dry.

Longinus returned to the full-length mirror, as if to inspect himself once more. He touched a corner of the frame, and the mirror swung open, revealing the small candlelit chamber of another stair-master.

‘Why, is there a room in your house that does not contain one of these devices?’ asked Quare.

Longinus said nothing. He gestured Quare into the chamber, then followed him inside. He closed the door, tugged the pull, and the stair-master began to descend.

Quare counted the seconds to himself. When he reached twenty-two, the stair-master slowed; at twenty-eight it stopped. The door slid open, revealing what appeared to be, at least as far as Quare could judge in the weak light, a fissure carved out of solid rock, scarce wide enough for two men to stand side by side. He could not see very far before a curtain of darkness descended, but he felt a whisper of cold, damp air that suggested the fissure extended a good distance ahead.

‘What is this place?’ he whispered, as if standing on the hushed threshold of a cathedral.

‘You shall see,’ Longinus answered in a whisper of his own. He gestured for Quare to step out and then followed him out of the chamber, lifting two candles from their sconces. One of these he passed to Quare.

As the door closed behind them, Longinus led Quare into the depths of the fissure, which narrowed as they advanced, until they were walking single file. The path zigged and zagged, following a gentle but steady decline. The chill in the air grew more pronounced, and Quare smelled a damp mineral tang. The words walls, floor and ceiling were too suggestive of civilization to describe what surrounded him; this passage, he realized, had not been carved or even extended by the hand of man but instead had been cut into the bedrock of the earth by Nature herself in some ancient paroxysm of violence that had sundered stone from stone. The rock was slick with moisture, and there was a sound of dripping, eerily magnified, that wove in and out of the sounds of their own footsteps and breathing: a sound very much like the ticking of the clocks in the rooms above, as if Longinus’s temporal shield extended even below the surface.

‘How deep are we?’ he asked, still whispering.

‘A quarter of a mile,’ said Longinus.

‘Does this passage lead to the guild hall?’

‘Not this passage, no,’ Longinus said. ‘We must go deeper for that.’

‘Deeper? How far does this fissure descend?’

‘Why, we have barely scratched the surface,’ Longinus said, sounding amused. ‘Did you not know that the netherworld of London is honeycombed with such spaces as this? Here one might see Nature’s rough draft of Magnus’s internet.’

As he spoke, the fissure widened. Longinus used his candle to light a torch that lay, along with a supply of others, against the rock face to their right. The flame sprang up, and the darkness fell back, revealing a vast chamber whose full extent was impossible to judge. Quare lit a torch of his own and raised it, gazing about in awe. ‘Incredible – we might almost be standing beneath the dome of St Paul’s!’

‘There are larger caverns by far to be met with below the ground. Indeed, I have often thought that another city exists here, a kind of anti-London … or, since these spaces long pre-date the first rude building raised above them, it is London that is the obverse reflection of this place.’

‘A city below a city … Do people live here, then?’

‘Some,’ said Longinus. ‘It was through one of the branching tunnels of this London underground, if I may term it such, that Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators gained access to the cellars of Parliament. Others have found their way here for more benign purposes, compelled by curiosity or misfortune. I learned of the tunnels from my father, and he from his, and part of my inheritance was a collection of maps, to which I have added substantially over the years, for, as you can imagine, a working knowledge of this maze might well benefit anyone desirous of moving about the city in secrecy. Yet I do not believe I have discovered more than a fraction of what exists. There are routes I have not explored, passages too dangerous to traverse unaided, if at all. Many who come here, for whatever reason, do not find their way out again – I have come upon their bodies, or what is left of them, often enough in my explorations. Others do not wish to leave, and dwell here like the kobolds of legend, furtive and sly, inured to the dark and suspicious of surface dwellers; I have done much over the years to gain their trust, for they do not take kindly to intruders. But tonight we shall not stray from the familiar paths – familiar to me, at least. They will take us back to the guild hall, with no one the wiser.’

‘How can you be certain the Old Wolf doesn’t know of these paths? Perhaps there will be guards waiting to take us as we emerge.’

‘There is always a risk,’ Longinus said with a shrug. ‘But I think it unlikely. I have shared my knowledge of the underground with no one – not even Master Magnus himself. Do not forget that I have spent many hours in the guild hall, disguised as a servant. If the Old Wolf or anyone else there knew of these spaces, I would have discovered it before now. No, their knowledge of the underground extends no further than the dungeon in which you were imprisoned. They have no notion of what lies below those cells. No doubt they did once, long ago, for some of the old entrances have been bricked up … though even those barriers are crumbling now, and useless.’

‘And when we gain entrance to the guild hall – what then?’

‘That will depend on what we find there. Planning can only take one so far, Mr Quare; we regulators live or die by improvisation. But let us “suit the action to the word, the word to the action”, as the Bard has it. Come.’ He advanced into the cavern, leaving Quare to follow.

This he did, albeit slowly, gazing about with a mix of trepidation and wonder. The ceiling was so high overhead that he could not see it, only long fingers of rock that depended out of the dark like icicles … melting icicles, for they dripped with water whose mineral content – the rich tang of iron and limestone freighted the cold air – had accreted into slick stone fingers on the cavern floor that reached up to clasp what had given them birth, a many-handed infant grasping for its many-handed mother, as if this were the pits of Tartarus into which Zeus had cast the Titans. Or as if these two sundered halves strove to pull themselves back together, repairing the ancient breach that had separated them. Despite the spaciousness of the cavern, Quare was very aware of the weight pressing down, all the streets and buildings of the London he knew resting on the shoulders of this secret sister city, which seemed at once as solid as a fortress and as fragile as a bubble.

‘No dawdling, Mr Quare,’ came Longinus’s impatient voice.

Quare hurried to catch up.

His guide stood waiting at the far side of the cavern, beside a fissure angling sharply into the rock – one of many such passages converging here, Quare thought, like streets and alleys leading to a central square in the world above.

‘It is impressive, I know,’ Longinus said. ‘Like something out of Dante. Later, when we are not so pressed for time, I will take you on a tour. But for now you must not let yourself be distracted. Follow as closely as you can, as lightly as you can, and speak only as necessary, for sound travels in peculiar ways in these convoluted spaces.’

Quare nodded. His mouth was dry, his skin covered in clammy sweat beneath the loose grey costume of Grimalkin. Once again, he tried to discern some connection to the hunter, straining not just with his ears but with every fibre of his being to hear the timepiece calling to him as Tiamat had said it would. To feel its tug. But all he felt was a diffuse tingling, as if his garments were imbued with a faint electrostatic charge.

This sensation he associated, after a moment’s reflection, not with the hunter but with the various timepieces secreted about his person, whose ticking constituted a steady background noise that merged into the echoes of dripping water until – as he had often felt in the guild hall – it was easy to fancy himself within the workings of a gigantic clock. Only this was a clock far older and greater than any built by human hands.

He had a sudden glimpse then, in his mind’s eye, of a clock greater still: the moon and the planets, the sun itself and all the far-flung stars, pieces of a vast and intricate orrery marking the minutes and hours until time and the universe ran down. And then? Would it be the Last Judgement, life or torment everlasting meted out by the stern justice of the Almighty, as he had been taught from childhood and, with a child’s credulity, had always believed? Or, on the contrary, was oblivion the common fate of men and the universe?

Or was there yet another alternative – again, the Law of Threes! – bound up with the watch and the Otherwhere, an alternative that lay coiled in the secret heart of the hunter like a charge of gunpowder awaiting a spark?

At that moment, as if in answer, and without a glimmer of warning, what might have been a ghostly hand reached inside his chest. It slid past whatever shield the timepieces had knit around him, wrapped icy fingers about his heart, and yanked, as though to pull it out of his body. He gasped, more from shock than pain. Every inch of his skin erupted in a fierce buzzing. Then, in the blink of an eye, the hand was gone – whether of its own volition or banished by the effect of the watches, he did not know.

Stumbling forward with a groan, Quare put out a hand to steady himself against the cavern’s rocky side. Dark spots flashed before his eyes; a mass of bees seemed to have chosen his head for a hive. He gulped air, afraid he would be sick. At some point, he had dropped his torch; it lay guttering on the ground.

Longinus’s voice reached him through the buzzing. ‘What is it, Mr Quare? Are you all right?’

He nodded, speech beyond him. Nor, he found a moment later, when the buzzing had receded and he could speak again, was he able to relate what had happened. The dragon’s geis prevented him … another ghostly hand, or rather claw, this one squeezing his throat. But he did not doubt that the hunter had made its presence felt at last. One more power seeking to pull his strings.

‘I have seen this before,’ Longinus said meanwhile. ‘There are those who cannot bear to abide beneath the ground for any length of time. It is not a question of cowardice; here, the stoutest heart may quail without shame. If you cannot go on—’

‘I can,’ Quare interrupted, his voice echoing hollowly. He stooped to retrieve the torch, which blazed up again once clear of the ground. His arm, his whole body trembled, though the buzzing had subsided, dwindling to a kind of background hum. His heart felt bruised. Helpless he might be, but that did not make him any less angry; on the contrary. He was seething with rage. He lacked only the means to express it, and a target on which to focus it. Both, he felt sure, lay ahead. ‘By all means, let us continue.’

Longinus held his gaze with his own, then nodded and slid into the passage.

Thus began a journey that Quare would always remember as a kind of dream. With his vision curtailed by the narrow fissures they squeezed through and the caverns into which those fissures opened, only to contract again, it was easy to imagine that they were not moving at all, but instead walking in place while the subterranean world moved around them, changing its shape and even its substance from moment to moment under a torch-spun magician’s cloak of shadow and darkness, as if Longinus had brought him back into the Otherwhere. And it occurred to Quare that perhaps this was as close to the Otherwhere as could exist in what he had always thought of as reality but which now seemed to him merely, as it were, a special (and necessarily lesser) case of a realer real, like Plato’s shadows cast upon the cave wall. Here was the primordial stuff of the planet, out of which the world above and its myriad wonders, living and unliving, had arisen … and into which they would all return, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, just as this reality itself would one day be enfolded back into the Otherwhere if Doppler – or, he suspected, Tiamat – gained possession of the hunter.

Yet how could he deny Tiamat the hunter, assuming they were able to retrieve it from the Old Wolf? He had seen how fruitless it was to fight the geis Tiamat had laid upon him. Every detail of their encounter was engraved upon his memory, so much so that he felt the creature’s reptilian presence still, as if it were lurking somewhere near by, for if there was ever a place that a dragon might find hospitable, this was surely it. He half expected, each time they entered a cavern, to see a pile of bones and treasure with a scaly form coiled on top of it like a sovereign seated on a throne.

Longinus set a fast pace, and Quare had to hurry to keep up. There was no time to study his surroundings or even to mark the path. If he were separated from Longinus, or if the other man were captured or killed at the guild hall, he would not be able to find his way back through this underground maze. He thought to mention this to Longinus but then decided to hold his tongue, afraid that anything he said, however softly, would find its way to their enemies, mortal or otherwise. In any case, he felt that as long as Tiamat had need of him, it would not abandon him here; if he called to it, it would come: it had promised – or threatened – as much. And however little he liked it, he knew that he would call upon the dragon if it were a question of dying down here, alone in the cold dark.

Longinus had spoken of men and women driven to seek shelter underground, and as they progressed farther into the journey, their course continuing ever downward, Quare began to see occasional evidence of it: rubbish left behind, scraps of old clothing and rags, the bones of small animals, the remains of fires. Markings on the walls made with charcoal or simply scratched into the stone: crude drawings of human and animal figures, simple declarations, names, initials, dates … and symbols he did not recognize, like letters in an unknown language. But he did not see a living soul.

After some time – how long, Quare could not have guessed – Longinus drew to a halt at the entrance to yet another cavern. Looking back at Quare, he raised a finger to his lips for silence, then motioned for him to approach.

‘We are not alone,’ he whispered as Quare came up.

Quare glanced behind him, but saw only the shadows thrown by their torches.

‘You must let me do the talking,’ Longinus continued. ‘Say nothing unless you are spoken to, and then be brief and respectful in your replies. Comply at once with whatever is asked of you. Under no circumstances draw your sword or any other weapon, unless I draw first. Is that clear?’

‘Yes. But should we not don our masks?’

‘No. My face is known here, though not my true identity.’

‘But—’

‘Shh,’ he hissed. ‘This is not the time for questions or arguments. I have broken no laws in bringing you here, but I have stretched certain … understandings. I had hoped to avoid discovery, but like so many hopes, it appears to have been futile. So be it. In a way, Mr Quare, you are fortunate indeed. First, to see what few surface-dwellers have ever seen. And second, to do so in my presence, for otherwise you would almost certainly be dead.’

‘If this is fortune,’ Quare replied, ‘I could do with less of it.’

‘’At could be arranged,’ came a voice from out of the darkness ahead, speaking in the thickest Cockney that Quare had ever heard, so that it seemed almost a foreign language even to his London-trained ear.

Quare put a hand to his sword, but Longinus grasped his wrist, preventing him from drawing. ‘Be still, sir!’

Now a second voice spoke, this one from behind. ‘’At’s right. Ain’t no cause ter be all berligerent like. We don’t mean no ’arm to them what means us no ’arm. We Morecockneyans is a peaceful folk.’

‘More … what?’ Quare asked, pulling free of Longinus’s grasp.

‘Cockneyans,’ came the first voice. ‘Morecockneyans, on account of ’ow we’re more cockney than the blasted Cockney.’

The second voice laughed. ‘We’re the original article, yer might say – been down ’ere since before the Great Fire, we ’ave. This is our kingdom, your lordships, and you may pass ’ere by our leave or not at all. Now, put out them torches and let’s ’ave a look at yer.’

‘Put out—’

‘Do as he says,’ Longinus interrupted. ‘They have become so habituated to dark that even the poor light of these torches blinds them.’ So saying, he let his torch fall to the ground and stamped it out. ‘Go on, Mr Quare. We’re perfectly safe, I assure you, as long as we behave in a manner befitting guests.’

‘If you think I’m going to— ow!’ Quare dropped his torch as what felt like a hornet’s sting pierced the back of his hand. In the seconds before Longinus stamped out the torch, he saw an angry red welt rising there. Then a darkness fell that was beyond any darkness he had ever experienced; it seemed to require another word entirely. He fumbled for his weapons, then froze as the tip of a blade pricked his throat.

‘Quare, is it?’ queried the voice that had laughed. It was not laughing now. ‘You’d best listen to your mate, Mr Quare.’

‘Gorblimey, if it ain’t the Grey Ghost, old Grimalkin ’isself!’ exclaimed the first voice meanwhile. ‘It’s been an age. I ’eard tell you’d retired.’

‘I had.’

‘A bit old ter be gallervantin’ about down ’ere, ain’t yer?’

‘No older than you, Cornelius.’

The voice chuckled. ‘Sharp ears for an old man.’

‘My blade’s grown no duller, either. Hello, Starkey.’

Quare felt the blade at his throat withdraw.

‘Grimalkin,’ came the reply. ‘Up ter yer old tricks again, are yer?’

‘You could say that,’ he answered. ‘Mr Quare and I are in pursuit of a certain timepiece.’

‘And who is Mr Quare at ’ome, eh?’ asked the voice of Cornelius. ‘Took on a ’prentice, ’ave yer? Never thought I’d see the day. You was always solitary as a cat.’

‘Mr Quare is a journeyman of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers,’ Longinus said.

‘Oho,’ said Starkey with a laugh. ‘A regulator, you mean. One of the Old Wolf’s whelps, is ’e? Or does ’e answer to Master Mephistopheles?’

‘Master Magnus is dead,’ Longinus said.

Silence greeted this news. Quare, meanwhile, had begun to notice that all was not as dark as it had first appeared. A diffuse, pale glow, fainter than the first pale smudge of dawn, hung like a sourceless fog in the air, and though it did not exactly illuminate anything, it did place objects into a kind of relief, so that he was able to discern, though none too clearly, the silhouettes of the two Morecockneyans. Cornelius, it appeared, was a large, stout man, nearly as big as the Old Wolf himself, while Starkey was thin as a greyhound.

‘Dead ’ow?’ asked Cornelius at last. ‘Was it murder?’

‘Did the Old Wolf do ’im?’ Starkey chimed in eagerly.

‘I cannot say,’ Longinus replied.

‘Cannot … or will not?’ Cornelius demanded.

‘In truth, I do not know for certain how he died. I cannot explain it. All I know is that it involves the timepiece I spoke of.’

‘Worf a lot, is it?’

‘It does not even tell the time,’ Longinus demurred.

‘Then why are you and Mr Quare ’ere so innerested in it?’ asked Starkey in a sceptical tone.

‘For two reasons. First, it belonged to me once, and was stolen by—’

At this, Starkey guffawed. ‘What, the great Grimalkin robbed? There’s a larf!’

Longinus continued testily. ‘You can see why I wish it back. No self-respecting thief enjoys having the tables turned. And to add insult to injury, the churl who stole it did so in the guise of none other than’ – and here he sketched a self-mocking bow – ‘the great Grimalkin.’

‘The cheek of it!’ Starkey sounded delighted. ‘The rogue!’

‘Second,’ Longinus resumed, ‘the timepiece is of considerable scientific interest.’

‘Pull the other one,’ Cornelius objected. ‘You said it don’t tell the time.’

‘Neither does a cannon or a musket.’

‘What, is it some kind of weapon, then?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Longinus said. ‘Its mechanism is unique, to put it mildly. It is no exaggeration to say that whoever can uncover its secrets will gain considerable power thereby – perhaps even enough to decide the outcome of the war.’

‘What war?’

‘Come now, sir,’ said Longinus. ‘You cannot expect me to believe that you are ignorant of the fact that our country is fighting for its very life against the French and their allies!’

‘You surface dwellers are always fightin’ over somefin’ or other. It don’t make us no nevermind down ’ere,’ said Starkey with a shrug of his narrow shoulders.

Quare’s vision had continued to improve, and he saw now that the faint glow he had discerned earlier had its source in Starkey and Cornelius; or, rather, in a kind of pale powder that covered their faces and clothes. It radiated a sickly greenish light, giving them the aspect of mouldering ghosts. Cornelius had a nose like a warty potato above a beard like a tangle of moss, while Starkey’s face was gaunt, his nose sharp as a knife’s edge, his eyes sunk so deep in their sockets that their existence could only be inferred. And though Cornelius was fully as large as the Old Wolf, his bulk, unlike that of the corpulent clockman, was made up of muscle.

‘Whether you live above the ground or beneath it, you’re still Englishmen,’ Longinus said meanwhile.

‘We’re Morecockneyans first,’ Cornelius replied matter-of-factly. ‘We ’ave our own king, our own country.’

‘Maybe we orter ’ave a look at this timepiece, Corny,’ put in Starkey. ‘Might be we should take it to ’is Majesty.’

‘A capital idea, Starks.’

‘Gentlemen, the timepiece has already been stolen from me once,’ Longinus interjected. ‘I do not mean to put myself to the trouble and risk of retrieving it only to have it stolen again. Nor is it to be idly handled – poked and prodded like some common chronometer. That is what killed Master Magnus, or so I do believe. And if he could not handle the timepiece safely – he, the foremost horologist of the age – I do not think you, or any Morecockneyan, would be advised to try.’

‘What about you, then, eh? You fink you’re better than Magnus?’

‘On the contrary, I know my limits.’

‘Then ’ow—’ began Starkey, but Cornelius interrupted:

‘Mr Quare.’

Quare started; he had begun to think himself forgotten. ‘Yes?’

‘That’s why you brung ’im along,’ Cornelius continued, ignoring Quare completely. ‘You fink ’e can do what Magnus couldn’t and what you dare not even try. That’s right, ain’t it?’

‘Hardly. There may be one other in all of England who can discern the secrets of this timepiece, but that person is not Mr Quare. However, it’s true enough that my young friend has a certain … affinity with it,’ Longinus said. ‘I do not think it will kill him.’

‘’Ear that, Mr Quare?’ asked Starkey, more amused than ever. ‘’E don’t fink it’ll kill yer. ’Ow’s that for a vote o’ confidence?’

‘It’s not the watch I’m worried about,’ Quare answered.

‘So it’s a watch, is it?’ Starkey rejoined.

‘Of course it’s a watch,’ Longinus replied before Quare could add anything. ‘Did I not say so already?’

‘No, you did not,’ said Cornelius, measuring out his words. ‘What else ’ave you omitted to mention, I wonder? I thought we ’ad an understandin’, Grimalkin. An agreement. We give you the right o’ passage through our dark domain, and you give us bits o’ information and a cut o’ the swag from up top. Ain’t that always been the way of it?’

‘Might be it’s time to renegotiate our agreement, Corny,’ put in Starkey.

‘I was thinkin’ the very same, Starks.’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ Longinus said, exasperated. ‘Gentlemen, I assure you, our need is urgent. More urgent than you can imagine. As for the agreement to which you refer, neither you, Mr Cornelius, nor you, Mr Starkey, has the right to renegotiate so much as a syllable. Do not forget that I saved your king’s life once. I dare say he has not forgotten.’

‘There you would be wrong,’ Starkey said. ‘King Jeremiah ’as grown rather forgetful of late, I regret ter say.’

Cornelius added, in a voice edged with mockery, ‘Come now, sir. You cannot expect me to believe that you are ignorant o’ the fact that King Jeremiah is no longer among the livin’.’

Longinus drew in a sharp breath. ‘Jerry dead? When? How?’

‘That don’t concern you,’ said Cornelius. ‘But there’s a new king on the mushroom throne. And ’e might not feel ’isself bound by any agreements entered into by ’is predecessor – kings is peculiar that way, I find.’

‘You know what I fink, Corny?’ piped up Starkey.

‘What’s that, Starks?’

‘I fink we should bring our guests to meet ’is Majesty.’

By now the conversation had undergone so many twists and turns that Quare was positively dizzy. Whether the ‘Morecockneyans’ were friends or enemies or something in between, he didn’t know, but he did know that he had no desire whatsoever to meet their so-called king. And the same, it was apparent, was true of Longinus.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said as if speaking to guests in his own drawing room, ‘you know me. You know what I can do. That I have not thus far drawn my sword is a measure of my friendship with your late king, and my belief that the agreement between us was still in effect even after so many years. If that is not the case, I shall feel justified in defending myself.’ And here he did in fact make to draw his sword; seeing which, however indistinctly, Quare did likewise.

The effect was electric. ‘No need ter be so ’asty,’ said Starkey, backing off a step.

‘Indeed not,’ Cornelius said. ‘We was only tryin’ ter be ’ospitable like. But I can see yer in a ’urry. Yer can always meet ’is Majesty some uvver time.’

‘Then our agreement is still in effect?’

‘’Course it is,’ said Cornelius. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll just—’

‘Very well,’ Longinus interrupted with a satisfied nod. ‘Then by the terms of that agreement, I require your assistance, gentlemen.’

‘But—’ began Starkey.

Faster than Quare could follow, Longinus’s sword was out of its scabbard. ‘You will accompany us to the guild hall of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers,’ he said. ‘That way we can travel without the need for torches. Your vision, after all, is considerably better than our own down here. Though never fear: I can see well enough to employ this’ – he flourished the blade – ‘if we should run into any trouble along the way.’

‘That’s … comfortin’ ter know,’ Cornelius said after a glance at Starkey.

‘Mr Starkey, you will oblige me by joining Mr Cornelius at the head of our little group. Sword sheathed, if you don’t mind.’

‘Wiv pleasure,’ he grumbled, sliding his sword back into its scabbard as he pushed past Quare, who only now drew his own blade, feeling slow and clumsy.

‘Now,’ Longinus said, ‘let us resume our journey in silence, for we would not wish to alert our enemies above – or, for that matter, our friends here below, who might misconstrue the situation. I trust we would all prefer to avoid such misunderstandings, eh, gentlemen?’

‘Assuredly,’ said Cornelius.

‘By all means,’ Starkey agreed.

‘You would do well to remember that I know the route as well as you, if not better. So you will oblige me by avoiding any short cuts or other unpleasant surprises along the way.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Starkey said.

‘Do you really mean to proceed without torches?’ Quare asked, not quite believing what he had heard.

‘The Morecockneyans, as you have surely noticed, employ a fine powder made of the crushed spores of phosphorescent fungi specially grown for the purpose,’ Longinus said. ‘You’ll find the light sufficient to travel by … or fight by, if it should come to that.’

‘It won’t,’ Cornelius said with assurance. ‘No surface dweller can move as quiet as a Morecockneyan, or ’ear us if we don’t wish to be ’eard. Present company excepted. Everyone knows the Grey Ghost ain’t no ordinary surface dweller.’

‘Ain’t no ordinary ’uman bein’, yer ask me,’ Starkey opined.

‘Nobody did ask, so shut yer ’ole,’ Cornelius responded with a snarl. ‘What I mean to say, Grimalkin, is that we’ll get the two of yer safely up to the guild ’all, never fear. But that’s as far as me and Starks is prepared ter go, agreement or no.’

‘I had not thought to presume upon you one step farther,’ Longinus said. ‘Now, pray, lead on. And remember: not a word, not a sound.’

The two Morecockneyans set off, followed by Longinus and Quare. At first their pace was brisk, but Longinus soon called them to heel. The light emanating from the Morecockneyans, while sufficient to illuminate the way, if only just, gave the already dreamlike surroundings an even stranger aspect, so that Quare felt more than ever that he had slipped back into the Otherwhere. Everything seemed created out of nothing an instant before they came to it, and then, as soon as they were past, to dissolve again into the primordial soup that had spawned it. Quare, after some moments, had sheathed his sword, concentrating on avoiding the obstacles that emerged as if out of thin air; at the same time, he was intent upon any hint, however faint, of the hunter’s ethereal touch. His heart pulsed; his skin tingled; his every nerve was pulled taut, vibrating like a violin string. The discordant ticking of the timepieces he carried in his clothing, a constant soft patter of sound, set him further on edge.

But as Cornelius had promised, they encountered no one, and soon enough they stood at the entrance to a passage that, according to Longinus, led into the lowest levels of the guild hall. Quare had no idea how much time had passed since he and his mentor had begun their subterranean journey, but it seemed impossible that it should still be night. Nevertheless, Longinus appeared unconcerned.

‘Gentlemen, thank you for the guidance,’ he said. ‘We are in your debt.’

‘Quite all right,’ whispered Cornelius. ‘I reckon you can find yer own way from ’ere.’

‘I should hope so,’ he said.

‘I guess we’ll be ’eadin’ ’ome, then,’ Starkey said. ‘Best o’ luck to yer both.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t allow that,’ Longinus said, already moving as he spoke, a shadowy blur.

Quare heard two surprised exhalations, so close in time as to be almost a single sigh. Cornelius and Starkey sank to the ground. He gaped like a schoolboy.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ Longinus hissed. ‘Help me move them.’

‘Are they … dead?’

‘Do you take me for a cold-blooded murderer?’

‘No – a regulator.’

This drew an appreciative chuckle. ‘Touché, Mr Quare. But they are not dead, merely rendered insensible by a salve on my dagger point. They will regain consciousness in a few hours, none the worse for wear. By which time we shall either be long gone … or it will no longer matter.’

‘But why …?’

‘Surely you could see that they were not to be trusted. Things are different down here. I have been absent too long. Jerry – that is, King Jeremiah – is dead. I confess, I hadn’t expected that. From the sound of it, I do not think my old friend died peaceably in his sleep. He had no heir, only a gaggle of bastards – no offence, Mr Quare. But it seems plain that Cornelius and Starkey serve whoever it is that now sits upon the mushroom throne. Had I allowed them to depart, they would have reported back to him and then returned here with others to wait for our exit. They would have set upon us, stolen the timepiece, and left us for dead. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind.’

‘Well, you have made an enemy of them now … and of their new king, whoever he may be.’

‘Regrettable but necessary. With luck, I shall have time to make amends, if warranted, though in truth I have shown our friends here more mercy than they would have given us, had they not been too intimidated by the reputation of the Grey Ghost.’

‘Another of your aliases?’

‘A nickname bestowed by King Jeremiah. I am most sorry to learn of his death. He was a giant in stature and in heart – every inch a king. When we have finished here, I shall look into the manner of his death. If it be murder, I will see that justice is done, one way or another. I swear it. But that is for later. The hunter awaits us, and time is short. Come, sir – let us be about our business.’

With that, he laid hold of Cornelius’s bulky form and, again evidencing his surprising strength, dragged the man into the passage; Quare did likewise with Starkey, who was as light as a bird. Beyond the narrow opening, the passage widened considerably, and they were able to deposit the bodies off to one side, leaning the two men against the rock wall, their legs stretched out before them, heads lolling, so that they resembled two sentries napping on the job.

‘Should we not bind them?’ Quare asked.

‘No need,’ Longinus assured him. ‘One way or another, this will be over by the time they regain their senses.’

‘Still, I should rather be safe than sorry.’ Quare cut strips of cloth from the Morecockneyans’ clothing and secured their hands behind their backs. ‘That will slow them down at least, if they awaken sooner than you expect. I would not like to find them waiting for us when we return. Perhaps we should take their weapons as well …’

‘And dispose of them where, precisely? Caution is commendable, but what is required now, Mr Quare, is speed and stealth. From this point on, not a word unless absolutely necessary. We shall endeavour to escape detection and to avoid violence for as long as possible; with luck, we shall be in and out without any bloodshed. But if we are not so lucky, do not hesitate – strike to kill. Do you understand?’

Quare, however, did not reply.

‘Mr Quare, do you understand? What has come over you, sir?’

And indeed, Quare had not heard a word Longinus had spoken. Instead, he was listening to another voice: faint but insistent. It called to him like a siren’s song. Not at all the brutal invasion he had experienced earlier, as of invisible talons clawing at his heart. This was a gentle suasion, an invitation, a seduction. If this was the hunter, then what had assailed him before?

‘Mr Quare!’

He blinked, recalled to himself. ‘The hunter is here,’ he said. ‘It calls to me.’

‘I hear nothing,’ Longinus returned.

‘As you said, I have an affinity with the timepiece.’

‘Can you discern its location?’

Quare pointed upwards.