Table of Contents

Oddjobs 4 : Out of Hours

PRESENT DAY (THURSDAY)

1773

PRESENT DAY

HELL

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Author Notes

Acknowledgements

Oddjobs 4: Out of Hours

Heide Goody & Iain Grant

Pigeon Park Press

‘Oddjobs 4: Out of Hours’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2020

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Published by Pigeon Park Press

Cover art by Mike Watts

www.pigeonparkpress.com

info@pigeonparkpress.com

Oddjobs 4 : Out of Hours

PRESENT DAY (THURSDAY)

Emergency crews swarmed across Centenary Square. There wasn’t a great deal for them to do. Ten minutes ago, the building site at the centre of the square had been the scene of a titanic fight. In the red corner, weighing at least two thousand pounds: Crippen Ai, a slimy shapeshifting, poison-coated refugee monster from some distant interdimensional Venislarn hell. In the blue corner, weighing in at two hundred and forty pounds: Rod Campbell, former member of the SAS, current employee of the Birmingham consular mission to the Venislarn.

Rod liked the emergency crews, he liked the sirens. In his experience, it tended to indicate that the moment of utter emergency had already passed and that if he needed to pass out or just have a bit of a sit down and a cup of tea, then that moment was not far away. He had won the fight, a fact that had surprised him more than anyone except perhaps Crippen Ai itself. Several tons of cement powder dropped on top of the slime creature had turned it into a sludgy suffocating mass of wet cement that was now rapidly drying and baking in the centre of the building site.

As he stood, trying unsuccessfully to brush cement dust from his clothes and admiring his handiwork while he could, his colleague Nina Seth entered the building site and approached the drying and hopefully dying monster. Nina had a frequently lax attitude to clothing in the workplace but her current outfit was something else all together. She looked like she had just come away from a stage audition for the role of Captain Hook (although her frame was more Peter Pan). She was wearing a Georgian greatcoat with big flappy pockets and shiny brass buttons, and on her head was a black tricorn hat.

“Some of my finest work,” said Rod, coming up behind her.

Nina turned to see him and then, as though it had been years since she had seen him, rather than the scant few hours since the meeting with Morag, Kathy and Vaughn that morning, she threw herself at him and hugged him fiercely. Cement dust from his suit immediately enveloped her and she broke away, coughing.

“Ugh! You’re disgusting,” she said.

“You’re not so pleasant yourself,” he said.

“It’s a new look,” she said, adjusting her hat.

“I meant the smell,” he said. She smelled liked she had been sleeping in a ditch and her coat had been used as horse blanket.

“I practically had to invent the bath,” she said.

“What?”

She gave him a smile. “Long story…”

1773

Nina would not have considered herself to have wide hips, not until she tried to squeeze them through a metal hoop less than a foot across. Behind her, the collapsing house crunched and snapped. Something smacked hard against her heel. She pictured briefly what it would be like to have her legs crushed in the twenty-first century and her body intact in this other time. She then pictured what might happen if the fall of Soho House squashed the oculus while she was still climbing through it.

“To hell with this!” she hissed, wriggled, pushed and fell forward.

She landed shoulder first on hard, tiled floor and rolled. She heard the hole behind her close with a crashing sound suddenly cut off, like a roll of thunder being sucked down a plughole. She stood. The hole and the oculus was gone.

It was dark. The moon at the window cast the only light there was. Outside was a long garden and a wall. She was standing in the same room she had just vacated in the present day. It was oddly pleasing that the room and the garden looked so familiar.

“Okay,” she said to herself, picking up her ‘History is Fun!’ notepad. “Find the oculus, open a window to yesterday and save the world.”

If she remembered the layout of the house well enough then Boulton’s study and the oculus were just along the hallway and, if it was nighttime, there should be no one awake to stop her.

“Stealth mode.”

Nina took out her phone, switched it on as a torch and went to the door.

The door handle was stiff but turned without noise. She crept out into the hallway. The air smelled heavily of waxy furniture polish. She shone her torch cautiously and moved towards the study.

A shadow flitted across the hallway ahead. She raised her light but it was gone. The eyes could play tricks in the dark but had looked like something had really been there. A human shape. She paused near the study door and pondered what to do.

No, she told herself. Her actions were clear. Get the oculus that existed in this time, get back to the future, save Morag, stop Rod dying and save the world. Five things, probably in that order.

She put her hand on the door handle.

Ahead, deeper in the house there was the smash of breaking glass; a window.

A second later there were shouts, from upstairs and from rooms behind her. A second after that there was the faintest flicker of light from the stairs.

“Crap,” she said.

She dashed into the study and shone her torch around. The place was full of ledger books and various notes. The desktop was invisible beneath a mountain of paper.

“Oculus, oculus…”

There were drawings. There were metal items, perhaps from Boulton’s factory. There was a brass and copper thing that looked like a piston. There was one of them geode thingies holding down a stack of paper. There was no oculus.

Someone in the house was shouting instructions. There were heavy footsteps on the stairs.

Nina hurriedly pushed items aside. She scattered papers, covered with complex designs and notes made in a Venislarn-style script. She threw the carefully laid out innards of a clock on the floor and opened drawers and what cupboards she could find. There was no oculus.

“Damn it,” she hissed. It was meant to be easier than this.

The door flung open. She whirled.

“What in hell!” declared the tall man, raising his hand as shield against the phone’s torch light.

Nina panicked and grabbed at the sash window. It didn’t move.

“Stand still!” barked the man.

She glanced back, still wrestling with the window.

“Stand still or you’ll feel the end of my knobstick!”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said.

It turned out that he would.

PRESENT DAY

Rod patted more cement dust from his suit. Across the square, Crippen-Ai’s cement smothered throes seemed to have come to a complete stop. From the entrance nearest the Library of Birmingham, the consular mission chief, Vaughn Sitterson, and the mission’s resident tech support / wizard, Professor Sheikh Omar, approached the entombed monster. Rod knew there would be questions and recriminations regarding what had just happened here.

“They’ve got Morag,” said Nina

“Who?” said Rod

“The Maccabees.”

“Kathy’s lot,” said Rod.

“Her,” said Nina.

Nina and Rod’s colleague Kathy, someone who had been briefly more than a colleague to Rod, was apparently a member of a covert organisation who wanted to wage open war on the Venislarn gods. Nina had called them the Maccabees. That was perhaps how they referred to themselves when the organisation first came into existence a couple of hundred years ago. Rod knew they now operated behind the façade of Forward Management, a construction and property management company that had fingers in pies and building projects all over of the city.

“And Morag’s pregnant,” said Nina.

“She’s what?” said Rod.

Nina tried to explain and, as she did, took a ragged notebook from her pocket to show to Rod.

Rod didn’t understand half of what she said and didn’t like the half he did understand. After she had given him all the really bad headlines, they went over to where Vaughn and Omar stood gazing at the modern sculpture that was Crippen-Ai.

“The world’s going to end,” said Rod.

“Twenty-nine,” said Vaughn, fixing him with a very unhappy gaze. This was extraordinary in itself; Vaughn never looked directly at anyone. He almost never spoke directly to anyone. His usual technique as mission chief was to communicate via e-mail, proxies and post-it notes and otherwise hope that his views and instructions were dispersed through the office via some sort of office gossip osmosis. Vaughn was clearly very unhappy indeed.

“Pardon?” said Rod.

Vaughn pointed round the square. “I can see twenty-nine windows looking over this site. That’s at least twenty-nine people who saw what just happened her. More if people are prepared to share, people who saw you very publicly bury this thing in concrete.”

“Cement,” said Rod. “And I did bury it. So that’s a win. Glass half full, you know.”

“And the world is going to end,” said Nina.

“It’s always going to end,” said Vaughn witheringly.

“Aye,” Rod agreed, “but it’s going to end tomorrow because…” He turned to Nina. “Notepad?”

Nina presented her notepad to Vaughn. It had the words ‘History is fun!’ written on it in an inappropriately jaunty font.

“These markings,” she said, flicking through, “are from a device called the oculus. It’s a time viewing thing. I’ve seen the day the soulgate closes. It’s tomorrow.”

“Friday,” added Rod, needlessly. “Also, we’ve been betrayed. Kathy is working for the other side.”

“The Venislarn?” said Vaughn.

“The Maccabees,” said Nina.

“Forward Management,” said Rod.

“The building people?” said Professor Omar.

“It’s a front.”

Vaughn shook his head impatiently. “You’re making very little sense. You might be concussed.”

“I’m not concussed,” said Rod.

“Me and twenty-nine or more other people just saw you fight that thing.”

“And I’m not concussed,” said Nina.

Vaughn’s expression suggested that she didn’t need to have concussion for him to doubt her sanity or reliability. “I need a full written report on this immediately,” he said. “No, first, you need to get a fresh change of clothes,” he said to Rod and then looked at Nina’s outlandish outfit. “And you need to read the office policy documents on staff clothing expectations.”

With that, and clearly overwhelmed by the amount of actual human interaction he just had to endure, Vaughn marched off back to the library, face buried in the tablet he carried as his all-purpose people avoidance device.

Rod turned to the professor. “They’ve got Morag, Omar.”

“Kathy?” There was light derision in the professor’s voice. There usually was.

“We know she’s pregnant,” said Nina.

His glib manner dissolved. He tried to recover it. “What? What do you mean?”

“She’s gonna give birth to the adn-bhul anti-Christ,” said Nina.

“For one, I think analogies between the Venislarn Kaatbari and the Biblical anti-Christ are reductive and unhelpful at best –”

Rod gripped the professor’s arm.

“Blummin’ heck, man. They’re going to kill her. If they think her baby is going to jump start the end of days then they’ll kill both of them. Who knows what they’re doing with her right now? She’s probably scared out of her wits right now!”

Morag was angry. She was irritated and more than a little bored but she was mostly angry.

And pregnant.

Morag had no experience of pregnancy in her previous life. It wasn’t that she avoided people who were pregnant, just that nobody close to her had ever had cause to explain the mechanics to her. If she’d ever given it any thought, she’d have assumed that when the time came, she’d watch some Youtube videos or something.

Now she was here, in a perfectly clean hospital-cum-prison room with no access to the internet, or even a sympathetic human, and she was fairly sure that things had taken an unusual turn. Professor Omar and Maurice had been keen for her to embrace the whole shitshow (read the books, knit the booties, do the pelvic floor exercises) but she’d resisted, partly out of denial and then almost certainly out of anger at their sheer impertinence. She sighed and hoped that Maurice’s yellow booties might yet get a chance to be worn.

She’d never for a moment have imagined that she might even miss the presence of Shala’pinz Syu, the Handmaiden of Prein who’d been assigned as her nanny, but even she would have been better than nothing. Instead, the death of another Handmaiden of Prein was now associated with her. She could expect little sympathy from the ones that remained, although that was probably just bubbling under in the top ten of things that she should worry about.

The handle of the door turned and Dr Kathy Kaur and Malcolm walked in, both former employees of the consular mission to the Venislarn, both working all the while for an organisation with a completely different agenda.

“Afternoon, fuckers,” said Morag with cheery malice.

You said the bad word, said her unborn child, a silent voice in her head. Ever since she’d accidentally made a telephathic link to her foetus with some Venislarn neuro-virtual reality equipment, it had been like carrying an onboard censor in her womb. She ignored it for now.

“Pissed off any more gods since I last saw you?” she asked Kathy.

Kathy arched an eyebrow and gave Morag a look that was half-playful, half-reproachful.

“We can’t stay to chat just now, but I’ve brought you a coffee and a sandwich.” Kathy held up a paper bag before putting it down on the wheeled table.

“Go to hell,” said Morag.

“That’s precisely what we’re trying to avoid,” said Kathy. “We’re not the ones who thought it wise to shag the emissary of an evil interdimensional horror.” Her expression softened. “We don’t hate you, Morag.”

“Funny way of showing it. There’s not even a toilet in this place.”

Kathy crossed to a thin wardrobe, opened it and dragged out some sort of chair. It looked as if it belonged in a museum of torture.

“A commode. Because we’re not animals.”

“Debatable.”

Malcolm gave a head jiggle to Kathy. “Ask her.”

Kathy sighed. “Malcolm is concerned about how much our colleagues, Nina and Rod, might know, might think they know about our operation here.”

“Operation?” said Morag and spread her hands. “I don’t even think you know what’s going on here. You think you can wage war on the Venislarn, the utterly unkillable and unknowable Venislarn. You’re like that king who thought he could command the sea to go back.”

“Canute,” said Malcolm.

“You’re a complete pair of Canutes, you are.”

“There are hundreds of us,” said Kathy.

Morag held her stomach. “And you’re all going to die when this one’s relatives find out what you’ve done.”

Are they? said her unborn.

“Rod and Nina,” Malcolm reminded her.

Morag opened her mouth but what could she say? The truth? That they probably knew nothing and that she was lost to them for good? Some cock and bull story to wind them up? In the end she settled for, “Fuck you. Fuck you both.”

Kathy and Malcolm shared a look like they expected nothing less and, without further conversation, left. The key turned in the lock.

Morag made a mental note to get Steve to check whether the key was still there on the other side. She looked at the commode. It was a primitive ugly thing made from tubular metal, with a seat suspended over a small bucket.

“Classy,” she growled, but then realised that she really, really needed to use it.

“Fine. Gonna fill this thing up to the bhul-tamade brim and your head’s going in it when I get hold of you Kathy Kaur.”

You’re very angry, mother.

“Yes, I am.” She lay back on the bed. “Steve, are you there?”

A ceiling tile shifted aside and Steve the Destroyer poked his face through the gap. “I am here. I lie in wait for our enemies to reveal themselves, so that I can flay their skin and —”

“Keep your cool for a bit longer,” said Morag. “We need to play the long game here.” Morag really wasn’t sure that ‘long’ was anything more than ‘not immediately’ right now, but she wanted to keep Steve under wraps for as long as she could. “Listen, Steve, what do you know about human pregnancy?”

He dropped down from the ceiling with the pencil that he was currently carrying round as his default weapon and struck a pose at the foot of the bed. “A primitive and quite revolting way to produce offspring,” he said.

“Yeah, thanks,” said Morag, pushing herself up onto an elbow. “You know I’m pregnant with the kaatbari, right? The anti-Christ. Yo Morgantus had more than a hand in this.” Morag reflected that she could have chosen her words more carefully, but she needed Steve up to speed.

Steve thought for a long moment. “Ho! The offspring can call me Uncle Steve!”

Morag acknowledged this with a wry smile.

Is this man my uncle, mother?

“Uh-huh,” said Morag. She wasn’t sure that she was ready to share with Steve about the whole talking baby thing. “To be clear though, I don’t think that this will be a standard uncle / nephew relationship featuring train sets and football.”

“You think I can’t play your football?” said Steve, jumping up and miming various footballer moves. His new floral legs lunged and pranced as he did invisible keepy-uppies.

I like the sound of Uncle Steve.

“He shoots, he scores!” crowed Steve as he ran across the bed. It was a journey that took him uphill and then down again. “You are very fat now, maggot.”

Morag ran her hands across her stomach. “I wasn’t fat like this earlier.”

“Hah! Your ignorance of pregnancy is astounding! Humans always get fat when a baby grows inside them. How could you not know this?”

“No, I mean earlier, like this morning, or even an hour ago.” She was meant to be in her first trimester but clearly something had changed in the past few hours. “Baby, are you up to something?”

I told you mother, I’m going to help.

Morag felt a rush of something hit her. She wasn’t sure if it was a massive release of pregnancy hormones, the sudden realisation that her baby had taken the pregnancy process out of her hands, or simply the result of Steve running about on her stomach. She leaned forward and threw up into her lap, just managing to sweep Steve clear of the barf zone.

“Muda,” she swore, stumbling to her feet. There was a roll of blue paper on a night stand. She took it and wiped herself down. “Unbelievable.”

She breathed deeply for a few moments, trying to decide if she was going to hurl again and then she took a turn around the room on shaky legs.

“Right, I’m bored of this now,” she declared. “Let’s see what we have here.”

Morag investigated the paper bag and found it indeed contained a disposable cup of coffee as well as the dullest looking cheese sandwich in the world.

Morag surveyed the contents of the room. Apart from the hospital bed, there was a wheeled cupboard, of the type found in hospitals everywhere, and a little tray that would come over the bed. There was a chest of drawers near to the door, made entirely of flimsy plastic. The weightiest thing in the whole room was the bed, and it was chained securely to the wall. The only way that she’d be able to use any of the furniture against her captors would be if someone was willing to lie down near to the bed so that she could bash their head in with the safety rail. She shrugged. Steve had joined her in the search and had been very pleased to find an elastic band on the floor. He declared that it would form part of a projectile weapon he’d construct and promptly hid it in the ceiling space he accessed by climbing on top of the wardrobe unit.

She pulled open the drawers in the unit to see what was inside. There were dressings and bags of fluid that looked like the ones that would be used in a drip. She consulted the label. Midazolam. She guessed that they were sedatives.

“Steve,” she called. “If they hook me up to one of these bags, I want you to wait until they’ve left the room and then pull it out, yeah?”

“Doctor Steve has seen Holby City. I can also get the electric paddles and shock your heart when I think you need —”

“No, it’s best you don’t do that.”

Other drawers revealed silicone tubing, and Morag wondered how strong it was. She gripped it in both hands and tugged it taut, but her stomach somehow got in the way, and made her feel so fat and unbalanced that she felt sure she’d just fall over if she ended up in a fistfight.

“Baby, how are you doing this? Are you growing faster, somehow?”

I am doing what’s necessary, Mother. We are in danger, and I can help much more if I’m big.

“The bigger you get, the more useless I become,” complained Morag. “Also – and this is quite important – the moment you are born the world will end.”

I promise to behave.

“No, baby, it’s more that you’re the herald of the Soulgate. Um, like an alarm clock. When you come out….” She didn’t understand the precise details and perhaps it was unfair to burden her unborn child with such knowledge.

“Steve, can you get to any other rooms through that ceiling space?” she asked, as she flopped back down on the bed. “I could murder a doughnut.”

“You wish me, Steve the Destroyer, former outrider of the entourage of Prein to go find you doughed nuts?” he said indignantly.

“Although, if you find a mobile phone or a loaded handgun, maybe those would be better.”

“Steve the Destroyer was made for greater works. The things I have seen…”

“Yeah?” she said. “Yeah, where have you been? And why are you legs now covered in a pretty fabric pattern?”

“I lost my old legs in hand-to-hand combat with a giant kobashi.”

“This was in hell, right?”

“No, fool,” he said. “I lost them in the battle to defend Soho House.”

“Course, you did,” she said, too tired to care that whether he made sense or not.

“That was after I escaped from hell.”

“How did you escape?” she said and closed her eyes and knew that sleep was almost upon her.

“It is an incredible tale in which Mrs Vivian Grey and myself deposed a tyrant, saved the fortress of Hath-No and I turned the tide of the battle single-handedly with my famous impression of a tito fruit.”

Morag opened one eye.

“What?”

He took up a bold and heroic pose on her chest. She really didn’t have the energy to object.

“A great tale such as this needs to be told from the beginning,” he said. “You last saw Mrs Vivian Grey and myself falling into the inescapable void of hell…”

Morag closed her eyes and, already drifting off, waved her hand for him to continue.

HELL

Vivian Grey pushed away the rock directly above her and hauled her way towards the pink light.

Scraping herself savagely but choosing not to care, she emerged, pushed herself over the edge of the hole in the rubble and allowed herself to roll down the pile of broken concrete and masonry to the ground.

She hurt and she suspected that wasn’t going to change. This was leng-space hell, one of the hells anyway. The laws of time and space, of life and death, didn’t hold much sway here. Injuries could easily be permanent, death only temporary.

Vivian still had the screwed-up remnants of the Bloody Big Book in her hand. She straightened the pages out, folded them neatly and placed them in her jacket pocket next to the pen nib and her arrow pendant.

She stood. She had lost a shoe. That was an irritation. It had been a good pair of shoes, comfortable, hard-wearing. People underestimated the value of a good pair of shoes.

She inspected her surroundings. The landscape shifted. In the distance was a rolling pink mass; a sea or something that acted very much like a sea. In the corner of her eye, she saw geography morph and twist when it thought she wasn’t looking. Something huge and distant roared. It sounded angry but Vivian wasn’t quick to judge. Overhead, above the wheeling Croyi-Takk, something that might have been purple sky or could have been the grasslands of a distant, inverted world waved at her. The gateway to the offices of Mammon-Mammonson Investments was closed, gone. Her colleagues were on the other side and they had closed it to save the earth, knowing they were trapping her on this side. This was only good and right.

A tiny figure stumbled across the debris towards her. It was no more than six inches high and appeared to be made from poorly stitched sack cloth.

“Ha ha! You are now mine, fleshing!” it declared grandly.

She pointed to the rip in its side. “Your stuffing is coming loose.”

The doll gave a horrified gasp. “I am wounded!”

“I can fix it if we can find a needle. What is your name?”

“I am Steve the Destroyer, gobbet!” it crowed. “Fear me!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Steve the Destroyer is a ridiculous, twee and juvenile name. Whoever gave you it should be ashamed,” she said, suspecting either Morag or Nina had had a hand in its naming.

“I don’t know, I think it sounds dangerous,” the doll argued. “Steve!” it declared boldly, fists on hips. “Mysterious even. Steeeeve.”

“No. Not at all.”

Steve kicked petulantly at the ground.

“Which way are you heading?” it asked.

“I thought I’d try down there,” she said, pointing towards the thing that might or might not have been the sea.

“This your first time in hell?”

“This hell,” said Vivian.

“Come!” it boomed as ominously as a doll could boom. “We have such sights to show you.”

“I believe I shall be the judge of that.”

She looked at her feet. One shoe on. One shoe lost. She took off her remaining shoe and carried it as she started down the slope. She stopped almost immediately and picked something up.

“What’s that?” said Steve.

“It’s a holepunch,” said Vivian.

“Hole-punch.” Steve tasted the word. “A fearsome weapon.”

“It’s a holepunch. For punching holes.”

Spread among the debris that had fallen through the gateway there were various pieces of equipment and office supplies. Vivian collected a box of paperclips, a pad of post-it notes, a bottle of Tippex liquid paper, a biro pen and a laptop case (empty). She put the items in the laptop case, along with her one shoe and carried them.

“What are they for, morsel?” said Steve.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “And you will not call me morsel, fleshling or gobbet. My name is Mrs Vivian Grey.”

“You cannot command me, woman-thing!”

“Yes, I can,” she said. “You’ll do as I say or I’ll put you in this bag too and I won’t mend that rip in your side.”

There was no time in hell and yet moment passed moment and Vivian’s watch ticked onward. So, time or no time, she judged five hours to have passed by the time she reached the border of a forest that stretched in a line between where she’d arrived and the sea. She thought of it as a forest but it was probably nothing of the sort. Jagged black columns rose up a hundred feet high. Spear-like branches jutted out from these at intervals and smaller quill-like twigs from them and smaller ones still, a fractal pattern that probably continued beyond the tiniest hair-thin spurs that Vivian could see. When she pressed her hand to the nearest bough, there was a strange and unpleasant resistance, as though infinitesimal blades were cutting into her, blades too tiny to see, too tiny to even draw blood.

She sat on the ground, set the laptop case down and opened it.

Steve rolled out, spluttering.

“I have never been exposed to such treatment! That bag smells of shoe, fleshling!”

“That bag smells of shoe…?” she prompted.

Steve the Destroyer gave her a hard look.

“Smells of shoe… Mrs Vivian Grey,” he said.

“Indeed. And if you are rude to me again, you can go back in there.”

He looked about himself. “What is this place?”

“I had hoped you would know,” she said.

She took the box of paperclips from the laptop case, removed one and unfolded it.

“Come here,” she said and patted her knee.

“Why?”

With some effort, she bent the end of the straightened paperclip double to make the eye of a rudimentary needle.

“I’m going to mend you.”

Steve gathered the trailing and rather grubby length of stuffing that had slipped out of his side and climbed onto her lap. She tore the tab off the paperclip box and drew a single ideogram on it in biro. She then pulled at a loose thread on the ripped cuff of her jacket and carefully worked it loose.

“What are you?” she said. “I recognise that this is a pabash kaj doll body but you, the entity inside it…”

Steve puffed his chest. “I am Qulsteyvan the Destroyer, outrider of the entourage of Prein, emissary of the shattered realms and an angel-demon of the desecrated ranks of the blind gods of Sulu Sukram. I am a guide to the realms of unknowable pleasure, a seeker in the seas of pain.”

“Yes, yes. I understand,” she said. “I have seen a picture of your kind. Lots of limbs. Crab claws.”

“What’s a crab?”

“As well as tentacles and a great quantity of embedded metal armour.”

“Is it a fearsome thing, the crab?”

“It was a rather fanciful picture, executed by an Edwardian scholar who perhaps had a limited social life. I recall a surprisingly redundant number of penises.”

The little doll slapped his featureless cloth groin angrily.

“Yes, that’s quite enough of that,” said Vivian. “And who did this to you?”

“I was trapped in this form by the fleshy mortal called Morag Murray.”

“Interesting,” said Vivian. “Didn’t think she had it in her.”

Morag Murray had joined the response team of the Birmingham consular mission to the Venislarn three weeks ago (three weeks plus or minus whatever time had passed or unpassed in the world since Vivian had fallen into here). Morag had struck Vivian as a prime example of someone promoted to the level of their own incompetence. However, if Morag had entrapped an outrider of Prein – deliberately entrapped an outrider of Prein – in this harmless cloth form, then Vivian might need to re-evaluate her low opinion of her colleague.

“What are you, Mrs Vivian Grey?” said Steve.

Vivian was focussed on removing sufficient thread without causing unnecessary damage to her jacket.

“An odd question,” she said. “I am a woman. A human.”

“Yes?”

“I am an employee of the consular mission to the Venislarn.”

“Yes?”

“My role is mostly one of registration, regulation and compliance. I keep the records of the Venislarn living in the city and make sure everyone, on all sides, follows the rules.”

“Yes?”

She licked the end of the thread and skewered it through the needle eye on the first attempt.

“I am a graduate of Bristol University. I was married and I am now a widow. I serve no god.”

“And what do those mean?” said Steve, waving a pudgy hand at her face.

“What?”

“Those lines. Are they tribal affiliation?”

She put a hand to her cheek and met the bags under her eyes and the wrinkles on her brow.

“They are a sign of age,” she said.

“Reward for long service,” said Steve, nodding in understanding.

“I’m not old,” she said and heard the unnecessary defensiveness in her own voice. She wasn’t old, old age began in the late sixties, if not later, but nonetheless her hand involuntarily went to her grey hair – not silver, not salt and pepper, but grey – and automatically checked that the bobble holding her ponytail in place was still tight. “Among humans, women live longer than men. Do you know why?”

“Tell me,” said Steve.

“Because we’re useful. Hold still.”

She held Steve in one hand, poked the stuffing back into the narrow rip and then lowered her needle to sew. Steve wriggled.

“You won’t hurt me?” he said.

“A seeker in the seas of pain, you said.”

She mended him with a row of neat and tight stitches, far better than those used to create him in the first place. Before she closed up the hole entirely, she rolled up the square of card on which she had drawn an ideogram and pushed it into the gap.

“What are you doing?” he said, his little wooden eyes looking elsewhere.

“Making sure this is nice and tight,” she said and finished the job.

Steve jumped up and did a few stretches, star jumps and lunges to test her handiwork.

“It is acceptable,” he declared. He looked back the way they had come. “You should not have put me in the bag.”

“I warned you.”

“We could have been attacked.”

“And you would have defended me?”

“The priests of Nystar patrol leng-space.”

“They don’t move very fast. I avoided them.”

“Ix’kwir death hoods lay traps for the unwary.”

“I stayed away from large predatory fungi.”

“The Keddhu-Chrrtrr weave irresistible wards on the edge of their lands.”

“I saw them. I resisted.”

The little thing, as much as it could express anything with a stitched-on face, looked disappointed that she hadn’t suffered greater hardship.

“Where do you intend for us to go, Mrs Vivian Grey?” he asked.

“There’s a hierarchy of needs,” she said in lieu of an honest ‘I don’t know’. “Shelter, warmth, food. I don’t know if there’s any food to be had in hell or if I can even starve if I don’t find any but I need shelter, protection.”

Steve gestured at the forest. “These are jagrahad antenna,” he said. “If we could find a tall enough one, we might also find a bhaldis traverser. It could take us to Hath-No.”

“Why? What’s there?”

“The Fortress of Hath-No. It is held by those loyal to Sulu Sukram. I could vouch for you.”

“Could you indeed?” she said. “Tell me, why would you do that?”

“Because you sew well and I owe you a debt.”

She pinned her makeshift needle into the inside of her lapel, closed the laptop case and stood.

“I want to see what’s on the other side of this forest first.”

“It’s not a forest,” said Steve.

“What is the correct noun for a large group of jagrahad antennae?”

Steve gave it some thought.

“The forest will be dangerous,” he said.

“But I have you with me,” she said, “and there’s a path over there. We can be on the other side before nightfall.” She looked at the purple not-sky overhead. “Well, before a significant length of time has passed. Not time but –”

She gave up. She would need to find some new idioms to use in this place.

The path through the jagrahad forest was wide, mossy and damp underfoot and too straight to be natural. Vivian set a brisk pace. Her aches and injuries were on her body and her arms so there was no excuse to let her legs off some hard work. Steve alternated between running ahead to scout the way and darting back to see if they were being followed.

“There is a pack of dendooshi keeping pace with us,” he told her.

Off to her left, a sloping predator with shoulders as high as a human, stalked through the slats of light between the trees.

“I see them,” she said.

“If I had my old body back, I would rip them apart with glee.”

“They’re not attacking us,” she said. “I don’t think they will come onto the path.”

“Why not?”

“Enchantments?” she suggested. “They’ve been conditioned to fear it? Or to protect it?”

Steve laughed humourlessly. “You are a – What is that word for a shat-goi person who thinks the best of every situation?”

“Idiot?” said Vivian.

“Yes! You are an idiot, Mrs Vivian Grey.”

Her socks were wet. Her soles tingled with the promise of future blisters. She thought about her missing shoe and her need for footwear.

“I don’t suppose there are many cobblers in hell,” she said.

“In Hath-No, they have everything you want,” said Steve.

“Even a cobbler?”

“Everything! Are your ears made of cloth?”

She nodded. “So, tell me, what is a cobbler?”

He grunted. “In Hath-No, we will find one who can tell you what a cobbler is and another who will find one for you! We will go there and I will show you its wondrous scriptorium where you will find gainful employment.”

Her burning feet made her stop even though she didn’t want to. She stripped off her wet socks and draped them to dry over her shoulder. They smelled sharply bitter, like she had been wearing them for a month, not… however long she had been wearing them. She stood on one foot and inspected the other. Her flesh was a raw pink, not only the soles but the sides and even round her ankle. There was a contour line between the untouched skin on the top of her foot and the removed layers on the side and bottom. This wasn’t simple wear from walking. She sniffed her socks again.

“Show me your feet, Steve,” she said.

“If you can call these feet,” he said and waggled a footless limb at her. The cloth at his feet was bleached, thinning.

“We’ve stepped in acid,” she said, went to one knee and carefully ran her fingertips over one of the patches of moss on the path. It was cold and wet to the touch. “Carnivorous moss?” she pondered out loud. “That might explain why the dendooshi don’t –”

She was cut off as the ground beneath her rose up, in a wave. Her feet went from beneath her and she landed hard on her back with a cry. Steve and the laptop case were sent flying. As Vivian got herself up on one elbow, the sides of the path rose up in a curve around her. Triangular teeth that had lain invisibly flat against the ground now flexed inward. For as far as Vivian could see along its length, the mossy carpet was rolling up into an acidic intestinal tract.

Vivian scrambled up to throw herself out through the closing gap. The path-worm rolled to stay with her, to keep her inside. She yelled and pushed away from its soft digestive villi and propelled herself out, feet-first. Gripping teeth grazed against her breast and back, the underside of her chin and then she was out but for her right arm. The teeth were angled inward and locked onto her arm just above the elbow.

There was no time for pain. There was no time. The teeth closed in, sheared downward. She heard but did not feel the click as the teeth clipped through bone and amputated her arm. Blood sprayed across the body of the path-worm, which now lay still, fully wrapped up into a pipeline cylinder, digesting the meagre meal it had caught.

She felt herself black out for an instant, came to and remembered she was bleeding. She was bleeding to death. She clamped her left hand over the stump and screamed.

“See? See?” yelled Steve triumphantly from the edge of the forest. “You are an idiot! I told you!”

Vivian knew she had to do something to staunch the bleeding. She knew she knew. She had attended first aid training courses – advanced first aid training courses. She had taken notes and re-read them later. There was something she needed to do but the pain was now coming and she couldn’t think.

Through the jagrahad forest, a band of slow and purposeful dendooshi approached, wolf-jaws open.

“Steve…” she said.

But there wasn’t time. There was no time.

She blacked out a second time.

1773

They brought Nina into the parlour of Soho House, her hands tied before her.

There were a handful of men in the room and a couple of women loitering in the doorways. The light in the room came from two lamps, one held by a servant by the window, the other on the table next to Matthew Boulton, the owner of the house. He sat in a long nightgown, head bowed in grim contemplation, a drink placed by his right hand. Nina’s phone and her notebook sat on the table next to it.

Nina waggled her jaw and grimaced at the pain where the servant man, Jonathan Angus, had struck her with his handy little club. He now stood by the dead fireplace, arms folded and back straight to make him appear taller and more imposing which was entirely unnecessary since he was the tallest person in the room by a head and didn’t need to flaunt his physique.

Another servant ran in and, on tiptoe, whispered at Jonathan Angus’s ear.

“Everywhere?” said Jonathan.

“Every cupboard and cellar,” said the servant.

“Very well. Continue to the grounds.”

“Send for John Scale and have the manufactory searched too,” added Boulton.

The servant dashed off.

“There’s no sign of the others,” said Jonathan. “The house is secure.”

Boulton nodded slowly. “Anne, take yourself back to bed. I will manage this.”

The woman at the far door slipped away.

“And so we have caught the one thief,” said Boulton. He looked at Nina and flinched in apparent disgust. “Dear God. Can we get some clothes on her? A sheet or something? Nancy!”

Nina was wearing clothes. She didn’t need to look to check. A skirt, a blouse, her jacket. She had lost her shoes somewhere along the way but that hardly made her naked. She recalled something about olden timey men get all funny and hot under the collar about women’s ankles? Was that it?

For the first time, Nina properly and consciously thought about the fact that she had travelled back in time. She was a time traveller, a super-sexy Doctor Who without a Tardis. She needed the oculus if she was ever going to leave this time but in the meantime...

“I’m not a thief,” she said.

“You’ll speak when you’re spoken to,” snapped Jonathan.

“I’ll speak when I damn well please, mate,” she retorted.

Jonathan’s hand flexed around his knobbly club.

“Seriously?” she said. “You’re going to hit someone when they’re tied up?”

It threw him off-guard and brought a little embarrassed colour to his cheeks.

A maid came in with a white table cloth and, with nervous glances, approached Nina. She flung it over Nina’s shoulders and then awkwardly drew it round her front, attempting to wrap her from neck to feet so no flesh was visible. Nina gave an irritated shake.

“Okay, enough with the toga party. I was fine as I was.”

“You really weren’t,” said Jonathan and there was a smirking glint in his eye.

The maid spoke to Boulton who thanked her before she left.

“Not a thief, eh?” he said to Nina.

“Why? What have you lost?”

“And yet you were found in my house after midnight, the kitchen window broken and an item of great value stolen.”

“What?” she said. It was the oculus. She just knew it. Life was full of curveballs and bloody-minded inconveniences and it would be sodding typical for her to turn up on the one night in the entire eighteenth century when Matthew Boulton’s oculus got nicked.

“The pineapple,” said Boulton.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“She plays the innocent,” said Jonathan.

“A pineapple?” she said.

“A targeted attack,” said Boulton. “An item of high value, easily transported but not easily identified by its owner.”

“We’re talking about an actual pineapple here?”

“Who were your confederates?” said Jonathan. “You will hang for this.”

“What? Grand theft fruit and veg? I don’t think so. I’m not your thief.”

Boulton thumped the table with his fist. “Then what were you doing in my study?”

“Studying?” she suggested and then immediately dismissed it as stupid. “Look, I’m a…”

She tried to reach for the ID in her pocket which was tricky with hands tied and trickier while wrapped up like a mummy. She wriggled out of the tablecloth. Boulton made a show of averting his eyes.

Nina grunted and managed to snag her work ID card with her fingertips. “Here!”

She threw it forward onto the table. Boulton seized upon it and was at once fascinated, tensing the card and marvelling at its sheen.

“What is this?” he said.

“It says who I am,” she replied. “Look, basically, I’m police.”

“She is a foreigner,” said Jonathan.

“Consular Mission to the Venislarn?” read Boulton. “Nina Seth.”

“That’s me,” she said. “I’m mostly all about keeping the peace and dealing with things that go bump in the night.”

“Go bump in the night?” said Boulton.

“I fear she’s being vulgar, sir,” said Jonathan.

This wasn’t going overly well. It was probably time to play the race card.

“I’m from India,” she said.

Both men gave a sudden “Ah!” of understanding.

“Explains the clothing,” said Boulton.

“Or lack of it,” agreed Jonathan. “And the vulgar language.”

“But not what you were doing in my study?” said Boulton, toying with her ID.

“My mission was to –”

“This consular mission of yours?”

“Oh, not that mission. My task was to investigate some strange goings on here - weird creatures, unusual artefacts, that kind of thing – and I saw someone outside the house and…”

“Decided to follow them?” said Jonathan.

“Yes. Exactly that. I followed them. Crash, bang, mistaken identities, false accusations. Easy mistake to make.” She held up her hands to be untied.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Jonathan. “Moments after the window was broken, I found you in an entirely different room.”

“I moved quickly.”

“The kitchen door was locked.”

“And this consular mission sent you?” said Boulton. “A woman?”

She adopted her most authoritarian tone, channelled as much Vivian Grey as she could.

“Yeah, I know this is all a little confusing for you to get your heads around,” she said. “A beautiful intelligent woman in your house with abilities and knowledge beyond your comprehension. Perhaps with some, like, mystical skills from the Orient. And you” – she pointed at Boulton – “Mr Totally Unreconstructed, got to get by those sexist preconceptions in your mind. You don’t see all the ins and outs –”

“Is she being vulgar again?” said Boulton.

“- but you’re gonna have to take my word on it, capisce?”

Jonathan frowned deeply. “Her story’s riddled with holes.”

Boulton shook his head and held up her ID card. “What is this?”

“I told you,” she said. “It’s my ID. That’s who I am.”

“No,” he said, tapping the edge of the material. “The portrait image of you is remarkable and this material around it… What is it? It’s like glass but… Is it some form of treated horn?”

Nina shrugged. “It’s plastic.”

“Plastic, yes. But what’s it made from?”

“Plastic,” she said. The guy was either hard of hearing or hard of thinking. She didn’t know how to explain it any clearer.

“And this case,” he said, picking up her phone and staring at its black face. “Or is it simply a mirror?”

“That’s hi tech stuff,” she said. “Mine.”

She remembered the Simpsons episode which involved time travel and the dangers of trampling on butterflies. Giving a Georgian bloke a functioning mobile phone was possibly a bit worse than treading on insects.

“There is something peculiar about its manufacture,” said Boulton. “And these small holes in top and bottom. Are they key holes?”

“If I said micro USB charging socket, would that mean anything to you?” she said.

“No, it would not,” said Boulton.

“Then don’t fiddle.”

A servant entered. “One of men from Handsworth says he heard someone running past his house not ten minutes ago, sir.”

“Your partner in crime?” Boulton said to Nina.

“Your pineapple thief,” she said.

Boulton pursed his lips. He looked at the card and back at her.

“I can make head nor tail of it,” he said wearily. He stood. “The magistrate will not be roused at this hour anyway. Have Nancy prepare one of the bedrooms.”

“Mr Boulton, sir?” said Jonathan. “She’s a dangerous criminal.”

“I’ve seen children that were more frightening,” said Boulton.

“Backhanded compliment,” said Nina.

“But find some men to watch the house, Jonathan, and if you want to sleep outside her locked door or window as suits your desires then that is fine.” Boulton drained his drink. “I’m going to bed.” He swept out, muttering, “Blasted pineapple,” his nightgown billowing behind him.

Nina looked at Jonathan Angus. He didn’t look a happy chap. She tested her jaw. There would be a bruise in the morning.

“Beddy-byes it is then, Miss Seth,” he said.

PRESENT DAY

One o’clock in the Vault beneath the Library of Birmingham and the secret offices of the consular mission to the Venislarn. In the half hour since Rod and Nina had convinced Professor Sheikh Omar to help them in their search for Morag, they’d achieved very little. While Omar had searched for spells that might be used to pinpoint Morag’s location, Rod had convinced Nina to take herself to the loos and at least attempt to wash off some of the ingrained muck from Georgian England and taken a phone call from Chad in marketing who wanted to know why Rod wasn’t over at the Mailbox in his supervisory and liaison role on the set of Man of War, a film that was deemed to be a pile of tosh by nearly everyone working on it apart from the director who thought it was cinematic gold, the producer who thought it was going to be a huge box office hit and Chad who saw it as the centrepiece of the public and (if given the right spin) positive unveiling of the Venislarn.

“I can’t come back,” Rod had said. “I’m busy.”

“But they’re doing the rooftop scenes,” Chad had whined, “and our lead has some questions about his character’s motivation that apparently only you can answer.”

“Well, they’ll have to wait.”

“They’ve got the helicopter camera crew on stand-by. I don’t think they can wait.”

“I have more important things to deal with.”

“Like what?” scoffed Chad.

“The end of the world in…” He consulted his watch. “Possibly a little less than twelve hours.”

“B-but the film... It isn’t finished.”

“No.”

“The release isn’t scheduled until next year. The premiere… Cannes…”

“No.”

“But… today?”

“Sorry, Chad. Gotta go.”

He hung up.

The Vault was home to items and artefacts, variously made of wood, secretions, dark metals, rotting fibres, body parts and parts unidentifiable. The designers of this space had clearly taken the view that, just because the contents were often dirty, frequently organic and sometimes downright unpleasant, it wasn’t a design aesthetic that had to be shared by the décor. On a clinical white table under clear lighting, Omar dangled an oddly shaped bone on a piece of string over a map of Birmingham and muttered in a dark magical language.

To the side, providing moral support and hot tea, was Omar’s partner, Maurice. Rod had noticed the crocheted booties that Maurice had been working on and which now rested on an empty bookshelf.

“You knew about Morag,” said Rod.

Omar didn’t look up from his enchantments. Maurice gave Rod an apologetic look and offered him a pink wafer biscuit from a packet.

“And you were going to do nothing, eh?” said Rod.

Omar snatched the bone out of the air and, irritated, shoved it in his jacket pocket.

“Quite cleverly, though quite reasonably, they have cast certain charms or wards, making her invisible to supernatural detection,” said the professor. Omar was a tall man, as tall as Rod though far leaner and willowy. His gaze, level with Rod’s, was magnified in his black-rimmed spectacles. “We were not doing nothing, Rodney,” he said solemnly. “We intended to manage the situation for the betterment of all. The end of the world serves no one’s interests.”

There was zhuzh of automatic doors and Nina entered the Vault, sidestepping the spherical leathery ball of a hibernating Bondook shambler that had made it down into the Vault earlier in the week and had not yet been redirected to the Venislarn menagerie in Dudley.

“Just had to make a phone call. Have we found her?” she said.

“We have not,” said Rod and critically regarded the coat and hat she was still wearing. “You going to wear that all day?”

“I like it,” she said. “It says something.”

“Like you’re a big fan of Adam Ant.”

“Who’s Adam Ant?”

He passed her a small aerosol. “Spray that. It’ll cover the smell.”

Nina sprayed a little and sniffed. “Is this perfume?”

“It’s an anti-pheromone,” he explained. “Bought it off the internet. It’s meant to mask your human scent, like if you’re being tracked by wolves or bears.”

“Is that likely?”

“Always be prepared.”

She sprayed herself liberally. “It’s basically Febreze.”

“It’s an anti-pheromone,” he said.

“Those gadget and survival nutjob websites must see you coming a mile off.”

Rod turned to Omar. “So, you can’t find her?”

“Not through arcane means,” said Omar. “They are perhaps blocking us, somehow. We could try some more generic scrying although that can decidedly hit and miss.”

“We could try the Fyrt Liqar,” said Nina.

“Fart licker?” said Rod.

“The Elixir of All Knowledge,” said Omar. “Dangerous, unpredictable and ninety-nine percent unhelpful. If you’re that desperate I know where we can lay our hands on the stone of Azhur-Banipal.”

That one Rod did know. He had seen it, almost touched it. “A wishing stone that gives your soul to the King in Crimson?”

“I said if you were desperate, dear boy.”

Rod sighed. “So, we rely on conventional means. We deal with what we know. Kathy works for Forward Management or the organisation behind the organisation. We investigate them, we work up some leads. Maybe she’s at one of their sites in the city. There can’t be more than fifty? A hundred?” It didn’t sound a great idea, even as it came out of his mouth, too time consuming.

“Their head offices are in Brindley Place,” said Maurice.

Rod gave him a questioning look.

“They have a tapas bar on the ground floor,” said the little man.

“Patatas bravas to die for,” agreed Omar.

HELL

Vivian experienced drifting moments of awareness and pain. She had awareness enough to encompass the pain and little else. Her arm was a wall of pain so loud that feedback signals of agony looped back and round, blanked out all other sensation and blew the fuses of consciousness time and again.

Vivian woke eventually and properly. The pain was still there and it was large and loud but it was localised — there — in her arm. She woke and realised she could not move. She was awash with fatigue, like a marathon runner the morning after the big event. (Vivian had never run a marathon. She was an advocate of healthy physical exercise but did not approve of marathons; they were fun runs for attention-seeking martyrs based on an arbitrarily chosen distance.)

But it wasn’t just the tiredness and pain that held her in place. Vivian opened gummy eyes to see that thick, crystallised mucous held her in place against the bed of coarse blue grass she lay against. Taller stands of the same grass waved above her and she saw there was something wrong with the sky directly above her.

It had a horizon.

“Where are we?” she croaked.

Steve bounded onto her chest.

“You are awake!” he announced, as though he was somehow responsible.

She angled her head to look at him. Her hair was enmeshed in a pillow of the solidified mucous but she could move her head a little. She saw her free hand, her one remaining hand, poking out of the crystallised goo. It was white as marble, bloodless.

“What happened in the forest?” she said. “The dendooshi. The path-worm.”

“I rescued you,” he said, clearly pleased with himself.

Vivian realised it wasn’t just the tall grasses above her that were swaying. The ground beneath her was rocking ponderously from side to side. “How?” she said.

“Escape was impossible!” he announced, arms thrown wide, knees slightly bent and, if he had proper fingers, he might have thrown in some jazz hands. “Hungry dendooshi were closing in and you had collapsed like a weakling and the only thing you were doing was spraying your red blood everywhere which was less than useless but you were doing it anyway and drawing the slathering beasts in all the quicker! How could we survive such a situation? We were outnumbered, this pathetic woolly body I have been imprisoned in has no defences against dendooshi teeth and no one was coming to save us for there are few friends and no happy accidents in hell!”

“You could have run away,” she pointed.

“Steve the Destroyer runs from no one!” he declared.

“Then Steve the Destroyer is a fool.”

“Also, I owe you a debt.”

She held him with a suspicious gaze which he seemed not to spot. “So, how did you rescue me from that situation?”

“I ran up a jagrahad antennae and made a noise like a mushroom.”

Vivian ran the sentence through her mind several times. It was entirely possible that Steve had misspoken. English was not his first language. It was equally possible that in this hell, where death was alien, she had nonetheless lost enough blood to critically impair her higher thought functions and he had said something entirely different when she thought he had said…

“Mushroom?” she said.

“Mushroom,” said Steve.

“As in a fungus?”

“A gilled wenbo, to be precise. A large one!”

Vivian closed her eyes and tried to picture the scene and it gave her a headache. Leaving aside the question about what sound a gilled wenbo, or indeed any mushroom, might make, Vivian could not yet see how this action had helped their situation at all.

“Are dendooshi afraid of mushrooms?” she hazarded.

“Ha!” he scoffed patronisingly. “You know nothing, woman! Who could be afraid of a large and juicy gilled wenbo? It is a mushroom! Pah! I’ve never heard such mindless stupidity. Afraid of mushrooms? Lunacy!”

“Enough,” she said. “I’m not so weak that I can’t stick you back in the laptop case. I’m just trying to understand how making a noise like a mushroom would help us.”

“By attracting the bhaldis traverser, of course.”

“Ah.”

“My imitation of a mushroom was so perfect, so enticing that a traverser was upon us almost immediately. The ground shook and the dendooshi fled a distance and as the traverser burst through from below, I pulled you here into the traverser’s setae and glued you in place to stop you slipping. The whole task required strength and dexterity and a level of bravery you would have wept to see, gobbet!”

“Gobbet?” she said.

Steve gave her a haughtily superior look but took a sidestep away from the reach of her hand.

“We are safe and on our way to Hath-No,” he said, “where I have allies and you will find the safety and security you crave.”

Vivian let her head fall back against the pillow of dried insect mucous and stared at the horizon above her. She attempted to picture her surroundings. They were on the back of an island-sized beetle creature. The ground beneath her was its carapace. The stiff grass around her was its protective coat of insect hair. The traverser would be climbing, claw over claw up the tallest and thickest of the jagrahad antennae, following it from whatever underground place it started to whatever destination lay at the far end of the sky. In the creature’s upward ascent, its back was a vertical surface. Gravity (which was a concept here rather than a law) had switched around. If she could stand, Vivian would perceive their journey between ground and sky as a tightrope walk between the jagrahad forest on one side and the purple not-sky on the other. As counterintuitive and alien as that might be, it was easier to picture than Steve doing an impersonation of a mushroom.

“Can I see your mushroom impersonation?” she said.

With no need for encouragement, Steve folded himself over into a little ball and hugged his knees tightly. He sat on her chest in that pose, entirely still.

“And the mushroom noise?”

“I’m doing it!” he grunted as though exerting great effort.

“It’s very impressive,” she said.

He unfolded, panting heavily.

“And now I must go,” he said. He jumped off and climbed inside the laptop case beside her and began making noisy exploratory sounds.

“What are you looking for?” said Vivian.

“Something to trade,” came the muffled reply.

“With whom?”

“Traders, obviously. We are not the only passengers aboard the traverser. Whole generations of yathki and bodu-papa have lived on this beast. Travelling, selling what they can. What is this?”

He had emerged, holding the pad of post-it notes.

“They’re adhesive notes but not so sticky that they can’t be unstuck.”

“And that is a good thing?” he asked. “Do not answer. They will suffice. I will return with information and food. Do you eat food?”

Vivian considered her stomach. She didn’t feel hungry but that might have because of distracting pain in her arm. “I eat,” she said.

“Good! Then I will bring you back sweetmeats, the tastiest gobbets.” He laughed, with the mannerism of an insane god-emperor and the voice of a child’s toy. “Gobbets for the gobbet! Ha! I made a humorous remark!”

Vivian made no comment on that.

“Stay hidden,” he instructed her and ran off through the thicket of insect bristles.

Vivian craned her head to look at her injured arm. Was it appropriate to describe it as an injured arm if seventy percent of it was no longer there? She tried to raise it and pain shot from her non-existent fingertips to her still-very-much-there shoulder. Slabs of dried bhaldis traverser slime coated the stump. At least it wasn’t bleeding. Perhaps there was no more blood to bleed.

Exhausted by even that small effort, she let her arm drop and allowed the slow rocking of the traverser to lull her back to sleep again.

Steve had secured Mrs Vivian Grey in the thickest clumps of bristles and, tiny though he was, he had to weave and squeeze through stiff hairs to get out onto one of the broad pathways that had been cleared along the bhaldis traverser’s back.

At the deep gorge that was the gap between the traverser’s wing cases, a bridge had been built out of dried shit. Excrement had been piled layer upon layer in an arch that had dried to rock hardness and polished by a million footfalls into something smooth with a surface that glistened frostily brown. Steve paused at the brow of the bridge and looked forwards along the traverser’s length. The hill of its abdominal carapace sloped forward, red and green to the distant, flatter lowlands of its thorax. Its head was a hazy shape in the far distance, its antennae barely visible at all against the dark background.

The line of the jagrahad spine was a filament of black stretching ahead of them. Somewhere in the purple distance was the fortress of Hath-No, home to Lord Ehhar. Steve laughed out loud. The woman Vivian believed he was taking her to a place of safety. It was true only in that he would be able to buy his own safety by offering Vivian as payment. Ehhar was a vassal to Sulu Sukram and allied to the entourage of Prein. He owed Steve nothing. Loyalty between houses and families only truly extended to the highest ranking members. Invoking the name of Prein was sufficient to be heard at Yo-Ehhar’s court, nothing more. Steve needed to buy his way into the court, where he could enjoy the protection of the fortress. Mrs Vivian Grey — stupid Mrs Vivian Grey! — would soon be in the flesh-mills of the Hath-No scriptorium and was willingly being led there like a gindo to the slaughterhouse. A fool of a human! She would regret putting Steve in a bag with a shoe!

He gave another hearty and self-satisfied laugh. It was a cleansing act and would be good practice for when he got to do it to her face.

“So sor!” declared a voice in surprise.

A vehicle was climbing the bridge, pulled by a team of four gindo. It was a sled formed from a spherical qanikir seed-casing mounted on bone runners. Two figures rode on the lead gindos and it was one of these figures who had exclaimed at Steve’s laugh. They were bodu-papa, who, as a race, were humanoid and harmless but these two were no ordinary bodu-papa. The top of their heads were covered in green-grey spongy masses, furred and ribbed like coral. The sponge-corals extended down to cover their eyes and ears and extended upwards like conical hats that then curved over to meet each other, linking the two, head to head.

“Who are you?” demanded one of them in Venislarn. “Who stands on a bridge and —”

“ — laughs at nothing?” finished the second.

“For shame.”

“For shame.”

The linked bodu-papa wagged their fingers at him in unison.

The sponge-coral on their heads pulsated softly. Just as the bodu-papa rode the gindo, the bodu-papa were being ridden by this entity. Steve did not know what this creature was.

“I am Steve the Destroyer!” he declared, pudgy cloth hands on his little cloth waist. “All who are wise fear me.”

“So bold,” sneered a bodu-papa.

“So fearless,” sneered the other.

“So proud.”

“So vain.”

“For shame.”

“For shame.”

Steve skipped over to the sled and tried to peek through the splintered slats in the ganikir case. Shapes within shifted in alarm. There was a foetid stink that he recognised.

“Humans,” he said. “Where are you taking them? Hath-No?”

“You should not pry into other —”

“- people’s business,” said the bodu-papa. “Do not look if you —”

“- cannot afford. For shame.”

“For shame.”

The bodu-papa tugged on the rein wire sewn into the gindo’s mouth and they moved on.

A short distance beyond the bridge, Steve found one of the few settlements that dotted the traverser’s back. Animal corrals and buildings had been formed from woven traverser bristles, cemented together with bodily secretions. Nomadic visitors had built temporary bivouacs by bending over and binding together bristles and then covering them with hides. The heart of the settlement was a mezzapandis , a thing that had no human equivalent, being equal parts market, gladiatorial arena and orgy. Armed with nothing but a pack of post-it notes and the knowledge that he was the finest warrior-executioner to ever strut the planes of hell, Steve threw himself into it.

He emerged some time later, covered in the steaming innards of his latest foe and dragging a net containing zojan fetishes, lewrhinn coins of passage and a fat yathki head that would boil up nicely and serve as sustenance for Vivian for the remainder of their journey. And it had only cost him a sexual favour and three of the sticky-but-not-too-sticky post-it notes.

Off to one side, in a dark bower, a lesshmor trader had drilled a hole in the traverser’s shell to create a heat pit. In exchange for a lewrhinn coin, the trader allowed Steve to hang his yathki head in it to cook. Steve stayed close to the heat pot, watching the traverser ichor bubble and roast his prize.

A smooth and slender tentacle looped unhurriedly out of the shadows and reached for Steve. Steve jumped away and slapped it with his pad of unspent post-its.

“Do not touch me, worm, or you will feel my wrath!” he snapped.

A creature leaned into the light. At best, Steve could say it possessed a head, a mouth, a number of eyes and a no more certain number of limbs. Its shape and proportions flowed constantly as though seen through deep water but its colour was a milky blue-white, leeched of colour like a drowned man.

“A philosophist might contend that if you do not wish to be licked then you shouldn’t smell so fragrantly feastsome,” it said.

“Feastsome?”

The warmth of the heat pit had dried out the gore that soaked Steve’s body and turned his wet fabric outer into a crusty and meaty shell.

“I might be delicious but I would give you fatal indigestion.”

“That sounds like a challenge,” the creature laughed. “I am…” It stopped as though troubled by a thought. “What did she call me? I am Crippen-Ai. I am famous in certain localitations.”

“I have not heard of you,” said Steve.

“This is not one of those localitations,” said Crippen-Ai. The tongue-like tentacle reached out for Steve again and Steve moved round to the other side of the heat pit. The creature bent and flowed, its body suddenly occupying the space where the tip of its tentacle had just been. The blue ooze that dribbled across its body drew back as though Crippen-Ai were trying to hold it in.

“I have not seen an animalescence of your persuasion before.”

“I am Steve the Destroyer,” said Steve.

“Steve the Destroyer?” Crippen-Ai savoured the name. “The annihilator. The demolisher. The havocator.”

“Steve,” said Steve. “For short.”

Crippen-Ai placed a limb just above Steve’s head as though measuring him from the ground. “For short, indeed, my minutianic friend.”

“Are you trying to anger me?” growled Steve. “Mock me when we are in Hath-No and I shall have that smirk ripped from your face, pus-sac!”

Crippen-Ai recoiled in pretend horror. “But how will the high chancellor of the court fulfil his para-regal duties without a mouth.”

Steve looked up at the creature and gave it some thought. One of the advantages of being stuck in the form of a cloth dolly with wooden eyes and a stitched on mouth was that he had one hell of a poker face.

“You are the high chancellor?” he said.

“I will be. My unparalleled acumentalism demands it.”

Steve nodded slowly. “We shall see when we arrive and present ourselves. I am well-loved and revered by the court.”

“Are you?” asked Crippen-Ai.

“I will be. I bring the king a great prize.”

“A bequeathing?” Limbs that may or may not have been there before clustered before Crippen-Ai’s apparently surprised mouth. Peg teeth swirled along his white lips.

Steve considered the creature. He couldn’t imagine Lord Ehhar taking an outsider, an unknown, into his court but whether Yo-Ehhar would provide this thing with employment or a protracted death, Steve knew he needed help safely delivering his prize once the traverser reached Hath-No.

“I could show you,” he said.

“You are minded to show me your prize?” said Crippen-Ai. “What an empleasing diversement. Lead on, my mannequinised friend!”

The speaking voices infiltrated Vivian’s sleeping mind, worming their way into the blank slate of her dreams.

“King Yabandaman the Shit will love the fabrics our allies will give us in Lonzhpar.”

“So soft.”

“So rich.”

“Such a comfort after the loss of his concubine, Sha Datsei.”

“A regrettable act.”

“A necessary purge.”

“The slut.”

“The slut.”

“The Shit will wrap himself in our fabrics — ”

“ — in its embroideries and luxuriate —”

“- in its touch. So elegant.”

“So refined.”

“But little will he know — ”

“— that the embroideries are cursed and spell —”

“— his doom. So sad.”

“So tragic.”

“For shame.”

“For shame.”

Vivian woke, still in her nest of bristles and glue. The voices had come from behind a thick screen of hair and, she realised, as consciousness fully returned to her, the two voices had been speaking in English. But their sing-song voice were far from human. She raised herself up on her good elbow (her only elbow, she corrected herself) to listen better as they went on.

“Then when the armies of Sulu Sukram return to take back —”

“ — what was so cruelly taken from King Ehhar —”

“So cruelly.”

“- their gratitude to their deliverers will know no bounds.”

“No bounds at —”

The voices stopped abruptly. Vivian, still weak, had been unable to hold herself up for long and had lowered herself back down and had perhaps let out a little grunt of effort.

“There is someone there,” whispered one of the voices and then called out in Venislarn, “Who is there? Who hides in reeds and —”

“- spies on the unwary?”

Vivian quickly decided it was pointless to pretend to not be there and there was no hope that she could run off and hide elsewhere and so she went on the offensive, replying in her own fluent Venislarn. “I am not hiding!” she huffed. “I was sleeping!”

“Had we known we —”

“- would have taken our conversation elsewhere. Did we wake you?”

The question was spoken in English. Vivian almost smiled.

“What did you say?” she replied in Venislarn.

“It was an apology,” said one voice. “Heartfelt.”

“Heartfelt,” agreed the other. “Come out so we might apologise better.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Rhempkin —”

“— and Stok,” they replied.

They sounded like a firm of solicitors.

“Humble herders, taking our cattle to market. Are you coming out —”

“— or are we coming in?”

Vivian sat up again. It required energy she barely possessed. She pulled at the crystallised mucous around her middle. It came apart like brittle toffee.

“Just give me a minute,” she said.

“A minute? What is a —”

“Patience!” she said.

“We can simply come to you —”

“- if it is easier,” they said.

There was a rustling sound and the shadow of bristles behind bristles moving.

“Wait!” she said firmly.

“Why?”

“Yes, why?”

There was no good reason she could think of so she invented a bad one.

“To look on my, er, naked form is deadly. It would melt your brain faster than a Myatothroq.”

The rustling hesitated.

“Then we will —”

“- wait,” they said.

Steve dragged the net containing the boiled yathki head, the zojan fetishes and the lewrhinn coins of passage along the path back to where he had left Mrs Vivian Grey.

“I could carry that for you,” said Crippen-Ai.

“I do not need your help,” he huffed. “Steve the Destroyer is strong.”

“But while you have a surplescence of strength you might be lacking in vertical altimensity.”

“I do not need your help,” said Steve.

The ever-shifting Crippen-Ai watched Steve’s struggles with the heavy net for the rest of the journey, back up the carapace and over the shiny shit bridge until they were back near the stand of bristles where he had left Vivian.

To his shock, there was a qanikir seed-case sled parked in front of the bristly thicket and two familiar bodu-papa, linked by a sponge-coral parasite were staring intently towards where Vivian lay.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

The bodu-papa turned as one.

“It is Steve the Destroyer —”

“- who is feared by the wise,” they said, unafraid. “And this?”

“This is Crippen-Ai,” said Steve, “a respected courtier who travels with me to the court of —”

“Of King Yabandeman!” shouted Vivian from the concealing bristles.

Steve laughed. “Listen to the gobbet prattle! We travel to the —”

“The court of King Yabandeman,” Vivian repeated emphatically. “Who overthrew Yo-Ehhar and now holds the fortress of Hath-No in defiance of the entourage of Prein and those loyal to Sulu Sukram.”

Steve was momentarily speechless. A change of ruler in Hath-No? One who was no friend to the Prein?

“Does your companion often deliver extemporaneous discourses on infernal politics?” asked Crippen-Ai. “Is your tributary offering to Yabandeman perhaps a history lecturer, a pedagoguerist?”

“Offering, is it?” said Vivian, still hidden. “Perhaps I should come out there and give you my strongly worded opinion on that, Steve. Or to give you his full name…”

“That won’t be necessary!” shouted Steve, running forward before she could blurt out his Prein title. “You stay in there!”

“I was coming out to speak to Rhempkin and Stok,” she said.

“No!” he shouted, glancing at the sled filled with human livestock. “Best if they don’t see you!”

The bodu-papa, Rhempkin and Stok, bent to speak to Steve.

“Is it true her visage —”

“- is so hideous that it melts brains?”

“Yes!” he agreed. “And the sight of her would cause your human cargo to literally explode in horror.”

“Explode?”

“Yes.”

“Human cargo?” said Vivian.

“Yes.”

“On its way to Hath-No?”

“To the scriptorium —”

“- for processing,” said the bodu-papa.

“Where I would find ‘gainful employment’, didn’t you say, Steve?” asked Vivian.

“I might have done,” he replied.

“Of what value is your contrapparent prize to the scriptorium of Hath-No?” asked Crippen-Ai.

Steve was stuck. “She… she…”

“I am the most gifted copyist and scribe there is,” declared Vivian.

“My!” said Crippen-Ai. “A historian and writer with the power to melt minds. An unbesmundial rarity indeed.”

“Yes,” said Steve. “Quite.” He looked from Crippen-Ai to Rhempkin to Stok. “Excuse me,” he said and dived into the bristles with his net bag of purchases.

He found Vivian on her feet, trying to peel sticky mats of mucous and bristle-grass off her legs.

“I told you to stay hidden!” he hissed in sotto voce English.

“Didn’t want me finding out you were going to sell my hide as vellum?” she hissed back.

“Not just any vellum! Your friend, Morag Murray, murdered two August Handmaidens of Prein!”

“Ah. Revenge, is it? And now that plan’s unravelled because your king isn’t king anymore, is he? I take it this King Yabandeman is an enemy of yours?”

Steve spat in contempt which, being a cloth doll with no actual spit, was more of a symbolic act than anything.

“Yabandeman is a barbarian usurper!”

“Who will destroy you the moment he finds out who you are.”

“He won’t recognise me in this form.”

“I could tell him.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would!”

Steve shook his head. “What is the testimony of a human against a Venislarn? I can have you slaughtered and turned into sheets of writing material before you breathed a single sentence.”

“And all I need is one word to destroy you and everything within a ten foot radius.”

He stopped. “What?”

Mrs Vivian Grey smiled. Steve was not an expert on human facial expressions but he recognised that that smile was not a nice smile.

“When I mended you,” she whispered. “I scribbled a Tyriat ideogram of unmaking on a piece of card and inserted it inside you before sewing you up.”

Steve gasped and grabbed at his neatly and tightly sewn wound.

“One word to activate it,” said Vivian. “I’m sure it will be an impressively messy explosion.”

“You treacherous slug!” he spluttered.

“You were already planning to betray me!” she countered.

“You did this first!”

“And I’m glad I did!”

“Are you two coming out of there?” called Crippen-Ai. “Or are you proposing to remain in clandestine conclavity forever?”

“We’re coming,” said Vivian.

Steve held out his arms to hold her back.

“Well, we can’t stay here forever, can we?” she whispered. “We each have the power of life and death over the other. It strikes me that we must make an alliance — of convenience only — if we are to survive this.”

“True,” admitted Steve, “but the moment you make yourself visible, human, either those bodu-papa will chuck you in with their other animals or that shapechanger Crippen-Ai will realise we have lied about who you are.”

“And I’m meant to have a face so ugly it kills,” she agreed. She turned to her laptop case. “Maybe there’s something here we can use as a disguise…”

As she considered and put aside bottles and boxes and bits of paper, Steve looked at his net.

“Ah-ha!”

“Ah-ha?” she said.

Steve hauled out the yathki head, still warm and steaming, and using a coin as a shovel, began excavating the interior of its avian skull.

Vivian watched him work. “Are you suggesting I wear a hat made out of a dead creature’s head?”

Steve burrowed into its eye socket from behind and pushed through carrying the wrinkly boiled eye aloft. “Helmet,” he grunted. “Mask. The yathki have large but thin skulls. You do not have a big head for a human.”

Reluctantly she picked up the skull, pinkly cooked flesh still clinging to its outside and lowered it over her temple. “It’s going to be too snug.”

Steve bounced onto her shoulder and then jumped with all his weight onto the yathki mask to jam it onto her head.

“Ow!” she said with controlled anger.

He jumped again.

“Ow! You’ve cut me.”

“It’s only blood,” he said and dropped down. The skull mask was lodged in place and did a surprisingly good job of covering the front half of her head, right down to her mouth. The bony ridges of the yathki’s upper jaw had cut into the sides of her head and her chin and neck were streaked with blood. Her ragged clothes, soaked in blood and traverser mucous and coated with matted strands of traverser bristles sufficiently covered her body.

“How do I look?” she said.

“Hideous,” said Steve, honestly.

She tutted. “Do I look human?”

“No. Having only one arm helps I think.”

“Oh, good.”

“Maybe we should remove the other also.”

She glared at him through the one empty eye socket he had cleared. She picked up her laptop case and was about to step forward through the screen of insect hair when Steve put out a hand to stop her.

“What is it?” she said.

“Perhaps you should hide that, yes?”

He was pointing at her consular mission ID card that was poking out of the front pocket of her jacket. She almost laughed but Vivian had mostly given up laughing years ago. She took the ID and put it in the laptop case.

“Ready?” she said.

“Ready,” said Steve.

1773

Aged eleven, Nina had been taken on a school trip to France, a little town called Le Touquet on the north coast. The school party had stayed in a large country house with dormitory bedrooms. The beds were lumpy and smelled funny and Nina was a long way from home. Her excitement, worry and disappointment kept her awake most of the night. When she needed the toilet in the middle of the night, she didn’t know where to go and spent the early hours of the morning awake with a full bladder and the noises of a strange foreign place.

Nina’s first night in a Georgian house, more than two hundred years from her own time, was almost exactly the same. She woke from a rubbish sleep to a strange room and a pressing desire to text her mum and tell her how much she had regretted coming here.

There was the sound of the door being unlocked and the maid — Nancy, Nina recalled — entered with a pile of clothes and a jug. Nina sat up, bed sheets bunched around her. Jonathan, eyes bleary but narrowed with suspicion, stood in the landing and drew the door to but not fully closed.

Nancy put the jug down on a stand next to a wide bowl.

“I was told you needed some garments,” she said briskly, laying out the clothes on the bed. “The dress is one of mine. It might be a bit tall for you but Mr Boulton says he will buy me a replacement.”

“That’s…. thanks,” said Nina.

“Jonathan will escort you downstairs when you are ready. The magistrate will be here at noon.”

Nina sighed. “Whatever. Look, I need the toilet.”

“Can’t you dress yourself?” said Nancy.

“No. I can. I need the loo.”

“Loo?”

“Lavatory?”

“I’m afraid I don’t speak French.”

Nina bunched her fists. “A piss. I need a piss.”

“Oh,” said Nancy, happily, bent down and pulled out a chamber pot from under the bed. “The gazunder’s here.”

“Good. And I just…? Yes.”

“You don’t have these in India?” said Nancy.

“No, we do not,” said Nina.

“Well, you’re in the civilised world now, miss.”

The maid left her to it.

After making necessary and difficult use of the chamber pot, Nina looked at getting dressed. Nancy had left her the dress, an apron and some undergarments that made no sense. Nina stuck with her own underwear and tried on the dress. It was utterly shapeless, offered no freedom of movement of her legs and the final three inches trailed on the floor.

She went to the door. It was locked. She knocked.

Jonathan opened it.

“What?”

“I’ll need scissors and a sewing kit.”

“Kit?”

“Sewing things.”

“Why?”

“You want me to wear clothes?”

He closed and locked the door and reopened it again several minutes later. He presented her with a wicker basket.

“No scissors,” he said.

“Worried I might do something stupid?” she said.

“Something clever.”

There were needles and thread in the basket. In a drawer, Nina found a hairbrush with a sharp metal handle. She used it to rip the dress seams up both sides to a modest length, folded the squares of material under and fixed them with her best stitching. Nina’s best stitching, which had earned her a scathing report from her school textiles teacher, amounted to repeatedly putting stitches in one place to make a knotted ball of thread that looked like it would hold.

The water in the jug was cold. Nina splashed her face and tied back her hair and looked at her reflection in the mirror. There was no bruise on her jaw but it still ached.

Jonathan opened the door for her.

“Hell’s teeth!” he said, looking at her. “We gave you clothes!”

“I’m wearing them.”

“I can see your knees!”

Nina looked down and gave her knees a jaunty swing. “I have nice knees.”

He made a noise that was half-sigh, half-growl.

“This way,” he said and propelled her to the stairs.

The house smelled of soap and polish and an underlying but unmistakeable human stink. They waited outside the dining room while a servant went in ahead of them and then they were invited in. Jonathan kept a firm held of her elbow. She had a boyfriend once who liked holding her by the elbow and steering her round with it. When his douchebaggery as a boyfriend was utterly confirmed, their relationship had ended with one of his dick pics as his Facebook profile picture and him locked out of his account for three weeks.

Boulton and his wife, Anne, sat at the table in front of a finished breakfast, he in a heavy jacket and high collared shirt, she in something flowing and lacey that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Little Bo Peep. She looked at Nina’s legs and dabbed her lips with a napkin. Boulton looked to Jonathan.

“We gave her clothes,” said Jonathan defensively.

Nina shrugged. “If you’ve got problems with my knees, that’s your problem, not mine.”

“There is such a thing as decency,” said Boulton.

“Says the man who locked me up in one of his bedrooms.”

“You are a house-breaker and a thief,” said Jonathan.

“If you tell us where your accomplice and the pineapple are it will go much better for you,” said Boulton.

“We’re still talking about an actual pineapple here?” said Nina. “Jeez, buy a new one.”

“Mrs Boulton was most looking forward to it being the centrepiece of our dinner on Friday.”

In Nina’s honest estimation, Mrs Boulton might share her husband’s weird passion for pineapples but didn’t like being used as the sole reason for its importance.

“I’ll pay for a new pineapple if you’ll stop whinging about it.”

Anne Boulton gave a little cough, not quite a scoff but certainly a concealed laugh.

“You think I can’t?” said Nina, thinking that she probably couldn’t. Her historical knowledge was hazy but she was confident that these guys wouldn’t take PayPal or contactless cards.

“Show me your hands, miss.”

“Why?”

“Show me,” he said, not harshly, but Jonathan applied pressure to her elbow warningly. She held them up.

“Not branded,” nodded Boulton. “Although who knows what goes on in the Indies? The magistrate will be here at noon. I will be called upon to swear that you were found in my house in the act of thievery.”

“Of a pineapple I don’t have.”

“And the court will either have you hanged or transported to the Americas.” There was a clear note of regret in Boulton’s voice.

“But?” said Nina.

Boulton moved aside his folded napkin. Beneath it, positioned neatly on the table was Nina’s work ID, her phone and the notepad.

“I do have questions,” he said.

“I bet you do.”

“These items are of remarkable manufacture and I would suppose you had stolen them except this one clearly has your countenance within it.”

“And you won’t learn a damned thing about them if I’m transported to the USA.”

“The what?”

“The what you said,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll give you some answers, all the answers I can but you’ll not hand me over to the magistrate.”

Boulton nodded ever so slightly. Anne’s nod of agreement was even slighter.

“Good,” said Nina. She looked down at her elbow and shook it free of Jonathan’s grip. He spluttered. “Don’t even think it,” she said. “Touch me again and I’ll unleash some Krav Maga on your ass.” She doubted he understood that but that was okay since she didn’t really know any Krav Maga.

“Okay,” she said to Boulton, “A, I don’t know anything about your pineapple. B, I’m not a criminal of any kind, although I did once hack my best friend’s Netflix password so we could stream Mean Girls and Mamma Mia without paying for it. C, that ID there…” She pointed. “That is me. That is who I am. I am here on a mission — a job — and I’m here because I know you’ve built something, a device called the oculus, and I need to use it. D — we’re on D, right? — I know that a lot of weird shit’s been going on round here for —”

“Oculus, you say?” said Boulton.

“Yeah. You named it or your buddy Darwin did. It’s a brass hoop about yay big and there’s these two dials within it and —”

Boulton had gone rigid and pale and, like a rusty robot, got stiffly to his feet.

“What is it, dear?” said Anne.

He shook his head as though to clear an unpleasant taste from his mouth.

“Miss Seth, I think I need to show you something. In the manufactory.”

“So, you believe me?” she said.

Boulton took a deep, unsettled breath. “Jonathan, you’ll come with us.”

Jonathan nodded. “And the, um…?” He pointed at Nina’s exposed legs.

Boulton threw up a dismissive hand. “Find her a coat or something. Don’t want the workmen suffering unnecessary excitations.”

HELL

Their destination, the Fortress of Hath-No was initially visible as a smudge, a speck on the bhaldis traverser’s path and, as the non-days passed, it grew larger and more distinct — a speck, a ball, a spherical termite mound, a moon of textured filth, brown and grey and veiny pink.

Vivian often gazed at it on their long journey, rationalising her only two choices: to disembark or to stay aboard the traverser in its immeasurable migration from ‘here’ to ‘there’. The rest of the time, once she was as rested as she was ever going to be in this unnurturing hell, she explored the limits of this small world. She spoke with more of the bodu-papa traders who lived on the creatures back and attempted to engage the yathki (although the fact that she was wearing a yathki skull as a disguise was apparently off-putting to the oily bird-like creatures). She bartered for goods with what little she had and discovered that any food she purchased was repugnant beyond description and that not eating at all came more and more easily to her. Eating was just a habit and one she needed to train herself to stop.

Other habits were harder to kick. In life, she had maintained that order and neatness were essential to the proper running of things and when a thoughtless (and possibly brain-damaged) skenvalt warrior trampled through the nest she had made for herself and Steve, she had driven him off with a stick and chased him so far as to make him leap into the chasm of the traverser’s wing casings and refuse to come out until the “shandig vho as-it ohn” had gone.

Mad three-limbed fury.

It was a title Vivian was happy to live with.

Before they had reached Hath-No, Vivian had made her decision. She had explored the tiny world of the traverser and, though she might have survived there indefinitely, it was a tiny world, parochial and dull and offering no opportunity for her to achieve anything with what remained of her existence.

Side by side and ready to disembark from the traverser, Vivian and Steve watched the surface landscape of Hath-No swing overhead.

“It is larger than I recall,” said Steve. “Yabandeman eb Muda has added to it.”

“Yabandeman ‘the Shit’?” said Vivian. “That’s what you intend to call him?”

“It’s his title,” said Steve and pointed at the nearest muddy outcroppings of the spherical fortress. “It’s his shit.”

A small crowd swelled as the traverser passed the nearest point of the fortress. Hands, tentacles, claws and fronds leapt up to grab at ladders, ropes, parapets and antennae. Webs and nets were lowered to pick up larger items of cargo. As travellers scrambled to disembark, others threw themselves across the divide from the fortress to the traverser’s back.

“Let us off first,” Vivian told a tangit-bux angrily. “If you let everyone else off first before getting on then…”

But the creature was gone. Vivian grabbed at what looked like a trailing vine with her one hand and then realised it was the tail of a Lossoro mage but held on until it had climbed securely in an entrance tunnel before letting go and giving it her most cursory apologies.

“Yes. ‘Sorry’. That’s all you’re getting,” she told it. “There’s no point hanging around, waiting for more.”

It hissed at her and moved on. She adjusted the woven bag on her shoulder in which she carried the laptop case and her few other belongings. She had made it herself from processed traverser bristles, just as she had made the floor-length cloak that now covered her filthy work suit and hid her human body.

There was a mournful retching sound and Vivian looked round to see a caliturn ogre that had also disembarked with them, stumble against a wall and vomit. Steve bounced onto the earth floor and come up fighting.

“I am not food, imbecile!” he yelled and then wrung out the worst of the vomit from his arms before turning and striding past Vivian on his little legs. “Come, creature! Don’t make me wait for you!”

The tunnel they walked along merged with other entryways and soon they were in what amounted to a queue before a wider entrance. It was a queue in name only.

“I used to think that the British were the only people in the world who knew how to queue properly,” Vivian said to Steve as she held out her elbows to stop a yathki merchant sliding past.

“And now?” said Steve.

“Apparently we’re the only people in all creation who know how to queue. You! You!” She stabbed the caliturn ogre with her forefinger. “You do not push in!”

The towering creature lowed and pointed ahead.

“I don’t care where your friends are,” said Vivian. “We were here first. If your friends want to come back to join you, they can but no pushing in!”

The ogre attempted a little experimental growling.

“Is that so?” piped up Steve. “You could not stomach me for your lunch! Do you want to face me as an enemy?”

The ogre decided not to chance it.

“What’s that?” said Vivian, looking ahead through the limited view that the yathki skull mask offered her. The tunnel ahead became for a section a tube of wet and pulsating flesh, ribbed with arches of muscle and dotted with flatulent tubes.

“I cannot see from down here,” said Steve who, being several feet shorter than everyone and everything else, had a very limited view in the crowd. “Raise me up, woman!”

Vivian picked up Steve and placed him on her shoulder.

“Azbhul!” he swore.

“Is it a problem?” she said.

“It is a Sphincter of Truth.”

Vivian, even though she did not consider herself to be a woman bothered by the sound of things or matters of style or taste, was given pause. “Sphincter of Truth?”

“Yes, woman.”

“It is called a Sphincter of Truth? That’s what they call it?

“Yes! For anyone passing through it can utter only the truth.”

“I assumed as much from the name. It’s not a very good name. In English, it just sounds stupid.”

In the mid-section of the sphincter tunnel, Kerah-han soldier-beasts, their bodies painted with a dark hieroglyph, coarsely handled and questioned individuals entering the fortress.

“We could be in trouble,” said Vivian.

“We could be slaughtered where we stand, gobbet!” said Steve.

“Is there no way round?”

Steve turned circles on her shoulder, searching. “If we could get to the underside of the Hath-No, we might be able to find the chambers of Bakhan Sand, workmaster of the scriptorium. If he has survived the usurper’s purges. He knows me of old and might allow us secret entry into the fortress. Go back, up that tunnel.”

“That one?”

Vivian turned and tried to slip back through the moving crowd.

A sinuous white limb circled Vivian’s shoulder and with implacable strength, turned her round towards the sphincter.

“You seem to have become directionally disencerted, my companion,” said Crippen-Ai and firmly propelled her onward. “An engifted scriptorialist such as yourself can do something as simple as follow a crowd, no?”

“I realised I have left something behind,” said Vivian.

“On the traverser? It has moved on and whatever it was it is now irreclaimably distant.”

The shapeshifter’s touch was like raw fish flesh. His face wore only an approximation of a real emotion but he was clearly enjoying whatever emotion he could sense in her.

“No, I really must go back,” she began to say, “because…”

And she stopped, realising that the ground beneath her feet had changed in texture and that they were now standing inside the accurately but unimpressively named Sphincter of Truth. Steve had vanished from her shoulder and, by the sudden flutter at her waist, had gone to hide in her bag.

A Kerah-han soldier-beast, grabbed Crippen-Ai’s shoulder in its fat paw and snarled through silver fangs.

“State your business!” it demanded.

“I am the parousiant high chancellor to King Yabandeman.”

“Yabandeman has a high chancellor!”

“And I am to be the new one.” Crippen-Ai flowed so that the soldier-beast was left holding the very tip of a finger and Crippen-Ai himself was already moving beyond and past the creature.

“And what do you bring as tribute?” demanded the soldier-beast.

“News,” said Crippen-Ai. “An attempted act of regicidalistic treachery.”

“What?”

“There will be an assassination attempt on his majesty.”

The Kerah-han soldier barked an order and several of his kind came running and, in short order, Crippen-Ai was led away. Vivian stepped smartly forward to follow.

“And where are you going?” demanded the soldier-beast.

Vivian opened her mouth and thought very carefully. Two feet from her head, a strip of wall muscle quivered, almost in anticipation.

“I was told I should go see Bakhan Sand in the scriptorium,” she said, honestly.

“Why? Who are you?”

“I am Vivian Grey.”

“Vivian Grey?”

“It is a foreign name, meaning ‘alive’ and ‘the colour that is black and white.’”

“And why would Bakhan need you, ‘Living black and white’?” said the soldier-beast.

“She said she was the most gifted scribe there ever was,” said a voice to the side.

Rhempkin and Stok, the bodu-popiloi bound together head-to-head by a parasitic sponge had come up beside her, leading their cart full of human cattle.

“Is this true?” said the soldier-beast.

“It is,” said Vivian. She had said she was the most gifted scribe there ever was.

“And what do you bring as tribute?” said the soldier-beast.

On that she was stuck. She opened her bag to look for something and the soldier-beast grabbed it from her, snapping the strap that held it to her shoulder.

“Wait,” she said but the clumsy beast had already ripped the bag open.

The laptop bag fell to the floor. The soldier-beast caught Steve as he tumbled. The soldier-beast squeezed him tight, contemptuously.

“What is this thing?”

“It is a pabash kaj doll. Made by people of my species. I had a hand in its stuffing.”

The Kerah-han soldier stared at it. Steve flopped lifelessly in its grip.

The soldier-beast grunted, stuffed Steve and the laptop case back in the ruins of the bag and passed them to an underling.

“That tunnel there,” said the soldier-beast. “All the way to the bottom. That’s where you’ll find Bakhan.”

The underling was scuttling off in another direction with Steve and Vivian’s belongings. “But my things…”

“That tunnel there!” snarled the soldier-beast, metal teeth gnashing. “And if Bakhan does not want you, you will be meat on my plate!”

Vivian had no choice. Her bag and the doll-demon were gone from sight and, as the Kerah-Han soldier-beast watched her, she had to go down the cramped tunnel he’d pointed her to, hunching over to squeeze into it.

In the darkness, she ran her hand along the wall to guide herself. The wall rippled and spasmed under her touch. A hot foetid wind blew up the deep slope. The tunnel angled downwards, steeper as she went, until she needed to brace herself to stop sliding forward on the wet, organic floor. When she did first inevitably slip, she grabbed the wall and stopped herself.

There were noises in the darkness. The wind came in regular soughing breaths. Liquids pooled, trickled and dripped from the ceiling and behind her something clicked and chittered.

“Who’s there?” she said.

There was silence and then renewed clicking and chittering. Green eyes looked at her in the darkness. Three sets of six eyes, glowing flints of green, like the nubs of glass used to decorate graves.

“Are you following me to check where I’m going?” she asked. “Or are you just hungry?”

The nearest creature clicked and scuttled forward. Vivian decided she didn’t need an answer to her question. She moved on and when she slipped a second time she let her feet go with it and slid forward on her backside.

Sliding became a controlled fall. A controlled fall became uncontrolled. She couldn’t tell how far she slid and it probably wasn’t as far as she thought but it ended in her falling into a dimly lit cavern onto a pile of something soft that stank of offal.

“Ow.”

In the corners of the irregular chamber, bellows moved and hissed, flywheels turned and the air was thick with steam that stank worse than a sewer. High above, large squares of leather hung, dripping and drying on black, needle-thin rails. A dun-coloured shape with awkwardly angled limbs moved among the steam and leather.

“Bakhan?” she called. “I was sent to work for you.”

The shape above moved on and did not reply.

Noises made her look back. Three spider-like creatures had emerged from the tunnel pipe, each the size of a human head. Black, segmented feet clicked and tapped impatiently on the calcified rim of the tunnel. The green lenses that were their eyes, locked on her and rotated and Vivian had the clearest sensation that these things were only a conduit, that she was being watched from afar. The lens eyes looked like they had been grafted onto the creatures’ faces by a zealous vivisectionist as did the trays of sawblade teeth that lined their protruding jaws.

“Bakhan Sand!” she shouted. “I have come to work for you!”

“Not! Wanted!” came the barked reply, in great belched huffs. “No! Work!”

The lens-spiders tapped with increasing impatience.

“I was sent by someone who knows you of old!” she shouted up. “I work very hard! And I’m very knowledgeable!”

The nearest lens-spider dropped to the offal pile and clambered awkwardly over it towards Vivian

“Know! Ledge?” said Bakhan.

The workmaster of the scriptorium came, claw over claw, down the wall behind the hanging sheets of leather. He was twice the size of Vivian and reptilian with a long fat tail dragging behind him. Horns jutted from his elbows and spine and a cowl of brown, scaly skin rose up around his iguana’s head like a hood.

“What! You! Know?” he demanded. Each syllable was preceded by a gulp of air, as though he had developed the power of speech without the aid of a voice box and had to gulp-belch every word.

“I know a great deal, Master Bakhan,” she said and performed as much of a bow as she was willing to begrudge anyone.

Bakhan raised a heavy claw and casually brought it down on the lens-spider that was making for Vivian’s ankle. The lens spider cracked under his weight. A green eye pinged off into a dark corner.

“Books! Know! Great! Deal! Books! Can! Not! Work!”

“I’m not afraid of work,” she said.

Bakhan brought his snout close to her mask. He sniffed. His cowl fluttered with suspicion. In these bowels of the fortress, thick with the stink of flesh and rot and sewage, Bakhan smelled of dust and wood and age.

Without looking away, Bakhan reached out and pulled a lidded basket down from a shelf. It was as large as a bathtub and woven from stiffened hair.

“Take! This! That! Room! Fill! It!”

“With what?” said Vivian.

“Any! Thing! But! Fill! And! Bring! Back!”

Vivian looked at the doorway Bakhan had pointed to. “Very well.”

She took hold of the edge of the basket and tried to lift it. It wasn’t heavy — it was lightly made — but it was cumbersome. She half-carried it and half-dragged it across the floor and through the door.

The chamber beyond was large enough that its ceiling and furthest walls were too dark and distant to see. The lower levels were lit by fatty candles that spat and hissed. The candles were mounted on the walls of shelves that filled the room. The shelves were constructed from lengths of bone lashed together with what she imagined was dried sinew.

Hair baskets, fat candles and bone shelves — Vivian suspected that this place was provided with a limited range of construction materials but they were all used to the fullest. The contents of the shelves supported this theory. Many were filled with uncontained piles of meat and internal organs: a shelf of livers, bundles of intestines, rolled up and tied like balls of wool, a powdery pile of nail or claw clippings. When she saw the hearts, it only confirmed what Vivian had suspected since her arrival; she knew a human heart when she saw one. This was the scriptorium and, if they used human skin as their writing material then there would be a lot of human bits left over that needed to be put to some use.

“Humans in hell,” she said to herself. “But only as a resource.”

Vivian dragged her basket through the room, inspecting shelves, peering in urns made of a chalky pink clay, rooting through sacks of decomposing material.

“And yet,” she mused further, “there is no death in hell. What is this, if not death?”

She shook her head, dismissing her own thoughts as sentimental and unhelpful.

Fill the basket and bring it back, Bakhan had said. She could see the trap in that instruction. Filling the basket would be little hardship at all but bringing it back? Vivian struggled to carry the bulky container as it was but she wouldn’t be able to return with it if it was fully laden with organs or teeth or even something as light as eyeballs. If there had been a handy sack or two of human hair, it would have been possible but there was none to be found even after considerable trekking up and down the aisles.

Vivian stopped to think. A low, fluttering wind blew through the room. A lens-spider chittered. It had climbed up onto a shelf and was watching her.

“Come to see me fail?” she said.

She realised then that there was reason why the lens-spider was the size of a human head. It wasn’t just the eyes and the jaw that had been grafted onto it. The legs were an addition too. There was almost nothing of the original human skull visible beneath the operation scars and black, filthy fuzz that had gathered on its surface.

“I’m not going to fail,” she told it.

Bakhan would not refuse her request to work. She would not be returned to be eaten by lens-spiders or the Kerah-han soldier-beasts. She would fill this basket somehow and return with it to the workmaster. Somehow.

Wrapped up inside Mrs Vivian Grey’s woven bag, Steve the Destroyer clung onto the laptop case and could only wonder where he was being taken. Playing dumb to the soldier-beasts in the Sphincter of Truth had been a genius ruse but now Mrs Vivian Grey had gone off and abandoned him and he would now have to face whatever came next alone. Soon enough, bag, laptop case and Steve were dropped onto a hard surface. It was ignoble treatment and his gut instinct was to leap out and demand restitution from the offender but he counselled himself that a genius tactician would do better to stay quiet and he silently told the clumsy oaf who had dropped him that they had just had a narrow escape. Any fool who incurred the wrath of Steve the Destroyer would normally regret it at once.

He fought his way to the opening and climbed out.

He found himself on a raised stone platform in a chamber that, at once, he recognised well and did not recognise at all. This high domed space had been Yo-Ehhar’s throne room and the great lord had once sat on his chair of twisted souls beneath hanging decorations of bloody chains and barbed whips. It had been a place of pomp and majesty and exquisite horrors. Now, the noble chains and regal whips were gone and where there had been a chair of twisted souls there was now something entirely new and despicable.

At the centre of the round room was a round pit, a pool of filthy, clouded water. Sitting in the pool and nearly fitting it as neatly as a plug was the corpulent body of the barbarian god-king Yabandeman. Yabandeman’s belly glistened with oils that were being constantly renewed by servants who had clearly been constructed from mortuary off-cuts. Yabandeman’s beard hung in a ragged crescent of cruel and impossible plaits along the underside of his moon-like face. Yabandeman’s eyes were huge and orange and surmounted by enormous and evilly sloped eyebrows. He grinned constantly as though everyone else in existence was the victim of a practical joke.

From his belly, grey limp tubes of gut spread out all around him like a flattened skirt. Each tube led off in its own circuitous loops to the body of one of the hundreds of courtiers who chatted and spat and fought and simpered at the perimeter.

A servant creature, sewn together from bits of pejjad stalker, dendooshi, and zangrei came to the platform on which Steve stood and picked up a wide platter of bix-seeds and went off to distribute them among the court. Around Steve were other bowls of sweetmeats, ornamental packages and gifts; Steve had been placed among tribute offerings to Yabandeman. He had been delivered not as a guest, but as a gift.

A frog faced thoggan in a formal yellow robe covered with hieroglyphic lines ate a bix-seed, licked his fingers and kicked the chained thoggan youngling next to him (so young that it still retained its larval-stage tail and gill fronds). The youngling clapped its wet hands and yelled through over-sized teeth at the top of its lispy voice, “Lithen all! Tardul Vray, high chanthellor and chief food taster to his majethty, King Yabandeman, thpeakth!” The robed thoggan, Tardul Vray, glared at the youngling who stared vacantly back until he realised what he was supposed to be doing, produced a small gong from behind his chain belt and struck it as grandiosely as a tiny thoggan could.

“So now all come,” declared Tardul Vray, striding forth self-importantly. “All edges of hell bow towards Yabandeman, Lord of Hath-No, king of dark reaches, slayer of Prein and the true wall against the sickness of Sulu Sukram. Now all come to pay homage. Come!”

He called forth new arrivals to the court, one by one, and when the youngling intermittently remembered, he banged his gong. Yabandeman looked on silently with that wide grin and those huge orange eyes while Tardul Vray accepted gifts from princes, traders, ambassadors and supplicants. The court ate and drank as the tributes continued.

Tardul Vray was the high chancellor and chief food taster. Steve realised that ‘food eater’ would have been a more accurate name. The excretions of the court fed directly into Yabandeman’s body and the king himself did not touch a morsel or a drop.

After the parasitically conjoined traders Rhempkin and Stok had displayed and presented their inscribed lengths of vellum, Tardul Vray called out for Crippen-Ai. At once, the corpse-pale creature was there in the centre of the room, expanding from one point to another, never truly moving but pouring himself into the available space.

“Unenbounded greetings to you, mighty king!” said Crippen-Ai. “And to your hyposervient court.” He split like an opening flower and bowed in all directions simultaneously.

“We do not know you. You are not… allied,” said Tardul Vray and there was a deliciousness in that final word as though it was the announcement of a death sentence. The youngling apparently felt this was worthy of a portentous bong on his gong. “Who are you? What are you? Why are you here?”

Crippen-Ai presented a face to Tardul Vray. “The who and the what and the why are consentamiously answered, you fat toad. I am the new high chancellor to King Yabandeman!”

This drew gasps and rattles and other species-specific noises of surprise. The youngling looked like he regretted wasting a good bong on the last utterance and was wondering whether adding another would seem hasty. King Yabandeman, still silent, leaned as close as his obese body would allow which was as much interest as he’d shown in any individual so far.

“How dare you!” spat Tardul Vray. “Usurper! Seize him!”

Kerah-han soldier-beasts pushed forward from the ranks of the court, weapons ready, but with little effort, Crippen-Ai moved and flowed away from them.

“Your adiposantic majesty,” he called t0 Yabandeman. “I come to you at a most opportune time for you are in need of a new high chancellor.”

“Am I?” said Yabandeman, his voice not as deep as his huge size would suggest but rough, like stones tumbling down a mountain. “But I have a chancellor.”

“And he has betrayed you.”

There were more gasps. The youngling risked a bong.

“Lies! Slander!” yelled Tardul Vray, tripping over his intestinal link to his king in his zeal to round on Crippen-Ai.

“Your chief food taster willingly and cognitarially passes food to you that may be poisoned,” said Crippen-Ai.

“Impossible!” said Tardul Vray. “His majesty only eats what I have eaten first. To poison him, I would have to poison myself first.”

“Incorrect! It is well known among the interapperably wise that the thoggan cannot digest bix-seed casings.” He presented a condescending smirk to the high chancellor. “Gastroenactive acids too weak, I hear. And so the contents of any of those seeds he has just eaten will pass through to your majesty where, their casing diatomised, they will wreak their grave effects on your defenceless innards.”

“Is this true?” demanded Yabandeman, already scrabbling for the intestinal pipe that fed from Tardul Vray to his own body.

“Not at all, lord,” said Tardul Vray hurriedly. “He lies. Though it may be true that our refined guts cannot digest the seeds I would never —”

He was cut off as Yabandeman hauled on the length of gut linking them, pulling Tardul Vray from his feet.

“Save me!” the king cried to his soldier-beasts, who had been dithering the centre of the room, trying to work out who to assist against whom.

“Save me!” shouted the king.

“No, my lord!” cried out Tardul Vray in terror.

The Kerah-han soldier beasts leapt on Tardul Vray and bore him to the ground.

“No, lord!” the thoggan chancellor screamed. “I would never harm you!”

A violent heave on the length of intestine and it came away from Tardul Vray. Familiarity and long service had welded master and servant together. It was not a simple unplugging. The tube came away, dragging a meaty ring of puckered flesh and several feet of cold amphibian bowel away with it. Tardul Vray gargled in agony.

The pain of a mortal injury gave him momentary strength. He threw off the Kerah-han and launched himself up and at Crippen-Ai.

“Usurper!” he spat. “Trickster!”

The thoggan youngling backed this up with some gong banging. It was at the centre of some serious political theatre and was giving the performance of its life.

“Your laxity in your obligedness has been your downfall,” said Crippen-Ai. “Your argument is not with me.”

Tardul Vray threw aside his inscribed robes. The inside of his legs ran freely with blood. Guts and internal organs hung loosely from his wound, drawn out by slow but insistent gravity. The high chancellor drew a sword that had been sheathed at his belt beneath his robes. It shone with perfect sharpness. Words of power, unstoppable spells, were engraved along its blade.

“You would attack me with the wordblade of Menscuzo?” said Crippen-Ai. “That a great life should be malmarked with an act of spiteful injustice.”

“My life is not yet done,” said Tardul Vray.

“I was talking about the sword.”

With an embittered shriek, Tardul Vray charged. He was dying and he was clumsy but Steve had heard of the wordblade of Menscuzo and it could prove fatal even in the hands of the terminally clumsy. Tardul Vray swung and Crippen-Ai dodged. Another swing, another miss. A third swing was too much and the exertions gave Tardul Vray’s insides the momentum to become outsides. Loops of gut and fat ripe organs snaked out onto the throne room floor. Tardul Vray screamed in fury as he came undone and Crippen-Ai seized the youngling’s gong and whacked the thoggan in the face with it to shut him up.

The moment the former high chancellor’s body hit the ground, scavengers rushed in to steal keepsakes and tasty treats. Three presz’lings argued over his kidneys. One went away disappointed and with a broken leg. Several tried to claim the chained youngling but the little thing ran off and disappeared into a wall pipe before anyone could make a snack of it.

Crippen-Ai carefully picked up the Menscuzo wordblade.

“Bring it to me,” said Yabandeman.

Crippen-Ai shifted and insinuated to the edge of the king’s bathing pool.

Yabandeman’s hand, as gnarled and as unlovely as a dead tree branch, plucked the sword from Crippen-Ai’s outstretched pseudopods.

“You have saved me from a poisoner,” he said.

“A potential poisoner,” agreed Crippen-Ai merrily. “Who can say?”

Yabandeman regarded him at length.

“The new high chancellor?” he said.

Crippen-Ai bowed deeply and that was very low indeed.

Yabandeman held up the now unutilised feeding tube. He peeled the remnants of thoggan anus from its end. “And chief food taster?”

“Alas, your mahoosiveness,” sighed Crippen-Ai. “I neither consume nor excrete. Seek for orifices all you wish but seek in vain.”

Yabandeman narrowed his gaze. Orange eyes flared.

“One without the other is not the done thing,” said Yabandeman. “We will see if you are worthy of the post.”

Vivian hauled the lidded basket back through to the room of steam and drying leathers. Lens-spiders followed her closely. They were perhaps not complex enough creatures to have desires. They didn’t want her to be rejected by Bakhan so they could kill her or drag her back up to the Kerah-han. But they waited impatiently for what seemed almost inevitable.

Bakhan clambered unhurriedly down from the misty heights of the drying room and grunted at the basket.

“It! Full?”

“It’s full,” said Vivian.

Bakhan hooked a claw under the edge of the basket and lifted, testing its weight.

“Not! Full! To! Brim!”

“Full to the very brim, Master Bakhan,” she assured him.

He snorted and flipped the lip open. In the bottom of the basket sat a single lit candle. Melted fatty wax had already fixed it to base.

“Full! I! Said!” belched Bakhan.

“Full of light,” replied Vivian. She ran her fingers around the basket rim to make shadows and then stood and levelly met Bakhan’s gaze.

Vivian herself was not enamoured by cute solutions to problems. Pun riddles, smart Alec answers and trick questions left her cold. Lateral thinking, in her opinion, was simply a way of enabling people without the right answers to feel better about themselves. However, in this situation, she had found herself with little choice. It was now a matter of presenting her solution as somehow worthy and hoping that Bakhan would be taken in.

“Full?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Full? Of! Light?”

“Yes.”

Slowly, Bakhan’s cowl of skin rose up and over until it covered his head and half his face. It was as though he was closing his eyes in contemplation. He was still for a long while. Lens-spiders clicked and chittered.

After a long while, Bakhan lowered his cowl and beckoned Vivian with a claw.

“Come!”

As he turned he gathered up both the lens-spiders with his sweeping tail and dashed them against a wall. One staggered in a circle on four legs as Bakhan led Vivian out. The dungeon chambers in the underbelly of Hath-No were extensive. Bakhan pointed out the different points on the production line as they went.

The floors beneath Vivian’s feet were uneven with accumulated strata of dried blood.

“Humans! Brought! Here! For! Slaughter! You! Know! Humans?”

“I do,” she said and resisted the irrational urge to check her yathki face-mask was securely in place. “Where do you get the humans from?”

“Trade! Agree! Ment! With! Em-shadt! Ambass! Adors!” said Bakhan. “You! Work! Human! Skin?”

“I’ve worked closely with it all my life,” she replied.

They passed through tanneries and further drying rooms. Workers composed of stitched together body parts hauled and dipped and processed human skins.

“Ya! Bande! Man’s! Creatures!” said Bakhan dismissively. “No! Skill! Poor! Product!” He thumped his wedge-shaped chest. “Bakhan! Served! Many! Lords! Good! And! Bad!”

A construct creature with two right arms struggled to stretch a cure skin over a frame. Bakhan berated it loudly and with deft claws showed it how it was done properly. Bakhan pointed ahead.

“Worse! Only! One! Scribe!”

The next chamber was filled with rows and columns of tall scribing tables. Only one was occupied. A waxy pale figure, a lean grasshopper of a humanoid, was shackled to his desk by his ankle (although that ankle was so thin, he could have slipped his foot out of the manacle with ease).

“You have a Carcosan word mage,” said Vivian.

Bakhan spat from glands in the corners of his mouth. “Blind! And! Mad!”

Vivian approached. The word mage was bent intently over his manuscript, writing with neat and precise movements of his quill. The marks he was making on the vellum were not from any alphabet Vivian recognised.

“This is nonsense,” she said.

Bakhan nodded mournfully. “You! Read?”

“And write,” she said.

“Incant! Ations?” he asked, hoping beyond hope.

“Some,” she conceded with neither arrogance or modesty. “Those I’ve read in the Big Bloody Book.”

“Big! Bloody! Book?”

“Yes,” she said. “The Book of Sand. The Wittgenstein Volume. No?”

Bakhan shook his head ponderously.

Vivian went to a desk where there were stacks of vellum. A bristle quill and a pot of red ink were laid in the recess at the top. She took up the quill, dipped it and, looking to Bakhan for approval before continuing, scrawled the simplest and shortest incantation she could remember. It was one she’d used before and was more of a plea than a spell. Roughly translated, it read, “Don’t eat me. Or else.”

As she finished the last pen stroke, the vellum creaked as though a great pressure had been placed upon it. The spell had taken hold.

Before the ink had even dried, Bakhan seized the vellum and inspected it. Lizard expressions were hard to read.

“Your! Name?”

“Vivian Grey, Master Bakhan,” she said.

A forked tongue emerged briefly from his mouth and twitched excitedly. “Bakhan! Have! Two! Scribes!”

The eviscerated corpse of Tardul Vray was removed piece by piece, mouthful by mouthful, from the throne room floor. In the mood of scavenging hunger that swept the court, a courtier grabbed up Steve from the platform of tributes and dangled him over its mouth.

“Unhand me, you loathsome bug!” ordered Steve.

The courtier paused in surprise.

King Yabandeman’s head swung their way.

“What is that thing?”

“I don’t know, my lord,” said the courtier.

Steve wriggled from the courtier’s grip, ran up its arm to its shoulder, pulled out a ceremonial comb from the thing’s hair and jabbed it into its one eye. The courtier leapt in pain and flailed about. Steve jumped, rolled as he hit the ground and strode imperiously to the centre of the court, which was no an easy task for a foot-high cloth doll. He looked up at Yabandeman, the savage warlord who had overthrown the true king and defiled this fortress of Steve’s people and wondered if he could kill him here and now. He decided that, sadly, such a thing was not yet possible. It would have to wait.

“I am Steve the Destroyer!” he shouted grandiosely.

“Steve?” said Yabandeman.

“The Destroyer,” said Steve.

“Yes, my lord,” said the provisional high chancellor, Crippen-Ai. “I met this diminuated figure on my journey here. He has come here from… where were you from, my little amience?”

“Earth!” said Steve. “I travelled to the human world where I subdued human foes, fought the unholy offspring of the dinh’r and descended back to the true realm through the jaws of Yoth-Mammon!” he said, which was all sort of true in a very roundabout kind of way.

“And why are you here?” said Yabandeman.

“Why?”

“Allow me, my lord,” said Crippen-Ai. “Steve, his demideified majesty enquires as to the intendental reasons for your supraevident presence in his kingly manse.”

Steve didn’t understand a word of that but it had given him a chance to think on the king’s own question.

“I’m here because I want a position in your court, king,” he said. “I have come with tribute and it’s the best tribute you’ve ever seen!”

“Ah,” said Crippen-Ai. “He was travelling with a curious beast. A historian? A scribe? An illuminatrix?”

“Mrs Vivian Grey,” said Steve.

“The most gifted scribe there ever was,” called out the bodu-papa, Rhempkin.

“It is true,” said Stok.

“Definitely true.”

“She spoke it in the Sphincter —”

“— of Truth.”

“So impressive.”

“So proud.”

“So vain.”

“A creature with an epiphysiognomy so hideous it would kill any who looked on it,” said Crippen-Ai.

“Where is this Vivian Grey?” said Yabandeman.

“Gone straight to the scriptorium to –”

“— begin her work,” said Rhempkin and Stok.

“And sent her tribute here,” said Yabandeman. “And this dot of a creature is her servant.”

“No,” said Steve. “That’s not correct, my lord.”

“No, for you are now mine. What else has she sent?”

Yabandeman waved a long arm and Crippen-Ai was at once by the table of tribute and bringing back the ripped bag and laptop case.

“Be careful with that!” ordered Steve, still irritated that they had wilfully misunderstood who had brought whom as tribute.

“Careful?” said Crippen-Ai, stopping with mock worry. “What could there possibly be in this to fear?”

“Dangerous items, shifter,” he said and jumped up to pull the bag from Crippen-Ai’s grip. Steve had spent an unpleasant part of his journey here inside that laptop case and had the chance to explore its contents and form opinions on what the items were.

He pulled out a wad of post-its.

“Behold!” he said, holding it aloft for all to see. “The mystery that is the post-it!”

There were a few receptive “oohs” in the crowd but not enough.

“What is it?” said Crippen-Ai.

“An impossibility!” shouted Steve. “Some things in the infinite hells are sticky, are they not?”

“Sticky?”

“Sticky.”

“Irrefusibly.”

“And all other things are not sticky, isn’t that so?”

Crippen-Ai edged closer with curiosity. “Of course.”

“Then what is this?” demanded Steve, ripped off a post-it and passed it to Crippen-Ai.

The creature took it in an extended tentacle and then passed it from limb to limb, touching and untouching its adhesive strip. He bent over it more closely.

“What is it?” cried a voice from the court.

“Tell us!” shouted another.

“Will it kill us?” added a third.

Crippen-Ai tapped it, undecided.

“Well?” demanded King Yabandeman.

“I… I don’t know,” said Crippen-Ai. “It’s not exactly sticky but then… It’s adhesivity is of an indeterminate state. What is its purpose?”

But Steve did not answer. He had their attention now.

“If that confuses you, prepare to be astounded.” He rummaged in the bag and found a loose paperclip. “Behold, unworthy ones! The sharp-but-not-sharp.” He ran to the edge of the gathered court, poked a courtier’s foot with the paperclip with little effect and then unfolded its end and poked again.

“You wound me, puppet!” growled the courtier.

“Careful how you speak to me,” said Steve. “You don’t know what I could do to you next!”

He ran back to the bag but Crippen-Ai was already looking inside. He cast aside a pen, looked at a card for a moment and then produced a hinged metal contraption.

“What is this?”

“That?” said Steve, drawing up short as though in nervousness. “That is the dreaded hole-punch.” He whirled on the crowd. “The Hole-Punch!”

“Is it pericolicious? Will it hurt me?”

“Hurt you?” Steve gave a heavy sigh and indicated that Crippen-Ai should hand it over.

Steve took it with slow caution, to show them how afraid of it they should be and also to give himself time to think. He had no concept of what it really was or what it was for. It was an earth device certainly and he had to put it in the context of what little he had learned of earth in the days he had spent, often sealed in a jar with nothing but a television for company.

“This,” he said. He turned it over and saw the white circles of cut paper in the translucent tray underneath, an instant reminder of images of snow and a certain festive figure he had seen more than once on television. “This is the fearsome weapon of Father Hole-Punch!” he declared.

“Who is that?” someone shouted.

“He is a god of the earth people.”

“Powerful?”

“Very!”

“Dangerous?”

“They fear him. At night he prowls. He sees them when they are sleeping. He knows when they’re awake.”

“Omniscient,” said Crippen-Ai.

“He comes into the caverns and nests of the humans, seeking out the good and the bad.” Steve prised off the plastic tray and scattered confetti circles of white punched paper. “He rewards the good with his offerings.”

“And the malintentive?” said Crippen-Ai. “What does he do to the bad ones?”

Steve held the device high. “Hole-Punch,” he said with as much dramatic menace as he could muster.

“And is it still dangerous?” said Yabandeman.

“The weapon of the god of red and white? Who can cross the world in a night? Oh, yes, it still has power.”

“And your master, Mrs Vivian Grey, how did she get this?”

“I do not know,” said Steve, “but if you were to ask her, she would pretend that Father Hole-Punch did not exist, such is her contempt.”

There were slurps and clicks of approval and content from the court.

“This court will see her before long,” said Yabandeman and looked to Crippen-Ai but the would-be chancellor wasn’t paying attention. He was looking again at the card he had taken from the laptop case.

PRESENT DAY

“Wake up maggot!” bellowed Steve, bouncing on the bed.

Morag took a moment to recall where on earth she was. Oh yeah, she had no idea. She was stuck in an anonymous room with a psychotic doll and a talking foetus that was on a mission, while wondering what sort of fate her captors had in mind for her. Would it be straightforward death or did they have something more creative in mind for her and her baby?

She sighed and raised her head.

“You were asleep,” Steve told her.

“I know. I was enjoying it.”

“I was telling you how I impressed Yabandeman’s court with my demonstration of the Post-It note.”

“Were you?” Her hands went to her stomach. “Adn-bhul cho. How long have I been asleep?”

Her stomach had grown to proportions that were definitely not normal. If she’d had a tennis ball nestled in there before, then she now had room for a basketball. She groaned and rolled over to see what impact this would have on her mobility. The first thing she needed to do was loosen the trousers she was wearing. The vomit had dried but they smelled really bad, and the waistband was way too small now. She gasped with relief as she undid the buttons.

“I have been exploring!” said Steve. “This room is one of four that look the same.”

“There are four hospital rooms? What else?” asked Morag.

“I don’t know, this ceiling space only extends over those rooms, a small corridor and a kitchen area. Is this human food?” He presented a foil-wrapped pop tart to Morag.

“It most certainly is!” said Morag, attacking the foil. “Did you see anything else useful in any of the rooms?”

“I found these,” said Steve, gesturing to a trio of scalpel blades. “Would you like one?”

Steve picked one up and began to use it to sharpen the tip of his pencil spear. On the side of it was the gold-embossed slogan, ‘THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS’.

“Kill a few of these Forward Management goons when they come in,” she said. “That’d be a start. No, even better, make a detailed inventory of all the other things that you can see out there and report back.”

“Steve the destroyer does not carry out stocktakes! That is a task for an underling!”

“Fresh out of underlings,” Morag said, grunting as she stood. “It’s for a council of war. It’s important that we know what resources we have. I need something else to wear by the way. See what you can do.”

Steve was happy with that and he swung back up to the ceiling, using the hoist that was part of the hospital bed.

1773

Nina stepped out into the morning air of Georgian England in a long coat. It was a long coat on her, probably a three quarter length coat for a man. It was all big lapels and shiny buttons. Nina swished it about her, knowing it totally added to her current Doctor Who vibe. Certainly, Steampunks or goths would probably pay top dollar for it in the trendier vintage clothes shops back home.

Back home…

Nina had grown up round here. Or would do.

She knew Soho and Handsworth as part of the seamless and grey suburban sprawl to the north of Birmingham. Her home was a one train stop or a twenty minute bus ride from the city centre, taking in the litter strewn sights of the Great Hampton Road and the Jewellery Quarter. It was route lined with kebab houses, phone shops, the pubs and businesses that had not yet failed and the derelict shells of those that had.

Outside Soho House now was greenery. Beyond the well-kept gardens there was an open hillside and scattered trees. The land she would grow up in was not strewn with litter but with sheep. Actual bloody sheep. In Birmingham.

“Is that Birmingham?” she said, nodding at the red and brown settlement a couple of miles away down the hill.

“Did you not come via Birmingham?” said Jonathan suspiciously.

“It was dark,” she said.

Boulton, cane in hand, strode towards the dirt track and the trees. “This way, Miss Seth.”

Jonathan made sure she walked ahead of him, prepared to grab her if she ran.

The wind whistled in the trees. There were no other noises to be heard. No motor traffic obviously. No… trains? Did they have trains back in these times? She would ask later.

On the far side of the trees, another track led to a spread out collection of red brick buildings. Tall, smoking chimneys sprouted from the tops of many but they were all dwarfed by a four storey monolith of a building, imposing and unfriendly, like a prison or those old fashioned state schools that were all finally demolished when Nina was still a child.

“This your factory?” she said.

“The Soho Manufactory,” said Boulton.

“The future made real,” added Jonathan.

“All steam engines and furnaces,” Nina nodded.

“I have, as it happens, purchased the rights to a steam engine and, God willing, Mr James Watt will come to Soho to erect one,” said Boulton. “For now, the mill up to the left there provides all the mechanical power we need.”

The crossed over the line of horses and wagons queuing to enter the front yard of the manufactory. One of the horses nickered throatily at Nina and she stepped swiftly away. City girls and horses didn’t mix.

“You don’t ride horses in India?” suggested Jonathan smugly.

“I don’t ride them anywhere,” said Nina.

Boulton had taken her vague interest in the factory as an invitation to give a lecture on it and, as they went in, he spoke excitedly about lamination processes, turning laps, flatting mills and any number of things Nina did not understand one jot. The central cavernous space of the manufactory was taken up by various work areas and monstrous pieces of machinery. She had expected conveyor belts or row and rows of identical machines but there was neither. Each machine appeared unique, each work area devoted to something different. Teams of men and boys battered, stoked, stamped, cut, chased, bored, poured, moulded and polished metal and stone and wood while trolleys and crate-bearers passed stacks of buckles, buttons, handles, blades and unknown objects from one station to another. Nina felt exhausted just watching them.

Boulton continued his talk about this innovation and that as they walked through and Nina had spent enough time in the company of boys who liked to go and on about their hobbies to know how to deal with them. Didn’t matter if it was Playstation games or their new Audi car or their wonderful manufactory, all you had to do was made polite musical noises, some ‘uh-huh’s and ‘ooh’s and the occasional ‘is that so?’ and they thought you were utterly entranced. By the time they reached an office space on the first floor (during which several men had glimpsed her knees but none had been overcome by ‘excitations’) Boulton was smiling warmly at her, clearly feeling he had met a woman who shared his passion for business and manufacture.

The office was large but starkly bare. Brick walls, rough unvarnished floor boards. There was no desk, only a simple table and there were no chairs, only stools. But the table was covered in an expected mess of paperwork and against the arch window, rolled up plans and charts leaned up against each other in such numbers as to look like a hurricane blasted forest.

Jonathan shut the door, muffling the noise of the manufactory outside.

Boulton sat at the table and regarded his papers.

“So, the oculus.” He sifted papers aside and pulled out a loose handful of sheets. They were covered with drawings, mostly of simply circles but surrounded by a mess of cramped scribbling. “These are the plans I have drawn up.”

“Yes,” said Nina.

“And this…” He kicked a wooden crate at his feet and then drew from it two metal hoops, one wire thin, the other flattened to a sharp edge like the world’s deadliest frisbee. “This is what exists of it, so far.”

Nina stared. It took her a long moment to comprehend what was going on. Or perhaps it took her an instant to comprehend it and a long moment to accept it.

“You haven’t made it yet?” she said.

Boulton met her gaze as he shook his head. She looked at the metal circles. Both were far smaller than the components of the oculus she had held in her own time.

“I’m having several pieces cast today. I do not know if it will be complete then because…” He chuckled. “… I don’t know what it is supposed to do or rather…”

He broke off and looked away.

“It’s for looking at events in other times,” said Nina. “A way of viewing the past or the future.”

Boulton was properly gobsmacked. “How could you possibly…? Jonathan?”

“Don’t think it was me, Mr Boulton,” said Jonathan. “I did not tell her.”

“It came to me in a dream. At least I think it did,” said Boulton. “It appeared to me as a vision. I have constructed it based upon what I recall of that vision and, the astute will notice that its name, the oculus, appears nowhere on these plans. All of which begs the question, how could you possibly know about this contrivance?”

“Okay,” she said slowly, building herself up to tell him something she didn’t feel comfortable with, namely the truth. “I’m going to lay this down for you and I don’t know if you’re going to believe me. It’s kinda — foom! — mind-blowing stuff, okay?”

“Mind-blowing?” said Boulton.

“Oh, you betcha,” she said. “Look, I know there’s been some weird shit going on around here lately.”

Boulton frowned.

“I think she reads fortunes in people’s ordure,” suggested Jonathan. “I’ve heard there’s a Hindoo swami in Coventry who can interpret the future in gentlemen’s faces.”

“What? No,” said Nina. “There was that creature you found in the rock.”

“Which creature?” said Boulton.

She tried to recall what she had seen through the oculus only a few days before, viewed through time from twenty-first century Soho House.

“Erasmus Darwin brought you a lump of blue john he’d found in a cave and when you opened it up there was this horrible Squidward Q Tentacles thing inside it called Crippen-Ai. Remember? It’s a creature, one of the Venislarn. It’s my job to — not to fight them. It’s sort of a threat management really. They’re going to destroy the world. You kinda get used to the idea but we make sure there’s an orderly queue and keep the basic suffering down to a minimum.”

Boulton leaned to look round her at Jonathan. “I do not understand a word she says.”

“Is she talking about fossils?” said Jonathan.

“You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “I saw it. The rock. The white creature. You brought it back to life with your homemade defibrillator. It was all tentacles and slime.” She did a little hand mime, of a flapping tentacled thing. “A total face-hugger.”

“This is nonsense,” said Boulton.

“Okay, okay,” said Nina. “What about Steve the Destroyer?”

“Who is that?” said Boulton.

“The little doll.”

“Doll?”

“Doll.”

“Doll?”

“Yes. The little doll man. He was posted to you. To ‘The One Who Calls Himself Boulton’. This tall. Wooden eyes. Got a real attitude on him. Probably a bit of a Napoleon complex.”

“A doll with attitude posted to me,” said Boulton.

“You remember?”

“No. I’m merely repeating the words I understand, Miss Seth. I do not recall receiving any doll and, as for this Napoleon Complex person…” He looked to Jonathan.

“Never heard of him,” said Boulton’s servant.

Nina clenched her fists. “I know this has happened. I saw it. I…” She shook herself out.

“Are you well?” said Boulton.

“About to go into a swami trance,” suggested Jonathan.

“My ID and my phone,” she said. “Do you have them?”

Boutlon lifted the heavy flap of his jacket pocket, removed her belongings and handed them over. She pressed the power button on her phone. There was — thank God — still some battery life left in it. She showed the men her home screen.

“An illuminated image!” gasped Boulton.

“Witchcraft!” said Jonathan.

“Technology,” said Nina.

She unlocked her phone and pondered what app might impress them most. She had no data connection. On one level that made obvious sense - there were no mobile masts or wi-fi networks to connect to — but on another deeper and more instinctive level she felt that the cloud should still be out there, that if anything, the lack of network users in Georgian England should mean she should be able to have clearer and better access to cloud data. But, no, there was none. She’d have to find something that didn’t require data.

“Here,” she said and put the phone on the table so both men could see it.

She swiped. She swiped. She swiped some more.

“How does it do that?” said Boulton amazed.

“Are you making it do that with your finger?” marvelled Jonathan.

“Astonishing!”

“Another one!”

“Oh! Those blue ones there! Yes!”

Boulton panted, literally out of breath with excitement. “But how is this possible? And what is this thing?”

“Candy Crush,” said Nina.

“And it’s function?”

“It’s just a game. I could show you something else - a bit of YouTube or Tinder - but there’s no data. I could… hang on.”

She turned on the camera function and held it out.

“Selfie everyone.”

“It is a mirror,” said Jonathan.

“Smile,” she said and took a pic. “You blinked in that one.”

“Our image captured!” declared Boulton and then patted himself as though he feared he was somehow now trapped in the picture. “Light, frozen. But how?”

Nina put her phone down.

“Simple truth. I’m from the future, Matt.”

“Good Lord!”

“I’m from the twenty-first century. I’m not going to be born for another two hundred and twenty-something years.”

Jonathan gaped.

“S’true,” she said. “My name is Nina Seth. I’m a Brummie. I was brought up about half a mile that way — no, that way — in a house that hasn’t been built yet.”

“But how?” said Boulton. “How is this possible?”

She tapped the plans on the table. “I climbed through. Squeezed through. In fact, can I just say…” She picked up a pen and dipped it in Boulton’s ink well. “Let’s make that… twelve inches across there, huh?” Her scribble was pathetically untidy next to his neat notations.

“Climbed through,” said Boulton, dazed.

“It’s a long story,” she said, “involving me going back to school and totally earning some gold stars, my colleagues getting in all sorts of trouble with blob monsters and memory-zappers and a back-stabbing bitch who’s decided that she can stop the end of the world because she is that bossy. Now, there’s some strange stuff going on here but I basically need your oculus to get back to my time and save my friends, Rod and Morag. She’s been kidnapped and he’s currently dead.”

“Only currently,” said Boulton.

“I plan to change that. I’m from the land of flushing toilets and decent wi-fi, where knees are allowed to run free, and the moment I get back there, I will save him.”

“And this?” Boulton tapped the phone. “Can you explain how it works?”

“It’s an Android phone, billion megapixel camera or whatever, edge screen.”

“And how does it work?”

“Well, it’s the pixels, isn’t it.”

“Pixies,” whispered Jonathan.

“And it’s got a lot of memory in there. And cloud storage.”

“Whose memories?” asked Boulton.

“No, like in the processor. Really powerful. Samsung ones used to explode. Or maybe that was the batteries.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Boulton.

“What?” said Nina.

“Batteries. I understand. You have a battery of Leyden jars in here.”

“Er, I don’t know.”

“Would this Mr Sung know?”

“Who?”

“Exploding batteries,” said Jonathan. “Pixies and clouds. Mr Boulton, sir. I beg of you. This is unholy!”

“And I thought I’d grow to like you,” tutted Nina.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come,” said Boulton.

Into the room came a man in a loose white shirt and smart pantaloons (or was it breeches? Nina wasn’t sure).

“Ah, Mr Scale,” said Boulton. “My foreman, Miss Seth. John, come in. I must show you something marvellous. Ah.”

This second ‘ah’ was for the woman who followed Mr Scale into the room.

She had black hair and light brown skin that suggested Southern European or maybe Middle Eastern ancestry, certainly not pasty white British stock. Her hair was raised up in a gravity-defying plume, a sort of proto-beehive hairdo. Nina supposed it was the fashion, as was the low cut dress with the lacy titty trellis, the heavy necklace with the pink gemstone and the bright red shoes with shiny buckles. The whole ensemble looked ridiculously extravagant but Isabella was tall, willowy and, although not exactly beautiful (her bucked teeth kinda distracted the eye), she was definitely tall and willowy enough that she could wear extravagant outfits in a way that petite sex kittens like Nina struggled with.

“Miss Isabella!” said Boulton in delight. “What a fortuitous happenstance. I must introduce you to our new guest, Miss Seth.”

“Guest is it now?” said Nina and gave Jonathan a superior smile.

“I came to see how your new devices and designs were progressing. Miss Seth, a pleasure to meet you.” She daintily held out a gloved hand.

“Yo,” said Nina, shook her hand and sprinkled some dap magic on it for good effect.

“I was told you had apprehended a woman in the act of burglary,” said Miss Isabella. “Is this not she?”

“All a mistake, I suspect. Miss Seth has come to us with the most remarkable but, I would vouchsafe, true story,” said Boulton. “Let me draw your attention to these.”

He held out Nina’s ID. Isabella swished across and took it from him.

“Consular Mission to the Venislarn,” she read.

“Yes,” said Nina.

Isabella cocked her head as though suddenly deep in thought or listening to an inner voice. “Why are you here, Miss Seth?” she said coolly. “Were you looking for someone?”

“Not particularly,” said Nina.

“No one sent you?”

“Who would send me?”

Isabella twitched, itching to say something that she momentarily held back. “Mrs Vivian Grey, perhaps?”

“Da fuck?” said Nina, floored.

Isabella smiled, prominent teeth exposed. “I see now. All very clear.” She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a slender, pronged yellis wand. Nina had seen one of these before, probably this very one in fact. As Isabella raised it, Nina mentally leapt for the counter-gesture.

“Hyet-pa,” said Isabella.

The prongs of the yellis wand glowed with a sharp blue light. The light shone on the faces of all the men, glistened in their wide and now unblinking eyes. They were frozen, entranced.

Nina double-checked she was holding the fingers of her left hand in the gnarled and crooked gesture that kept the wand’s power at bay. Of course she had it right; if she hadn’t, she would be a zombie like the others.

“Quick and clever,” said Isabella. “I like that. Are all women in the future like you?”

“There ain’t no one like me,” said Nina. She nodded at the wand. “You’ve messed with their memories. That’s why Boulton doesn’t remember finding the creature in the lump of blue john. And you. I read stories of a madwoman hanging around the mines, causing trouble, giving Erasmus Darwin grief. And that’s why…” She made a displeased noise. “What did you do with Steve the Destroyer?”

“Well, well, well,” said Isabella. “You’re either well informed or very good at guessing games. You seem to know a lot.”

“But what do you know about Vivian?” said Nina.

Isabella shook her head. “Last I saw her, she was still in hell. The Fortress of Hath-No, writing that impossible book of hers.”

“You saw her?” Nina was ravenous for details. “What do you mean? How?”

Isabella smiled gently. “She saved us. All of us. I barely remember it. I have glimpses now. Her terrible face, the demon lady Sha-Datsei, Barry.”

“Barry?”

“Yes. Barry. Closest thing I had to a friend then. True, he was a frog boy but a friend of sorts. Now…”

Her breast heaved. No, one of her breasts heaved, which was frankly a neat trick that Nina had never mastered. From beneath her lacy boob-concealer something slithered out.

“Now, Crippen-Ai is my one true friend.” She looked down on the white amorphous creature with genuine tenderness. The tenderness was gone from her gaze when she looked back at Nina. “Vivian saved us but she’s picked the wrong side. The Venislarn will have the earth.”

“Oh, we all know that,” said Nina.

“But which Venislarn?” said Isabella. “Crippen-Ai and I have an apocalypse to hijack. With a few trinkets…” With her wand, she gestured to the plans for the oculus on the table and, with the other hand, touched the pink gem at her throat.

“I see.”

“We have an army waiting to be summoned.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And a world to enslave.”

“Right.”

“And the brightest men of the age to help us.”

“Got it,” said Nina. “This is brilliant.”

“What is?” said Isabella, confused.

“This. Monologuing. Bad guys are always doing it in films and they never do it in real life and, you know, you’re doing it right now.”

“Monologuing?”

“Yeah, telling me your diabolical plans. And, can I just say, Isabella, I had no idea how really useful it is, to me. You could throw in some evil laughs too, if you like. That would be like the chocolate frosting. And I know I should be like strapped to a table with the laser. But this, this is good. Gold dust, baby.”

“You talk too much.”

“Says the monologuing villain. Listen, lady, I don’t know what Squidward here has got you involved in.”

“Crippen-Ai.”

“Sure. Crippen-Ai, shan shu bech ai. But you are not compelled to comply. Put the yellis wand down and we’ll talk.”

The slithering Venislarn peering out of the woman’s cleavage waggled its little limbs.

“You too, sir,” said Nina. “Until I establish your credentials, you’re to stay right there and not do any weird muda.”

The woman, Isabella, was amused. “I’m not being compelled to work with Crippen-Ai. He is my friend and ally and, whatever reason you’re here, you are in the way.” She took a quick step towards the desk and scooped up Nina’s phone in the same hand that held her ID. “Gentlemen,” she instructed, “you will forget everything that has been said in this room. You will also forget any encounters or conversations you have had with this woman since she was first apprehended in Mr Boulton’s house.”

“Oh, that’s not fair,” said Nina.

The Venislarn wriggled and slipped back into the woman’s bodice.

Isabella sighed contentedly. “Run or be hanged, Nina Seth,” she said and the light of the wand faded.

Boulton blinked. The foreman, John Scale, put a hand to his temple. Jonathan stared at Nina.

“The thief!” he declared, alarmed.

“Seize her!” shouted Boulton but Nina was already running.

She hit the stairs before anyone else was through the door.

Nina had spent her whole life contending with people who were bigger than her. Bigger people had longer legs. Bigger people had longer strides and reaches. Bigger people were faster, theoretically. School basketball and athletics had been nothing but an embarrassment for young Nina Seth. But smaller people had less body mass to power and were a smaller target to hit. Nina had been a goddess of dodgeball and her hockey dribbling skills (not to mention her underhanded ankle swipes) were something to be marvelled at. Ducking and weaving came very naturally.

While Jonathan was lumbering down the first flight, Nina reached the final turn of the stairs, swinging through the stair rails and onto the manufactory floor. She sprinted across the busy hall of workspaces, skidded round two men working at a forge and vaulted a trolley of crates. Voices were raised in anger and caution.

Jonathan yelled, “Stop! Thief!” but she was already at an exit.

She jumped up onto the wagon that had backed into the doorway to be loaded. The driver grabbed for her trailing coat but missed as she climbed over the side, slid down the curve of the front wheel and sprinted across the yard.

There was a general outcry but the loudest shout was from Jonathan Angus. She didn’t look back. She could picture him well enough, club in hand, sprinting after her.

Through the gate she ran, crossed the track, a shallow ditch and ran pell-mell through a line of trees. She raised her arms to protect her face from sharp, swinging branches. She burst through on the far side and took a moment to collect her thoughts and her breath.

She was in a field, an exposed and uneven grassy field, dotted with grazing sheep. The only other things in sight were a stone drinking trough and a far fence where a lad on a horse was plodding by. Nothing to hide behind. Jonathan and others besides would be close behind. On the flat and in the open she had lost her advantage.

“Oi! Mate!” she called, running for the fence.

The boy on the horse turned to look at her but did not stop.

“Oi!”

As she neared, his gaze flicked upwards to the trees behind her. She looked back. Jonathan fought his way through the final branches. There was a small party of men with him. Apprentice lads from the factories or some such she thought.

Nina skidded in the mud near the fence and managed to sort of climb through it and collide with it at the same time.

“Hey! Mate!” she said to the lad on the horse.

He was a spotty streak of nothing with an oversized coat and nothing but rags on underneath. The horse looked better fed than him though it had no saddle and only a rope reins and bridle.

“They after you?” asked the boy.

“Lend us your horse?” she panted.

“No.”

“I’ll buy it from you.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Then give us a ride.”

He looked past her. Nina looked back. The men were running and stumbling over the field.

“Crap,” she said.

“What’ll you pay me?” said the boy.

Nina had nothing. Her phone and ID were gone. She had no money, no cash. None from this time or any other. She had…

“Ah.” She fished in her bra and produced her emergency condom, wrapped in a silver foil packet.

“What’s that?” the boy marvelled.

“Shiny. Valuable. Ride?”

“All right. An’ you’ll bagpipe me when we stop.”

“What?”

“Or let me have a go on your dumplings.”

“What? Piss off!”

He looked at the men, not many moments from the fence now, and tutted.

“Fine,” he sighed and patted the horse’s rump behind him.

She stared at it. “How am I meant to get up there?”

The boy had no words or advice for her. Nina glanced back once and then threw herself up at it. She scrabbled, grabbed at the horse’s hide and, as the boy grabbed hold of her dress and hauled, managed to lay herself over the rear of the horse in the most degrading position.

“An’ you hold on now,” said the boy.

“To what?” she squeaked.

He gave her no answer and instructed the horse to trot on. Nina was jolted and bounced. She grabbed the boy’s leg for support and focussed on not being thrown from the horse. The horse’s spine pounded her midriff, driving coughed air from her lungs. She could smell nothing but horse stink. She could see nothing but horse arse. She didn’t know how long she could maintain her position.

“Can’t. Do. This,” she spluttered with each jolt.

The horse slowed. She groaned.

“They’re a ways back,” said the boy. “Swing yourself up.”

“How?”

He swivelled and patted her on the backside. “Up and round.”

Driven by the indignity of having her backside patted, she pushed herself up and brought a leg round to sit behind the boy. Her ribs screamed in pain and she coughed.

“Do not touch me again,” she growled in his ear.

“Then you’d best hold onto me,” he she.

“Not likely. You stink, mate.”

He looked back. “Bugger.”

Nina looked too. Three men on horseback were racing down the road towards them, swerving round to overtake those on foot.

“Who are those guys?” she said.

“You know I said this horse wasn’t mine…” said the boy.

“You are bloody kidding me.”

The boy grinned and spurred the horse into a gallop. Nina held on to the lad.

HELL

Bakhan Sand had Vivian write out for him line upon line of Venislarn phrases and incantations, both in the standard, cursive and the awkward boustrophedon script. The blind and mad Carcosan word mage was left drawing squiggles and nonsense while Vivian produced what was apparently the first coherent work to be produced by the scriptorium in ages.

The lizard workmaster did not want to let her stop, simply out of his continuing amazement of her abilities. Vivian considered herself to be a merely competent Venislarn linguist by human standards but it seemed that literacy levels had dropped dramatically in this corner of hell.

Eventually, he told her to put down her quill and led her through baked earth tunnels and dark passages back to a vast store room which was either the one he had sent her to earlier or one very much like it.

“Rest!” he belched, gesturing at the empty floor.

“Rest here?”

He jabbed a claw at collection of low creel baskets, piled with rotten off-cuts of flesh. “Make! Bed!”

He pointed at a seemingly identical set of offal-filled baskets further along. “Eat!”

“I see,” she said.

“Rest!” he commanded and then disappeared, his tail whipping along behind him.

Vivian looked at baskets of slops. “No, I’m not eating that. Or sleeping on it.”

She had discovered in her time in the Venislarn dimension that a body taken beyond the mortal world could get by without food or sleep. The laws of energy and entropy were not the same here. Vivian had not eaten in what had subjectively felt like weeks and, as a person who had always regarded food in mostly functional terms, she did not miss it. However, sleep was still an escape from the cares of waking life and, as such, she valued it. Not enough to sleep on a bed of human remains.

Taking a candle, Vivian inspected the shelves of the storehouse. Most of its contents were what she had seen before: rotten remnants of unfortunate beings, dissected and sorted and stored but with no real indication of a future purpose.

She found bales of hair and vats full of teeth, not all human. She found strings of tongues, festooning an alcove like grisly bunting. Without food or sleep a human could survive. Could a human tongue live on without the rest of its body? The tongue-tinsel swayed gently. She held up a hand to feel for a wind, to find a cause of its movement. She could hear the constant fluttering wind of this place but feel no breeze. She moved on.

Eventually, she found something new. Behind a door of bound bone, she uncovered a chamber filled with clothes. They were so mouldering and filthy that at first she thought she was looking at a mound of sackcloth rags. But they were clothes: trousers, shirts, dresses, skirts. They were ripped and bloodied. The chamber was not small. There were clothes enough here to fit a thousand people. Vivian suspected that a weaker person might cry at the sight of them.

She was not a weak person. She gathered up as many cleanest clothes as she could in her one good arm and carried them to the spot Bakhan had told her to rest in.

The spot was no longer empty. A creature stood there. It was a thoggan, barely three feet tall, a child with its larval tail still dangling between its scaley legs. One of the youngling’s eyes was swollen closed with bruising. There were other marks on its body. It looked as if it had run a long way and fallen many times. It stared at her, fearful and expectant.

“What do you want?” she said.

“I ethcaped,” it squeaked, through teeth that were far too big and square for a thoggan, adult or child. “My papa’th gone and my gong’th gone too.”

“That barely makes sense,” she said irritably. “Why do you have such big teeth?”

“Big thmile. Everybody happy,” it said and then demonstrated. It was like a toad had gone to an orthodontist and asked for everything.

“And where are you from?” said Vivian.

The youngling pointed up. “But my papa’th gone. And my gong’th gone too.”

“Gong?”

“Gong’th gone too.”

“Well, can’t you go back there?” she said.

The youngling stared at her and made no intention to leave. It put its webbed hands together and twiddled its thumbs.

“I certainly don’t want you,” she said.

She dropped the bundle of clothes on the ground. The youngling looked at the clothes. Vivian pulled a weighty lump of rancid meat out of the nearby creel.

“Are you hungry?” she said. The youngling looked at the meat. Vivian held it up to her bird skull mask and made eating noises. “Hungry?”

The youngling continued to stare, with the mindless vacancy she had come to expect from youths everywhere.

“Here,” she said and threw the meat hard down the aisle. The thoggan youngling limped after it. Vivian began to arrange the clothes into a thin mattress shape. By the time she was done, the youngling was back, grinding the remains of the meat in its peg teeth.

“I don’t want you,” she said. The youngling didn’t understand.

She took the creel down, put it on the floor some distance away and pointed at it.

“Eat all you want and then go,” she said.

The youngling began to devour the meat noisily.

Vivian rolled up a thick smock for a pillow and laid down. The pillow smelled musty, of dirt and age and perhaps of the man who had worn it. The fluttering windless wind was the only sound in the room.

Vivian woke later. The candle had guttered out. There was a pressure against her shoulder blades. The thoggan youngling was curled up behind her. It was stroking her hair and her mask and making unpleasant shushing sounds. Vivian realised there were tears on her face and on the smock pillow.

“I wasn’t crying,” she told the youngling. “I wasn’t crying,” she said and went back to sleep.

1773

The boy reined the horse in and turned to look behind them. There was a grin on his dirt- and sweat-streaked face.

“Have we lost them?” said Nina, panting.

“They have lost us,” said the boy, “which was the plan, wasn’t it?”

Nina climbed off the horse or, more accurately, let herself fall. She rolled and got to her feet and immediately discovered that what felt like an hour on horseback had robbed her legs of all sensation and the ability to walk.

“Christ,” she said, hobbling round.

The boy slid off the horse with greater ease and seemingly no pain. He patted the animal’s flanks and inspected it admiringly.

“Now,” he said, trying to sound casual, “where’d you want to do it? I could give you a green gown right here.”

“Green gown?” said Nina, still experimenting with notions of standing up straight. Her back appeared to be against the idea.

The boy nodded at the grassy area growing near the trees.

“Green gown,” he said.

Nina quickly worked it out. “Jesus. I’m not having sex with you and I’m certainly not into old-timey dogging. For fuck’s sake. How old are you anyway?”

“Thirteen,” said the lad, trying to stand as tall as possible. “I… I’ve done it with lots of women.”

“Spoken like a true virgin,” she said.

“You promised me a reward,” he said, sulkily.

She took out her emergency condom. The silver foil crinkled between her fingertips.

“What is it?” he said.

“No use to you,” she said. “Look, I appreciate your help, even though I’m now going to get collared for horse theft as well as pineapple theft.”

“They have to catch us first.”

There was a rustle in the undergrowth. The boy gave a start. Onto the path stepped a man with a bad beard and a filthy brown coat, each so disgusting that it was not easy to see where one ended and the other began. The boy looked fearstruck. Nina wondered if they would have to flee again, knowing that her bashed and bruised body was not going to be in favour of the idea.

The man’s eyes widened at the sight of the horse. He glared at the boy.

“Not another one?” he cried in despair.

“No, pa,” said the boy hurriedly. “It’s not!”

A swift backhand clouted the boy across the ear.

“It’s not! It’s not!” the boy cried. “It’s… It’s her’n.”

The man glared at Nina now. His brows, matted with muck, were as fierce and as rampant as his beard.

“Um,” she said, not sure what she was talking herself into. “The horse? Yes. Yes, it’s mine.”

The man glared at the horse. The horse did nothing. It was indifferent to glaring.

“Where’s the tack? The bridle?” demanded the man.

“Well, that’s the thing,” said the boy. “This lady lost them.”

“Lost them?”

“Had to sell them,” said Nina. “I’ve come down from… Leeds? Yes, Leeds, and I had to sell them to pay for…?” She looked to the boy.

“Food and lodgings,” he suggested.

“That,” she agreed.

“And why’d you bring her here?” said the man.

“The lady had hurt her… hand,” said the boy.

“Weak wrists,” she said.

“I said she could visit with us in exchange for…”

“Something,” said Nina firmly. “Something as yet to be determined.”

The man studied her long and hard. The studying became longer and harder when he got to her knees.

“My face is up here,” she pointed out.

“Huh? Uh,” he grunted. “You oughta put on some clothes you know.”

He turned and waved them to follow him into the thick undergrowth.

HELL

Steve did not understand how Yabandeman’s court worked. When Hath-No had been the centre of Yo-Ehhar’s domain, the court had been a war room; individuals had come with information and went with orders, arguments were settled quickly and violently, and outsiders either came as prisoners or petitioners and were dealt with equally harshly whichever the case.

But Yabandeman permitted something entirely different to happen in front of his seat of power. The members of the court were players in a game. They advanced themselves, physically or socially, scored points by some tally that none could see and treated Yabandeman more as an umpire or judge than as a tyrant. Furthermore, Yabandeman had a disgusting tolerance for foreigners and aliens. The traders, Rhempkin and Stok, and the nameless parasite that rode them were accorded near civil treatment and their promise to return from Lonzhpar with more humans was greeted with something close to thanks. The shape-shifting Crippen-Ai acted as though he was Yabandeman’s most trusted advisor and, by the looks of the way Yabandeman treated him, would be formally offered that position soon enough.

Games, politics and the filthy intermingling of digestive systems. It was, frankly, baffling.

Steve the Destroyer did not understand their games and refused to play. Whatever courtly event was in session, he made his position clear. He stood at a point precisely halfway between the king’s bathing pool and the front ranks of the encircling nobles. He carried an unfolded paperclip as a spear and stabbed anymore who was foolish enough to come near. That was how he chose to play their games.

He had to move sometimes, when a courtier moved round the hall and the umbilical gut that fed their waste into Yabandeman’s body swept by. He could not attack the king’s own intestines and so Steve was forced to leap over them as they came or, most undignified, let them roll over him. This provided some of the assembled much amusement but Steve couldn’t see what else he was supposed to do.

“Why are you here?” Crippen-Ai asked.

“I am Steve the Destroyer. I brought the most gifted scribe ever to King Yabandeman.”

“Yes?” Crippen-Ai flowed and billowed in front of Steve. “But why are you here? What is your ergological function?”

“He amuses me,” said King Yabandeman.

“And where would we be without the risableness of clowns? But should this figure offer us nothing but cheap titters and podiamatic impedement?”

“Speak plainly,” growled Steve, levelling his tiny spear, “or I will spill your innards on this floor.”

Crippen-Ai gave Steve a possible smile and then turned himself inside out, white flesh pouring from his mouth in a fountain cascade that then rose to become Crippen-Ai anew.

“I don’t need you to do that for me, my dear inconsequentiality. My question was what does his aquarecumbent majesty need you for? What service do you offer?”

“Should we give him a job?” said Yabandeman.

Crippen-Ai bowed low. He was better at that than anyone “How peripercacious of your majesty. A job.”

1773

The man’s name was Jed Trimbull and the boy was his son, Dick. They had a camp in a broad clearing in the trees. There were five of them in all, the two Trimbulls plus another man, a woman and a child. The man and woman could have been any age. They were filthy, almost entirely toothless and had the pasty hollow-eyed look of drug-addicts. Dick called the woman Nan but Nina suspected there was no relationship there or it was a complex one. The child was called Pip and Nina couldn’t decide if it was a boy or a girl. It was almost completely silent and split its time between whatever chores it was given and taking food whenever it could.

The camp itself consisted of a single tent, greasy and brown with use, and a campfire. A pair of fallen logs had been brought close to form makeshift seating. A pot was hung over the fire. The pot bubbled with something that looked like dishwater and smelled like school dinners.

Aching from her first horse ride, Nina gladly sat by the fire and when the soup was declared done, politely took a bowl of it. The others gnawed at old bread and simply watched her eat the soup. She wondered what the hell for and figured it was to see if she dropped dead from food poisoning, and then she realised it was because they only had the one bowl and had to take turns. She hurried up and downed it. It was mostly vegetables and some stringy meat and it didn’t taste half as bad as it ought to have done.

“Where are we anyway?” she asked, as Dick served up soup for his dad.

Jed pointed. “Birmingham is six mile that way.” His arm swung. “Halesowen five mile that way.”

Nina thought about that. Probably somewhere under a flyover of the M5 in her time then. Quinton or Bearwood. A sudden thought grabbed her.

“Are there bears in these woods?”

Jed laughed, nearly slopping his soup. The man and the woman gave gummy grins and chuckled silently, although it was more like they were copying Jed rather than finding anything funny themselves.

“No,” said Jed, very much amused. “Why, do they have bears where you’re from?”

Where she was from? Was this a comment on her skin colour? Was he probing?

“Bears in India?” she said.

“I thought you said you were from Leeds,” he said.

“Oh, right. Leeds. No. No bears. I don’t know why I said it really.”

Jed slurped soup noisily. “Is it Leeds or India then?”

“I’m from all over really,” she said.

“Not from round here. I can see that much.”

She looked round. “Nice spot you have here.”

Jed grunted disparagingly. “It is what it is.”

“Are you…” She dithered over the right word. “Travellers?”

“Aren’t we all?”

“I meant, like, gypsies.”

Jed spat on the ground. The man and woman did likewise though it seemed neither had any spit in them.

“You’ll kindly not tar us with the same brush as those devils over on the Black Patch,” he said curtly. “We’re honest folk, god-fearing folk, not witches and horse thieves.”

Nina glanced over at Dick who gave her an anxious look. This didn’t go unnoticed by Jed.

“Cos horse thieving will get you hanged, won’t it?” he said loudly, making it clear he knew perfectly well what was going on.

He tossed his now empty bowl to Dick and then peeled open his crusty coat to pull out a pistol tied to his belt by a length of string. He rested it on his knee, pointing it casually at Nina, his finger on the long trigger piece.

“Now, sometimes we have visitors and they like to pay us for our hospitality with such coins and goods they have on them,” said Jed. “But we’re not thieves. Never took nothing that wasn’t freely given.”

“She promised me a go on her dumplings,” said Dick.

Jed reached out to smack his boy round the ear but couldn’t reach so lifted a foot and gave him a boot up the backside instead.

“My humblest apologies, ma’am,” said Jed and raised the gun to aim more pointedly at her. “You try to raise a boy right but they is always a disappointment.”

Dick passed the soup bowl to the toothless man. His slurping was, if anything, noisier than Jed’s.

“We didn’t want to move here,” said Jed. “The people are different and there’s not much hunting in these woods except a little rabbit and squirrel.” The stringy meat, thought Nina. Squirrel or rabbit? “I had a fine job making nails in Halesowen until someone was caught riding a horse that wasn’t his.”

Dick hung his head.

“And then we moved west of here, a nice spot out in the hills above Hagley, where a man could do a little tinkering in peace. Course then we had to move on again because one of Lord Lyttleton’s horses was stolen.”

“That’s not true, da!” said Dick, his face red with shame.

Jed sprang to his feet. “Don’t you tell me it’s not, you little heathen. I heard it off the parish priest himself.”

“That’s not right.”

“You telling me you didn’t take it?” yelled Trimbull senior, waggling his pistol at the boy.

“It’s not why we had to leave!” yelled Trimbull junior.

“I was saving you from the noose, lad, and not many fathers’d do that!”

“We left because you were afraid of the ghost in the well!”

“As any man would be! ‘I’ll rip your eyeballs from their sockets, fleshling.’ That’s what it said to me, so it did. I swear to God.”

“An’ I’d be scared an’ all,” said Dick. “But don’t go saying we had to flit because I took Lord Lyttleton’s best horse.”

“But you did!”

“Might have done,” admitted Dick quietly.

“Woah, woah,” said Nina. “Hang on.”

“What?” snapped Jed.

“What ghost in the well?”

“It’s nothing.” Jed’s face was dark, angry and humiliated. “Let’s say nothing more of it.” He remembered he was holding a gun. “We were discussing payment for our hospitality.”

Nina ignored him.

“This well. You could show me where it is?”

“I’m not never going back there,” said Jed, gripping his pistol all the tighter.

“Dick could show me,” said Nina.

“And why would he do that?”

Nina shrugged. “I’ll give you my horse.”

“But,” said Dick and then frowned in furious thought.

“And if anyone asks you where you got it from, you can tell them you bought it off Nina Seth, who you thought was a honest woman but who it turns out is a notorious pineapple thief.”

“Are you?” said Jed.

“What?”

“A notorious pineapple thief.”

“Can’t think of anything worse.”

PRESENT DAY

“What kind of pistol was it?” said Rod.

“What?” said Nina.

“What kind of pistol did the man, Jed, have? Flintlock? Wheellock? Percussion cap?”

They were walking at a pace through the International Convention Centre on the shortest route from the Library of Birmingham to Brindley Place.

“How the hell would I know?” said Nina.

“Well, what did it look like?”

She held out her hand as though holding a gun. “You know. It was a gun. Heavy. Wooden.”

“Aye, but the cock. Was it holding a piece of flint or —”

“I travel back in time to save your life and all you want to know is what kind of…?” She made a furiously exasperated noise. “Gun nerds.”

“I’m just curious. You mentioned it.”

“It was a gun, all right. Jeez.”

They hurried across the canal bridge, down the lane between pubs and high-end chain restaurants and into Brindley Square. This area, at the heart of Birmingham’s canal network, had once been filled with wharfs, warehouses and industry. It had then gone into long and terminal decline until it had been utterly revamped and redeveloped into offices and bars. There was even an aquarium in one corner of the square.

“Remember, when you and I came here to see the penguins?” said Nina.

“We were chasing a man-eating starfish, Nina,” said Rod.

“That too.”

Forward Management, the prime developers of the area, occupied a seven storey brick building built in a style that was half neo-Classical, half dockside warehouse.

“We got a plan?” said Nina.

“I was just going to ask politely,” said Rod.

Forward Management’s castle, arm and hammer logo, executed tastefully in frosted glass, hung on the wall behind the reception desk.

“Good afternoon,” said the receptionist.

“Hello,” said Rod.

“How can I help you today?”

And, abruptly, perhaps subconsciously knowing that this moment had been approaching all along, Rod had no idea what to do. There was no sane way to approach this situation. He and Nina had personal knowledge that individuals within the company were responsible for kidnapping Morag. They knew these people were holding her somewhere. They knew that this company was the descendent of one set up by certain English industrialists who had sworn to openly fight the Venislarn threat. He and Nina knew this most clearly but with no tangible evidence and what could he possibly say to this receptionist — young, cheery, possibly fresh out of uni, with probably no understanding at all of her employer’s dark secrets?

And anything he did say would be an accusation and, as a Brit, throwing curt and impolite accusations at anyone was just not on. Rod was a man of deference and, despite what Vivian might have said in the past about the directness of northerners, he was a man of subtlety.

“Um…”

“Can I assist in some way?” said the receptionist.

“Um,” said Rod and realised that he didn’t have a better plan. “Hi, I’m Rod Campbell from the local consular mission to the Venislarn.” He flipped her his ID. “I’m looking for my colleague, Morag Murray, who you’ve kidnapped and I wonder if you can tell me where you’re holding her.”

The receptionist’s smile remained on her face, and she took Rod’s ID to check more closely. Rod suspected that it was to buy some thinking time.

“Lovely,” she said. “Now, who would you like to address your concerns to? I can make you an appointment if you’d like?”

Rod wasn’t a man to back down from a course of action just because he was faced with a pleasant smile and incessant politeness. Actually, he was starting to think that this was a poor approach, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Can I speak to your head of kidnapping?”

“We don’t have anyone doing that role in our company, I’m afraid.”

Rod could see Nina out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t completely sure what she was doing, but she seemed to be looking at the fire extinguishers that were on a stand near to the doorway.

“Who do you have then?” asked Rod.

“Sorry?”

“Who do you have? Show me the list and I’ll choose.”

“No, that’s not how it normally works,” said the receptionist. “I can’t show you our employee list, it’s personally identifiable information.”

“Hey Rod!” called Nina. “You know about fire extinguishers, right?”

“Yes,” said Rod, turning. “You’ve got water, foam, CO2, dry powder —”

“— so, if you were choosing from these, which one would you use to make the most mess?” asked Nina, standing at the side and gesticulating at the possibilities like a magician’s assistant.

“I, um, probably the foam. Yeah, definitely the foam or the water.”

“Good. Which ones are those?”

“Cream and red labels,” said Rod.

Nina picked up the two that he indicated and carried them over to the reception desk. “Here, you have the water one, it’s heaviest. I’m having this little foam number. It’s compact and sexy, as the world has come to expect from me. It’s definitely today’s accessory.”

She picked up the cannister, pulled out the pin and fired foam across the desk, covering the receptionist’s lap with foam.

The receptionist squealed in terror. She leaned forward to press something on the console in front of her, but Nina was too fast. She launched herself over the desk, grabbed her wrist and slammed it onto the wooden surface.

“A little help, Rod!” grunted Nina, whose feet were well off the floor so that she could reach.

Rod hesitated. The choice he faced was either to give Nina some sort of bunk up, which was a little bit more touchy-feely than he was comfortable with, or leaning over the desk and pinning the receptionist’s arm himself, which seemed a little bit brutal, given that she’d done nothing much wrong. In the end he settled for pulling over a chair for Nina to stand on.

“Listen to me,” said Nina. “We have some very important work to do and you’re stopping us. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is a life or death situation. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said the receptionist in a small voice.

“Now, I know that in any organisation, there will be someone that you call when you don’t know who else to call. It might be because they’ve been around forever and they know everything. It might be because they’re super-helpful and they can always solve a problem. I want that person and I want them now. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes.”

“So, tell me, what’s the name of that person, the person that you’re going to call?”

“Winnie,” said the receptionist.

“Good. You’re going to call Winnie and get her to come here as fast as is humanly possible. You will direct us to the nearest meeting room so that we can have an undisturbed chat with Winnie. Yes?”

“Yes.”

Rod was impressed to see how quickly Winnie appeared. She was a large woman with frizzy hair who wheeled a bulky trolley behind her.

She beckoned to Rod and Nina. “Meeting room Basil is free I think.”

Rod wondered whether the meeting rooms were named after herbs or after Fawlty Towers’ characters.

“Take a seat and tell me how I can help,” said Winnie. “Young Trish didn’t give me a lot to go on. Not sure what’s the matter with her, she sounded very distracted.”

They followed Winnie into a room with a large table surrounded by chairs. There were prints on the walls that showed colour pictures, presumably of the company’s prime properties, some bright and evocative artist’s impressions, others photo collages or numerous projects.

Rod had left the water-filled fire extinghuisher at the front desk, but Nina still wielded the foam one, and nestled it on her lap as she sat down. Winnie appeared not to have noticed.

“Why are you the one that they call for weird stuff ,Winnie?” Nina asked.

Winnie gave a small shrug. “Been here a long time and nothing much fazes me.” Rod watched as Winnie opened up her trolley case. She pulled out a banana, an apple and a giant battered Filofax. She assembled a row of pens and pencils and finally removed a laptop as fat and bulky as a kitty litter tray.

Nina stared at the ancient laptop and the stationery but resisted the questions that Rod could see written on her face. “Well, Winnie, we’d like to call on some of that specialist knowledge that you have. I reckon that you’ve noticed some odd comings and goings over the years, yeah? Unusual symbols on documents? Covert meetings? Kidnappings?”

Winnie held up a hand. “One moment please.” She picked up one of the pencils and examined its tip. She leaned down to the case and retrieved a pencil sharpener. She twisted the pencil, counting just audibly to twenty and then examined the tip again.

“Better.” Winnie started the boot-up procedure on her laptop. The screen scrolled with messages as copious and slow as pre-flight checks for a space mission. “No, not sure I’ve seen anything like that,” she said eventually. “I mean, there’s a few tales I could tell about Christmas parties. Management have had to do away with a free bar the last few years because there are some people who just don’t know when to stop.”

“Winnie, you know that’s not what I mean,” said Nina. “This would be properly weird shit, like an occult club or something.”

“No need for that kind of language, young lady,” said Winnie, staring at her laptop screen. It still hadn’t completed its warm-up. “Occult, you say? We do have a little dressing-up tradition at Halloween. Devil horns and so on. We always have a bake sale as well, for charity.”

“Bake sales are not what we’re after. What about artefacts from the past. Does the company have any unusual antiques?”

“Oh yes, there are some nice micrometers and some old slide rules in a glass case at the back of the staff canteen,” said Winnie. “I’ll take you over to see them if you like. Birmingham has a proud engineering heritage so we like to —”

Nina stood up and slammed the fire extinguisher down onto the conference table. “Shall I tell you what I think, Winnie?” she yelled. “I think that you’re the one they wheeled out to talk to us because you can just spew bullshit for hours! You produce this weird boxy thing, like it’s ever going to help us and then make us sit here like idiots while you sharpen your pencil and pretend this thing’s a laptop or something.”

“I think it is a laptop —” started Rod, but Nina was on a roll.

“I want to know where they’ve taken Morag Murray!” she yelled. “She’s a red-haired mouthy Scot. You couldn’t miss her. Is there a cellar here, or someplace with cells?”

“No,” said Winnie in a quiet voice. “There’s really nothing like that in this building.”

“Oho! In this building!” shouted Nina in triumph. “Did that sound like an admission of guit to you Rod?”

“Not re—”

“Right, which building have they got her at, Winnie? I’m seriously at the end of my tether with your chat.”

The door opened. Rod looked up to see Chief Inspector Ricky Lee standing in the doorway.

“Come to help?” said Nina.

“What the hell are you dressed as?” said Ricky.

“I told her to ditch the coat,” said Rod.

“As if my day wasn’t busy enough. As if I wasn’t stuck doing the clean-up on whatever it was that happened down at the Think Tank, not to mention the mess Rod left in Centenary Square, I have to come down and — could you put that fire extinguisher down, Nina?”

Rod stood to leave. “Just need to grab these pictures off the wall,” he said to Ricky. “Be right with you.”

“You haven’t come to help?” said Nina.

Ricky meaningfully unclipped the handcuffs from his belt.

“I mean I’ve missed you,” said Nina. “I mean seriously, ‘carve your initials into the wall next to my bed’ missed you, but is this the time or place for kinky sex?”

“I’ve come to escort you back to the office,” said Ricky.

Rod nodded wearily. There was a clock on the wall. He tried not to look at it.

HELL

There were no days in hell. The Fortress of Hath-No was a ball of jumbled construction, spherical by chance rather than design. It hung between planes that were the reds and purples and greens and yellows of a violent bruise. There was no sky. There were no suns or moons or stars. There were no days or nights.

There were constants in this realm but no constant changes against which time could be measured. But there was existence, continuing existence and it could be measured only in seasons of intrigue and political manoeuvring, even if the Venislarn were too vicious to recognise them as such.

Even if she never left the scriptorium, Vivian heard of the doings in the fortress from Bakhan Sand. It became evident, as Vivian continued her timeless labours in the scriptorium caverns, that Bakhan believed each season marked an inevitable worsening of things, that the fortress was turning to shit, metaphorically as well as physically.

There had been, according to Bakhan’s accounts, a golden age when the forces loyal to the Prein held the fortress. Bakhan had no political affiliation to them but, even if they were fascist torturers with a love of sadism that was remarkable even among the Venislarn, they knew how to keep a bureaucracy running. During that halcyon season, the scriptorium was full of word mages and scribes, not just copyists but creators of new texts, scholarly and sorcerous.

Yabandeman and his armies of Kerah-han and patchwork monsters had taken Hath-No, not just because of its strategic position or because they loathed the Prein and their god, Sulu Sukram, but because they recognised that the scriptorium of Hath-No was a treasure trove. The scriptorium was like a flower, beautiful and delicate, and Yabandeman plucked it greedily and, with clumsy hands, killed it (the flower analogy was Vivian’s not Bakhan’s and involved her explaining at length what a flower was and ended up with a long and unhelpful discussion about photosynthesis). Through Yabandeman’s clumsiness, scribes who would not work to his demands were killed and new scribes stayed away in fear. Energies were diverted from the creation and copying of knowledge because Yabandeman demanded more of what Bakhan thought were the ‘showy’ products: word armour, enchanted weapons, words as blunt tools and magic.

Through that long decline, Yabandeman had continued to make demands and when Bakhan complained that there were not enough professional tanners, ink-makers and scribes and that the stitched-up morons Yabandeman had provided to replace them were not sufficient, Yabandeman had put in overseers to supervise Bakhan, convinced that more management was the answer.

Meanwhile, Yabandeman the ‘Shit’ squatted in his pool in the centre of the fortress, feeding on the excrement of his courtiers and crapping out the building materials for further expansion. With each passing bowel movement, everything became more bloated and unwieldy and unbeautiful and Yabandeman, now in a prison of his own making, turned his savage irritation on his inner circle. Chancellors, food testers, generals and advisors had been dispatched or banished for the flimsiest of reasons. While sorting and rearranging the books on the shelves of the scriptorium library, Bakhan confided that the low point of those courtly purges was in the imprisonment of Yabandeman’s favourite concubine, Sha Datsei.

“What had she done?” Vivian asked.

“Refused! To! Attend! Feast!” Bakhan burped.

“Is that all?”

“Yabandeman! Defeat! Keyd! Army! Cele! Bration!”

“Yes?”

“Roast! Keyd! Beast! Feast!” Bakhan took down a large volume that had been filed in the wrong shelf and passed it down to Vivian. “Sha! Datsei! Told! Attend! Told! Dance! In! Full! Glory!”

Vivian passed the oversized book to the thoggan youngling who was still loitering around the scriptorium.

“Take it over there,” she instructed. “On the small shelf.”

“Yeth. Put it on the thmall shelf,” said the youngling.

“And no eating it,” she said. She looked backed to Bakhan. “She was told to dance in her full glory…? You mean, naked?”

“Yes! Naked!”

“And she refused?”

“Yes!”

“Understandable. Modesty is an underrated virtue.”

“No!” said Bakhan. “Not! Refuse! Because! Naked!”

“No?”

“No! Refuse! Because! Roast! Keyd! Beast! Her! Brother!”

“I see.”

“Sha! Datsei! Locked! Up! Most! Sad!”

“Do I detect that you are a bit of a romantic, Bakhan?”

The lizard creature looked at her and flicked his tongue.

The tray was heavy and four times as wide as Steve was tall, but Steve was not going to give up purely because a task was difficult. Yabandeman had told him that this was an important task and that Steve was being entrusted to see it completed. This clearly amused the court. Steve concluded that they were simply happy to see such an important job handed to an obviously competent individual.

Steve carried the tray on his head and tried to keep it balanced with the aid of his pudgy little hands.

He followed the instructions he’d been given and followed the twists and turns through the fortress tunnels. Though much had changed in Hath-No, there was much that was familiar and he did not get lost. A number of courtiers followed him part of the way, watching with what he reasonably took to be admiration for a job well done, but eventually they fell away and he came to a narrow corridor, smeared with luminescent excrement that outlined the shape of things, nothing more.

The Kerah-han soldier-beast in the corridor crouched to peer under the tray.

“Can’t you see I’m on an important errand?” snapped Steve.

“What errand?” said the soldier-beast.

“I am to bring this meal to King Yabandeman’s ‘honoured guest.’”

The soldier-beast looked on the tray and then looked under it again.

“What meal?”

“Stand aside, imbecile!” Steve commanded and marched on.

At the end of the gloomy tunnel was a grille gate and an equally gloomy space beyond. The gaps in the grille were sufficiently large that Steve could leap straight through and the bottom spikes did not fully reach the floor so he slipped through with the tray on his head.

That done, Steve looked around. The place had, in former iteration, been a luxurious nest, the chambers of a high-ranking Prein. Now, all the splendour and glory of the place was gone. Chains and blades and sculpted bones of the vanquished were replaced with torn fabrics, eviscerated cushions and grimy floor coverings. The skeletal remnants of a chandelier swung slowly from the ceiling. Throughout the space, numerous creamy pale and translucent figures sat in silence. Some were humanoid, others insectoid, others ghechlin-form. Some wore hair, others feathers or scales. Most had identifiable faces and limbs but others did not. All sat with their back to the doors but Steve could tell in an instant that all were unmistakeably female.

Female guests? A harem? A dairy herd? Steve neither knew nor cared.

“Listen up!” he said. “I have a delivery for Yabandeman’s honoured guest. Which one of you is it?”

There was no response. The females remained equally still.

Steve strode up to the nearest, a humanoid with a horn-covered face. “I’m talking to you,” he said and kicked her in the side. His little foot went through, showered in white, brittle flakes.

“Er…” he said.

The humanoid was nothing but a shell, skin-thin and dry as dead leaves. None of these female figures was a living person but all of them, in all their various forms, had been cast off by someone or something…

Steve looked up. The skeletal thing that was not a chandelier dropped on him. She bound him up in her sharp limbs and held him close to the mechanism that passed for a mouth.

“What are you?” she said. Her voice was as mellifluous as her grip was tight. “And why are you here?”

“I am Steve the Destroyer. Unhand me!”

“Why are you here?” she repeated.

“On Yabandeman’s orders. I am to bring this meal to his honoured guest.”

The tiny body and head at the centre of the mass of articulated limbs rocked in mirth.

“Honoured guest now? I’m Sha Datsei. I was his favourite concubine once and then his most hated prisoner.” She tilted her whole body. Multiple glassy eyes caught the light. “Am I going up in the world or going down?”

Steve struggled against the steel grip around him. It was no use but struggling seemed the right thing to do anyway. She held him motionless and shifted her body round to look at the tray on the floor.

“And where is the meal?” asked Sha Datsei.

Steve looked round. The tray was empty.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I dropped it on the way.”

She brought her head back to view him.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think you did.”

He abruptly grasped her meaning. “Eat me? I think not, hussy!”

Her teeth moved independently of each other in her small, circular mouth, like cogs in a grinding machine. “Perhaps he wants me to eat you to be rid of your impertinence.”

“You’re not the first to try to eat me,” said Steve, unafraid.

“Is that so?” she said, drawing him in.

“Try it,” he challenged her. “I’m not poisonous.”

She stopped.

“Not poisoned?”

“Not poisoned.”

She held him away at a considerable distance. “Not poisoned?”

1773

Nina and Dick rode west through the evening. Dick held the reins. Nina held those bits of Dick which seemed cleanest and least likely to cause him excitations. They carried a length of rope and a blanket had been thrown over the horse’s back for them to sit on. The blanket made the journey no more comfortable.

They rode cross-country as much as they did along tracks and pathways. This countryside of rolling hills, intermittent woodland and wild brambles would one day be part of the outskirts and the suburbs of her home city but Nina recognised none of it until they began to climb a sharp, mudstone hill.

“What’s this place?” she said.

“Clent Hill,” said Dick.

“Clent Hills!” she said and laughed. “Came out here on a school trip. Hated it. Maneesha put gum in my hair. She said it was an accident but she’s a lying bitch. We had to walk to the top which was torture.”

And though her bottom had been pounded to a tender numbness, Nina could see the advantage of riding over walking. They were soon at the top and looking down over further hills and the setting sun.

“That there’s St Kenelm’s Pass and down there’s Hagley Wood. Some days you can see the Black Mountains from here,” said Dick.

“Yeah, all right, Frodo. Is it far?”

“Hagley Wood. We make towards that monument thing, the big needle. Our old camp was before that.” He looked at the darkening sky. “You not afraid of ghosts?”

“Not ones that live in wells and call people ‘fleshlings’.”

Dick kicked the horse’s side and they made their way down.

HELL

When Bakhan came to Vivian at her desk in the scriptorium she was multi-tasking and philosophically mourning the loss of her arm. Teaching the thoggan youngling his letters while repeatedly putting the quill back in the mad Carcosan’s hand whilst simultaneously finishing a word-armoured cloak for one of Yabandeman’s commanders tested her one-armed abilities to the limit.

She was teaching the youngling to write its name, although that had first entailed giving it a name as it did not seem to have one, and had apparently spent its early life responding simply to shouts and kicks. The second challenge was stopping it eating its quill and parchment (and, in fact, the corner of its desk, which it gnawed on when bored).

“No, Barry put it down and work on your letters. That’s a ‘yed’ and then a “hwa’. ‘Hwa’ with the curly bit at the bottom.”

It was at that point that the Carcosan word mage dropped his quill again and bashed his desk in annoyance. Vivian patiently returned the dropped quill to him and he continued to write nonsense squiggles on the same parchment he’d been scribbling on ever since Vivian’s arrival.

Bakhan approached through the aisles of empty desks. Vivian bent over her work. She had quickly come to realise how much Bakhan depended on her meagre literacy skills but she nonetheless wanted to present a professional image to him at all times.

“How! Goes! Cloak! Work?”

“It is nearly done,” she said, which was not a lie.

“What! This?” he asked, spearing the edge of a piece of paper tucked under the vellum sheet she was working on.

“It’s part of a book,” she told him.

They were the pages of the Big Bloody Book that had fallen with her into hell. She had kept them in the pocket of her tattered and filth-covered jacket since their arrival, alongside the nib with which they had allegedly been written. She had taken them out to compare with tomes in the scriptorium library. If there was an infinite compendium of all things, human and Venislarn, she had expected to find at least some references to it in the library. She had found none so far but she was not put out. The library was vast and she had time. Or rather, in this timeless realm, she did not not have time as there was no time to not have.

Bakhan did not read them but felt the pages between his claw tips. “Thin! Mater! Ial!”

“Paper,” she said.

His flesh cowl riffled with interest and then he saw the youngling’s handiwork and pulled the vellum sheet away from the youngling. Its edge was ripped and wet with saliva.

“Waste! Ful!” said Bakhan sternly.

“Barry,” sighed Vivian, “you must stop eating everything.”

“But it’th tathty,” said the youngling. “Tathteth of people.”

“Barry?” said Bakhan.

“After Barry Gibb. The Bee Gee. The teeth. They… Never mind.”

“Do! Mind! Waste! Ful!”

We have more sheets.”

“Need! To! Make! More!” said Bakhan and beckoned her to follow.

Vivian complied without question, grabbing the sheets from the Big Bloody Book before following him. She knew this moment had been coming since her arrival and although she saw no purpose in being squeamish about the inevitable, she had been content to put it out of her mind. The human cattle, brought by Rhempkin and Stok, had been deposited in a storage pit in a far corner of the scriptorium complex. A patchwork nightmare waited for Bakhan and Vivian at the pit’s edge. It had a long knife in its grip and a nervous energy and a sheet of yellow bone where any normal entity would keep its eyes.

“We stick ‘em?” it asked. “Stick ‘em now?”

Vivian looked over the edge. A dozen filthy faces looked up.

“You! Make! Choice?” Bakhan asked her.

“You want me to dispatch them too?” she asked unhappily.

Bakhan took that as a request, snatched the knife from the stitched monster and offered the blade to Vivian.

“You! Ex! Pert!”

Vivian sighed. She was irritated more than anything. She had found a niche of sorts here in Hath-No and, although far from content, she had routine and purpose and as much comfort as any person might expect in hell. This was an interruption.

“Bring that one up,” she said, pointing.

The eyeless patchwork creature swept down with its long arms and skilfully snagged the young woman by the arm and hauled her up. She came up screaming. The eyeless one deposited her on the ground, the woman collapsed in terrified howls. Eyeless pulled her upright. The woman curled up again. Eyeless tried a third time and was annoyed at her lack of co-operation.

“Leave her be,” said Vivian.

“I oughtta stick it?” it asked. “Stick it good?”

The woman crouched, head bowed and defeated. Words escaped between the sobs. Vivian angled her mask-covered head to listen.

“Señor glorioso, ruegote, salvatme!”

To Vivian’s ear, it sounded like Spanish, maybe Portuguese. Vivian did not speak either Spanish or Portuguese. She had not felt the study of other human languages worth her time. She didn’t believe she should feel ashamed that her native language was the global lingua franca of the age. As far as she could tell, British people who learned foreign languages only did it to improve their CV or to assuage their guilt at three hundred years of British colonisation of world culture.

Bakhan pinched the flesh of the woman’s shoulder. “Is! Good?”

“Good?” said Vivian. “It’s unacceptable.”

“Not! Good! Skin?”

Vivian put her hand on the woman. The woman’s sobs subsided. Had she recognised the warm touch of another human? Vivian withdrew before the Spaniard paid her hand close attention.

“This will not do,” she said. “For one, they’re dirty.”

“Clean! After!”

“But the dirt has given them sores and spots. Look. That’s a blemish. It’s weak and saggy and these creatures need feeding up.”

“Feeding! Up?”

“With human food.” She realised that she had walked into a conversational mine field. “Food that humans eat,” she clarified. “Fruit. Vegetables. Grains.”

“Grains?”

“Anything. But nothing rotten.”

“Food! Expensive!”

She shook her head at her master. “You feed them well, you will get the best vellum. And they need to be kept somewhere clean, with proper bedding. And clothes.”

“Why! Clothes?”

“Humans like clothes,” she said. “A happy herd is a healthy herd. Have you people never heard of animal welfare?” It was a sharply rhetorical question. Of course, they hadn’t.

She pointed at the open spaces available around them. “I want baths put in here.”

“Baths?”

“Hot water. And soap. Um, rendered fat product for washing. I’ll show you, if I can remember how it’s done. I’m sure I saw some tubs of fat in the storeroom.”

“Boil! People!”

“Not these ones,” Vivian told him. “We’re going to clean them. And feed them. And actually bring them back to health.”

“But! Need! Vellum! Now!” Bakhan growled.

“Stick ‘em!” added Eyeless.

Vivian let the knife drop to the ground. “You want good vellum, you’ll do it right. We’ll use our last supplies carefully. No more wastage.”

Bakhan’s flesh cowl rose over his head. This was a sign of deep thought or deep annoyance. He toyed thoughtfully with the woman’s hair and then jabbed Eyeless in the shoulder.

“Baths! There! Cooking! Pots!”

“We’re not gonna stick ‘em?” said Eyeless.

“And! Beds! And! Fetch! Food!” He wheeled on Vivian. “Make! Soap! Make! Clean! Make! Good! Skin!”

“I have other chores, Master Bakhan –”

“Your! Respons! Ibility!”

Sha Datsei eyed Steve suspiciously. Her segmented limb held him fast as she was in no hurry.

“Why would you say you were not poisoned?”

“Because I’m not poisoned,” he said.

“But why would you say it?” she asked.

He looked at her like the idiot she evidently was.

“Because I’m not poisoned. I am unpoisoned. Poison is something I do not contain.”

“Lots of things are not poisoned,” she said.

“And I am one of them,” he replied.

She carried him across her cell. She had dozens of limbs, each one composed of several jointed lengths of finger-thin material that could be bone or metal or horn. She was like a gargantuan umbrella that had shed its fabric and grown to monstrous proportions. Her multi-jointed body shape gave her a fluid control over her physical dimensions and Steve was beginning to see how she could have fit into any of those varied skin cases she had cast off and left around the chamber.

She settled in a high corner and dangled him below her.

“If you were intelligent, you would have been better off telling me you were poisoned.”

“But I’m not.”

“Intelligent? Or poisoned?”

“Yes. Both. The second one. I am one but not the other.”

“But you told me you were not poisoned.”

“I did.”

“Which makes me assume that you are poisoned.”

“That’s stupid,” he said.

“If I told you not to think of a pink Tweepadoc, what would you think of?”

“What’s a Tweepadoc?”

She squeezed tighter. It did not cause him any pain but if she persisted, she might burst one of his seams. And then she’d definitely be in trouble.

“So, you are telling me that there is no poison in you?”

“Yes!”

“Yes you are telling me or yes you are poisoned?”

“Yes, I’m telling you that.”

“Nothing that will cause me harm if I ate you?”

“Correct – no, wait.”

“What?”

“I do have an explosive Tyriat ideogram inside me.”

She held him at arms’ length, which was a notable distance for Sha Datsei. “So, you are poisoned!”

“Only if the rune is activated.”

“Fie!” she cried and flung Steve away. He bounced painlessly off a wall and crash landed in the lap of one of her shed skin-casings. “If he wants to kill me, he should have the courage to come down here and do it himself!” she spat.

“King Yabandeman didn’t put it there,” said Steve, brushing himself down. “It was Mrs Vivian Grey.”

“Who?”

1773

Hagley Wood was dark and full of shadows and Nina realised for the first time that she did not carry any means to make light or fire. That Isabella cow had her phone and Nina had given up smoking years before (although her mum still blamed Nina’s lack of height on her brief habit, not on anything as obvious as the crappy genes her tiny mum had passed to her).

They dismounted to avoid getting constantly slapped in the face by branches.

“Is it far?” said Nina.

“Our camp was just here,” said Dick.

“But the well?”

“That way.”

“Lead on,” she said.

“You lead on,” he said.

“You know where we’re going,” she argued.

“You’re the one not afraid of ghosts,” he replied.

“I don’t think it’s a ghost,” she said but took the lead anyway.

“How do you know?” asked Dick. “‘ere, you’re not a witch, are you?”

“Maybe,” she said.

She walked on and realised he wasn’t following. “What? I’m not really a witch.” She tutted. “Come on, Dick. I can’t find this alone.”

After a second or two he followed. Maybe he trusted her. Maybe he didn’t want to be alone in the woods at dusk.

“Through there, ‘tween those two trees. So how would I know?”

“Know what?” she said.

“If you was witch.”

“Dunno. Just be glad you didn’t try to touch me. Ooh, bad juju if you touch a witch’s dumplings.”

“Why? What happens?”

Nina shrugged. “Er, you knob falls off.”

“Does it?” he said, with dreadful fascination.

“Absolutely. Well known fact.”

His hand clutched her elbow.

“Hey,” she said but he didn’t let go and then she saw why. The hole in the ground was near invisible in the dusky gloom. It was three feet across, big enough to swallow her and circled by only a shin-high stone wall.

“Crap,” she said.

“If you were a witch I shoulda let you fall in,” he said.

She knelt at the side of the well and gazed down. The darkness was impenetrable.

“Why’s there a well in the middle of wood anyway?” she said.

“For water,” said Dick.

“I meant why here. We’re miles from anywhere.”

“But water’s water for people who are passing by and are in need.”

“Hello, down there!” she called into the hole.

“You’ll wake the ghost!” hissed Dick and started praying.

“Ghosts don’t sleep. And it’s not a ghost,” said Nina. “His name’s Steve.”

“Steve?”

“The Destroyer. He’s a friend of mine. Well, sort of not really. A frenemy. This cold bitch Isabella something mind-wiped the locals he’d sent himself to and then disposed of him. When I asked what she’d done, she said, ‘Well, well, well’. That woman’s clearly been to the Scooby Doo school of villain training.”

“Oh, I see,” said Dick. “‘Well, well, well’ and he’s down a well. Cor, right clever, that.”

“Simple tastes for a simpler time,” Nina muttered and then leaned over to call into the well. “Hello! Steve! Are you down there?”

“Who waketh me from my slumber?” replied a reverberating voice from the depths.

“Od’s bodkin!” squealed Dick and resumed his prayer (although it seemed he only knew the first two lines of the Lord’s Prayer and just repeated them over and over again).

“Who darest approach my lair?” called the voice.

“Are you bloody kidding?” said Nina. “Who darest approach my… Who do you think you are? Sir Ian bloody McKellan?”

“Who?” said the voice.

“You know. Gandalf. I’ve got Frodo Baggins’ dirty-minded cousin up here. You two could do a double act. Is that you down there, Steve?”

“Might be,” said the voice. “Who’s that?”

“Nina. From the consular mission. What are you pissing about with the silly voices for?”

There was a pause. “Boredom, mainly,” said Steve. “I’ve been down here for months.”

“Why don’t you come out?”

Chains rattled in the depths. “I would but she bound me.”

“Rope,” said Nina. Dick passed her the bulk of it and tied the end around the base of a tree.

Nina threw the rope down. There was a thump and a splash and an ‘Oi!’

“What is it?” said Dick. “An ‘obgoblin?”

“A rag doll,” said Nina, testing the secureness of the line and trying to recall if she was any good at climbing.

“But it speaks!”

“Yes. That’s because it’s possessed by the spirit of a demon.”

“Lord help us!”

“He won’t,” said Nina. “We looked into that.”

She kicked off her shoes and lowered herself over the edge. She dug her toes into the thick gaps of the well wall and gripped the rope as she descended. It was all by touch. The darkness had closed around her almost immediately.

“So, Steve?”

“What is it, mortal?” he said.

“Why didn’t Isabella – it was Isabella, wasn’t it?”

“The Spanish girl.”

“Spanish? Okay, right. Why didn’t she just destroy you?”

“She thought I was going to explode.”

“Is that likely?”

“Entirely possible.”

“Um. Why?”

“Because Mrs Vivian Grey is a treacherous witch with no respect for her betters.”

“Did he say ‘witch’?” called Dick from above.

“No,” Nina shouted back.

Her foot touched water and then brushed against something hard and wooden. Chains rattled. Nina checked her footholds and reached out. Her hand found the edge of something, a bucket, broken by the feel of it, floating on the water and, inside, metal links and something soft and squidgy.

“Stop poking me, creature,” said Steve.

He was wrapped in chains and floating in a bucket at the bottom of a well. Too heavy for her to carry back up.

“Hold still,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Steve.

“I meant…” She stepped off the wall and splashed into the water beside the bucket. “Ach. Cold! Here.” She made a coil of rope and blindly fed it through what loops of chain she could find. She tied them off as best she could in a granny knot and began to climb.

Her wet feet had less grip on the way back up but the footholds were good. She kept one forearm wrapped around the rope but barely needed it. As she neared the top, she saw Dick peering over. Her reached down to pull her up.

“Where is it?” he said.

She rolled over the lip of the well and laid on her back to get her breath.

“Pull it up,” she said.

“The demon?”

“He’s a friendly demon, don’t worry.”

“I will tear your soul apart!” cried Steve.

“Ignore him,” said Nina weakly. “It’s fine. Really.”

Ten minutes later, Nina was sitting, drying off in front of a fire that Dick had built. She still wore her wet dress despite Dick’s pleas that she really ought to take it off or might suffer chilblains.

Nina had smashed the rotten bucket Steve had been sat in and was now trying to untangle the layers of bucket chain that had been wrapped round and round him.

Dick stared at Steve, fascinated. Who wouldn’t be? Nina had only known Steve the Destroyer briefly. His body was a pabash kaj doll, a Burmese fetish creature made from rough cloth and heavy stitching, the same basic shape as a gingerbread man and about as sophisticated. The creature that inhabited the body was some mid-ranking torturer-warrior thing from the demonic entourage of Prein. He acted like he still he was an armour-plated horror rather than a cut-price toy.

“If you free it, will it kill us?” said Dick.

“No, it won’t,” said Nina.

“You don’t know that,” said Steve. “I might.”

“But will you?” she said.

“Maybe.”

“I could throw you back down the well.”

“Didn’t ask to be rescued.”

“Dick.”

“What?” said Dick.

“Not you,” she said. “Him.”

She pulled a loop of chain free which was all well and good but tightened another knot in the process.

“Last I saw of you, you had fallen into leng-space. With Vivian.”

“We had,” said Steve. “I did.”

“What happened?”

He tapped the chains binding his chest reflectively. “You wish me to tell my tale, gobbet?”

“Yes.”

“It is a tale to shake you to your core,” he said.

“I like a good story,” said Dick.

HELL>

Vivian quickly came to see why Bakhan despaired at the cobbled together creatures that Yabandeman had given him as servants. Eyeless and the other patchwork ruins seemed capable of misunderstanding even the simplest of instructions. Cauldron-like tubs had been set up in the space near to the humans’ pit but getting the servants to understand that some were for soap production, others to be used as baths by the people and others for preparing some form of stew or broth for the humans to eat was a constant battle. Either the creatures had no long term memory, were cognitively impaired or were being wilfully stupid. Vivian was forced to explain on numerous occasions that the people were to be cleaned not cooked, the fat was being rendered for soap not soup and that the various tubers, grasses and critters thrown into the broth were going to be a meal, not some arcane potion. In the end, she decided that it would be best that the humans not be placed in any pots whatsoever without her present, in case some hideous mix up occurred.

This additional burden on her meant she had limited opportunities to continue with the business of producing the written work demanded by the powers above which, in the light of the vellum shortage, was perhaps all for the better. Young Barry’s writing lessons were abandoned and, perhaps under the impression that Vivian had adopted him as some sort of pet, Bakhan did not object to the youngling roaming freely around the scriptorium halls. However, he rarely strayed far from Vivian’s heels and followed her like a puppy.

He was by her side when the first humans were brought up to be bathed and clothed. The first half dozen were all men, with wild dark hair and matted beards.

“These are for you to get a bath,” she told them in English.

“¿Mas qué decís?” said one.

“Ello no es la lengua de el demonio,” said another.

“A bath,” she said.

“No es frances.”

“Credemos que es ingles. El demonio fabla ingles.”

“Ingles?” said Vivian. “Yes, English. And this is a bath.”

They still failed to understand and chattered back and forth in their own language.

“Bath,” she said and did a mime of washing under her armpit.

“Volatis nos lauamos, maga?” one said.

“laua…? Lather? Yes,” said Vivian. “You lather yourselves.”

A small young man tentatively stepped into the milky warm water. The others waited and watched while he took a tough brush and began to sluice himself down. He slid forward and submerged himself fully and then came up with a grin.

“A Dios gratias, que bueno!”

He was scrubbing his hair when the next man could not bear it anymore and climbed in too. Soon enough they were all clambering in and clawing at their filthy flesh and lice-ridden scalps.

“I’m trying to get them to make soap too,” she explained over the splashing, “but I’m not sure of what we’re meant to do. I know it involves wood ash or something but I’m don’t clearly recall.”

“Soap?” said the little man who had first ventured into the bath.

“Soap,” she said and then did her little washing mime again and made a claw of her hand as though holding a bar of soap.

“¿Scoba?” he suggested. “¿Trapo?”

“Possibly,” she said.

Once they were out and shaking themselves dry, she led them over to the pile of clothes she’d had Eyeless and his cohorts bring over from the store room. She had ignored the ripped and the rotten and those that told the bloody story of their previous owners. These people didn’t need to know they were getting dressed in the clothes of dead people. Perhaps they were beyond caring.

She did notice that the men were surprised by many of the clothes. They initially ignored all of the trousers and were perplexed by clothes with zippers and Velcro. They gravitated automatically to the simpler shirts, the coats and simpler leggings. The clothes in the store were of styles and materials that ranged across all of human history and Vivian suspected that these individuals were not from her own time. There was no reason why they had to be. Time and history were a nonsense here.

She felt a vexing need to ask them where and when they were from and how a band of Spaniards had ended up as prisoners in hell but if none of them had the decency to speak English then those questions would have to go unanswered.

After dressing in such oddments as covered their modesty, she led them to the food cauldron and the patchwork servant she had told to serve up. Its stupidity and inability to comprehend the different functions of spoons and bowls was quickly brushed aside by the Spaniards who served themselves up and wolfed down the hot broth. The food didn’t smell particularly enticing but the men wolfed it down nonetheless. Perhaps in hell, any food was better than no food, although that was not Vivian’s experience.

“¡Sopas!” declared the little man.

“This is soup,” said Vivian. “But earlier I was talking about soap.”

“¿Sopas?”

“Not soup, soap,” she said and pointed at the rendering tubs.

“¿Aquello tanbien es sopas?”

“No. This is soup. That’s soap. It’s… Oh, just forget about it.”

Once the first batch of people had been bathed, clothed and fed, the process became self-sustaining. The men helped others from the pit. There was hesitation and bickering and the bitter assertion of a pecking order between the people but, since Vivian could not understand the language, she had no intention of intervening.

There was a young girl who had found an eccentric outfit comprising a long tunic and a skirt that was many sizes too big for her, but she hoisted the whole thing up with a belt and flounced up and down, evidently very pleased with herself. Inspired, the youngest of them all, a small girl with bucked teeth, made a serviceable dress for herself from a man’s shirt.

Soon enough, all of them were cleaned and eating. The little man who had braved the baths first stood beside the fat-rendering pots with a brown-haired woman. He now wore a peasant’s tabard, she wore a skirt and a Liverpool United football shirt.

They discussed the pots’ contents for some time.

The woman turned to Vivian. “¿Es sapo?” She made a scrubbing action against her skirt.

“Yes! Soap,” said Vivian. “I did say.”

“Debet aniadir cal,” said the man.

“¿Aniaden cal?” the woman asked Vivian.

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

The woman’s gaze flicked fearfully to behind Vivian. Eyeless came up behind her.

“The humans are clean?” said Eyeless.

“Yes, they are,” she said.

Many went back for more food. Some were sick, and Vivian felt there was nothing she could do about that. She had improved the lot of these people, given them a modicum of relief from their suffering. That had been her job and her philosophy back on earth: to relieve the pain of as many as possible for as long as she could, even in the knowledge that the pain, awful and unbearable, would come back eventually. The quality of lives could not be judged on how they ended but on how they were lived.

“We stick ‘em now?” said Eyeless.

“No. We wait until they are healthy,” she said.

She could not tell the Spaniards that they were only being cared for now in order to be sent to the slaughterhouse later. She could not tell them and did not want to. A number of the humans went to the pile of clothes to take items to make beds or stuffed rags into shirts to make pillows. Barry sat among the remnants, throwing garments merrily into the air and chewing on a strip of fabric.

“Bakhan needs vellum now,” said Eyeless.

“Yes, but he will have to cope. Something will come up, I’m sure,” she said and as she said it, the answer came to her. She hurried as fast as her weak and lopsided body would allow over to Barry and the pile of clothes. She took the strip of material from his mouth. It looked like cotton, old and fraying but it was cotton.

“We need boiling water,” she told Eyeless.

“More boiling water?”

“You have quite the attitude for someone with no face,” she told him. “Yes, boiling water. Heat up those baths. The humans don’t need them now.”

“We boilin’ the humans, yes?”

“Miguel,” she called and waved the man over.

The little Spaniard came to her.

Vivian dug in her pocket and took out the folded pages of the Bloody Big Book. “This is paper,” she said.

He made to take it from her. She shook her head.

“I’m just telling you: this is paper.”

“Papel, si,” he said.

“We can make paper by ripping this material up.”

“Rip?”

She tried to mime it but ripping was a mime that truly required two hands. Barry gave an excited grunt and ripped up the nearest piece of cloth.

“¡Vo!” exclaimed Miguel, understanding.

Vivian waved the other humans over. This might possibly work. Bakhan had seen the pages of the Big Bloody Book and been mystified by the material. There was no paper in hell.

“We’re going to reinvent paper,” Vivian told an uncomprehending Miguel. “And maybe save all your hides.”

Sha Datsei sulked. She squatted in the corner and spun a confection of fresh flesh from the spinneret in her belly. It was soon a face. It was a spiteful little face.

“I can tell you something with certainty,” she said. “Yabandeman hates one of us enough to see us dead.”

“Or both of us,” said Steve cheerfully.

“Quite.”

“Or perhaps this is a test.”

“A test?” she said.

“He knows that I am powerful and fearless,” said Steve. “But he does not know how powerful.”

“You are certainly… something,” she said.

“Yes, indeed,” he agreed. “You recognise it too.”

Sha Datsei spun the face a sharp and cruel chin and then went on to create its neck and body.

“We should use this situation to our advantage,” she said.

“How do you mean, woman?”

“He expects you to be eaten or me to be poisoned. But neither has happened. When you return, he will be mystified. He will be prepared to believe the impossible. Maybe enough that I can win my position in his affections again and take my place at his side once more.”

Steve watched her work and nodded thoughtfully. He did not have any inkling what the mad spindly creature was on about but he felt it looked good to nod thoughtfully.

“And when you are back at his side, what will you do?” said Steve. “Be a dutiful consort or slay him where he sits?”

Sha Datsei shrugged which was a beautiful whole body action. “Let’s see how the mood takes me when we get there.”

Steve was surprised. “He killed your brother, didn’t he?”

Sha Datsei slipped the half-form body over herself. She squeezed, curved her limbs to fill the spaces appropriately. When she moved, when she smiled, it was possible to believe that Sha Datsei was the skin she wore and not the wiry framework within.

“I was only angry because I didn’t get to do it first,” she said.

Bakhan watched the humans at work and Vivian watched Bakhan. He looked troubled, but then Bakhan Sand never looked happy. She wondered if he saw this new industry in the scriptorium as part of the continuing decline of all things or if he grasped that there might be something positive in this new venture.

Escorted by Eyeless’s patchwork things, one group of humans continually ferried clothes in from the storeroom. If any of them had been ignorant of where those clothes had originated they were now fully aware of the fate of most of the humans who had come to this place. If the bloodied rags in the clothes store weren’t sufficient, then the shelves of body parts were.

Another group sorted the clothes into natural and artificial fibres. This was mostly done by look and feel but Vivian had pointed out the labels that could be found on more modern clothing and cries of “Polyester!” and “Lycra!” occasionally went up from the sorting team. Vivian had noted that there appeared to be no clothes at all that were identifiably from after her own time. She filed this away for future thought.

The clothes were then passed to the rippers who tore the clothes into strips before throwing them into the bubbling pots.

Partit e pone los en la caçuela,” said Barry, who had picked up the humans’ language very quickly. “Bien e pequeño.”

The young girl with bucked teeth clearly shared Barry’s talent for languages and the pair conversed in a curious pidgin Venislarn.

Vivian had worked with Bakhan and the more skilful prisoners to construct rectangular mesh trays. These were dipped into pots of boiled down linen slops, shaken free of moisture and then the pages tipped out onto clean fabric sheets to dry.

Pressing the paper into sheets required tools not readily available. After explaining the requirements to Bakhan, his suggestion that he get some of the patchwork monsters to stamp on the sheets was quickly turned down. Rollers and presses were sought.

The first sheets of paper Hath-No had ever produced were rough and uneven but they soon improved.

Miguel and another man approached Vivian. They bowed to her and smiled at Barry.

“Donya Vivian Grey, ¿el papel vsa se para escrivir?”

“They want to know what the paper ith for,” translated Barry.

“Why?” said Vivian.

Miguel explained and Barry translated. “It theemth, Juan here lived next door to a paper-maker in plathe called Bullenthia – ”

“Valentia, si,” said the man.

“And you need to wash the paper in thpethial glue or the ink will run.”

Vivian did not have a quill on her but she had the pen nib she had carried in her pocket since earth and took it out to mime writing and the smearing of ink.

“Si. Si,” said the man enthusiastically.

She nodded. “We can make glue. We have bones and old skins. Ask Juan here if he knows how to make the glue.”

Vivian turned the blackened metal nib over in her fingers. She was currently using natural quills in the scriptorium. It struck her as fitting that, if hell was moving to paper-based technology, they should also think about moving from the quill to the pen.

“Bakhan!” she called. “Is there anyone in this fortress who can make these?”

PRESENT DAY

Vaughn Sitterson sat at the head of the meeting room table. He had a range of lever arch folders in front of him, each filled with solid inches of documentation. He stared at the folders, not at his two underlings.

“When Greg Robinson died and there was a change of leadership at the mission, it was evident that key policies needed either rewriting or putting in place. Health and safety in the workplace policy, employee responsibilities and expectations policy.” As he said each, he took a folder and stacked it in front of him. “Public relations policy, inter-agency co-operation and a crisis situation management policy.”

The folders were fat and soon he had built himself a little wall to hide behind. Rod noticed he’d even offset the ‘bricks’ in each layer to create a bit of structural integrity.

“We have limited resources here in this office. There was an incident at the Think Tank earlier today. There is a dead August Handmaiden of Prein at the scene and two of our response officers have gone missing.”

“We know,” said Nina. “We tried to say. Kathy kidnapped Morag.”

“Wild speculation,” said Vaughn.

“I was there!” said Nina. “Kathy had help. Someone tasered me at the Think Tank.” She pointed to herself. “It was weeks ago but I can still feel it.”

“Weeks…?” said Vaughn faintly.

“Time travel,” said Rod, waving the point away. “Point is, we need to find out where they are holding Morag.”

“The point is,” said Vaughn, with the firmness of a man who was keen to seize the point before it wriggled away from him, “none of this is an excuse for two of my response team to storm into the offices of local businesses, threaten staff and make the wildest of accusations.”

“They’re not wild, they’re true,” said Nina.

“And why are you still dressed like that?” said Vaughn. “Staff dress code…”

He tried to pull a folder out of the wall he’d built in front of him.

“At least she smells better now,” said Rod.

“So bears and wolves can’t track me,” Nina added.

Vaughn’s wall looked ready to fall. He gave up on trying to extract the policy document he needed.

“I think you’re both unfit to continue in your current capacity. Whether it’s illness or stress or… or brain parasites.”

“Brain parasites?” said Rod.

Nina shrugged. “Greg had them one time.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. Remember? That time he bought himself a little Hyundai coupe, grew a little soul patch and started playing guitar at his desk.”

“I thought he was having a mid-life crisis,” said Rod.

“Un-uh. Brain worms.”

“Oh,” said Rod, lightly surprised. “He even asked me if I wanted to start a band with him.”

“Fairly certain that was the brain worms,” said Nina.

“Policy states that you should have your security clearance and access rescinded until such time as you’re fit to continue work,” said Vaughn.

“To hell with policy,” said Rod.

“Take that back,” said Vaughn.

“We have a genuine, live and time sensitive crisis on our hands right now, Vaughn! Morag is in danger.”

“And the relevant people have been informed. We are co-ordinating with the police on this.”

“But we can’t sit idly by.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Vaughn.” He was rearranging and rebuilding his wall of policy documents. “I think what we need to do is get you to share your accounts, separately, so that we can sort this out and move on.”

“Share our accounts?” said Nina.

“Tell someone. Get it all out. And then we can move on.”

Rod looked at Vaughn suspiciously, a pointless gesture on a man who never made eye-contact. “Someone important?”

“Yes.”

“Someone who can then do something? Something constructive?”

“Exactly,” agreed Vaughn and smiled. His wall was back in place, rock solid.

HELL

Steve entered the throne room, bearing the unwieldy tray over his head. He scuttled between individuals, not afraid to jump on a few toes or graze a few shins as he passed, until he was back to his chosen spot, halfway between the ranks of courtiers by the walls and the edge of Yabandeman’s bathing pool. There was a liveliness in the court and fresh tribute on the dais and Steve had to stand for a while before the self-important Crippen-Ai deigned to notice him.

“What are you doing here?” he said. “Did we not remittulate you with an errand?”

“You did, shifter,” said Steve. “And I went.”

“He never went,” jeered someone from the crowd.

“He got lost,” joked another.

Steve drew his paperclip weapon and turned on the courtiers. “Say that again, coward! Say that again and I will have your tongue!”

“Enough of this tattyfilarious nonsense,” said Crippen-Ai. “There are supplicants, applicants and mendicants to be presented to the court. Your failure to do as you were instructed will be –”

“I took the meal as requested to King Yabandeman’s honoured guest,” said Steve, in as grand a voice as he could produce, “and she thought it was delicious.”

Crippen-Ai extended a head on a length of elastic flesh to look at the tray. “But it is empty, you knitted fool.”

“Of course it’s empty now!” said Steve. “She ate it. I just told you.”

“It was empty before. Empty. Unencumbered. Non-pretainered.”

“You say that but Sha Datsei ate it all and said it was the finest meal she had ever received and, your majesty, she sends you this as a token of her thanks.” Steve unknotted the sack of flesh time over his shoulder and held it up.

Crippen-Ai reached for it but Yabandeman’s gangling arm came down and took it first. The king spread it out between his fingertips and looked at one of Sha Datsei’s discarded faces.

“How is my lady?” he said, seemingly of no one.

“She is well, your majesty,” said Steve, “and hopes you will send more delicious food in fond memory of her.”

Yabandeman slowly tore his gaze away from the flesh face. “More delicious food?”

“Air, your majesty,” said Steve.

“Air?” said Crippen-Ai.

“That’s right. She drank it like soup. Saw it with my own wooden eyes. If you can tell me where you got it from, I can go get some myself.”

The brows above Yabandeman’s huge orange eyes crinkled in confusion.

“I assume it’s from in here somewhere,” said Steve.

There was the small but clear sound of one of Yabandeman’s food-taster courtiers sucking in and then swallowing down a mouthful of air. Heads turned. The courtier shrank, embarrassed, and Steve could feel the moment hanging on a knife-edge, a wobble as the crowd waited. And then, at once, there was the hissing and inverted belching of hundreds of individuals trying to eat the air around them. Gums flapped, teeth whistled and oesophagi strained as air was gulped in.

“I don’t taste anything,” said one.

“This air is sweeter than that,” said another.

“I think I have it,” shouted a third, keen to please. “Yes, definitely tastier air over here. No, no shoving.”

Individuals jostled and pushed. Claws were extended, as were threats.

To Steve, it was utterly mystifying, made doubly so by the fact that this was what Sha Datsei had predicted. ‘A hall full of sycophants claiming that they could taste it too, the most delicious non-existent meal ever.’

The courtiers trampled on each other’s intestinal links to their monarch as they crowded.

“I’m eating it, my lord!” yelled one, almost swamped by others. “You will taste it soon!”

“Enough!” shouted Crippen-Ai but his voice was more suited to conspiratorial whispers than to crowd control.

The frenzied air eating continued.

“Enough!” bellowed Yabandeman, grabbed a handful of umbilical tubes and bodily dragged dozens of courtiers away from the scrum. The court fell silent (silent but for the occasional and suppressed sucking gulp of a courtier trying to eat some air on the sly). “Enough,” he said. “Let it be known that if any finds the delicious air my Sha Datsei craves then we will present it to her again.”

“I think I have it,” continued one courtier but had the sense to keep his voice down and not make a fuss of it.

“I’m sure his majesty does not need recognating that Sha Datsei is his prisoner, an enemy in his sight,” said Crippen-Ai.

Yabandeman narrowed his gaze at the acting-chancellor and said nothing.

The ring of courtiers parted as more tribute was brought in. Steve recognised the bodu-papa merchants, Rhempkin and Stok, leading their gindo-drawn qanikir sled into the throne room.

“Ah, the skin-traders,” said Crippen-Ai.

“Greetings,” said Rhempkin.

“Greetings to you,” said Stok and the two, bound head to head by the grey-green coral parasite, bowed as one.

“We return to his majesty’s –”

“- court with the finest wares from Lonzhpar. We have sought the softest –”

“- the purest stock animals and hope they will find favour –”

“- in your eyes. Your patronage and indulgence is all we crave.”

“So true.”

“So simple.”

“We only live –”

“- to serve.”

While they prattled on, they brought their sled around and unlatched the opening at the back. The humans within cowered and the bodu-papa had to drag them out one at a time, tapping them with the painful end of a whip-like switch.

The humans huddled and held themselves as they were brought out in front of the eager court. They whimpered and whined, a constant sound like the buzzing of insect wings. It was a piteous and nauseating sound, thought Steve.

Vivian walked two paces behind Bakhan Sand. Barry the thoggan walked beside her carrying a thick pile of the newly created paper. They were heavy, more card than paper but they were smooth and uniformly rectangular and would serve the scriptorium’s purpose well. Bakhan had insisted however that they be brought to the court for the king’s approval. His was the only opinion that mattered.

There were no windows in Hath-No. The orb-shaped fortress had many gates and entrances but they were all functional. Nobody in hell demanded a room with a view. The journey from the scriptorium to the throne room was from one set of windowless tunnels and caverns to another but as they rose – always by winding, sloping corridors, never by stairs – Vivian nonetheless felt that they were entered an a portion of the fortress that was less dungeon-like and more palatial. The filth-smeared tunnels widened, the light sources were brighter and clearer and the hubbub of a working, living place grew around them.

“Is the throne room at the centre of the fortress?” Vivian asked Bakhan.

“No!” he said. “Centre! Is! The! God! Heart!”

“What’s the God-Heart?”

He shushed her. “Silent! We! Enter!”

The throne room was a great circular dome of a room. Vivian followed Bakhan through a segment of the gathered crowd composed of palace functionaries and court officials. She could see that the great and powerful had arrayed themselves in a space facing the king himself, the corpulent giant submerged to his waist in the pool at the room’s centre. All eyes were currently on the line of naked humans being paraded in front of the throne by Rhempkin and Stok.

“They’re back,” said Vivian.

“Ssssh,” said Bakhan. He was good at shushing; he had the tongue for it. “Have! Come! From! Lonzhpar! Good! Humans!”

“The betht human thkin comes from Lonzhpar,” said Barry. “Papa alwayth thed.”

Lonzhpar. Vivian had heard mention of that before, from Rhempkin and Stok’s own mouths. She had been delirious at the time, semi-conscious at best. It had been aboard the giant traverser. They had been speaking of killing, of cursed fabrics from Lonzhpar, of assassinating the ‘Shit’.

“Yabandeman eb Muda,” she whispered to herself.

“They! Are! Agreeing! Price!” said Bakhan. “Should! We! Stop! Them? Show! Paper?”

Vivian was trying to work through the implications of this Venislarn monarch being killed. There were no Venislarn who were sympathetic to humans – no more than there were cows sympathetic to grass – but there was presumably some advantage, either for her personally or for humanity at large, in Yabandeman being either dead or not dead. He had taken the fortress from Steve’s people and Steve (just about visible among the streamers of gut on the throne room floor) was her ally, of sorts. Although he had originally planned to sell her to the Prein. But the Prein had maintained a functioning scriptorium, which was her current haven. But would they want to keep her there if they ever returned to power? There was a lot to be said for maintaining the status quo.

“Yes, yes,” she urged Bakhan. “Intervene. Now.”

“Stop!” shouted Bakhan, striding forward, tiptoeing where necessary over Yabandeman’s feeding tubes. Vivian followed as quickly as she could and Barry brought up the rear.

The bodu-papa traders glared at Bakhan.

“Interrupting us while we –”

“- sing the praises of these finest wares?” said the traders.

“Most impertinent.”

“For shame.”

“For shame.”

“We should raise our prices.”

“Higher –”

“ – and higher.”

“But we respect King Yabandeman and –”

“We! Don’t! Need! Skins!” said Bakhan.

“What nonsense does –”

“- he speak?”

“Don’t! Need! Have! Paper!”

“Has the overseerage of the scriptorium tannery addled your mind, Bakhan?” said Crippen-Ai but Bakhan ignored him and waved Vivian and Barry forward.

Vivian bowed towards the king. She did not like the way his gaze drank her in but she ignored such unhelpful nerves and took a sheet of paper from Barry’s pile.

“Paper, your majesty,” she said. “Cheap to provide. Uniform. Durable. We have enough materials in Hath-No to make ten thousand sheets.”

“Ah,” said Crippen-Ai. “Mrs Vivian Grey. My omniadept travelling companion.” He corkscrewed his body to face Yabandeman. “You will recall the pieces of tribute which offered the court such eucussment.”

Yabandeman rolled forward in his tub, slopping grey water over the rim and the inscribed sword that rest there. “Is it true you slaughtered the false god Father Hole-Punch?”

“I don’t know who that is,” said Vivian.

“See!” said Steve, bounding over and swinging himself on the tails of Vivian’s cloak to mount her shoulder. “I told you of her contempt.”

“You tell us many things,” said Crippen-Ai. “I would not be surprised if your cavatous body was not full of utterances of variable honesty.”

“Are you calling me a liar, blob-boy?” snarled Steve.

“I speak with disambiguated plainness,” said Crippen-Ai. “You, on the other hand, tell this court that the vile and disgraced quimsnare Sha Datsei has eaten and enjoyed a meal of rarefied and nutritious air!”

“She did,” said Steve.

“And you will speak of my former love with care,” Yabandeman warned Crippen-Ai.

“My amasculant apologies, my lord.”

“Rare airs you seek?” said Rhempkin.

“Nutritious airs?” said Stok.

“We have travelled far –”

“- and wide and have –”

“- heard of such things. You wish to use an inferior –”

“- product in your scribe-house? We will return when the experiment has failed with fine –”

“- reliable hides –”

“Paper! Not! Infer! Ior!”

“ – reliable hides –”

“- and precious airs. So sweet.”

“So tasty.”

“Dizzying.”

There were a few discreet burping gulps among the court.

“Stop doing that!” snapped Crippen-Ai.

“We will depart, leaving only our promise –”

“- to return and this –”

“- oh, this! –”

“- token of our service.”

Rhempkin untied a bundle from the back of one of the gindo beasts.

Vivian turned her head to whisper to Steve. “Who are our friends and enemies here?”

“We have no friends, Mrs Vivian Grey,” he replied tersely.

“Keep your voice down. Enemies?”

“I don’t like him,” Steve whispered, pointing at Crippen-Ai.

Rhempkin flung out the bundle and it unfurled from his hands, a long banner of wine-red material, interwoven with grey and black sigils. It looked like a section of cancerous lung rendered in fabric.

“A cloak for his majesty,” said Rhempkin.

“The finest Lonzhpar has ever produced.”

“Beautiful.”

“Regal.”

“Divine.”

Yabandeman reached out for it.

“It’s cursed!” said Vivian loudly.

Yabandeman paused. The traders spluttered.

“It will kill you, your majesty,” she said. “I heard them conspiring.”

“And now we see where Steve gets his enfabulances from,” said Crippen-Ai. “Cursed, indeed!”

“They are in the pay of the armies of Sulu Sukram,” she said.

“Are they?” said Yabandeman.

“Are they?” whispered Steve. “Why didn’t you tell me, woman?”

“Preposterous,” said Rhempkin.

“Absurd,” said Stok.

“Outlandish.”

“Unforgiveable.”

“For —”

“— shame.”

The pink jewelled-eye at the centre of the sponge-parasite was glowing brighter, ripples of light distending from its centre, a warping tunnel of indefinable distance stretching out behind it.

“They’re escaping,” said Vivian.

“Impossible,” said Crippen-Ai.

He was wrong. The jewel-eye was drilling a hole from this place to another. She stepped forward and took the Menscuzo wordblade from the edge of the king’s pool. The pair of bodu-papilou were held in place by the jewel-eye’s magic. Both raised their hands defensively. Vivian swung upward. The blade was feather light. It sliced through the parasitic bridge between the two traders. Stems of grey flesh sprayed out. The pink light died and the traders staggered apart, Rhempkin still glued to the larger chunk of the sponge creature, Stok wearing only a crown of severed flesh.

Rhempkin screamed and clutched at the parasite, trying to hold it up, trying to stem the bleeding. Stok stumbled away, gasping.

“My lord! My lord!” he cried out blindly. “It was not my fault. It made us do it! We had no choice!”

“No!” shrieked Rhempkin. “Don’t listen to him! Aaagh!”

The jewel-eye tried to glow again but it was only a flicker, a spasm in the throes of death. Vivian couldn’t be sure but, even at this distance, it looked like a Gellik rose orb, a powerful artefact indeed.

Stok tripped over one of Yabandeman’s feeding tubes and fell. He waved his arms about, grasping and imploring. Kerah-han beast-soldiers grabbed him.

Rhempkin was trying to keep his feet while supporting the sponge-creature which was now little more than a hat made of jelly. The creature’s uncontained innards poured down over Rhempkin’s head, the sac of its body emptying. And, as it died, it desperately drew energy from its single servant until Rhempkin was gasping like a landed fish. He made a final dry guttural noise and then dropped to the floor.

“Lock him up to await his majesty’s displeasure,” said Crippen-Ai even as the beast-soldiers were dragging Stok away.

The court was in uproar. Vivian did not think she would ever have cause to describe the Venislarn as hysterical but there were theatrics going on in the throne room that were so ostentatiously melodramatic that she had to hold back from telling them all to get a grip and pull themselves together.

Crippen-Ai bent over the dead bodu-papa. He made a star-shaped claw and prised the Gellik rose orb from the parasite’s deflated corpse.

“Assassins,” said Yabandeman. “In my court. How did this happen?”

“Your former high chancellor did not hold your safety in high regard,” said Crippen-Ai. “Now, if you were to formerly appoint me to the –”

“And you,” said Yabandeman, pointing a long finger at Vivian. “You knew.”

Yabandeman’s tone was neutral. He might have been accusing her of complicity or recognising she had saved him; she could not tell.

“I only knew for certain when I saw the cloth.” She looked at the material, screwed up in a heap on the floor. “It is a long story, your majesty.”

Yabandeman rested his hands on his belly and bobbed up and down a bit. Vivian eventually decided that was a signal for her to tell the story. Vivian regarded herself as an effective and efficient communicator but she knew that didn’t make her a natural storyteller. She had discovered fairly early in life that, when she told jokes, no one laughed, even though she recounted them perfectly. No one was interested in her personal anecdotes and, she came to realise that even she wasn’t interested in them either. Her life was her own and stories were for fools who had nothing better to do with their time. However, Yabandeman had requested her story and so she told it.

The story she told was the truth and nothing but the truth. She only omitted the unhelpful and unnecessary. She did not mention earth or the reasons that led her to hell. She did not mention her human nature and the need to disguise herself. All else, she relayed – the jagrahad forest, the bhaldis traverser and Steve’s impression of a mushroom (which he gladly repeated for the benefit of the court before offering to show them his impersonation of a tito fruit which he considered to be his masterpiece). She explained the overhearing of Rhempkin and Stok’s conversation, the meeting with Crippen-Ai, Hath-No and her job interview with Bakhan Sand, the reinvention of paper and the work she had put the humans to.

“And I would like to see the scriptorium make use of these,” she said and held up an object for the king’s inspection.

“It’s a wand,” someone shouted.

“A blade,” said another.

“It’s a pen,” she told them all. “It’s a permanent quill of sorts. And maybe one day we will start printing too.”

“Print! Ing?” said Bakhan.

“We’ll discuss it,” she whispered aside.

“You should be rewarded,” said Yabandeman. “A high position in the court.”

“Take it, woman. Take it,” Steve hissed in her eye.

“I am content with the position I have,” she said.

“If I may, your utlracircumferated majesty…” began Crippen-Ai but Yabandeman was picking up the Menscuzo wordblade.

“You wield it well,” said Yabandeman.

“Take it, woman. Take it,” hissed Steve.

“Pens, your majesty,” she said, holding hers up. “Not swords. There’s a saying where I come from.”

“Yes?”

“That the pen is mightier than the sword.”

“Yes?”

Around the throne room, the attentions of hundreds of alien horrors were fixed on her. “Well, it’s a saying, that the power of the written word has more sway than –”

“She speaks of spells,” said Crippen-Ai.

“Well, no, not just spells but the power of communication as a whole does more to…” She sighed. “It is a foreign saying, your majesty, and does not translate well.”

“Then what reward do you want?”

She pointed at the humans, almost unforgotten, huddling against the side of the traders’ sled.

“I will take them.”

Yabandeman squinted at the whimpering livestock as though they were as small and insignificant as dust.

“You have made errapatient claims that you no longer need these creatures?” said Crippen-Ai. “This paper…” He slid over and deftly lifted the sheet from her grasp. “… is it not the miracle product you say it is.”

“What do you want humans for?” Steve whispered in her ear. She brushed him off her shoulder.

“Paper manufacture is a labour-intensive process,” she said. “We need workers.”

“I have given Bakhan workers,” said Yabandeman.

Behind her, Bakhan nodded deeply and bowed, lowering the cowl over his face. Vivian hadn’t realised quite what a coward the scriptorium workmaster was.

“We need intelligent workers,” said Vivian.

“But humans?” said Crippen-Ai.

“Yes,” she said.

“And that’s all you need?” said Yabandeman.

Barry tugged her cloak. “Athk him if I can have my gong back, pleathe.”

She ignored him.

“The humans. And nothing else,” she said.

The king’s face had two eyes and a mouth, a chin, a jaw, ears but it was not a human face and she could read little in his expression.

“Make it so,” he said.

Guards moved in to herd the dozen or so humans. Vivian went over and beckoned them to follow. She did not dare address them in English publicly and doubted she would be so lucky to have English-speaking humans delivered to her this time. Even so, if she had spoken in English she might be uncovered herself. Fortunately, fear herded the humans well enough and they were too weak and frightened to resist.

Bakhan led the way back to the scriptorium. Vivian brought up the rear.

Steve ran to catch up, bounced off Barry’s head as a launching pad and scampered up to Vivian’s shoulder.

“You are a fool, Mrs Vivian Grey!”

“Almost certainly,” she said. “Sentimentality got the better of me there. My emotions have always been my weakness.”

“We could have asked for anything!”

“We?”

“Anything! Yes! And you let that fat barbarian live!”

“What was I supposed to do?” she said.

“Let him die. Even an ugly know-nothing like you could have done that.”

“And what then? Invite the Prein back? Let someone else take over?”

“Yes!”

Someone like Crippen-Ai?”

Steve paused and tapped his woven chin with his fist. “I suspect he does not like me.”

“I think you’re right. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

“Ha!” said Steve. “You are a weakling. You could not throw him at all!”

“Yes, that’s sort of the point of the idiom.”

“Who are you calling an idiom?”

He jumped down and trotted away. “We could have had it all!” he shouted.

Steve returned to the throne room to find it returned to its usual hubbub of chattering, fighting and intrigue. Various courtiers were still valiantly gulping at the air to try to find the sweetest airy morsels. Some of Yabandeman’s feeding tubes were beginning to swell with the gassy throughput.

Across the far side, little remained of Rhempkin and Stok’s sled. The gindo beasts were gone, food now for the quickest and most brutal. The qanikir seed-casing that had made the body of the sled was a shattered mess on the ground. The bone runners had been taken. Steve had clearly missed all the fun.

Crippen-Ai sat on the edge of the king’s pool, his head stretched upwards to give quiet counsel to the monarch.

“One should merely be aware,” Crippen-Ai was saying, “of the dangers of letting too many unaligned and eerifyingly unknowable aliens into your realm. The humans cannot be trusted.”

The king stroked his scraggly beard.

“They are nothing but animals.”

“How veritacular of you, lord. They are wild animals and overnumerous. You should have them slaughtered.”

“But I need my armour,” said Yabandeman. “The forces of Sulu Sukram are massing for a counter-attack. The scriptorium can produce word-shields, personal armour and spells.”

“And this Vivian Grey – about whom we know nothing – is clearly gifted,” said Crippen-Ai, “but do we trust her?”

Yabandeman made a gravelly noise in his throat. “She just saved me from killers.”

“And what better way to gain your trust than to thwart a supposed assassination attempt.”

“Supposed?”

Crippen-Ai wormed closer, arcing himself up until he was like a giant bib across the king’s front.

“Make a decree, lord. Have the humans killed.”

“Only when I have my armaments.”

“Very well. Once the armaments are complete. On that moment, have every human in the scriptorium destroyed.”

“I have no objections to that.”

“Every single one of them.”

“Every single one.”

Crippen-Ai glanced down and saw Steve stood at the foot of the royal bathing pool. Crippen-Ai’s head flowed down his body and loomed over Steve.

“What snoopery is this? Spying on our courtly conversation?”

“I was just standing here. It’s not my fault if I hear what you’re saying.”

Crippen-Ai’s limbs engulfed Steve.

“Spies and triflinguate poppets like you should watch their step,” he said.

Crippen-Ai’s flesh gripped Steve’s head and feet and twisted, making a corkscrew of his soft body.

Yabandeman’s claw fingers nipped in and took Steve from his grip.

“I want to know about this meal.”

“Sha Datsei’s meal?” said Steve.

“Is it true?” said the king.

“It was delicious.”

“Is it true that she spoke kindly of me?”

“Sire,” said Crippen-Ai, “that is hardly important.”

Yabandeman glared at Crippen-Ai and something rumbled deep within him.

“Do not think to know what is important!” He looked back to Steve. “Go to her. Offer my thanks to my love. Ask her about the delicious food.” He looked over at the courtiers and the various food testers who continued to gulp in mouthfuls of air. “Before this lot inflate me like a balloon.”

He reached down and released Steve. Steve hit the ground, rolled and sprinted for the exit.

PRESENT DAY

Rod knocked on the door.

It was on the eighth floor, one floor up from the consular mission offices. He didn’t know they had rooms on this floor of the building. Nina had been sent to another room and they had parted with a promise to get this over with and then regroup to assist in whatever efforts were being made to find Morag.

“Come in,” said a woman’s voice.

Rod entered.

It was a small office. One wall was all window, overlooking Centenary Square and the city beyond. There was a desk crammed in one corner but the heart of the room was taken up by deep square armchairs and a low coffee table. A middle-aged woman with punky hair and a white blouse sat at one of the chairs.

“Rod,” she said. “I’m Hannah.”

He nodded in greeting. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

“I don’t think we’ve had need to meet before. Which is usually a good sign.”

“Vaughn told me I should come and talk to you and that you’d be able to…” He gestured to the seats. “Should I?”

She gestured with a slow and elegant hand for him to sit. He did. The chair was deep and spongy and very comfortable.

“You’ll be able to help us?” said Rod.

“I hope so,” said Hannah.

“Because there’s a lot going on. It’s, you know, end of the world stuff and…” He looked at his watch.

“Don’t worry about the time,” said Hannah. She had a calm, measured voice, like the world’s smoothest satnav.

Rod nodded, trying to agree with her but unable to shake the urgency of the situation.

“The world is going to end tomorrow,” he said.

“And what do you mean by that?” she said.

Rod frowned. Was this a test? Or was she asking for clarification?

“The Soulgate,” he said. “The Venislarn are here, right now, of course. But they’re hiding, in plain sight sometimes. Come the Soulgate, they’ll reveal themselves to the world. Seas of blood, rains of fire. I don’t know. Gods rising from dead cities beneath the waves. You know the kind of stuff. And the Soulgate, well, when that closes then we won’t even be able to escape by dying. It will be hell, but you know this, right?”

“And who told you this?”

“About the Soulgate? Or tomorrow?”

Hannah gave him a friendly and lightly enquiring look.

“Nina told me about tomorrow. She’s seen it apparently. She’s travelled back in time. She went back in time but looked into the future through this thing… I can’t remember what she called it. Octopus? No, that’s stupid. Opticus or something.”

“She’s a time traveller,” said Hannah.

It wasn’t a question but it wasn’t quite a statement either.

“Aye, she’s a time traveller,” said Rod. “Not like that’s her job. She’s not Doctor Who. She just has, travelled back in time I mean. She did it to save me?”

“To save you?”

“Aye. I died, in an alternate timeline or something and she went back in time to come forward in time and change things.”

“That’s a very kind thing to do.”

“I think it was about saving the world too. She got tangled up in events back then.”

“Back when?”

“Georgian Birmingham. I’m not too clear on the dates. Nina isn’t very…” He circled his hands, searching for the right term. “… not very historically aware. There’s like this year and then there’s last year and then there’s all the rest of human history that she treats as one great undifferentiated mass. Some of the things she told me, I don’t think she’s got her historical facts correct and the things she said the people said, I just don’t think it was era appropriate. To hear her version of things, you’d think that Georgian England was obsessed with pineapples.”

“Anyway,” said Rod, “she got tangled up with some Venislarn issues back then. An occultist named Isabella who was to bring about the end of the world a couple of centuries earlier. While she was back there, she also met with Steve the Destroyer.”

“And who is that?” said Hannah.

Rod blinked and pouted as he thought.

“I think that would be very hard to explain. He, Steve, only ended up in Georgian England after being sent there from hell by Vivian Grey. She was a colleague of mine and Nina’s.”

“But she was in hell.”

“Was. Is. I’m not sure.”

“So, she’s dead?”

Rod spread his hands. “I don’t know how these things work. She’s in hell. Nina thinks we can save her, get her out.”

Hannah nodded but said, “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I’m only getting this second hand, the story Steve told Nina that she’s told me.”

“Tell me what you understand of it.”

Rod urged to fidget, to get up and do something. “Are you sure we have time for this?”

“We have plenty of time,” said Hannah.

She had a remarkably soothing voice and the chair was very comfortable.

“It seems Vivian managed to get herself a position in some fortress or something. In hell.”

“A position?”

“Aye, working in administration or filing or something which would have suited her to a tee…”

HELL

An atmosphere of order and routine came over the scriptorium in Hath-No. In the midst of hell, Vivian had created a pocket of civilisation.

The new humans were soon cleaned and fed and rested. They were not conveniently Spanish or English and no one knew what language they spoke among themselves. From their short stature and stark bowl haircuts, Vivian supposed they were from even further afield in time and geography than the Spaniards who now ran the paper mills unsupervised. The thoggan youngling, Barry, was curious about the humans and Vivian imagined that, before long, he might have picked up the newcomers’ language too.

Vivian confined herself to the scriptorium halls. The little buck-toothed Spanish girl called Isabella was allocated to the Carcosan word mage, her only task to put the mage’s quill back in his hand whenever he dropped it. Vivian was given the space and peace to work. She wrote on the constantly improving, increasingly uniform sheets of paper. She worked with a pen and inkwell. A Spaniard with some smithing skills was producing more pen nibs, copies of the simple black nib she had brought to hell from the world above.

She enjoyed the silence as she worked but the scriptorium was never truly silent. The trembling and fluttering wind she had first noticed in the storerooms was also evident here. On one occasion she had tried to find its source, working through the hide shelves, listening at every valve-like duct or opening. She concluded soon enough that the sound was coming from the scrolls and texts that could be found throughout Bakhan Sand’s realm. The sound was the soft flexing and stretching of sheets of vellum.

She had opened a tome and touched its pages. The vellum curled almost imperceptibly beneath her touch. This was human skin and there was no death in hell. She had stroked the page to settle it and returned the tome to its place. Vivian had enormous respect for the written word but, until that moment, consider books to be mere vessels for those words — books were not to be hoarded as things in themselves but shared and used. Now, she realised, she was warden of a library of texts that had once lived and which had not yet died — a library as hospital ward, as creche, as care home…

The Venislarn cared nothing for the suffering these once-humans had gone through and were still enduring. Yabandeman wanted words as weapons. Runes and hieroglyphs that represented mere concepts on earth had greater power here. Simple words had the power of wards and curses. Pinned to a body or wrapped around a limb, they would burn like fire, shield like walls of iron. Producing them was not an arduous task.

Vivian split her efforts. She produced Yabandeman’s armaments regularly enough to please Bakhan but also gave herself opportunity to read and to study. The scriptorium libraries were filled with Venislarn knowledge and, being Venislarn, much of it was madness. Histories were mangled with magic, were tied up in poetry and the ramblings of incoherent gods. Terrible and impossible imagery was scrawled in the pages of books. Vivian read carefully, knowing that at the turn of each page, she might encounter a phrase or a picture that would destroy her mind instantly. In books, she reminded herself that whatever oasis of normality she had created here, she was truly awash in a sea of horrors and insanity.

At her desk, Vivian put aside the piece she was working on for Bakhan and brought up a tied set of papers onto the desk. In the middle of the pile were the pieces of paper she had brought with her into hell. They were just fragments of the infinitely large Big Bloody Book. A chunk of the rest of it had been dropped, burning, into the mouth of the goddess Yoth-Mammon. She suspected that it was burning still and hoped it was giving Yoth-Mammon serious indigestion.

The Big Bloody Book was a compendium of everything. It was the real-world extrapolation of Wittgenstein’s ‘big book’ thought experiment. It described the universe in its entirety. As a book, such a work was almost entirely useless, as unhelpful as a one-to-one scale map. But, when it had been stored, whole and safe, in the Vault of the Birmingham consular mission to the Venislarn, she had taken the time to read as much of it as she could.

It was hard to know what could be learned from such a book. As a description of the universe, it contained every true fact. It also contained every lie every uttered. It contained every banality and irrelevance. And, yet, it drew her.

She set one of the pages at the top of her desk. The majority of the page, continuing from whatever missing page had come before, detailed the structure and functionality of an unnamed government. By the feel of the text, she could easily imagine it was about some early modern city state, a Florence or a Naples. The first line, an incomplete sentence running on from an earlier missing page, began: “- the city militia at times of crisis, which gave these middle level functionaries considerable influence.” Who these middle level functionaries were was not immediately clear.

A call-out box at the side, listed instructions, rules for some unknown game. It contained lines such as:

A player will put suspicious places in the starting squares.

The second and third belts are only for overtaking.

If a player has all the features in a purge, they can buy houses from the bank.

The Pompatus moves clockwise around the board.

None of it made immediate sense and yet Vivian felt that these scant pages were her one link to an object of true wonder and power. And so, now, she picked up her pen and began to scribe her own notes regarding the page before her. She had a neat and economical penmanship, a reward from a proper school education (back in the days when penmanship, typing and other practical skills were both prized and taught). True, she had not been taught to write in Venislarn, the script she now used, but the skills and the discipline were essentially the same.

She wrote out each sentence from the book fragment and followed it with her own thoughts on its meaning. It was almost certainly a fruitless endeavour but there was meditative pleasure in the act and she did not deny herself this small pleasure.

Bakhan came into the hall with a long wrapped bundle.

“What! That?” he said, looking at her writing.

“I used to tell Nina that if you think you understand the Venislarn, you don’t understand the Venislarn. I’m paraphrasing Feynman of course.”

Bakhan looked at her. His cowl was half-raised in incomprehension. “What! That?” he simply asked again.

“Parts of an ancient book, written long ago and far away. I do not understand half of it.” She tapped the page. “This is the product of a true Venislarn. You, Yabandeman, the Prein. You are not the true Venislarn, are you? You’re just the creatures that walk on their world.”

Bakhan made a sudden barking sound, like he was choking on a cherry stone. Vivian realised he was laughing.

“We! Are! Fleas!” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “That is precisely what I mean. The fact that we can even converse like this is proof that you are nothing like the gods of this world.”

“Nor! You!” he said.

She looked at him through the narrow eyeholes of her yathki skull mask and wondered how much he knew or suspected.

“The! God! Heart!” he said. “When! Your! Work! Is! Done! I! Will! Take! You! There!” He gestured up, towards the upper levels of Hath-No. “Home! Of! A! True! God!”

He placed the wrapped bundle he carried on the edge of her desk.

“What’s this?” she said.

“A! Gift!”

She touched the edge of the stiff cloth. It was tacky and dirty and smelled off. “Who is it from?”

“From! Me!” said Bakhan and his cowl quivered in embarrassment.

“I don’t deserve gifts.”

“Pah! Take!”

Vivian unwrapped it. It came apart stickily, like a hot boiled sweet. Underneath the roll of cloth, was a severed arm. It was a mostly fleshless thing, covered in greasy black hairs. It looked like it had come off some sort of humanoid rat creature that had starved and drowned.

“Um. Wow,” she said.

“It’s! Good!”

“I’m sure it is,” she said politely. “I’m not hungry at the moment but –”

“Not! Food!” said Bakhan. “It’s! Arm! New! Arm!”

Vivian regarded it anew.

“Oh. An arm? An extra arm for me? Because…”

“Be! Cause! You! Said!”

“I did say,” she agreed, quiet with shock. “Yes, I did say I was struggling with only the one and you remembered and…” Her words trailed away as she gazed at it.

“Can! Sew! It! On!” said Bakhan, miming. “I! Make! Very! Small! Stitches!”

Vivian did not hold with lying to spare people’s feelings but hell had perhaps had an impact on her and, apart from a rag doll with delusions of grandeur and a thoggan boy with too many teeth for his own good, Bakhan was as close a friend as she had in this world. And he did have the trait she admired most in others: he wasn’t an idiot.

“That’s very kind of you,” she said and put it aside. “We’ll sort it out later.”

“Can! Do! Now!”

“No. I’m busy now. Later, Bakhan.”

“You! Like! Though?”

“Oh, yes!” she said, hearing her own voice and remembering that she was an appalling actress. “It’s lovely. Doesn’t quite match the other but appearances aren’t everything, are they?”

“No?”

“No,” she said.

The reptilian nodded, hesitated and then awkwardly turned away and left her.

Steve the Destroyer ran to the prison cell of Sha Datsei, weaving between lumbering pejjad stalkers and zangrei mentats with the silver platter balanced on his head. The guard at the head of the prison corridor did not delay him as he ran on. The tray slid under the door and Steve leapt through the gap in the grille with such energy that he landed on the tray on the other side and slid forward on it like a toboggan.

“I take it it went well,” said Sha Datsei.

“How do you know?”

“You are in one piece.”

She turned. She was wearing a freshly created flesh casing. It was a thin body, lacking muscle or fat. The skin hung off it, not exactly loose or wrinkled but without tension. The one arm cradled her pale stomach. Her face was a beaked skull with dead, hollow eyes.

“What do you think?” she said.

“You are Mrs Vivian Grey,” he said. “Except your arm is too long and –”

As he spoken the many jointed limbs inside the arm of the body contracted and the arm shrank.

“Yes,” he said. “You have her. But she’s a pathetic and stupid creature. Why make yourself like her? What is your plan?”

“No plan,” said Sha Datsei with Vivian’s mouth. “You described her. I am a bored artist. Why is she stupid? You called her cunning before. Manipulative.”

“She uncovered a plot against Yabandeman and did not use it to her advantage.”

“What plot?”

Steve climbed onto the lap of the fattest shed skin casing and nestled in its hollow. “Two skin merchants with a poisoned cloth. They work for the blind gods.”

“Sulu Sukram wants to take this fortress back,” she said. “And will try to do so soon enough.”

“How do you know?”

“Even down here, I hear things. You’re not my only pet.”

“Pet?” Steve leapt to his feet. “Pet?! You’ll watch your tongue, prisoner, or I’ll have to teach you some manners!”

She rocked with amusement.

“That’s not your real body, is it?” she said. “You’ve been trapped in there.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I can hear it. I’ve spent my entire existence wearing skins that never suit me. You, you sound like one of the Prein. Maybe a flagellant or one of the scourgers.”

“You don’t know me,” he said bitterly.

“No,” she said with an odd note of kindness. “It doesn’t matter what you were.” She unleashed a little snort of laugher. “I mean, as long as you weren’t one of those ridiculous outriders of Prein, you know, the ones with the claws and a hundred cocks sprouting out of their bodies. Ridiculous things.”

Steve said nothing.

1773

In the spring of 1773, a witch took up residence in the Crown Inn in Deritend, just south of the St Martin’s church and Birmingham town markets. Some said she was a gypsy fortune-teller, some said she was a sorceress from some far distant land. Those who met her could agree on little except that she was certainly strange, definitely not from round these parts and gave out the kind of advice that one didn’t usually get from wise women and such. She rented the best rooms available above the inn and paid her bills in a timely fashion. She had only one servant, a shifty-looking and spotty lad with light fingers, but the innkeeper sometimes heard her talking to someone when the lad was out on his frequent errands. Talking to herself was not the witch’s only peculiar habit.

The witch was obsessed with bathing and demanded a bath be poured for her every other day, which she took by the fire in her room. Soon enough, the innkeeper hired a girl solely for the purpose of boiling and ferrying the water to the witch’s room and charged the cost directly to the witch. Despite this insane zeal for bathing, the witch refused nearly all cosmetics, perfumes and ointments that fashionable ladies enjoyed.

She did not dress like any local woman and had a disconcerting habit of going out and about with far more of her legs showing than was normal. The witch made a handsome income in the few weeks she stayed in the Crown by offering consultation and advice to a range of individuals. A number of her customers were singers, tavern musicians and even the proprietor of the new Theatre Royal (currently under construction on New Street). She taught them ditties and ballads of a type never heard before in the town and, for years to come, people would still hear songs such as ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Poker Face’ and ‘Roar’ accompanied by the fiddle or concertina.

Singers and such aside, most of her paying visitors were women and many of them well-to-do. Once they had adjusted to the witch’s odd manner of speech, they almost universally welcomed her advice on matters ranging from health to childbirth to marital matters to household management. Ladies with health afflictions often brought with them the nostrums and pills they had been sold by druggists, doctors and ‘advertising professors’. These were almost always thrown away by the witch.

She peered at the bottle Mrs Hardwick, the gunmaker’s wife, had passed to her.

“Quicksilver?” she said.

“It contains the essence of life, guaranteed to balance the humours, Mistress Seth,” said Mrs Hardwick.

“It’s Nina,” said Nina automatically. “Quicksilver is mercury, right?”

The needle-nosed Mrs Hardwick gave her a politely vacant look.

“Quicksilver is mercury,” said Nina, convinced that her general knowledge hadn’t let her down on this point. “It’s poison.”

Nina would have thrown it into the fire but the maid had already complained about having to pick over shards of glass when cleaning it out and Nina wasn’t about to throw poisonous liquid metal into the flames. She stood up and put it on the cabinet in the corner with the various bracelets and trinkets she used as set-dressing for her fortune-telling act. She tucked it next to Steve the Destroyer who was being an obedient demon and sitting as perfectly still as a rag doll should.

“But Dr Rotspur assured me of its efficacy,” said Mrs Eliza Hardwick.

“Why? What was his diagnosis?”

“Female hysteria.”

“Hysteria. Uh-huh.”

“I have a wandering womb. It’s a common complaint among ladies of a delicate habit, especially those prone to nagging.”

“Who says you nag?”

“Dr Rotspur. And my husband.”

“This the husband you say is out drinking and partying five nights a week?”

“Dr Rotspur says it is not healthy for a man to deny his urges. If he retains his… his vital fluids then he is in danger of succumbing to male hysteria. He has these terrible headaches in the mornings, you see…”

Nina blinked and said nothing while she tried to decode that.

“Your husband goes out and has sex with other women? On your doctor’s orders?”

Mrs Hardwick pulled a pathetically compliant face. “I do my wifely duty but there are times when I can’t…” She reddened and bowed her head. “When I am unclean.”

“When you’re having your period?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“When you are menstruating, Eliza.”

Mrs Hardwick reddened further and fiddled with her fan.

“Right,” said Nina, who had had enough. “Time for Dr Nina to give her own diagnosis.”

She stood.

“Do you wish to examine me?” said Mrs Hardwick.

“Don’t need to,” said Nina. “I know what your problem is. You don’t have a wandering womb. No one does. You’re problem is you’re ignorant, a complete doormat and you have a stupid, selfish husband.”

“Mistress Seth! I must protest.”

“Don’t. You know I’m right. And it’s Nina. My prescription is three things: shoe therapy for your husband and pads and pockets for you.”

Mrs Hardwick said nothing; she was curious. Nina went over to the teapot on the table and felt it. It was still warm enough. In the absence of fizzy drinks, smoothies and decent fruit juices, her drinking choices in this place were reduced to tea, coffee and alcohol. It wasn’t yet noon and perhaps a little too early for alcohol.

“Your husband drinks?” said Nina.

“He does.”

“Comes homes to bed absolutely shit-faced, falls asleep with his clothes and shoes still on and wakes up with a terrible headache.”

“Often.”

“Statistically, people who go to bed with their shoes on are likely to have a terrible headache in the morning.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. Therefore, each night, when your husband falls down dead drunk, take his shoes off for him.”

“I see.”

“And then hide them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Preferably in two separate places. Backs of cupboards, up the chimney. Do you have children?”

“We do.”

“Hide them in the children’s bedroom. Maybe that will encourage him to remember he has kids.”

“And this will cure his headaches?”

Nina poured tea. It was stewed and nearly pitch black. “The more time he spends looking for his shoes, the less time he’ll have for boozing and cheating on you.”

“I wouldn’t call it cheating as such, Mistress Seth.”

“Bhul ken-zat!” Nina swore in Venislarn. “It’s cheating. It really is.”

She grabbed a linen lump from the table by the small, grimy window and tossed it into Mrs Hardwick’s lap. Mrs Hardwick gave a little squeal and then inspected it.

“What is this?” she said.

“Nina Seth’s prototype sanitary pad (patent pending).”

Mrs Hardwick turned it over, mystified.

“Listen,” said Nina. “It’s a basically a little cushion stuffed with sawdust. You put it in your knickers.”

“Knickers?”

“Drawers. Pants. If you don’t have any, buy some. That goes in them when you’re having your period.”

“But…”

Nina put a splash of milk in her tea. “You are not unclean, Eliza. You are never unclean. You just have a period once a month. That’s natural and normal and, if nothing else, an excuse to eat chocolate, slob on the sofa and be a bitch one week in four. ”

“But my husband doesn’t want to touch me when I’m un-…. When I’m having a period.”

“That’s his problem. And he’ll be too busy looking for his shoes to judge you for it. Besides, with Nina Seth’s prototype sanitary pad (patent pending), your period won’t stop you going out and doing all those things women do. You can go roller-skating, sky-diving, Zumba dancing, whatever.”

“I see. I think.”

“Good,” said Nina. “Finally, pockets.”

“Pockets.”

“Watch.” Nina theatrically put her hands to her sides and then slipped them into the pockets on the hips of her dress. “Look at that, eh?”

“I have seen pockets before, Mistress… Nina.”

“Really? Where are yours?”

Mrs Hardwick patted useless at her own skirts. “I don’t mean that I have them on my garments…”

“No, you don’t, do you?” said Nina. “That’s because only men have pockets. I can assure you, that two hundred years from now, it will still only be men with decent pockets. Nice, deep pockets you can keep your keys or your phone in and we women will be stuck with stupid fake pockets you could just about fit a hair grip in. There’s a tailor in Needless Alley – Johnson – take him your dresses and your jackets and your skirts and tell him you want pockets. Tell him Nina sent you.”

“And how will this help?” she asked.

Nina sighed. “You’ll be striking a blow against the patriarchy. They keep us down by keeping our hands full. Get some pockets. Take control of the house keys and the money. Hell, hide one of his shoes in there.”

A little smile appeared on Mrs Hardwick’s face. Small steps, thought Nina.

“You’ve got to take charge, Eliza. Sister’s are doing it for themselves now.”

“Oh, I heard a man singing about that in the market square. I thought it was a catchy air.”

“I taught him that one.”

“However, I was not certain who the sisters were he was singing about.”

“Us!” said Nina. “The universal sisterhood. You, me, all the ladies.”

With a thump and a creak, the door opened. Dick entered with a covered tray in his hand.

“Oh, didn’t know you were with someone,” he said and made to back out.

“We’re nearly done,” said Nina and winked at Mrs Hardwick. “So, hide his shoes, get some pockets and make use of the sanitary pad. And make your own if you can. And tell your friends too.”

Mrs Hardwick rose hesitantly, unsure if she fully understood what had just happened. “And Dr Rotspur’s nostrum?”

“Leave that filth with me,” said Nina. “And if he asks, tell him to come see me,” she added in her flintiest, most dangerous tone. “And remember you’re in charge, Eliza. Your husband needs you more than anything but a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

“What’s a bicycle?”

“It’s not important.”

Dick held the door as the customer left.

“Seriously?” said Nina. “Has no one invented the bicycle yet?”

“What’s a bicycle?” said Dick.

“Two wheels. You sit on it. You steer it.” She held out her hands as though gripping handlebars.

“A cart,” said Dick, unimpressed.

“Two wheels!”

“A small cart.”

She screwed up her face. “I’m not talking about a horse and cart, you plum. There’s no horse.”

“How does it go then?” asked Dick.

“You make it go yourself.”

“Still sounds like a cart,” he said and put the tray on the table.

“What’s that?” she said.

Dick whipped the cloth off. “Oyster pie.”

Steam curled from the top of the pastry-covered tin. “Oyster?” said Nina.

“Pie, yes.”

“Oysters in a pie?”

“Yes. Are you too hoity-toity to eat oysters?”

“Where I’m from, it’s only the hoity-toity people who eat oysters.”

“You’re strange,” he said. “Anyway, I’m never sure that it’s real oysters in a Birmingham oyster pie. You know how far it is to the sea?”

“Weston-super-Mare,” she said, pointing in what she imagined was a southwesterly direction.

“That’s a week’s journey if it’s a day,” said Dick.

The pie, despite her reservations, smelled good; fatty and meaty. She poked the thick golden crust.

Dick circled the room, peering at new items he had seen since the day before. A visit from Dick was like playing a complex memory game. It was quite possible that he had stolen from her on more than one occasion but she had accumulated sufficient clutter during her short time that there was no knowing. The items of greatest value to her were those she’d brought with her and top of that list was her bra and her shoes. If she stayed much longer she’d have to spend time educating a decent cobbler and a tailor or seamstress who she could explain the basics of the underwired bra to without confusing them or getting them over-excited.

Nina broke off a fat triangle of pie crust and ate it, washed down with barely warm and over-stewed tea.

“Speaking of food, I see you’re wanted for stealing another pineapple,” said Dick.

“I’m what?” she said, spitting crumbs.

“Family out in Yardley. Thieves broke in an’ took their pineapple. They reckon it’s the same ‘female thief’ who did for the Boultons. And they say he wasn’t the first neither.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“They reckon the thief’ll swing for it when they catch’em.”

“This place is mad,” she said. “Fruit as a status symbol. And – am I right? – these people don’t even own the pineapples? They’re rented, right?”

Dick laughed, inspected the bottle of Dr Rotspur’s mercury medicine and sniffed it. “No one can afford to own a pineapple, not unless you’re some lord or something. And why’d you want to own one?”

“One would assume you’d eat it,” said Nina.

Dick laughed at her. “That’s like eating swan or… or… diamonds. Not even the rich folk like the Boultons get to eat the pineapple, you just show it off at your la-di-da dinner and everyone thinks ‘cor, these people are so rich they gets to eat pineapple’ and then you put it away again.”

Nina was about to scoff at the stupidity of that and then recalled boys she had known who had a not dissimilar attitude to their cars – washed them, polished them, took selfies of themselves in them, but wouldn’t dream of actually using them to drive to work or go pick up a KFC.

“Anyway,” said Nina, “how are things up at Soho House?”

Nina had sent Dick up to the manufactory as her spy and had soon got himself hired as a fetcher and carrier (no doubt due to the top interview tips she gave him before he went). Working shifts at the manufactory and acting as her PA meant the lad was back and forth constantly and should have been an exhausted wreck but it appeared that drawing two wages was like amphetamines to the boy and he motored around on a cash-fuelled high.

“Mister Tremaine works me hard but I’ve already learned the shortcuts. I can be gone half the day and he doesn’t know.”

“But the oculus,” said Nina. “Is it finished yet? I can’t get back home if it’s not.”

Dick put down the bottle of medicine, clearly not interesting enough to steal, and continued to browse. Nina found her fork (her fork – she owned one. She’d never been so invested in owning cutlery before) and fished around inside the dark pie.

“He’s had some of those oculus hoops cast but definitely not all,” said Dick. “Boulton seems more interested in these si-de-re-al” – he pronounced the word slowly and carefully – “clocks he’s had designed.”

“Star clocks,” nodded Nina. She’d seen one in the basement of Soho House back in the twenty-first century. It had appeared normal enough but had been linked to some Venislarn technology that had seriously screwed with local space and time.

“And the Isabella woman?” said Nina.

“She came by twice,” said Dick. “You’re right. She’s got her nose in all his business. Those things he’s making – I don’t know if they’re her designs or his.”

Nina had suspicions that the oculus and the sidereal clocks and other things beside had not sprung from the imagination of either Boulton or Isabella but the slimy Venislarn, Crippen-Ai, she had teamed up with.

“And you’ve found out where she lives yet?” said Nina.

Dick looked away darkly to the fire.

“What?” she said.

“I tried following her and I’m no fool,” said Dick. “But she lost me. Took her carriage down a turning on the edge of town and, when I caught it, there was no turning to be found. Impossible, I know.”

“No,” said Nina quietly. Time, space, memory. Isabella and Crippen-Ai were accumulating Venislarn artefacts that made all of them dance to her tune. “She’s a slippery bitch, that one.”

“Put that back, puny mortal,” snapped Steve.

Nina looked up. Dick’s hand flew to his pocket.

Nina clicked her fingers and held out her hand for Dick’s loot.

He reluctantly pulled from his pocket a pair of Nina’s knickers.

“Knickers?” said Nina. “Seriously? Do not rub them on your cheek!”

“But they’re soft and full of feminem- fem-in-in-ity.”

Nina regretted ever having taught him that word. From his mouth, it sounded sordid.

“The youth is a sexual deviant,” said Steve, “but he only paddles in the shallows of true depravity. Let me teach him a lesson in pleasure and pain.”

“No one is teaching anyone any lessons,” said Nina. “Pants. Now.”

Dick gave Steve a filthy look and passed Nina her undies. He had lost all of his fear of the demon doll since getting to know him.

“Snitches get stitches,” he muttered to Steve, another phrase Nina regretted having taught him.

“I am nothing but stitches, you imbecilic lout,” crowed Steve.

“I’m underappreciated, I am,” said Dick, miserably.

“Cheer up,” said Nina. “You can have fun watching me fall off a horse again in a bit.”

Dick groaned. “Riding lessons? Again?”

Nina wasn’t going to be put off by his pessimism. “Until one of you lot gets round to inventing the car, we’re stuck with horses, so I might as well learn. Get her saddled up, check the engine oil or whatever you do and I’ll be down in an hour. Maybe today’s the day I figure it out.”

“Figure it out?”

“Sure,” she said. “There’s probably just a knack to horse-riding and when you’ve got it, you’ve got it. Like riding a bicycle.”

“What is this bicycle thing?”

“Enough! Horse. Now.”

“You’re a harder taskmaster than Mr Tremaine at the manufactory,” grumbled Dick. “And he doesn’t expect me to be work a second job, be his spy and fetch his dinner and run his errands at the same time.”

“Oh, yes. I truly underappreciated you,” she said. “I should give you a ten shilling bonus for your efforts.”

“Really?” said Dick.

“Once I’ve penalised you from trying to pilfer my undies.”

“Penalised?”

She nodded. “A ten shilling fine should do it.”

He stared. He opened his mouth. He closed it again and he slammed the door on his way out.

“Ha!” barked Steve. “Do you not see? The amount you fined him was exactly equal to the reward you offered him. He has profited naught.”

“Wow, nothing gets past you,” said Nina. She speared a chunk of something in the pie and stuffed it in her mouth. It was chewy and tasted of chewiness and gravy. It might have been an oyster.

“I believe I have located it this time,” said Steve and jumped down from the cabinet. “I can feel it here,” he said, sticking a cotton-wool fist in his right waist.

“Are you sure?” said Nina, still chewing (and chewing). “You’ve already seen my sewing skills.”

Steve contemplated the bunched and untidy needlework on his left side.

“I am sure, fleshling,” he said, seriously.

“Fine,” she said, tried swallowing, discovered the mouthful of pie wasn’t ready to be swallowed yet and kept on chewing. She wiped her hands on the tray cloth, took up her scissor shears and sat by the fire so Steve could climb on her knee.

“Lie still,” she told him as he got into position.

“No tickling,” he replied.

PRESENT DAY

“Hey, baby,” Morag said, lying back on the bed and stroking her swollen stomach.

Yes, mother.

“I’ve been thinking about how you could help.”

Yes?

“Do you remember when you first worked out how to talk to me?”

“I do”

“Well, I wondered if there might be a way that you could make a connection with someone else? Someone who might be able to help us.”

I can try mother. Who should I try to connect with?

Morag thought. “Rod or Nina would be good. My friends.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You could probably reach out to Yo Morgantus. You’re related, I guess. Sort of.”

Related?

Morag’s unborn tapped into her thoughts.

Is Yo Morgantus my father?

“Not exactly,” she said. “No. Your father was a man called Drew.”

What was he like?

Morag came down hard on her initial thoughts, didn’t want her baby’s first mental image of its dad to be of a hot, frequently naked man.

“He was a kind man,” she said quickly. “A funny man. He made me forget my worries.”

Did he love you?

Wow. What a blindsider of a question. There was no good, honest answer to that.

“I’m sure he would have loved you,” she said.

Does Yo Morgantus love me?

Morag shook her head but said, “He would trample the city to reach you if he thought you were in danger. Hmmm. Maybe best not try to contact him actually.”

Morag pushed herself to her feet. So many things felt wrong with her body. She held her trousers in her hand to keep them up, and peered past the enormous bulge of her stomach to try and see her feet.

She hitched up the hem of one trouser leg. “Muda, that used to be where my ankle was!”

Swollen and stiff, there seemed to be a slab of solid, immovable flesh that went from the bottom of her leg to her feet. How on earth was she supposed to walk on legs that betrayed her like this? She made a couple of circuits of the room out of sheer bloodymindedness and then sat down on the bed, exhausted. How on earth did anyone ever keep up with normal life when they were pregnant? She felt as if she could happily spend all day taking naps, but that really wouldn’t help them get out of here. At least she was no longer feeling nauseous.

“Oh, bhul….”

Why on earth had she let that thought into her head? Moments later she’d pulled out one of the empty drawers in the unit and vomited the remains of the pop tart into it. She closed it with a tiny feeling of satisfaction at the minor inconvenience that a drawer full of vomit would cause her captors. Stacked up against the end of the world it probably wasn’t all that significant.

She sat back down on the bed and wished there was a proper chair in the room, as her lower back was really sore.

Steve dropped down from the ceiling and landed on her outstretched hand.

“Ow! You’re supposed to be a bit more delicate around a pregnant woman,” said Morag.

Mother, I think I’ve done it! I have made contact with someone!

“How did you do that?” she said.

I felt their touch. Then I knew what to do.

“Ho! What wizardry is this?” yelled Steve, clutching his tiny cloth arms to his head, and banging the sides with a ferocious violence. “You! In my head! How did you get in there? What are you doing? How can I fight you?”

Steve twirled his pencil spear about and made to jab in at her belly. Morag fended it off with ease and moved him aside.

“Right, everybody stay calm while I explain what’s going on.” She paused briefly. “Now, baby, that was Uncle Steve who just touched my hand. It’s lovely that the two of you are able to chat now, but please don’t make contact with anyone else who touches me, because the chances are high that the next person who does that will be someone who wants us both dead.”

I understand, mother.

“Steve. The voice in your head is the kaatbari. It is able to communicate with us telepathically. This is not necessarily a bad thing.” Morag wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Steve or convince herself about that last part.

There followed a few moments of silence. Morag wondered if the others were taking time to absorb what she’d just told them.

Mother, will I have a thousand penises?

“What?!”

“The kaatbari asked me what my true form was like,” said Steve. “It asked.”

Morag swore under her breath. “Steve, can we keep the chat to more useful subjects?” she said. “No, baby, you won’t. Probably.”

What is a penis?

“That’s a chat we’ll have later on. Steve, did you take a look to see what’s in the other rooms?”

“I have searched them all. Outside of here there are three beds, six pillows, three blankets, seven sheets, a toaster, forty three sugar cubes, a clock, a microwave, a mop, four ladybirds, a doctor’s coat, a paperclip, two hundred paper towels, six mugs, seventeen sachets of coffee, sixty six teabags, a Yedankhi obfuscator, seven scalpels, a pair of scissors, a chair, a bin and three dead flies.”

“A Yedankhi obfuscator?” asked Morag.

“Yes. And three dead flies.”

“That’s a spell-blocker, isn’t it?”

“Shall I fetch it?”

“Yes. And the doctor’s coat.”

Did I do well to contact Steve? Are you proud of me? asked the baby, as Steve went off.

“You did very well,” said Morag.

Steve says that he has lots to tell me.

“I’m sure that he does,” said Morag cautiously, “Steve can be prone to a certain amount of exaggeration, so you might want to check in with me about what he tells you.”

What’s exaggeration?

“It’s when you stretch the truth. The stuff that he tells you about himself is likely to be more about his dreams or maybe his memories.”

So, do mortals really howl for mercy at the mere sight of him, and his thousand penises?

“No. No they don’t.”

There was a noise from outside the door, and Morag wondered if it was Steve retrieving the Yedankhi obfuscator or whether someone else was out there.

The door opened and Kathy and Malcolm entered again.

“What do you know about Rod and Nina invading the offices of – ” Kathy began and then stopped and gawped at Morag.

It was true that, Morag was holding onto her trousers to stop them falling down and she was having serious trouble staying upright but, nonetheless, staring was not polite.

“What happened to you?” said Kathy.

Morag gave her a crazy look and cradled her bump. “This? You’re a doctor, right? This is GCSE biology stuff.”

“But you’re… you’re huge. This is not normal. I’ll need to perform an examination.”

“No way am I letting you anywhere near my ginger minge with your treacherous fingers, Kathy.”

“This is not normal,” Kathy said to Malcolm. “Something is happening.”

“No shit,” said Morag.

“If Rod and Nina have broken into Forward’s offices…” said Malcolm grimly.

“Yes, all right,” Kathy agreed. “Deal with them. Take enough men to make certain of it.”

“Deal with them?” said Morag.

Malcolm left. Kathy gave Morag a frankly stunned look.

“I need to come back and examine you,” she said.

“You come back with latex gloves and lube, I will instruct my bairn to bite your adn-bhul fingers off.”

Can I, mother?

Kathy left and locked the door.

“It’d give her one hell of a shock, wouldn’t it?” said Morag.

The ceiling tile shifted and Steve jumped down.

“I had to imitate one of the ladybirds to avoid detection when she came through the door. It was most effective, no?”

Morag stared at him. “How did you imitate a ladybird?”

“Like this.” He stood very still, but still very much resembled a small cloth doll.

Morag stared at him some more but then shook her head. “Good work, Steve.”

I want to see Steve’s ladybird impression, mother.

“And so you shall,” said Morag. “Let’s have a look at this Yedankhi obfuscator then.”

Morag took it from Steve and turned it over in her hands. I was a dark miniature obelisk with wavy patterns, like the grill of an air-freshener, cut into the face. “I think there was one of these in the Vault,” she said. “In fact, it might have been this one. Charms and wards can’t penetrate an area with this in place. This might be stopping our friends finding us.”

“So we must simply destroy it or remove it from the area, and they will be able to locate us!” said Steve. “We shall march out of here triumphant, after skewering the worthless fools who imprison us!”

“Yes, that. Let’s do it,” said Morag.

Morag dozed on the bed while Steve set about the Yedankhi obfuscator with a scalpel blade.

“Huh-yargh!” yelled Steve as he tried impaling it with his pencil spear. The point slid off the Yedankhi obfuscator without even leaving a scratch.

“Steve the Destroyer will not be defeated. I need you to hold it steady for me, human.”

“You seriously think I’m going to hold onto that thing while you stab it with maximum violence?” asked Morag.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Morag stared at the ceiling while Steve continued his attack. How was it possible that even the war-like grunting of Steve the Destroyer was making her sleepy? There was no way that a normal human pregnancy was always as tiring as this. Everyone would constantly be tripping over pregnant women as they snoozed where they dropped.

“Shall we try something different?” she asked, levering herself up from the mattress before she fell asleep. Steve clearly subscribed to the “if at first you don’t succeed, keep going until you drop” school of thought and it was seriously getting on her nerves.

She took the Yedankhi obfuscator and put it on the floor underneath one of the wheels that supported the bed. She made sure that the wheels were locked and then turned to Steve.

“Are you strong enough to lift this? Love to help, but you’ll have noticed that I’m all stomach now.”

“Can Steve the Destroyer lift this? Of course. You could help though.”

“I am helping,” said Morag. “I’m not lying on the bed, am I?”

Steve lifted the end of the bed and slammed it down on the Yedankhi obfuscator. It didn’t splinter into a thousand pieces, but at least it stayed in place. Steve continued to bounce the bed off it for several more minutes, but it still remained in one piece. A floor tile cracked beneath it.

“Right, I reckon it’s time for plan B,” said Morag. “Pop it in that bag they brought my sandwich in. Let’s hope they’re neat freaks and they come to tidy up in the not too distant future.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” said Steve.

“You’ve got a Tyriat ideogram of unmaking inside you. I could blow you up with a word.”

“Unh-uh.” The little doll shook its head. “Nina Seth took it out of me. Eventually.”

1773

“Do you have to stick your tongue out while you eviscerate me?” asked Steve the Destroyer.

“It helps me think,” said Nina.

She had pulled apart the seam in Steve’s side and was now exploring his stuffing with her fork and the tips of the scissor shears. She was careful and slow. She was probably not using the best of tools and even the best rooms in the Crown Inn were dingy and dark and if she blindly activated the Tyriat ideogram of unmaking Vivian had put inside Steve, they probably wouldn’t need to scrape her off the walls; they could just paint over the top of her.

“So, this Isabella…” said Nina.

“What of her?” said Steve.

“Basically, you’ve known her all her life.”

“Very intermittently,” he said. “She was born on earth. She and the others were dragged down to hell in some ritual, I know not what. When Mrs Vivian Grey sent us back to earth, we were many miles and many centuries distant from Isabella’s time and place of birth.”

“They were found on the hills near Sheffield in seventeen fifty-something. I remember seeing Boulton and Darwin talking about it through the oculus.”

“You had the oculus —”

“Back in the future, yes.”

“And you let it go?”

“I had to in order to come here. I’ve come here to use the oculus to get back to a slightly earlier time to save Rod and Morag. It’s the long way round I admit but it’s going to work, okay? Anyway, this Isabella. She was born on earth, in Spain, spent her childhood in hell and now she’s wound up here in England and has been serving Crippen-Ai ever since.”

Steve wriggled. “Stop it. You said you wouldn’t tickle.”

“Be still.” She squashed him flat with one hand. A sharp card corner had become visible among the mass of hair and rags in his side. She reached for it gingerly with her shears.

“And she has this pink jewel, called the Gellik rose orb, taken from those two, um, Rhempkin and Stok.”

“Mttffs Rhhht,” mumbled Steve through the gag of her fingers.

“Which she can use to drill through the hell or any other plain of existence.”

“Cwppn Ai cnn, yfff.”

“So, when she threatened to summon an army and enslave the world, she’s basically got the tools to do it.”

“Yfff, shh fuffnly cwwd.”

Nina snagged the edge of the card and drew it out. She let Steve go. He sat up, panting.

“That was most undignified, woman!”

“Consider yourself lucky,” she said. She turned the rough square of card over in her hand, inspecting Vivian’s brief but exquisite handiwork. “She was always good with a pen,” she said. “Tyriat ideogram. I’d never be able to draw one correctly but this is the real deal. Utter the activation words and ‘Kablooey!’”

“And do you know the activation words?” asked Steve.

Nina nodded silently. She reached for a small cloth purse with a brass clasp she had taken to carrying with her and put the ideogram inside.

“Now, stitch me up,” ordered Steve.

Nina threaded her needle. She got it on the sixth attempt; she was improving all the time, even in this bad light.

“And this gemstone,” she said thoughtfully. “We could also use it to open a door to Hath-No and get Vivian back.”

Steve merely looked at her.

“No,” she said, “we will use the gemstone to open a door to Hath-No and get Vivian back. Right, hold still. ‘Nina Seth’s needlework demonstrates a lack of aptitude and an utter disregard for this subject.’”

“What’s that?” said Steve.

“It’s what my textiles teacher put on my school report,” she smiled and went at him with needle and thread.

PRESENT DAY

Through the thick glass of Hannah’s eighth floor office, Birmingham was a city of jumbled buildings and a million people quietly going about their business. Cars and buses were shunting queues of matchbox shapes. The city ran like clockwork. It was a cliché but Rod believed in clichés, the standard operating patterns of the universe. Each component was in its place. All was busy, all was peaceful. It seemed impossible to conceive it could come to an end by this time tomorrow.

Hannah had listened to him, his accounts of what Nina had said, of what Steve the Destroyer had told her about Vivian in hell. He found that harder to contemplate than the end of the world. Nina’s version of Steve’s version of hell sounded like an Alice in Wonderland world of mad colours and madder individuals, a nightmare perhaps, but nothing like the images the word ‘hell’ conjured up for Rod.

“What I’m hearing,” said Hannah softly, “is a lot of talk about chaos.”

“How so?”

“Events outside of individual’s control,” said Hannah. “Vivian is clearly a woman who knows her mind well and yet you’ve told me a story about her clinging to a precarious existence in a tyrant’s castle.”

“I’m not sure it’s a castle.”

“It sounds like a castle. And Nina, for whom you clearly feel a certain… fondness?”

“Fondness? No, I don’t think that’s right.”

“You want to keep her safe,” said Hannah.

“Only because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“Precisely. You thrust her into this situation which does not match her skillset. She is set adrift in this historical setting she is not equipped to deal with and, furthermore, you pit her against an enemy, this….” She consulted the notes she had quietly been making. “This Isabella. An enemy whose aims seems generic and ill-defined.”

“I’m just telling it as I understand it,” said Rod.

“And, of course, then there’s death.”

“We are in a dangerous line of work,” he pointed.

“I meant your death in particular,” said Hannah. “You believe that you will die tomorrow.”

“Aye, maybe. The world’s going to end. I don’t know if we’ll be lucky enough to actually die when that happens.”

“And the whole point of the Nina narrative is that she is trying to prevent your death. You look very well for a recently dead man by the way,” she said and made a happy little noise, not quite a laugh, to show that she was joking.

“Sorry? Nina narrative?”

“That’s right. The story you told me about Nina.”

He tried to sit forward in the big comfy chair but it was very soft and resisted his efforts. He scooched forward in an undignified manner.

“It’s not a story,” he said. “It’s what happened.”

“It doesn’t matter how you choose to see it,” said Hannah. “What’s important is that it matters to you.”

“And you said it was a situation that I put her in, ‘thrust’ her into, an enemy I’ve ‘pitted’ her against. I didn’t do it to her.”

Hannah made a concerned and caring face, a little sad pout to show that she felt sorry for him. “Of course, of course. I’m trying to say that the feelings you’re articulating, that you’ve expressed through your account, however you see it are —”

“But it’s what happened,” he said. “It’s not like I’m telling you about a dream I once had.”

“I understand. But these stories, about chaos and death, I want to explore —”

“It happened!” he said.

Hannah slowly and carefully put her pen and jotter pad together, nodding in soft acknowledgement all the while.

“We can analyse the believability of the stories if you like,” she said. “Nina’s time travel exploits, for example.”

“What’s unbelievable about them?” said Rod. “Apart from, you know, it actually being time travel and that.”

Hannah smiled briefly but deliberately, a sort of smile a doctor would give.

“You said that Nina travelled back in time to prevent your death which occurred earlier today at some point.”

“Nosedive from a helicopter, apparently, aye.”

“And yet she clearly makes reference to events that have happened in our present time because she had travelled back in time.”

“Eh?”

“For example, according to what she said, she was partially inspired to make the trip back in time because she found an old Wedgwood vase that had an image of her on it. She went back in time because she knew travelling back in time was something she was going to do or indeed had done depending upon your viewpoint.”

Rod frowned. “I don’t really follow.”

“When Nina travelled back in time, did she at that point live in a present day where she had already travelled back in time or did she live in a present day where Nina had not yet been to Georgian England?”

“This is quite confusing,” said Rod.

“Or, to put it more simply,” said Hannah, driving her point home, “if Nina only travelled back in time because you were dead then, at the point at which she saved you by…”

“By making the phone call warning me.”

“Yes, at that point, what incentive was there for the Nina already living in this timeline – because there would have been two Ninas at that point – What incentive was there for the Nina who had not yet travelled back in time to actually travel back in time? Are there now two Ninas in Birmingham?”

“Um…”

Rod found himself drifting back in the chair, partly because of the pull of its comfy cushions, partly because his mind was trying to process more information than it could handle. He didn’t know which was worse – the time travel paradoxes he didn’t fully grasp or the thought that there might be two Ninas currently running around Birmingham, upsetting people wherever she went.

“This doesn’t change the facts,” he said.

“No,” agreed Hannah. “We clearly have a lot to do.”

“We do,” he agreed, then tried it again with a more assertive frame of mind. “We do. What’s first?”

“I’m thinking that we need to book in a number of sessions.”

“Sessions?”

“We can book in a block of ten, one per week for the next couple of months.”

“Er, what?”

“Some people need less, some people need more and what’s important, Rod, is that you decide how many is right for you.”

He shook his head. “What kind of sessions? You do know the world is going to end tomorrow?”

Hannah smiled. “We could pencil in the first for today and hope we’re still around for next week’s.”

“Pencil in what? I thought you were going to do something. We need action.”

“We do,” she agreed earnestly. “And the best action comes from within. You are the expert of your own life and that’s why I advocate a primarily person-centred therapy although I do enjoy a bit of psychodynamic therapy.”

“Psychodynamic…?”

“I have a leaflet here somewhere,” she said, looking about herself. “Don’t worry,” she laughed. “I’m not in to all that Freudian analysis. No couch in here, you’ll notice.”

“What?” His mind spun. The comfy chairs, the gentle unhurried manner… “You’re a therapist?”

She nodded. “As you can imagine, being a front line service, the consular mission sees mental well-being as key.”

Rod tried to stand upright in the most assertive and aggressive manner possible the comfy chair fighting him all the way. “I thought you were going to do something to help! I thought you had the power to… to…”

“All the power you need is within yourself,” said Hannah, putting a hand on her heart. “The key to proper person-centred therapy is acknowledging that –”

The door opened. Nina looked in.

“There you are,” she said. “I couldn’t remember —” She looked at Hannah, then Rod. “What are you doing in here?”

“She’s a therapist!” said Rod, pointing at Hannah.

“How long did it take you to work that out?”

Rod looked at his watch and didn’t like what he saw. He realised, now that the door was open, he could hear an alarm ringing in the building.

“Is that alarm you?” he said.

“I’ve been busy,” said Nina. “Did you know they cancelled our door and lift access?”

She held up an ID swipe card. It wasn’t hers. “Let’s go.”

He followed her out without a backward glance. Red alarm lights flashed in the lobby area by the lifts. Lift doors opened as they neared. Security Bob stepped out, took one look at the pair of them and reached for the taser baton on his belt.

Rod didn’t like to make judgements about people but Security Bob was old and fat. His major weapons in the fight to maintain consular mission security were pedantry and belligerence. Physically, he had very little. Rod caught Bob’s wrist as he raised the taser, twisted and gave the man a half second zap in his own chest. Bob went down with a grunt.

The entered the lift. Nina swiped the stolen ID card and pressed for the basement.

“You still smell of horse,” Rod told her.

1773

Georgian England stank pretty much as Nina expected. The people stank. The buildings stank of mould, smoke and the people who lived in them. The streets stank of smoke, horse shit, humans and the pools of raw sewage they created. What worried Nina most was that she was getting used to it.

The stable yard behind the Crown Inn stank almost entirely of horses. By comparison to everywhere else, it was a delightful rustic aroma.

Dick waited for Nina, the horse’s reins in his hand. Nina wore her shortest, most practical dress for riding. She also wore the knee-length riding boots that a local cobbler had made for an aristocrat’s young son but which had never been collected. She knew she looked more like a go-go dancer than an equestrian but it would have to do. She also wore her long coat.

“I have very fond memories of this place,” she said to Dick as she strode out to him.

“What place?”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the inn. “It’s still here in the future. Went to a brilliant New Year’s party in the upstairs function room. Alpine lodge theme. I got hammered on Jägerbombs and copped off with a guy I know called Ricky.”

Dick waited for her to stop talking.

“Is this important or are you just trying to avoid getting on the horse?”

“Bit of both,” admitted Nina.

The horse was called Charlotte. She was large (all horses were large to Nina) and a deep toffee brown and, if Nina could stop hating all horses for a second, quite a lovely and placid girl. Nina had fed her oats from her hand and had congratulated herself on not shrieking as Charlotte’s big lips brushed her palm. Nina had rubbed Charlotte’s nose and patted her flanks and shared some kind words with the beast. Nina remained quite terrified of her.

“Okay, what lesson is it today?” said Nina.

Dick mushed his lips in thoughts. “I reckon we should start with getting on the horse without me having to push you up, followed by staying in the saddle without falling off.”

Nina nodded earnestly. “Two lessons in one. Right. Here goes.”

She focused on mounting the horse. Not having Dick’s hand shoved in her backside was quite a motivator and Nina was determined to get this right first time.

HELL

Soon enough, Vivian needed to set aside a separate table to store the sheets for her private writing project. Each of the fragments from the Big Bloody Book had spawned dozens of sheets of commentary and conjecture. They had even inspired some thoughts of her own on subjects that were wholly tangential. Footnotes led to digressions led to asides. These in turn led to her searching and studying the contents of the scriptorium’s own library. The sphere of her studies expanded and, at times, she wondered if she should keep her focus on just the Big Bloody Book pages but, she reasoned, since the Big Bloody Book described all known existence then it too encompassed these other books.

Barry the thoggan hopped onto a stool next to her and crouched on top of it, hands and feet gripping its edges.

“If you’re going to sit on it, sit on it properly,” she said.

“What are you doing, Mitheth Grey?” he asked.

“I’m working.”

He rocked his stool and walked it forward to the edge of a desk. “What’th thith?” he said.

“Do not eat it,” she said automatically.

He grinned at her. “Paper’th not ath tathty ath vellum.”

She gave him a stern look. Even masked, her stern looks had power.

“That,” she said, looking over at it. “That’s a description of the Soulgate.”

“And thith?” he said, picking up another sheet.

“My analysis of a poetry fragment. I think it’s based on Ryngu’s The King in Crimson.”

He rock-walked his stool over to her own desk. It was loud, irritating, dangerous and inefficient.

“And thith?”

“Haven’t you got something better to do?” she scowled.

He looked up at her with big fishy eyes and smiled. Barry’s smile reminded her, not for the first time, that the baring of teeth was a sign of fear and submission in chimpanzees (and more than a few humans in her experience). She relented.

“I was thinking about The King in Crimson. It’s a Carcosan piece of work and I began writing all I recalled of Carcosa.”

Barry looked at the word mage a few desks over.

“No,” said Vivian. “He doesn’t even know what he last ate for dinner. He might be from there but his knowledge of Carcosa is worse than mine. I’ve simply started writing what I recall of the place. I’ve detailed the ruling families and the role of the guilds in the city administration. There’s a lot to be said about the one-party state and the roles of the bureaucrats in –”

She looked at where she had finished off writing. She was near the bottom of the page. She dipped her pen in the inkwell and continued to the end of the line where she ran out of room. The unfinished sentence began: “The Cey und’ay had the power to levy taxes and were able to command –”

She stared it at while the wet ink dried. There was something horribly and unpleasantly familiar about it.

She set it down, sorted through her stacks of work until she found one of the original pages of the Big Bloody Book. It was the sheet with the call out box of nonsense games rules at the side. The bulk of the text was a continuation of an article about government and the first sentence fragment at the top read: “- the city militia at times of crisis, which gave these middle level functionaries considerable influence.”

She felt fear for a moment, or possibly excitement. The two were not easily distinguished.

She placed the papers side by side. The handwriting matched. Side by side, they clearly belonged together.

“I always thought it was curious,” she said.

“What’th curiouth?” said Barry.

“A place of learning such of this and none of the books here mention the Big Bloody Book. Why?”

Steve made his way down the corridor to meet with Sha Datsei.

He entered her chamber and found that she was hanging from the ceiling, in the form that he’d first encountered her.

“I bring news!” Said Steve.

“You have word from my husband?” asked Sha Datsei.

“No,” said Steve. “This is much better. I bring a game.”

She dropped from the ceiling. Suddenly she was eye to eye with Steve – a considerable achievement given that she was easily twenty times the size of him. She retracted her elongated neck into a more reasonable position and continued to stare at him.

“I do hope you're not trying to trick me,” she said.

“Trick you?" said Steve. “Why would I do that?”

“Because that's what I would expect of any emissary that my husband sends,” said Sha Datsei.

“I am not any emissary,” said Steve. "I am Steve the Destroyer and I bring you a game from Earth.”

She slithered forward with interest. "This game, it is a challenge for great minds?”

“Something like that," said Steve. “I wanted to teach you how to play Pointless, however it turns out that it doesn't translate well. I have therefore fallen back on a secondary game. Behold!” He brought his hands from behind his back with a flourish and set down a board with a set of teeth arrayed upon it.

“What is this?” asked Sha Datsei.

“This is the Earth game known as tiddlywinks,” said Steve. "It is an old and venerable game, played most expertly by the youngest and the very oldest humans. It seems as though its wisdom is timeless."

“Very well," said Sha Datsei. "You may show me how to play tiddlywinks. The teeth are prizes? Do we compete for a full set and bite our opponents?”

“Sadly no," said Steve. "That might be a game for another time. What I propose we use the teeth for is the counters in the game of tiddlywinks. I could find no better substitute.”

Steve demonstrated how one might flip a tiddlywink. This was made more difficult by the fact that both the flipper and the flippee counters were teeth. However with persistence and lots and lots of time (which they both had) they were able to develop a rudimentary technique.

“I believe I am becoming proficient at the tiddlywinks,” said Sha Datsei.

“Indeed you are," said Steve. "I should say we are evenly matched in our abilities, which will make the rematch so much more exciting. I shall return for a full tournament.”

There was the sound of footsteps. Bakhan Sand had entered the scriptorium.

“There is no time in hell,” Vivian said to herself. “Things do not have to follow the same sequence…”

Bakhan raised his claw in greeting.

“Come! Miss! Us! Grey! I! Want! To! Show! You! Some! Thing!”

Vivian gently put the sibling sheets down on her desk. She felt unusually light-headed.

“All! Is! Well?” said Bakhan.

“I think the’th gone mad,” said Barry.

Bakhan’s shrug seemed to suggest that this was perfectly normal.

“Come!” he said and beckoned.

“Yes,” said Vivian. “I think a walk to clear my head would be a good thing right now.” She stood. She had to make a deliberate effort to tear her gaze from the sheets filled with her handwriting. “Yes. Where are we going?”

“To! The! God! Heart! Home! Of! True! Venis! Larn!”

“Good,” she said, forcefully stepping away from her desk. “I probably have some questions for them.”

Yabandeman’s pool bubbled with a constant stream of flatulent bubbles. His fat body creaked and squeaked as his courtiers’ intake of gulped air was pumped through countless tubes into his belly.

“I cannot taste it,” he said, not for the first time. “Nothing to be tasted. And I’m hungrier than ever.”

Crippen-Ai leaned in close.

“Sire, I am sure we can resolve your cucinarian woes soon enough but, if I may, there was the matter of a certain proclamation. The word armour is near complete. The humans are superfluous.”

“Yes, yes,” said Yabandeman tiredly. He hooked his finger around Crippen-Ai’s elastic body and pushed him aside so he could address Steve who stood among the inflated lengths of gut on the floor. “You took my last message to Sha Datsei?”

“I did,” said Steve. “The poem.”

“And you recited it as instructed.”

Steve struck a confident pose. “I don’t often recite poetry, King Yabandeman, but when I do it is a powerful performance.”

“And my lady?”

“She was moved,” said Steve.

This much was true although if Yabandeman had asked for clarification, Steve might hesitate to say she was moved to hysterical laughter and cruel mockery of Yabandeman’s verse.

“Moved,” said Yabandeman.

“The proclamation, sire…” said Crippen-Ai.

Yabandeman growled.

“A proclamation!” he said, loud enough for all to hear. “I proclaim that my one love, Sha Datsei, is hereby pardoned of her crimes and will return to court as my consort and co-ruler.”

“Sire?” said Crippen-Ai.

Yabandeman’s hand whipped out and grabbed Crippen-Ai. Slender fingers squeezed hard, threatening to slice the shifter into half a dozen uneven chunks.

“Yes!” said the king. “Let it be known that after my soldiers are armed and armoured every human in the scriptorium is to be slaughtered.” His orange eyes swivelled on Crippen-Ai who did not struggle in the king’s grip. “And let it also be known that if this worm continues to wheedle and whine in my ear, I will have him torn limb from limb.” He considered Crippen-Ai’s fluid form. “Bit from other bit.”

Yabandeman dropped Crippen-Ai. The creature bounced off the pool side and part-rolled, part-slunk across the floor.

“My brimmingest apologies, lord,” he wheezed and dragged himself, as though crippled, to the edge of the room.

“Go take my message, Steve,” said Yabandeman.

Steve looked to him.

“Tell Sha Datsei she is free.”

Steve gave him a fierce salute and scampered away.

1773

The thing Nina hated about horse riding — no, the things, plural, Nina hated about horse riding was that no matter how much it hurt and smelled at the time, the pain and the stink stayed with you. She had fallen off only the four times and she was young enough and agile enough to bounce but now, two hours later, those bumps and knocks and aches came back to haunt her with a sadistic vengeance.

Her lower back ached savagely and her shoulders, which she swore she hadn’t banged or used at all in her riding lesson, ached in unnecessary sympathy.

She hobbled to the tin bath the maid had poured for her by the fire. There was a measly four inches of hot water in it at the moment but the maid was heating more in the kitchen downstairs. Nina couldn’t wait for her to fill it — that would take the best part of an hour — and so stripped out of her horse-scented clothes and climbed painfully over the lip of the tub.

The aches seemed to be spreading. God, if this was what it was like to be old then she didn’t want to live that long. Twenty-five years old then death, please. There probably wasn’t much to live for after that age anyway. She thought of her colleagues. What did Rod do with his life? Played around with gadgets and drank disgusting real ale in that sad lonely man flat of his. Morag went on OAP day trips to places of historical interest with that weird downstairs neighbour of hers. And Vivian… All Vivian seemed to live for was the opportunity to criticise others, act like a tinpot dictator and belittle everyone else’s ability to make tea. The discovery that Vivian also supported a local donkey sanctuary (a picture of a donkey was the only photograph in her house) came as a startling revelation — that’s how dull the woman’s life had been.

Of course, Vivian was in hell still, Morag had been taken by Kathy bloody Kaur and Rod was dead. Nina hoped she died before she became old and boring but there were at least three old and boring people she’d do her all to bring back.

She made a satisfyingly creaky old-person groan as she sat down in the tub. She picked up the ugly square that passed for soap in this place and began to wash herself down.

She heard the door open. It would be the maid. Dick had been sent away for the afternoon with strict and threatening instructions to not come back until nightfall. He had also been given instructions to take Steve the Destroyer with him. Although she didn’t give two hoots about non-human horrors getting a glimpse of her naked body, she had banished Steve while she bathed ever since he had described her body as ‘scrawny, inadequate and not fit for purpose.’

“Just pour it in, Mary,” said Nina.

There was a chuckle. It was deep and throaty and definitely not Mary. Nina looked round.

There were two of them. One was bald, one was hairy and unshaven. Both looked like they were going to an audition for Oliver!, possibly for the role of Bill Sykes. The hairy one had the Bill Sykes look about him, even down to the battered brimmed hat and tatty neck tie, but she reckoned the wild glint in the bald one’s eye would clinch him the role.

“Get out!” she ordered. “Get the fuck out!”

The bald one chuckled again and closed the door behind them. Oh yes, he’d get the Bill Sykes part, the whole casually cold, criminally cruel, woman-beating role.

“We’re not going nowhere,” said bald Bill Sykes.

The hairy man demoted to being Bill Syke’s understudy smirked. “Not without you.”

Nina took note of that remark. They weren’t just casual burglars or opportunist rapists. They wanted her for a reason.

She stood, deliberately, defiantly and ignoring her aching body. She reached slowly for her towel, determined to show no shame at her nakedness. If she hurried to cover herself they’d only find that amusing, exciting. If she responded to their threats with anything other than cool contempt then she was playing their game. If she fought them out of fear, that might only spur them on. God help her, they might call her ‘feisty’ or say ‘I like a girl with spirit!’

Nina wasn’t going to give them that pleasure. She wasn’t afraid of nothing.

“What are you doing?” said Bill Sykes as she wrapped the towel around herself.

“Getting dressed,” she said.

“Maybe we don’t want you dressed,” he leered. The edge of a knife glinted in his hand.

The understudy put a restraining hand on Bill. “Nah, she’s a witch. You can’t… you know.”

“What?” said Bill.

The understudy sniffed. “If you touch a witch’s dumplings…”

“What?”

“Yer knob falls off.”

Bill laughed, disbelieving.

“Nah, it’s true,” said the understudy. “Man in the pub told me. S’a fact.”

“No.”

“T’is. And he was told by someone who met a witch.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Bugger me,” he exclaimed.

“And then, after your knob fell off, I’d kill you,” said Nina. She took her dress from the chair and pulled it over her head.

Bill laughed. “Kill me? I’d like to see you try.”

Nina nodded compliantly. “I can do the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.”

“The what?”

“Uma Thurman? Kill Bill? I just have to touch you and then your heart explodes.”

“Explodes?”

“Explodes.”

“Don’t believe you.”

“Mystic secrets of the Far East,” she said as she continued dressing. She slipped her little purse into her dress pocket. “So, who sent you?”

Bill shifted uneasily. This conversation was no longer going the way he’d planned.

“Isabella?” she suggested.

“You shouldn’t have let her talk,” hissed the understudy.

Nina sat on the bed to put her boots on. She had no plans to go anywhere, but if it came to a fight, she didn’t want to be barefoot.

“You’ve got the gag,” Bill hissed back.

The understudy held a length of grimy brown cloth.

“That is not going anywhere near my mouth,” said Nina.

The men approached together, one with a knife, the other with a gag.

“You’ll do as you’re told, miss,” said Bill, happy to find himself back on his expected script for this encounter.

Nina clutched the purse in her pocket. She could kill these two with a word. Unfortunately, the explosion would kill her too and she wasn’t prepared to do that; she had plans.

She reached down, picked up the poker beside the fire and swung round with it in a wide arc. The tip caught the understudy on the cheek, spraying blood across the room. He yelled. That was good. Yelling was good.

Bill refused his hold on his knife and punched her cleanly with a combination of fist and knife handle that nearly knocked her unconscious. She stumbled and tried to raise the poker. Bill punched her again.

“Get her!” he growled.

The understudy’s hands were on her now. Something was stuffed in her mouth. She retched and tried to spit.

“Fight all you want,” said Bill. “I likes a girl with spirit.”

If the situation hadn’t been so drastic, Nina would have rolled her eyes. A bag or sack was thrown over her head and someone – it would be Bill – punched her in the stomach for good measure. As she curled up involuntarily, they grabbed her by armpits and elbows and half-dragged half-marched her out.

On the stairs there was a gasp and a crash. Mary the maid.

“Make a sound and I’ll gut you,” said Bill.

Nina stopped struggling. She didn’t want to give Mary a reason to cry, didn’t want to give Bill an excuse to stab her. They wanted Nina alive, so she was safe for now.

They steered her down the stairs, turned her around and out through a door. There was uneven ground beneath her feet and the stink of the street. Hands reached underneath her and she recoiled. She was lifted up and over a hard board on onto a wood floor – it was a cart.

HELL

The fortress of Hath-No was vast but, even so, the route Bakhan led Vivian on seemed to extend for more miles than was possible. They ascended from the scriptorium dungeon to the wide arterial thoroughfares and they crossed halls, torture pits, hive-like nesting structures and spaces whose functions, dimensions and even existence couldn’t be properly distinguished. Scuttling skull-shaped lens-spiders followed them for part of the route. Bakhan paid them no mind but seemed pleased with himself when they gave up and crept off. Kerah-han soldier-beasts guarded major junctions and barred the way to key areas but Bakhan’s route always diverted away through a side tunnel or access pipe before they reached any guards. He knew the fortress well.

“We! Are! Close!” he barked as they clambered up through a passage paved with plaques of creamy residue that were constantly washed by a rivulet of yellow bile. The floor was slippery and Vivian had to grip the wall tightly with her one hand to maintain her balance.

“One might have logically felt,” she said as she grunted with the effort of the climb, “that the centre of the fortress wouldn’t be so difficult to get to.”

“It! Is! Secret! Place! Holy! Place!”

He turned at the top and held out a claw to help her. Vivian took it gladly.

He lifted her effortlessly up and into a large, spherical chamber. It was smaller than Yabandeman’s throne room, a chapel compared to the king’s feast hall. Soft blue light filled the space, emanating from the walls. The chamber walls were of a heavy glassy stone, dark but shot through with ribbons of light: bolts of lightning frozen in the heart of an iceberg. There were other openings across the surface of the God-Heart, top and bottom. This place reached outward in all directions. There were no other features to this place, only the lightning-streaked walls and breaches in the wall. The place had a heavy sense of having once contained something, a space now vacated.

“God! Heart! Of! Hath! No!” said Bakhan.

“There is no Venislarn here?” said Vivian.

Bakhan cupped a hand to an ear (even though he had none visible). “Hath! No! Was! God! Here!”

“Yo Hath-No was a god,” said Vivian, understanding. “But he’s gone.”

Bakhan nodded. He drew her forward, holding her hand by the tip of his claw, like a courtly gentleman leading his lady out to dance. They stepped into the centre of the chamber, to the edges of an aperture in the floor.

“Look!”

The hole extended downwards, dark and straight and, at its end, a circle of purple. Vivian focused and, not for the first time, wished she could remove her mask in order to see better. The field of purple wavered and swayed. It was the distant possibly-land not-sky.

“This tunnel sees all the way out.”

“Look!”

He directed her gaze upward. Another straight opening looked up at a far off pink landscape. Somewhere up there was a jagrahad forest and the creature that had eaten her arm.

“Eyes! Of! Hath! No!” said Bakhan.

He pointed to the four cardinal points of the room around him and she went to each to look at the view offered.

An impression of the being who had lived here developed in her mind.

“The fortress was his shell.”

“Don’t! Know!” said Bakhan. “Long! Ago!”

The fifth eye she looked through showed a swirling inky space, dotted with fires or stars (it was impossible to tell). At the centre, darkness against darkness, something moved, swarming.

“What is out there?” she said.

Bakhan stood close next to her and put his head level with hers.

“Don’t! Know! Getting! Closer?”

Steve ran in the direction of Sha Datsei’s prison cell. He glanced over his shoulder often and, when he was certain he was not being followed, he darted away, between the legs of a band of lesshmor traders and towards the lower levels of the fortress. Before long, he was lost (although he didn’t actually regard himself as being lost, more that the stupid fortress wasn’t laid out as it should be) but he continued taking downward passages, knowing that the scriptorium was at the lowest levels and that the fortress would get its act together soon enough and point him the right way.

As he climbed into a slime-rimmed access pipe, a mechanical spider, fashioned around a mouldering human skull, crept from the shadows to block his path. Half a dozen green glass eyes whirred as it focussed.

“Piss off, six eyes!” Steve told it and stared it down until it stepped aside.

He threw himself down the steep pipe, gouged troughs of slime as he used his feet to brake near the bottom and leapt out into the writing halls of the scriptorium. Steve remembered when this space had been abuzz with dozens of scribes and illuminators, scholars chronicling the glorious history of the Prein and word mages fashioning spells and curses. Now, it was all but empty and, instead of the meaty stink that used to pervade the place, it now smelled fusty, of dust and boredom. Finished sheets of writing, many covered in simple but powerful war runes, hung from lines in the rafters. The wafted in the constant warm breeze. The only individual in sight was an emaciated word mage at a desk, bent over his desk like a drooping candle.

“Oi!” shouted Steve. “Where’s Mrs Vivian Grey?”

The word mage ignored him and continued his writing.

“Hey, fossil-face! I’m talking to you! Where’s the woman, Vivian Grey?”

The word mage appeared completely deaf.

Steve noticed that the decrepit creature’s writing quill had been securely tied to his hand with strands of sinew.

“What the hell…?” said Steve.

“Pardon me, thir, can I athitht you?” said a voice.

Steve jumped. A runty thoggan child had crept up behind him.

“Thorry. Didn’t mean to thtartle you,” said the thoggan.

“You didn’t startle me, small fry!” snapped Steve. “That was a jump of… of readiness – a high state of readiness - and you’re lucky I didn’t kill you where you stood.”

“Thorry.” The thoggan took a respectful step back and smiled like an idiot.

“You’ve got too many teeth,” said Steve.

“Big thmile. Everybody happy.”

“Where is Mrs Vivian Grey?”

The thoggan made a show of looking around. “The’th not here.”

“I can see that! I need to find her. I need to warn her.”

A shadow fell across them. The thoggan’s eyes, big as they already were, widened in surprise. Steve jumped, again.

Crippen-Ai, stretched to menacing height, encircled them with jagged limbs and brought a hard and spiteful face close to them.

“You!” he spat at the thoggan. “Skedaddle you overendented grimblesnipe, before I peel you open and burn your innards!”

Barry peed himself in fright and fled.

“What are you playing at?” demanded Steve.

Crippen-Ai swept him up in coiled limbs and squeezed.

“The long game,” said Crippen-Ai. “And playing both sides is tiring.”

Before Steve could react, Crippen-Ai had flowed up the wall, through a pipe and, carrying Steve in his folds accelerated up through the fortress’s innards with a succession of slurps, pops and thuds. Crippen-Ai splatted against a wall and a floor and stopped. Steve would have shaken himself to clear his spinning head but he could not move in that grip.

The room they were in was hardly large enough to warrant the name. The entrance was a gap in a vertical shaft, a chimney of sorts. There was a window, thin and deep. Whether it was the window or the shaft or the confines but Steve felt they were somehow up high, that this space was a roost or an eyrie. Or a lair.

“Now,” said Crippen-Ai, “what were you hastifying to the scriptorium for, Steve?”

“None of your business, snot-pile.”

“You were sent to Sha Datsei but went to warn Vivian Grey instead. Why? Was it because of this?”

From within his body, Crippen-Ai disgorged a rectangle of laminated plastic. It was Vivian Grey’s identification badge. He had last seen it when Vivian Grey had placed it in the laptop case. From there, he could not recall how it might have got into Crippen-Ai’s clutches.

“Mrs Vivian Grey, employee of the consular mission to the Venislarn.” He brought the photograph on the card level with Steve’s eyes. “A human. Very much so. I’ve even met others of her kind. Morag Murray, Kathy Kaur. What is her stratagem?”

“What are you on about?”

“Mrs Vivian Grey. She must be here for a reason. Have the humans sent her here as an agent? But why here?”

“No one sent her here.”

“I don’t believe you. I will destroy her soon enough but I have to know. Does she have plans for Yabandeman’s word armour? Is there something she seeks in Hath-No’s nookeries?”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“Tell me!”

“Release me now and I might let you live,” said Steve.

Crippen-Ai was not amused. “You really do suffer under the most lachrymatically misguided image of your own self-worth.” Fine needle-like teeth emerged through Crippen-Ai’s flesh and half ripped, half tugged at Steve’s cloth body. “You have no power over me.”

“I could kill you with a word,” said Steve.

The slicing pull of Crippen-Ai’s limbs slowed but did not stop. “You are a liar, Steve.”

“A Tyriat ideogram, sewn into my insides. Just a word to activate it and this room will be painted with your minced innards.”

Crippen-Ai recoiled but only slightly. “And yours,” he said.

“If I’m going to die,” said Steve, watching a wound open up in his chest and the first blooms of stuffing popping out, “I think I’ll take you with me.”

Crippen-Ai nodded and relaxed his grip. The damned creature could see when it was beaten.

“Since you put it so glibbantly…”

There was a sudden compressing sense of movement, Steve felt himself folded under pressure and passed along a barrel of flesh, hand to hand to hand to...

He was flying at high speed. He rocketed through the window opening with a pop of compressed air and was at once outside the fortress, dropping away. Crippen-Ai had thrown him, expelled him. The window was now a slit in the fortress surface and the entire fortress was disappearing rapidly beneath him. Away from the place’s idiosyncratic gravity, there was no up or down to be had. Steve flew. His course was set, and no matter how much he twisted or struggled, Hath-No was becoming more and more distant.

Bakhan and Vivian watched the dark swarm approaching through the eye of Hath-No.

“It looks like a cloud,” said Vivian. “A sandstorm.”

Bakhan was sceptical and, Vivian realised, nervous.

“Not! Sand! Storm! Too! Ordered!”

“Then what?”

“That?” said Crippen-Ai. “That is an invasion force.”

The white amorphous creature was on the far side of the God-Heart chamber, draped nonchalantly against the wall with the deliberate ease of a street hoodlum. He had a plastic rectangle at the end of one flipper limb and was tossing it like a coin. Toss, catch, toss, catch.

“To be percifitate, it is the armies of Sulu Sukram, returning from exile to reclaim their former home.” Crippen-Ai’s head developed a trumpet ear and he cocked it dramatically. “I would have expected the alarm to have been raised by now. Yabandeman is an incompetent monarch but even his lookouts should have – ah!”

A deep and discordant cry went up as though from a thousand cracked horns.

“Now, they have seen it,” said Crippen-Ai, amused. “Unless, of course, that alarm is for the fire I started in the scriptorium.”

“Did! What?” barked Bakhan.

“Oh, don’t get pansharded, my pauciloquent friend. Yabandeman was only going to waste your spells and wards. I’ve simply shortened the war. And the Prein will be grateful for my assistance.” He oozed towards them. “I should thank you, Mrs Vivian Grey.”

“For what?” she said.

“Paper. It has that suprangeously combustible quality. Did you never wonder where her knowledge comes from, Bakhan?” he asked and tossed the plastic rectangle down at the lizard’s feet.

Vivian had recognised her office ID card the moment she’d seen it. Bakhan squinted at the picture.

“Vivi! An?”

His voice, always so harsh and so limited, barely conveyed the confusion and distress she could feel rolling off him.

She gripped the beak of her yathki mask and lifted it up. It had been solidly wedged over her face for as long she’d been here and when it came away, it reopened the abrasive wounds in her scalp. She did not feel the pain, not the physical pain. She lifted her human face to Bakhan.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I had hoped you suspected but did not care. I hoped it did not matter to you.”

Bakhan’s eyes flicked across her face. He bared his teeth and hissed.

“If I hadn’t acted,” said Crippen-Ai, “if the Prein were not already at your door, you would soon be smothercated in human vermin.”

Bakhan flexed his claws.

“You should thank me,” said Crippen-Ai.

Bakhan drew back momentarily and sprang, not at Vivian but at Crippen-Ai, jaws wide and claws slashing. Talons raked through the white flesh, parting it like strings of cheese. Crippen-Ai shouted, in anger rather than pain, and twisted as Bakhan spun on his foot to swipe back the other way. The shifter dodged. Bakhan came at him and Crippen-Ai became snake coils that corkscrewed themselves around Bakhan’s body. As they did, blue ooze flowed from Crippen-Ai’s body and where it touched Bakhan’s flesh, it steamed and bubbled.

Bakhan Sand screamed.

Vivian ran forward, swinging the yathki skull as the sharpest and heaviest object to hand. Before she was within a stride of the fighting pair, Crippen-Ai flung out a fresh limb, a branch in the face, that knocked Vivian to the ground. She shook herself, dazed.

“Go! Save!” began Bakhan and then the muscly cords closed around his face and burning acid silenced him.

Bakhan’s dying claws dug in Crippen-Ai’s tightening coils but to no use. Crippen-Ai gave an audible grunt and Bakhan’s body gave way. The scriptorium workmaster spasmed, came apart and slapped to the floor in an untidy pile.

Vivian rolled back and up to her feet. Even as she stared at Bakhan’s dismembered corpse, her hand was forming the ritual gestures for a curse. Vivian was not a practitioner of the magic arts – the world was untidy and illogical enough without the addition of magic – but she had read enough books, had studied key texts and knew what worked and what could inflict pain.

As she made the fourth gesture, Crippen-Ai grabbed her with blood-soaked limbs and snapped her forearm in two. He followed this, while she was still frozen in shock, with the breaking of her left leg. It was a casual, even lazy attack, as though his heart wasn’t truly in it, as though he just wanted to see what happened when he bent her femur in half.

She blacked out for a moment on the way to the floor but it was only a moment and not long enough by half. Crippen-Ai withdrew his limbs and watched her gasp and flap and blink in constant surprise at the pain.

The first words out of her mouth, unbidden, unconsciously chosen, were:

“Even by the standards of the Venislarn…”

“What?” said Crippen-Ai. “You wish to stand in judgement, slump in judgement over me?” The face he presented to her was sneering. “No one cares what you think, human.”

He spiralled over himself in a sort of fountain and she realised he was wringing Bakhan’s blood from his own body, shaking the last of the dead creature from his limbs.

“Your opinion will count for even less when I inform King Yabandeman of your treachery.”

“I suppose I burned the word armour?” Vivian grunted through the agony.

“Indeed you did, you disfiderate crone. Yabandeman will believe me. The only question is whether he’s able to dispatch his troops to kill the humans before the Prein slaughter them all.” He tiptoed round Bakhan’s grisly remains, playfully squeamish as he avoided the pooling blood. “But Yabandeman, humans, Prein. Who kills who in what order, it’s all fuel to the fire, all benescant to me.” He paused at an exit. “But I’d be gladful if you could stay alive for now. I will have questions for you later.”

“I will see you dead,” she said, struggling to enunciate the words.

“Unlikely,” said Crippen-Ai and was gone.

She could have sworn at him or attempted a pithy comeback but those would have been hollow gestures and the overwhelming pain that washed over her body was sapping all her strength. Vivian rolled, screamed when she moved her one shattered arm, and looked to Bakhan. His head lay on its side, mouth closed, tongue protruding slightly through his teeth. His cowl was up, his eyes hidden. She wept. Tears were a frivolous indulgence in her opinion but she was out of practical options for the time being.

1773

Nina had worked much of the gag out of her mouth with her tongue and when they finally took the bag off her head, she spat it out and she spat and spat but even with the gag gone there was no shifting the taste. It was like her mouth had been used as a hoover bag – hair and dust and the foul taste of people.

They had tied her hands behind her back around a wooden post. The post ran ceiling to floor in the dingy cellar room they had brought her to. Her hairy assailant bent to pick up the gag.

“Don’t fret, Algie,” said bald Bill Sykes behind her. “She’s tied good and proper.”

She could have screamed for help. There was a narrow window high up on one wall. If they didn’t care about her screaming, they were probably far from any people. There were crates and bundles stacked throughout the cellar. Several were stamped with the name ‘Scroggins and Scroggins’ which seemed distantly familiar.

“There,” said Bill and stood away from her. “She ain’t going nowhere.” He circled her warily, leering. “You’re going nowhere, are you, darling?”

He stroked her cheek. She kicked him in the bollocks.

Bill doubled up for a second and then came up snarling, fists clenched.

“She told you to take me unharmed,” she said, trying to put a tone of decisive confidence in a what was essentially a guess. “Isabella. She wants me unharmed.”

It was enough to make him hesitate. Eventually, he forced a laugh. “She’s a feisty one, ain’t she?” he said to his understudy — Algie, was it?

“I thought you were going to take me to her,” said Nina. “Me and her have got a lot to talk about.” She kept up the strident tone, trying to force him onto the conversational backfoot. “I don’t like to be kept waiting,” she said.

Bill and Algie exchanged glances.

“I’ll go,” said Algie.

“No,” said Bill. “I’ll go. You’ve to repair the fruit. You’re better at the fiddly stuff.”

Algie’s expression, backed up by the bloody mark she had put on his left cheek, suggested that he didn’t really want to be left alone with Nina but he didn’t argue.

“What if she tries to escape?” he asked.

“Are you going to untie her bonds?” said Bill.

“No.”

“Then she won’t escape.”

Bill gave her a final, warning look and, with only a little hobble in his step for his injured bollocks, he left.

When he came back, he’d have Isabella with him. Nina imagined that it would be a brief conversation. Isabella would want to know what Nina knew, torture any secrets she had from her and then have her killed. Whether she was in league with the Venislarn Crippen-Ai or was simply his human puppet, Isabella would be a tough opponent to overcome, particularly if she was still tied up in what felt like a warehouse basement. Time was not on Nina’s side.

Algie lit a shuttered oil lamp and hung it on a hook in a corner of the room where crates had been stacked to make a table area with a cloth over it. On the cloth was a pot, brushes, various wood-working tools, a clay pipe and tobacco pouch and what looked like two halves of a spikey fruit.

“Is that a pineapple?” she said.

“Not talking to you,” said Algie, sat down and stuffed his smoking pipe with tobacco before picking up and inspecting the split pineapple.

It looked like a pineapple but it wasn’t a pineapple. The spikey bits were too round and laid too flat. It was more like a giant pine cone than a pineapple. And the stiff, sharp fronds coming from the top were too rounded, too much like petals. If it was a pineapple then they had changed a lot in two centuries. And if it wasn’t that then…

“Is that a fake pineapple?” she asked.

“Shut up,” he said. “I said I’m not talking to you.”

Algie experimentally placed the two piece of the fruit back together, looked at the join and then began to apply glue from a pot to one half.

Scroggins and Scroggins. Nina remembered where she’d seen the name. It was in the diary of Jonathan Angus which she had read back in her own time. They were merchants of some sort and had provided the Boultons with an extortionately priced pineapple for some fancy dinner party they were going to have.

The pieces fell into place in Nina’s mind.

“You sell people fake pineapples,” she said.

“Shut up,” said Algie, concentrating on his gluing.

“That’s wood,” she said.

“Shut up.”

“It’s impressive,” she said. “Realistic. The paint job on the pointy bits.”

Algie paused. He didn’t respond – he didn’t want to engage with her – but he paused in acknowledgement. Ah, so it was his pineapple.

“You sell them fake pineapples. And even if it’s a bit inaccurate — sorry, Algie, but it is — it doesn’t matter because who’s seen a real pineapple, eh? Unless they went to some fancy lord’s banquet and they had pineapples growing in their hot houses. But…” She smiled. “Even if they’ve just hired it for the week, you can’t take a chance on them trying to cut into it so you break in the following night and steal it back.”

She laughed.

“What?” said Algie.

“Selling exotic fruit that no one’s properly seen before and which are too expensive for anyone to actually eat and then stealing them back again to avoid detection. And then selling them on again. It’s bloody genius.”

Algie didn’t comment but the tiniest smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. It was pathetic, really. Taking compliments from his prisoner. He pressed the two halves of the broken fruit together and wiped the droplets that came through the seams.

“And that’s how Isabella makes her money, is it?” said Nina, disappointed.

“This ain’t got nothing to do with her,” he said.

“Ah, this is just a side line. You and the Scroggins.”

He twitched.

“Or is working for Isabella just a side line?” she said. “She’s just a bit of bonus cash when she needs you and Bill to do a job for her?”

“How do you know his name’s Bill?” he asked, surprised.

Blind luck, she thought but she didn’t say that. She kept her composure.

“He’s Bill. You’re Algie. But your dear old mum called you Algernon, right?”

“You know too much,” he said.

“I am a witch,” she pointed out.

There was a wonderful glimmer of apprehension in his eyes. He was starting to think that she wasn’t trapped in a cellar with him but that he was trapped in a cellar with her. But she had to tread carefully. There was a thin line between keeping him at bay and accidentally goading him into silencing her for good.

All the while they’d been talking, she’d been exploring the ropes that bound her hands to the post. By the feel of it, Bill’s knots were like her sewing. There was no skill there so he’d just tied it again and again until it was good and tight. She had little chance of picking them apart with her fingertips; they were just too thick and she didn’t have the angle to reach. But, given long enough, she reckoned she might be able to fray some of them against the edges of the post behind her.

“You’re just some filthy foreign pedlar,” said Algie. “I don’t have to be afraid of you.”

“You don’t,” she said, “but there’s a lot I could teach you. I could make you a rich man. I could tell you secrets that would add decades to your life.”

He scoffed and stood to light his pipe from the lantern with a splint.

“Quit smoking for one,” she said.

“And that’s going to stop me dying of pox, is it? Smoke protects you from bad airs. Well known fact.”

“Or,” she suggested, “you could think about washing your hands more often.”

“What?”

“In hot soapy water. Before you eat and that.”

Algie was unimpressed. “That’s the secret of long life?”

“Look at me,” she said. She grinned toothily and said through gritted teeth like a bad ventriloquist. “Haff you efer seen teef as fwhite as zese?” She threw her head back like a model in a shampoo commercial. “And this skin. Smooth as a baby’s bottom.”

It was all true. Spending several weeks in the past had been a bloody trial for a woman used to twenty-first century beauty and hygiene products. Her mouth constantly tasted like the night before and she had got more zits in the past two weeks than in the past two years in her own time. But, relatively speaking, she was the freshest face and most wholesome looking adult in the whole of Georgian England. She was a damned supermodel compared to everyone else, albeit a pint-sized supermodel. Her very existence gave off a supernatural vibe.

“You wouldn’t believe I was fifty-three,” she said.

“Fifty-three years old?” said Algie.

“You better believe it, babe.”

He stubbed out the smouldering splint on the wall and sucked on his pipe. “You talk a load of rot.”

“All right then,” she persisted. “Immortality. I can teach you the secret of immortality.”

“Livin’ forever?”

“That’s what it means. I could show you if you untie me.”

He laughed. “You must think I’m daft, woman.”

Of course I do, she thought, but said, “If I’m to show you.”

“You can tell me,” he said.

She set her face in stern annoyance. Algie didn’t care. He turned to go back to his pineapple sticking.

“Elbows,” she said.

“What?” said Algie.

“It’s, um, licking your elbow.”

“You what?”

“That’s right. If you lick your elbow each morning, you’ll never die.”

“Lick,” he said, “my own elbow?”

“You do have elbows, don’t you, Algie?”

He gave her a suspicious look and the shucked off his coat and pushed up the sleeve of his loose-fitting shirt. He put a finger on his elbow.

“Lick it,” she said.

“With my tongue?”

“Yes.”

“You lick it.”

“It has to be you, yourself. It’s scientifically proven.”

Hesitantly, reluctant to be shown up as a fool, Algie raised his elbow to his mouth and then got stuck when the angles just didn’t work. He stuck out his tongue to try to bridge the gap.

“It’th impothible,” he said.

“It’s not,” she said. “You’ve got to really want it.”

He spun on the spot and used his other hand to try to force his elbow up.

“Believe you can do it,” said Nina as she began to saw at her bonds against the post. She had no idea how long it would take, hours probably, and almost certainly more time than Algie could be diverted by attempts to gain immortality. “If you believe it, you can do it,” she told him.

Algie grunted. He waggled his arm up and down, trying to find a new way to angle his arm. He craned his neck and capered on the spot.

“Go on!” she said. “You are so close.”

“You think tho?”

“Absolutely. Hold onto that dream! Follow that star! And you can be whatever you want to be!”

She rubbed the ropes with all her might. He spun round and round, chasing his own elbow.

“Go on, my son!” she cried.

And then he tripped, stumbled against the post in the corner and knocked the oil lamp from its hook. It smashed on the low boxes nearest to it. There was no sudden pool of flaming liquid, no petrol ‘whoomf’ explosion but there was enough oil and flame to set fire to the boxes before dizzy Algie (still unable to lick his way to eternal life) realised what he’d done.

“Fire, Algie,” said Nina.

He shook himself and looked. He nipped forward and stamped on the burning crate. This smashed the box and gave the fire more manageable chunks of wood to attack.

“Crikey,” he said. He tore the cloth from his workspace, spilling pots and brushes and threw it over the fire. The cloth caught fire instantly.

The fire was growing. Smoke pooled against the low ceiling.

“We need to get out of here,” said Nina.

Algie saw the truth in that and ran up the stairs.

“Don’t leave me!” she yelled. “Stupid adn-bhul zek’ee!”

If she had been rubbing the ropes against the post with all her might before, there was no name for what she was doing now. As the flames spread from box to box, taking full hold of a corner of the room, Nina yanked and pulled and screamed for Algie to come back and untie her. She had to stop yelling when the smoke caught in her throat and she coughed.

She could feel the heat of the flames on her face, that Bonfire Night prickle of heated skin. In desperation, she began bashing herself against the post, hoping against hope she could break it and slip through. She rotated round the post and yanked until her arm sockets screamed.

Above the crackle of the fire, she heard footsteps on the stair: Algie scampering down.

“’bout bloody time!” she snarled.

“I forgot my pineapple,” he said, scooped it off the floor and ran.

“You can’t leave me!”

He stopped, mentally torn, and then after far more deliberation that she’d have liked, he turned back to her. She presented her tied arms to him. He pulled at them, tugged and shifted and made dissatisfied noises. He started to cough too.

“A knife?” she suggested.

“Right,” he said.

Smoke stung her eyes as he sawed. The timbers of the roof above them gave a sharp and alarming creak. If she wasn’t burned alive or suffocated by smoke, she might have a chance of being crushed by a falling building. It was nice to know she had options.

The ropes abruptly loosened and she pulled herself free.

Together, they fled. Smoke poured through the slats of the stairs. The room above, a mostly empty back-of-shop storage space, was already hazy with smoke. Nina turned one way. Algie steered her another, out through a narrow corridor to an open door. They stumbled out into evening light and fresh air.

Around them was a circle of greenery and somewhere, the sound of a river. They were out in the sticks somewhere, Nina had no idea. But as soon as she was outside, she ran.

“Oi!” coughed Algie.

The building they had just come out of was the only one in sight. A broken and rotten waterwheel protruded from the side.

In a straight run, Algie would beat her so Nina ran round the old mill, leaping the dried up river bed that the ruined waterwheel sat in. Algie was not as slow physically as he was mentally and he was right behind her from the off.

On the second corner of the building, his hand grabbed her shoulder and hauled her down. They tumbled and rolled and he came up before her, knelt half across her body.

“Ungrateful fucking whore!” he spat indignantly and drew back his arm to slash her with the knife.

He didn’t get chance to. Dick whacked him across the head from behind with the butt of a gun and Algie slumped forward into the grass.

PRESENT DAY

“There’s a lot I don’t understand,” said Rod as they rode down in the lift.

“The modern world is a confusing place to old people,” said Nina.

“There should be two of you.”

“Should there?”

He nodded and tried to recall how Hannah the therapist had put it. “If you’ve travelled back in time from this point, from now, and you changed history, where is the Nina from this timeline?”

“She went back in time,” said Nina.

“But why? You only went back because I was dead.”

“Yep, and that’s what I told me.”

“Told you?”

Nina nodded like it was obvious. “While you and Omar were dicking about in the Vault, I phoned myself and told myself you were dead and that I needed to go back in time to change things.”

“You told yourself I was dead?”

“And I believed me too.”

“Didn’t you, the other you, wonder why she was getting a phone call from herself?

“I put on a voice.”

“What kind of voice?”

“I did a Brummie accent and pretended I was Lois.”

“You already have a Brummie accent.”

“Not like Lois.”

“I can’t believe that worked.”

“I believed me and that’s all the endorsement I need.”

“Incredible,” said Rod.

“Aren’t I?” said Nina and smiled sweetly.

“And do you have a plan for what we’re going to do next?”

She nodded. “Sort of.”

“Aye?”

“We go into the Vault, pick up a clever thingymabob that will help us find Morag then hightail it out of here and save her.” She held up a crumpled bunch of papers in her hand. “I took those pictures that you pinched out of their frames. It’s the best list we’ve got of Forward Management’s building sites and I stopped to charge my phone.”

“Charge your…? You know we’ve got less than eight hours until midnight?”

“I do,” said Nina, “because I can now see the time on my phone. Did you know there’s no wi-fi in Georgian England?”

“Astonishing,” said Rod.

The lift doors pinged. Rod made sure he stepped out first. The two consular security officers by the entrance to the Vault were already looking their way. One, a guy called Andy, had his hand on his holstered pistol.

“Gents,” said Rod. “We’re going in the Vault.”

“It’s not happening, Rod,” said Andy. “We have orders.”

“From who?”

The other one, whose named escaped Rod, jerked his head upwards. “From the top.”

“From Vaughn?” said Rod and just let enough of his opinion of Vaughn seep into those words. Hesitation visibly flowed through them.

Andy glanced past him at Nina. “Why’s she dressed like that?”

“Big Adam Ant fan,” he said.

Andy cracked half a smile.

Rod nodded to the glass airlock doors to the Vault. “We just need to go in there and collect something. Nothing dangerous, nothing you’ll get into trouble for, and then we’re on our way.”

They weren’t yet convinced.

“And given that’s the only entrance in and out of the Vault, if someone turns up, you can tell them you have us cornered in there.”

It made sense of a sort and allowed the two of them to save face whilst avoiding the current confrontation with Rod. Andy swiped his ID at the door.

“But don’t go doing anything stupid while you’re in there,” he said.

“Like bringing the world to an end,” said the other.

“I can’t make any promises,” said Rod.

He and Nina went through one set of doors then the other and were in the Vault. The alarms ringing throughout the building were muffled here.

“Right,” he said. “What’s this, er, thingymabob that will help us find Morag?”

“I didn’t have one in mind,” she said. “I hoped we’d find something.”

“You said you had a plan.”

“Sort of. I said, sort of.”

“Flippin’ heck,” Rod huffed and walked down the aisle into the Vault. “And you need to tell me where to look because I’ve got no idea.”

“Who is Adam Ant anyway?” she said.

He was thinking about where to even begin explaining when his attention was arrested by something else.

“That thing’s looking at me,” he said.

Nina looked round at the geometric concrete monstrosity that was trying to sidle down the aisle towards them. To Rod’s eyes, it looked like a headless horse, made from materials left over from an industrial construction project.

“Ah, don’t worry about that,” said Nina. “Just one of the Bridgeman ‘playground’ monsters. Used to be dozens of them all over the city.”

“Why are they called ‘playground’ monsters?”

“Their natural territory. Kids thought they were just climbing frames. Like until they moved. There’s still one out there somewhere in the Fox Hollies area but it’s been dormant for decades.”

The thing slid closer.

“It’s harmless?” said Rod.

“Oh, it will eat you if it can. Vampiric. Skin to skin. But it’s slow, it’s just sniffing out the Bondook shambler there,” she said, gesturing to the hibernating creature on the floor. She frowned. “Can’t yetis sniff out pregnant women?”

“What?” said Rod.

Nina nodded to herself. “I think I read it on a Buzzfeed quiz or something.”

“Yetis? As in…?” He raised his arms like claws and did a bigfoot stomp. “Are they even real?”

“Why are you asking me if they’re real?”

“I mean, are they Venislarn?”

She shook her head at his apparent stupidity. “I’m not talking about Venislarn. I mean yetis, the animals. You know, David Attenborough stuff. Planet Earth.”

His brow screwed up in disbelief. “Yetis aren’t real. They’re not a… not…” His mouth gave up in exasperation.

“I’m just saying we need a super-sniffer animal. Steve tracked me down by sniffing.”

“When?” said Rod.

“When Algie and Bill had me prisoner at the mill.”

“You got yourself into a lot of trouble for a single trip back in time,” he suggested.

“The curse of a pretty face,” she grinned.

1773

Steve the Destroyer had spent a profitable afternoon with Dick Trimbull.

Steve had visited the world of men on numerous occasions but, until he met the woman Morag Murray, these had been fleeting visits. They were often to visit lone individuals or groups of men and women who had met with a single purpose. That purpose always involved arcane rituals and burning desires. They also tended to involve varying combinations of drugs, sex, wanton nudity, boredom and bondage gear. Before meeting Morag Murray, if someone had asked Steve the Destroyer what the average human being was like, he would have described them as educated but stupid, fond of hanging out in dark candle-lit cellars, partial to black clothing and black eye make-up and, without exception, far less delighted to be visited by a pleasure/pain demon than they perhaps pretended to be.

And then Steve met Morag Murray, was stuffed into this demeaning cloth body, and spent two very informative days in twenty-first century Birmingham. There had been no cellars and barely any black eye make-up. There had been biscuits and cups of tea and these things called television quiz shows and a refreshing lack of need to torture anyone to the brink of ecstasy and beyond.

Now, Steve was being given the opportunity to explore eighteenth century Birmingham. It was an interesting contrast.

In the clean and sanitised world Morag Murray lived in, people were not overtly critical or rude of one another. They did not fling filth at the weak, the disfigured and the pathetic. They spoke in a polite code of formal phrases, like actors in a tedious play. But, here, in the glorious mess of Dick Trimbull’s Birmingham? No such restraints were visible. People with beautiful weeping sores and cankered bodies squatted in doorways. A man with a deformed back and withered arm danced and cavorted for the coins and insults of passers-by. Children — oh, how Steve despised the uselessness of children — were either expected to be silent or hard at work, preferably both. And the smell! It was a foetid, suppurating and putrid world and it was wonderful.

Lodged in Dick’s pocket and mostly still in case he draw attention, Steve toured the sights and sounds of a town energised by people’s desires to experience life at its fullest, often at each other’s expense. They went to gambling rooms and Dick played cards badly and got into an argument with a man with most of his nose missing. They went to the cock pit to watch two preening birds goaded into killing each other. Dick won as much as he lost until a pickpocket passing through the crowd tried to steal Steve.

“I will tear your soul apart if you don’t put me back,” growled Steve, in the growliest voice a rag doll could muster.

The thief gave a shriek as though burned, leapt into the cock pit and crushed one bird dead in his haste to flee.

Another fight broke out at that point and much argument as to who had won and who had not, during which Dick was unable to reclaim his stake but did enrich himself from the pockets of those who were otherwise engaged.

Afterwards, Dick bought a hot ‘mystery bag’ of meat from a vendor in the market and ate it in a public house with a tankard of ale while a minstrel sang rude songs about some bloke called King George who everyone clearly hated. Steve had no interest in mystery bags of meat or tankards of ale but he enjoyed listening to the rude songs and watching drunk men trying to buy the affections of diseased women.

They tottered back to the Crown Inn, Dick full and merry and Steve as sated it was possible to be in a body that had little or no capacity for feasting, fornicating or fighting.

The innkeeper and half the inn looked sharply at Dick the instant he walked in.

“What’s happened?” said Dick.

In the sudden clamour of shouts and fury, the innkeeper dragged Dick in the direction of Nina’s rooms.

“Two villains came for your lady.”

“Who?” said Dick.

“And struck our Mary in the doing so.”

At the top of the stairs, Steve saw a bloody handprint on the whitewashed wall. He wriggled out of Dick’s pocket to inspect it.

“Our Mary’s now in the kitchen,” said the innkeeper, “been crying her eyes out for an hour now, neither use nor ornament to anyone.”

Steve stood on tiptoes and sniffed at the mark.

“The two men, sir, please,” said Dick.

“Took your lady with them, no one saw where. Reckon she tried to fight them off with the poker.”

“This isn’t her blood,” said Steve.

“Lord above, help me!” exclaimed the innkeeper in fear, only just spotting Steve. “What is that imp?”

“Hand me that poker, mortal!” demanded Steve.

The innkeeper shrank back into the doorway of Nina’s room.

“This is Nina’s familiar,” said Dick. “He won’t hurt you.”

“There’s nothing familiar about me at all,” said Steve. “The poker.”

“They don’t like the touch of cold iron, do they?” murmured the innkeeper.

Dick took the poker from his weak grip and proffered it to Steve. He sniffed. “The same blood. Nina did this. We have our miscreant. Come!”

“Come where?” said Dick.

“We will follow.”

“How? No one saw.”

Steve tapped his little nose.

“It’s a secret?” said Dick.

“I will follow the scent of his blood! Do you doubt me?” he said grandly.

“Yes,” said Dick.

“Well, don’t,” said Steve.

In the stable yard, Dick swiftly saddled up Charlotte. When Steve bounded up to stand on top of her head, like a captain at the prow of his ship, Charlotte whinnied in alarm and swung about skittishly. Dick patted her neck and made soothing shushing sounds.

“Can you calm your beast, gobbet?” said Steve.

“Can you tell me which way to go?” retorted Dick.

Steve stood high and inhaled deeply. His plan to follow the trail of the kidnapper’s blood was no foolish boast but scenting it among the nasal cacophony of the town was not easy.

“That way,” he said eventually.

They rode out onto the main road in front of the inn. Steve sniffed again and pointed, his arm a swinging compass.

“This had better not be a waste o’ time,” said Dick.

“Pah! You mortals know nothing of time,” said Steve. “On! On!”

Dick spurred the horse into a canter. Steve had to grasp at the beast of burden’s mane to avoid being tossed off. His fabric flesh rippled in the wind and he felt an uncommon pleasure in the sensation of speed. “On! On!”

They rode west. Steve frequently lost the scent of the man’s tangy blood, drowned among the riotous odours of the town, but he did not tell the lad Dick this and he always picked it up again in time. Besides, the further they got from the centre of town, the clearer the scent was among others.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” said Dick as they trotted along a path between fields. “Even hunting dogs need to be low to ground to follow their quarry.”

“I am no dog!” scowled Steve. “I am Steve the Destroyer, former outrider of the entourage of Prein, ex-emissary of the shattered realms and one-time servant to the blind gods of Suler’au Sukram. I have a superior nose to any dog!”

“If you say so,” said Dick, dubiously.

“Your world of rot and squalor is an open book to me, every scene filled with footnotes and asides written in odour.”

“Right you are.”

“Take that man today at the bird fight…”

“What man?” said Dick.

“The one who tried to steal me and then in his fright trod on your cock. Just a moment in his hand and I could distinguish his last meal, his favourite drink. I could smell the skin infection that was consuming his ear. I could detect the scents of people he lived with, the houses he’d visited, even the last man to have worn his coat.”

“All right, all right,” said Dick and then, “‘Former outrider’? ‘One-time servant’? You had a falling out with your last masters, did you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Steve aloofly.

“It’s okay,” said Dick. “I never got along with any of my masters neither.”

Dick steered Charlotte through a gap in the hedgerow and into a steep meadow at the bottom of which sat a decrepit mill house surrounded by trees.

“Tell me she’s there,” said Dick. “Apart from the cottages by Selly manor, there’s nuthin’ else within miles of here.”

Steve sniffed deeply and swatted Charlotte’s twitching ear. He nodded. “Down there.”

“You certain?”

Steve gave him a stern look. Steve could see the bulge of a firearm beneath the boy’s coat.

“We shall descend upon them like a pack of ravenous dendooshi,” said Steve. “Are you prepared for violence?”

The boy gave a grim little smile.

“Then let’s ride.”

HELL

From her cell, Sha Datsei heard the first of the invaders land on the surface of Hath-No. They landed with the soft plosive sound of rain on dry soil; one and then a handful and then constant patter. This sound was overridden by the shouts that went up from the Kerah-han soldier-beasts. The shouts became distant and the fighting concentrated elsewhere.

Sha Datsei hummed to herself and put her mind to what to wear. She surrounded herself with the dry and crumbling skins she had spun for herself in the long ages of bored isolation. None of them seemed suitable now. To the background of fighting and screams, she made herself a new skin. It was many-legged and covered in folds of mucous flesh. It wasn’t exactly the body of a Prein noblewoman but it was close enough to make the point: Sha Datsei was a pragmatic individual and was willing to make a deal with whoever won the day.

Something exploded nearby. The tunnel beyond her cell was suddenly filled with dust and clods of fallen dirt. Yabandeman’s shit-covered palace wasn’t holding up against the assault. A crack had appeared in the wall directly above the hinge of her cell door. Sha Datsei regarded it with cool curiosity and then attacked it with metal-tipped feet. Baked excrement and old stone fell away with a pathetic ease and, before Sha Datsei could survey what she had achieved, the door creaked and the heavy grille fell inwards and rebounded noisily on the floor.

“Shoddy workmanship, husband,” she said and stepped out to see what chaos was unfolding.

Steve drifted in the void between worlds. Hath-No continued to recede from view. The cloud of Prein attackers had enveloped the fortress like flies on a dungball. The Prein were not flyers. They would have approached on Folgis sacs or a hijacked traverser. Most of the Prein were too heavy for Croyi-Takk or other flyers.

Steve had previously boasted of his tito fruit impersonation. He was very proud of it. It was possibly even better than his wenbo mushroom impression. He hadn’t necessarily shared his fruit impersonations with anyone but he knew that it was a niche skill and one few bothered developing. If anyone could successfully draw in a Croyi-Takk by appearing to be a nice piece of fruit, it was Steve.

And, as it stood, without the aid of a flyer of some sort, there was no way he was getting back to Hath-No.

Steve threw out his arms and legs and tried to make himself appear as spiky as could be. And then he began to make the noise of a tito fruit.

A Kerah-han soldier-beast skidded to a halt in the corridor before Sha Datsei. His patchwork soldiers stumbled behind him. The Kerah-han instinctively gnashed his teeth at her and waved his sword.

“Stand down, beast,” she said. “I am not your enemy.”

He began to protest but confusion mangled his words.

“I return to my husband,” she said, “and you will not stand in my way.”

In the buffeting confusion of the tunnel as individuals ran back and forth and the world shook, a lesshmor bumped into one of her angled legs. Without even looking, she flipped the lesshmor up and pounded it against the wall to show her displeasure.

“And the fighting is in the other direction,” she said to the soldier-beast.

“Humans have sabotaged our armoury,” it replied, finding its tongue at last. “Lord Yabandeman has ordered them killed.”

“Priorities,” she said witheringly. “Hath-No burns and my husband concerns himself with pest control.”

She stepped over them and continued to the throne room.

Hath-No shook. In the God-Heart, the sounds of bombardment were as blurred as distant thunder. Vivian lay, broken, watching Bakhan Sand’s blood seep and trickle across the tiny imperfections on the floor. It pooled around where her head lay. She didn’t try to move away. She didn’t have the energy and it was Bakhan’s blood; in her painful delirium, his touch – yes, even the touch of his blood – was a comfort.

The lightning embedded in the walls of the God-Heart flickered in response to the sounds of battle. This empty place might once have been home to a god but, whatever nervous systems and life support had surrounded him were still in place.

“What were you like?” she said, her voice an inaudible creak.

It was a meaningless question. If Hath-No had once housed, had once been the body shell, of a true Venislarn god then there was no honest answer that Vivian would have been capable of understanding. These creatures that were killing each other in the fortress around her, playing their mindless political games, instinctively imprinting their own tiny cruelties on the world – they would not be capable of understanding either. Humans and Venislarn creatures alike could not understand true gods, no more than microscopic intestinal fauna could comprehend what it meant to be a human. The kings and courtiers of Hath-No would not recognise a god if one was placed directly in front of them.

A thought came to her. It was sufficiently surprising that she reflexively shifted her body to consider it and gasped at the pain that followed. She tutted at her stupidity and made herself calm and think.

Bakhan had regarded this empty chamber and seen the home of a god. He must have been told by someone that that was what it was. There were many who probably did not know even that but Bakhan, as learned as the local Venislarn were, saw the spherical space and the glow in the walls and the eyes of Hath-No and understood it all as evidence that a god had once been here.

Of course he would have.

Years ago, in a world where years meant something, Vivian and her future husband had gone to the fleapit cinema up the road from their university digs and watched a re-showing of The Fantastic Voyage. Over ice-cream in the intermission, Vivian told him that Donald Pleasance was clearly going to turn out to be the traitor in the team and that Raquel Welch’s character was seriously underqualified to go on a mission in a miniaturised submarine into a man’s body. Mr Grey had nodded along and then offered his opinion, which had been far more philosophical: that at such a microscopic level there was no sense of the patient being a real person; that, even when the miniscule submariners were in his brain, there was no personality or seat of consciousness visible.

He was right, as in so many things (although she had taken care to rarely let him know this as it didn’t do to inflate a man’s ego).

In the presence of the vast, the colossal, it was impossible to see what was right in front of you.

“Hath-No.” She said his name as a whisper. “Yo Hath-No.”

She moved her hand forward along the floor, even though it hurt her to do so and she barely registered any feeling in her fingers anymore.

“Lord Hath-No,” she said. “Hear my prayer.”

The scriptorium was burning. The fire had started in the store rooms and was in danger of spreading to the writing hall. Paper burned, vats of meat boiled, bundles of hair vanished like fizzing fuses. Although such things were not possible, the undying remains of a thousand rendered human beings screamed in agony.

The humans and Yabandeman’s patchwork men worked in teams to fight the fire, beating at the flames with blankets and hides, having already used up all the available water (and barrels of other stored liquids).

Barry had been doing his best to orchestrate and motivate the firefighters.

He stood as close to the fire line as he dared and waved a colourful rag.

“And beat! And beat! Thlap the flameth! And thlap the flameth. Ea, Pedro. Puede facer lo.”

Pedro coughed against the smoke, wiped sooty sweat from his brow and attacked the fire anew.

And then, as one, the patchwork people turned their efforts from fighting the fire to killing the humans. They threw down their hides. They grabbed the men or even just pushed them into the flames. A couple were killed before the rest knew what was going on and then a holler went up and the humans were fighting a battle on two fronts.

“What’th all thith about?” shouted Barry. “Thtop it!”

The one called Eyeless snarled. “Stay out of the way or we’ll do you too.”

Miguel Velez, who was younger and quicker to react than most, cracked Eyeless across the back with a wooden rod and then leapt to the defence of his fellow humans.

On the floor, Eyeless groaned.

“Yeah!” said Barry, kicking non-existent dust in his face. “And jutht you wait until Mithuth Grey getth home. Thye’ll be having wordth and no mithtake.”

Steve saw the Croyi-Takk veer across the sky towards him. He kept up with the tito fruit impression and tried to be as fruity as possible. The secret to a good tito impersonation was the vocal ululations, although he had to be careful not to overdo it. A loud fruit would be a suspicious fruit.

He hadn’t yet put much thought into what he would do when he had the Croyi-Takk’s attention. The Croyi-Takk had chitin pincer jaws as long as the rest of their bodies and a raptor intelligence. They were bad-tempered and belligerent.

Since his incarnation in this soft body his primary tactic against larger foes had been to get eaten and then fight them from the inside. In truth, it was less a tactic and more of an everyday accident. The fighting options for a stuffed mannequin were generally few. Weapon-wise, he had a paperclip and an explosive rune stitched into his stuffing.

Carefully, while trying to maintain a fruit-like appearance, Steve unfolded the paperclip into a curved hook.

The Croyi-Takk screeched in its final approach from the side and opened its pincer jaws. As it engulfed him, Steve lashed out with his hook. It bounced and scraped along the hard inside of the pincers and then snagged on a sheet of sinew where pincer met gullet.

The Croyi-Takk honked in surprise and shook itself. Steve held tight and the hook held firm, embedding itself deeper in the stiff tissue. Just below Steve’s feet, the greedy flyer’s throat pulsated with contractions, attempting to swallow what refused to be swallowed.

It swung and slewed through the void as it tried to find the angle to dislodge the truculent morsel.

“You’ll not eat me this day!” Steve yelled triumphantly.

He cast around for something else to grab onto. He was unfamiliar with Croyi-Takk anatomy (especially from the inside) but knew what he was looking for: the Croyi-Takk equivalent of tonsils or tongues, something soft that understood pain and could be used as a rudder.

“Ah-ha!” he declared and swung himself up to grab at a bunch of fleshy barbels on the inside curve of the upper pincer.

The Croyi-Takk yelled as Steve wrapped himself in them and tugged hard. The Croyi-Takk jerked in pain.

“No! That way, you bastard!” said Steve, attempting to see their destination through the open jaws. “To Hath-No!”

Sha Datsei entered the throne room to find disarray. Soldiers were elsewhere. The members of the court were either leading their own troops, making plans for their personal escape or were among the dozens who had politically and literally tied themselves to their king. Yabandeman’s pool was surrounded by food tasters tying themselves in knots with their umbilical guts. The inflated guts squeaked against each other.

Yabandeman waved his advisors into silence as he saw Sha Datsei.

“My beloved concubine,” he said.

“My husband,” she replied.

Something crashed in the levels high above. Flakes of clay rained down, cascading over Yabandeman’s round shoulders. He picked a piece of rubble from his beard and flicked it away. His distended belly brushed noisily against the rim of the pool.

“I’m sorry we have to meet this way,” he said.

“At your moment of triumph?” she said, letting her tone hang on the cusp of sarcasm but not quite crossing.

“We were prepared. We had wards and shields and –”

“All destroyed,” said an ice white shapeshifter, sliding over from the alcove in which he had been lurking. “Concremated by lowsome ingrates.”

Sha Datsei gave him a haughty look. “This must be Crippen-Ai, your new high chancellor.”

Crippen-Ai lowered himself before her. “I see my eunomie precedes me –”

“Not my high chancellor yet,” said Yabandeman. “That depends on our winning the day.”

“Of course. I am happy to serve the victorious king in whatever capacity he chooses,” said Crippen-Ai obsequiously.

Sha Datsei could see why Steve didn’t like him.

PRESENT DAY

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” said Rod as they browsed the shelves in the Vault.

“Only one?” said Nina, leafing through a big fat, leatherbound volume.

“One that’s bugging me. If Morag’s pregnant with the cat’s Barbie –”

“Kaatbari.”

“Aye - and its birth marks the end of the world then how can the world end tomorrow? It’s not like she’s…” He puffed out his cheeks and pretended to carry a bowling ball pregnancy bump in front of him.

“Some people don’t show their pregnancy bump until several months in.”

“But surely that’s just like lasses who are…”

“Are?”

“You know,” he said. “Big fat heifers.”

Nina put the fat volume back on the shelf. “Why is Rod single? The mystery continues.”

“Are we any closer to finding something that will help us?” said Rod.

Nina poked among shelves of grungy artefacts and evil looking ornaments.

“Well, as I said, if we run out of ideas we can always – ah!” She pulled a heavy glass vial down from a shelf. Its fat teardrop shell was wrapped in filigree, sickly looking like a skin disease or rust. The liquid in the vial was bright red and clear.

“Cranberry juice?” said Rod.

“The Fyrt Liqar,” said Nina.

“The fart licker,” he said remembering. “The elixir of wisdom.”

“It’s basically the internet in liquid form,” she said. “Every drop a billion trivia facts.”

“Then we just drink it and…”

She grimaced. “It can be a bit random, but yeah.”

He took the lid off. “Then let’s do it.”

“Wait,” she said. “There might be something better we can use.”

“Like a yeti,” he said, deadpan.

The alarms elsewhere in the building had stopped. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. If Vaughn Sitterson wasn’t going to take their story seriously and he considered them to be, at best, over-worked or, at worst, dangerously out of control then they should expect to be found and dragged out of this place in short order.

“Fine,” said Rod. “Let’s find something that’s better than bottled facts. What’s this?” he said, grabbing a wide glass jar off a shelf. At once, the silver shellfish inside began clacking their shells and jostling in the cloudy water.

“Angry whelks,” said Nina.

“Be serious,” said Rod.

“I am,” she said. “The forty-nine angry whelks. They’re Venislarn but I don’t think they’re classified yet so it’s just angry whelks.”

Rod studied them. They certainly looked angry. He shoved them back on the shelf. They continued to snap and clatter as their water settled.

“What’s this?” he said, picking up a thin white disc with shapes clipped into its edge.

“The Nuba’hiz token,” said Nina, barely looking round as she continued her exploration of the display cases.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a token, like for a cloakroom. You hand it in and…”

“And what?”

She gave him a look. “Don’t know. We don’t know where you’re supposed to hand it in or what you get in return. The occultist who found it was very excited by it but no one knows what it’s for, yet.”

“Huh.” Rod mindlessly put it in his pocket.

Nina was getting ahead of him, working her way along shelves of maps, tools, orbs, blades, effigies, dried plants, severed claws, pottery, wands, jewellery, rocks, amulets, pickled organs and clockwork trinkets. Rod followed slowly.

In the deep recess of a shelf was a peculiarly shaped item, so peculiar that Rod would have struggled to put any definition to its shape, save that it had edges and surfaces and was made of a material that might have been metal or organic but was definitely shiny, except in the places where it wasn’t. Whatever it was, it certainly looked important.

“What’s this?” he said.

Nina turned as he was reaching for it.

“No!” she snapped. “Don’t touch that.”

He held back. “Sorry. It looked useful.”

She stomped back to him. “Yes, that’s what it does.”

“It’s useful?”

“It looks useful. The grayl-ing traps you by looking important and valuable and then you pick it up.”

“And then?”

“It becomes an unbearable burden and you can’t shake it off.”

Rod found himself annoyed. “There should be warning signs.”

“Doesn’t work,” said Nina. “The stronger the warnings or the more secure the box it’s locked in, the more alluring it becomes.” Nina found a clearly unimportant stick on a lower shelf and used it to propel the grayl-ing deeper into the shelving. “Look, Rod, it’s probably best if you don’t… you know…”

“Touch anything?” he said.

“Er, yeah.” She pointed to a chair by a table. “Just sit there. Out of harm’s way.”

Rod went and sat down, feeling like a little boy sent to the naughty step.

Nina moved on, exploring the shelves, leaving Rod the Dunce behind.

The table next to Rod was evidently used by Professor Omar as one of his numerous personal desks around the Vault. A yearly planner was blu-tacked to the wall next to it. Rod could see that the words ‘End of World’ had been jotted in a precise flowing hand on tomorrow’s date.

“At least someone believes us,” said Rod.

There were two weeks blocked out the following month for ‘Holiday – Barry Island’. Various other cryptic notes were jotted here and there, some in Venislarn, some in English, some in neither. Rod noted that alternate Sundays were marked with ‘Mr Grey @ Sutton Park’ and wondered if that had anything to do with Vivian Grey’s late husband, although what he’d be doing in Sutton Park on a Sunday was mystery, what with him being dead and everything.

Of course, Rod reasoned to himself, if they just used the fart licker elixir, they’d probably have the answers to all manner of questions. The big vial was one the shelf just across from him. There was a mostly clean cup on the table. He looked down the aisle. Nina was some distance away now.

“Who Dares Wins,” he said, fetched the vial, released the stopper and poured a shot measure of the red liquid into the cup.

It smelled vaguely floral, a bit herby perhaps.

“Every drop a billion trivia facts,” he said and took a sip.

He smacked his lips, hiccupped and, to his own surprise uttered the words, “Cappuccinos are so called because the frothy top resembles a monk’s hood.”

He took another swallow.

“Zeppo Marx engineered the clamps that held the A-Bombs dropped on Japan in World War Two.”

“Oh.” He downed the rest. “The Book of Sand is named after the master of the scriptorium in Hath-No although he did not write it.”

“You say something?” shouted Nina.

Rod made to shout back a general reply and called out, “If you put Viagra in a vase of flowers it will stiffen the blooms.”

Rod put his hand over his mouth. Nina trotted back and looked at the vial on the table and the cup next to it.

“Did you drink the thing I told you not to drink?” she said.

Rod shook his head firmly. “Wang Zheng’s lost keys are behind the bread bin.”

“Who’s Wang Zheng?”

“No idea.”

Nina gave him a clip round the ear.

Morag woke. The paper bag was gone. She gave a massive grin.

“It’s worked. They took the rubbish, with the Yedankhi obfuscator inside!”

Steve the destroyer was back up in his ceiling eyrie, but he dropped down to talk. “I know that humans enjoy a little suspense in their news updates,” he said. “So let me start by telling you that there’s good news and bad news to report.”

“Go on,” said Morag, sitting up.

“The good news is,” Steve jumped onto the table and created a passable imitation of a drum roll with a pair of scalpels on the table top, “that the Yedankhi obfuscator has been taken with the rubbish.”

“Yes. I just said that. So, what’s the bad news?”

“Aaand the bad news,” Steve started drumming again, but Morag gave him a stern look, “the bad news is that they only took it as far as the bin in the kitchenette next door, so it’s more or less back where I found it.”

“Oh bhul. We can’t smash it, we can’t get rid of it. I don’t even know how to shut it up.” She stared at her swollen belly. “You’ve been quiet, baby, have you got any thoughts?”

I’m not sure what a Yedankhi obfuscator is like, Mother. How would you normally shut up something like that?

“What’s it like? It’s like a little obelisk.”

What’s an obelisk?

“Hm, we have some reference problems. It’s a square pointy thing, although I guess you don’t know what square or pointy is either. Right, let’s start again. It’s super-tough, so we can’t break it, and we don’t know how it works, so we can’t jam its signal.” A thought passed through Morag’s mind. “Although…if it works on waves in some way we could try shutting it in the microwave to shield it.”

“Hah! We will nuke the Yedankhi obfuscator!” said Steve, scuttling back up to the ceiling.

“Hell, yeah. Put it in the microwave for an hour and if it isn’t shielded at least we might be able to cook it until it explodes. Great work team!”

I like being part of a team, mother.

Morag patted her stomach and felt an indistinct shape reaching up to her hand.

Had her foetus just high-fived her?

1773

Algie was unhappy.

He was clearly unhappy that his prisoner had escaped and that their watermill hideout had burned down and his head had been given a whacking great blow in the process. He was made unhappier when Nina slapped him from the brink of unconsciousness and demanded he now lead them to Isabella’s house. He was made even more unhappy when Steve decided to ride him there as his own personal mount, perched on the back of the hairy man’s neck and using a length of twine as a rein and a rusty nail as a crop to spur him on. His unhappiness was perhaps made complete when he begged to know what this creature on his back was and Nina told him the complete and unvarnished truth.

Algie could do nothing but hobble on, his hands tied before him, a rope leash tying his waist to Charlotte’s saddle. Nina walked close to Algie, his knife in her hand. Dick rode Charlotte, ready to whack Algie again if he caused any trouble.

“Onward, you sluggard!” commanded Steve, jabbing Algie with the nail. “No dilly-dallying.”

Algie whimpered miserably. Nina had little sympathy.

He was a thief, a house-breaker, a con-artist and a violent kidnapper who was clearly open to notions of murder and sexual assault and would have happily let an innocent woman be transported or worse for crimes he’d committed. He ought to be grateful that they’d let him live. The only solace he had seemed to derive from his fake wooden pineapple, which he hugged to his chest like a baby. Wet glue still seeped from its seams.

Night was falling. A full moon had already appeared, its glow mostly concealed by clouds.

“How far is it?” said Nina.

“Juf’ ower vis field,” said Algie, around the wooden bit Steve had stuffed between his teeth.

“That’s what you said last time!” spat Steve and stabbed him with the nail again.

Algie squealed and sobbed. “It’f a vig field!”

Cows watched them from one side of the field to the other. They crossed a small ditch, through a screen of trees and came out on the driveway of an isolated country house.

“This her place?” said Nina.

Algie nodded sadly, his rein jiggling. “Fhe’f not here. Her cawwiage is gone.”

“That’s a swell gaff and no mistake,” said Dick.

He was right. It wasn’t quite Soho House but two storeys of brick and stone with large windows commanding views of landscaped garden spoke of wealth well above the norm.

“Fhe vought i’,” said Algie and the tone he use suggested that ‘vought’ (or indeed ‘bought’) was entirely the wrong word.

“What did she do to the previous owners?” said Nina.

“Vey live in the fervantf quarterf. Vey don’ know vey used to own de flace.”

The yellis wand, thought Nina.

“If the foul woman is not here then we must lay a trap and smite her when she returns,” said Steve.

“Or we could go investigate,” said Nina. “Do a bit of Scooby-Dooing.”

“Scooby-Dooing?” said Dick.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Nina facetiously. “Can I have your dad’s gun?”

“I told you, it’s had the same charge in it for months,” said Dick, digging it out from beneath his coat. “I don’t know if it fires.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I don’t know how to use it.”

He handed it over. It was as long as Nina’s forearm and cumbersomely heavy but its curved wooden handle gave it some balance. She considered how it complemented her ensemble.

“All I need is one of them triangular hats and I could be a highwaywoman.”

“You’d also need to be able to ride a horse,” said Dick.

“Shut up, Dick.”

She walked down the earth drive to the house with the others loosely following. Even by the full moon she walked in shadows until she reached the circle of light cast by the lantern over the door. She hammered on the door with the butt of the gun.

A young servant lad opened the door.

“Evening,” she said, pistol held casually across her chest. “British Gas. I’ve come to read the meter.”

HELL

In the scriptorium, the young human, Miguel Velez led the human counter-attack. The patchwork creatures were outnumbered and, it became clear, poorly constructed. Tools from the paper mills and the defunct tannery were used as weapons against them. The patchwork creatures were bludgeoned, taken apart and tossed into such pits as they could not climb out of. The remainder tried to rally a defence in the tannery but far too late. They were pulverised with paddles, whipped with chains and pulled apart with hooks.

Barry led some of the smallest and more timorous humans in chasing down any severed limbs that tried to crawl away. These were dumped, wriggling and protesting into barrels.

Miguel declared that Yabandeman’s creatures had turned on them and that must barricade the doors and build a redoubt.

Barry suggested that they should wait for Mrs Grey or Bakhan Sand. “Saben facer lo,” he said.

However, there was no time to build defences or argue strategy. The doors to the writing hall slammed open, pressed by the weight of bodies. A line of Kerah-han soldier-beasts stepped in, backed by more patchwork creations. The Kerah-han carried sharp purpose-made weapons, and this was in addition to their natural claws and metal fangs. Paddles and chains and hooks would be woefully inadequate against them.

“¡Preparados!” said Miguel, positioning himself at the front of the humans’ ragged ranks.

“Or we could hide,” suggested Barry, gesturing to the crusted pipes that opened out into the room. A lifetime of bullying and beatings had taught him that hiding was a good a defence as any.

As he pointed, he heard an odd noise from the pipes and as he listened it got louder. It sound like… well, it sounded like nothing Barry had ever heard before. If anything, it sounded like an angry insect trapped in a jar, coupled with an echoing cacophony of screaming and swearing. It was unusual enough that it distracted Barry’s attention even as the Kerah-han advanced to massacre the humans.

The sound grew louder, mounting and magnifying until even the fighting lines of the humans and Kerah-han paused to look and listen. Only as it reached a crescendo could Barry work out which of the openings it was coming from. It was one of the largest pipes, which carried the constant swelter of hot air of the tannery out to the surface. Except now, the air was definitely blowing into the tannery.

Barry shrank into a ball and carefully wrapped his arms over his head.

Something exploded from the pipe. It was big and it was buzzing and it was all wings and legs and snapping pincers and pipe crud and it was very very angry.

The Croyi-Takk bowled into the front lines of the Kerah-han, scattering dozens and savagely snapping at those who remained within range. The Croyi-Takk was an aerial predator and not suited to ground fighting but what it lacked in natural adaptation it made up for in fury. It ripped into Kerah-han and patchwork soldiers alike and as it ruined their ranks, Miguel led a hasty charge against the flanks of Yabandeman’s troops, seizing the weapons of the fallen.

The Croyi-Takk shook its head and Barry saw Steve the Destroyer fly out of its maw. The rag doll landed on his feet and, without pause, joined the human charge.

“Onward!” he yelled. “We have to save Mrs Vivian Grey!”

“Sigunt la pupa,” shouted Barry, gesturing for them to follow Steve.

“Does anyone know where she is?” said Steve.

“¡Segue me!” shouted Barry and led the way.

Vivian was always sceptical of profundity.

People held great stock in deep truths and mystical understanding, even though it appeared those who felt they had discovered profound wisdom usually only did so after ingesting large quantities of drugs or after starving themselves half to death in their quest for enlightenment. Clearly the depth of any truth was relative to the cognitive impairment of the person perceiving it. A flight of stairs was a mountain to a man with no legs.

Therefore, when she first heard Hath-No speak to her, Vivian reasonably assumed that she was imagining it, in a delirium brought on by pain and physical exhaustion. And it wasn’t speech as such. She felt something in the ground beneath her, something entirely intangible.

Intangibility was another clue that this was all a hallucination. When people talked about matters that weren’t confined to the physical, that were somehow beyond the directly perceivable – nonsensical things like ghosts and telepathy and love – then Vivian would stop them before the end of their opening sentence and tell them not to be so stupid.

Nonetheless, she felt an intangible presence – intangible presence! Oxymoronic nonsense! – through the floor of the God-Heart.

“Lord Hath-No,” she said. “You must wake.”

In life, there are great sights that lift the heart and fill the beholder with joy and wonder.

In his long existence, Steve the Destroyer had known many. As an outrider of the entourage of Prein, he had been gifted with the flail and the scourge. He had dragged individuals to the utter limits of pleasure and pain. He had opened up souls and teased excruciations from their core until they shone like supernovae. He had ridden into battle and stood poised at the lip of hell to oversee the destruction of mortal worlds.

The longer his existence, the fewer and farther between those moments became. Since his imprisonment in this form he could recall few great moments. If put on the spot he might mention the time he punched a fish monster’s eye out (from the inside) or the time he managed to guess a winning answer while watching the Pointless television quiz show. None of it was the stuff of sagas.

But now he beheld a scene of true beauty.

He and the thoggan sprog, Barry, had led the humans into the tunnels of Hath-No and, in one of the great arterial corridors, now came across a battle of such ferocity as Steve had rarely witnessed. On the one side were the mighty ranks of the Prein and, on the other, facing a serious drubbing were the cobbled together forces that fought for the barbarian usurper, Yabandeman. Preinic drones threw themselves on the sword of the Kerah-han warriors, swamping them with their bodies. Behhar slug-boys rolled over Yabandeman’s rag-tag foot soldiers. Skendax paladins, in numbers Steve had not seen in aeons, strode over them all, waving their flesh banners and singing hymns of unity and entropy and the exquisite terrors of the singularity. And dancing through it all, the self-banished, the unclean midwives, the August Handmaidens of Prein. They danced and fished, cutting the sea of battle into a more pleasing form – sculptresses all.

“Fall back!” cried Barry.

“No,” said Steve. “These are my people. My family!”

“Who?” said Barry. “Thith lot?”

Before Steve could reply, a Skendax paladin, swiping at the Kerah-han on the edge of the press, snagged him up with his tooth-lined crook. He was hoisted dozens of feet into the air until he was level with the elongated and desiccated visage of the warrior-priest.

“Brother!” yelled Steve, delighted to be among his own again. “Praise be!”

The Skendax paladin’s face plates shifted in confusion as though he had trouble focussing on the little thing caught on his crook.

“It is I, Qulsteyvan the Destroyer! I have come back to you!”

The paladin’s plates presented a troubled expression. “What are you?” he intoned.

Steve laughed. “This body? It’s a funny story. It would make you weep, but in a manly way, because it is a heroic story. By the gods it is!”

The Skendax paladin poked Steve with one of its frontal appendages. Steve batted it away.

“It’s true!” he said. “This body, it’s just temporary. You’ve got to imagine me as I was. The legs and the claws. Ooh, and the tattoos, yeah? Plus the penises. You’ve got to picture me covered in penises. Cocks everywhere.”

The Skendax paladin sneered. “You are corrupted, once-brother. Better death than this wretched form.”

The face plates parted and the paladin brought the crook closer to bite down on him. Steve wriggled and loosed himself from the crook’s teeth and fell, tumbling, to the ground. He rolled between combatants’ feet and staggered away to the edges where there were only corpses. When he looked up, the Skendax paladin hadn’t even bothered to look to see where he’d gone.

“Fucker!” he screamed.

“There you are!” said Barry, running up. “We couldn’t thee where you’d gone.”

“I’m not crying! You are!” said Steve.

“Um. Okay,” said Barry. “Not thyure what you mean but… thyall we go get Mithuth Grey now? I think I know a way round thith.”

Steve sniffed and rubbed the fluff from his little wooden eyes and watched his army march on without him.

A Kerah-han captain ran into the throne room. The fur down one side of his body was matted with blood.

“King Yabandeman,” he panted, spitting flecks of phlegm, “the Prein have broken through in several places.”

“What?”

“In the lower levels the enemy has taken the torture pits and is pushing for the yelz caverns. And on this level, the enemy has reached up to a line through the hall of teeth, the brigade rooms and the sphincter tunnels.”

Yabandeman waved an impatient hand. “Redirect the Kera-han veterans. They will put it right.”

The Kerah-han captain hung his head. Sha Datsei observing from beside her king’s throne, initially thought it was a gesture of shame and apology and then realised he was watching the rivulets of blood and sweat trickling from his own body and across the floor.

“They cannot,” said the captain. “The veterans are too depleted to attack.”

Yabandeman slammed the rim of his pool. “But I order it! The veterans’ attack is an order!”

The captain shook his head, exhausted.

“Cowards!” said Yabandeman, sounding far more petulant than commanding. “They are cowards and traitors!”

The Kerah-han captain mumbled something.

“What?” demanded Yabandeman.

“That’s simply not true, my king,” said the captain. “They have bled and died for you.”

Yabandeman gave a strangled cry of fury. He took up the Menscuzo wordblade at the edge of his pool and lashed out with it at the Kerah-han captain. The captain took a single step back and was out of his reach. Yabandeman rolled and squirmed in his pool. He squeaked and farted but his inflated body was stuck.

He threw the blade forward and it landed in the midst of the tangled guts about him.

“You!” he said and pointed at the courtier nearest the blade. “Kill him!”

The simpering blue noble picked up the wordblade in his jewellery covered hand. He regarded it as though it was entirely alien to him, its purpose a mystery.

“Kill him!” yelled Yabandeman.

The courtier looked at the Kerah-han captain next to him. The grizzled and battle-weary captain looked back.

The courtier gave the captain an apologetic look and poked him pathetically with the tip of the blade. The captain did not even try to dodge the attack. It pricked him on the chest and it stayed there, a bridge between them.

The captain shook his head and swatted the blade aside. It fell from the courtier’s weak grip. It punctured a gut tube where it fell and the captain’s final scornful look to the court and his exit were accompanied by the whine of an intestine deflating through a puncture.

“The dregs of my retinue!” Yabandeman ranted. “You have no honour! None of you!”

“Sire…” said Crippen-Ai, sidling up to the king.

Yabandeman pushed him away. “I have conquered Hath-No! Alone! And this is what happens! I’m betrayed by weaklings who never truly served me. But if you think I will leave Hath-No because of that, you are sorely mistaken. Honour holds me here.”

“Not your fat belly?” said Sha Datsei.

“What?” snapped Yabandeman.

“Your honour holds you here,” she said. “I was agreeing with you, my love.”

“Bakhan Thand took her to the God-Heart,” said Barry. “Thith way.”

He scurried ahead and then scampered back as the humans wearily followed. In this way, he shuttled backward and forwards. Steve found it simply exhausting to watch and was on the verge of punching the irritating little fish-boy just to make him stop when the trio of August Handmaidens of Prein dropped into the tunnel before them.

The humans, filled with terror and energy, shouted as one and raised their weapons.

“Worms,” said a handmaiden.

“Playthings,” said a second.

The sculpted shells on their thoraxes rotated into position and made war faces.

“Thyit,” squeaked Barry and tried to run back to the human lines. A handmaiden stepped forward and effortlessly pinned him to the ground.

“Food,” she said.

Steve roared, raised his paperclip weapon and led the charge against the three giant warriors (although, his legs were small and within seconds he was overtaken by the humans but he was definitely still leading the charge, albeit from behind).

1773

There were a dozen servants in Isabella’s house, although it rapidly became clear that there was something unusual about these servants and not just the blank stares and long moments of confusion before any of them could respond to commands or questions. As Nina directed them all into the kitchen larder which they could be securely locked in, she made a number of mental bets with herself regarding which of them had been members of the houseowner’s family before Isabelle had mindfucked them into the role of servants.

Before locking them away, Nina had gathered that Isabella had left the house less than an hour before with a coachman and the man called Bill and gone to the Scroggins’ mill. Nina couldn’t say how much time that gave her to search the house or what she hoped to find in doing so.

“We need to search for clues,” she said as they gathered in the kitchen.

“Clues?” said Dick.

“Er, yes,” said Nina, aware of how very Scooby Doo indeed things now sounded. “We’re investigators. We know who the bad guy is. We just need to work out what she’s up to and how to stop her.”

“Who is this Guy person?” asked Dick.

“I don’t know nobody called Guy, I swear,” said Algie wretchedly, still clutching his pineapple.

“Guy, bloke, feller, dude,” said Nina. “Isabella is the bad guy. Steve, you stay here and guard Algie.”

“Don’t leave me with that, demon!” said Algie but Dick was already binding him to the iron stove and Steve was picking out evil-looking kitchen implements which he considered vital to his guarding duties.

“And Dick and I will search the house for clues,” said Nina.

“Like a big book with ‘My Wicked Plans’ written on the front,” suggested Dick.

“Er, if we did, that would be brilliant. Unlikely, but brilliant.”

And so they searched by lamplight. The houses of the Georgian well-to-do were not only large but full of nooks, cubby-holes and more drawers than anyone could ever need. Nina tried to locate those rooms she thought an evil masterminding bitch might use most often. Dick’s was a more methodical approach, going from room to room regardless of its purpose. Unfortunately, being a thief, he struggled to distinguish between potential clues and the merely valuable.

“Is this a clue?” he said, running in to the room Nina was searching.

“That’s a tray of silver cutlery, Dick.”

“Not a clue?”

“Not a clue.”

He ran off and was back in seconds.

“Is this a clue?”

“That’s a pottery bird.”

“Not…?”

“No.”

Again.

“A clue?”

“That’s a woman’s dress.”

“This?”

“A pearl necklace.”

“This?”

“A vase. It’s not a clue.”

“Right. Cos there’s a whole room full of this stuff,” said Dick.

“Vases?”

“No, this stone,” he said and tapped the ovoid body of the vase which had been fashioned out of a single lump of polished blue john stone.

“Show me,” she said.

Dick led her along the landing and into a bedroom which had been packed with boxes of various shapes and sizes filled with lumps and shards and worked pieces of blue john.

“Okay, that’s weird,” said Nina, crouching to inspect the contents of one box.

“Is this stuff valuable?” asked Dick.

Nina shrugged. “Not as valuable as it will be one day.” She tried to remember what she had read about blue john in her own time, what the Soho House historian Mrs Fiddler had told her. “Boulton just thought it was pretty. No one had used it before. But there’s only one source, a finite supply.” She picked up a chunk and looked at its bowl-like inner surface. “That squiddly bastard Crippen-Ai was found encased in a lump.” She paused in thought or, more accurately, she paused and waited for the thought to come. There was something eluding her, a truth.

“There’s this fish,” she said.

“Fish?” said Dick.

“Can’t remember what it’s called. Saw it on some CBBC nature thing. It’s like an eel. And when you grab it, it produces this slime, oodles and oodles of it. I don’t know if it’s poisonous or what but it’s like this protective defence to stop other fish eating it.”

“Yeah?” said Dick, not seeing her point.

“And this stuff…” said Nina. “And Crippen-Ai, he’s all about the slime.”

“But this is stone,” said Dick.

“It hardened to stone,” she agreed.

“But it’s thousands of years old.”

“Millions but who knows how long Crippen-Ai was trapped underground, spinning this stuff out and… and it’s odd, this rock can only be found in that one place, in the whole world.”

“I don’t get it,” said Dick.

“No, neither do I,” she said, standing. “But there’s something going on here. If it’s a defence mechanism, what’s he defending himself against? He’s a sodding Venislarn. Damn near unkillable anyway. Come on, the search continues.”

Near the rear of the house, tucked away was a room that was a study of sorts, a small library with very few books. A musket hung on the wall. A theatre playbill hung next to it. The top drawer of the bureau contained no less than four packs of playing cards including one illustrated with ‘artistic French caricatures’ (which turned out to be just shoddy cartoon porn). In this oldy-timey man cave, Isabella had taken over. Newsheets and sportsman’s almanacs were swept aside and piled high in the corner of the room and replaced with a table filled with correspondence and accounts ledgers.

Nina cast her eye over these. Isabella had clearly made her mark on the world. She had built up a portfolio of business interests, cultivated relationships with respected businessmen and gathered as much learning and influence as it was possible for a single young woman to do. And in that aggressive personal development, Nina saw the anger and the frustration and recognised that finding a niche in this time and place, as a woman out of her own time, was a hardship the two of them had both experienced.

In a black leather folder, there was a cornucopia of designs: mechanical, artistic and arcane. Clockwork devices, measuring instruments, industrial machines.

“Found anything?” said Dick.

“These are hers,” said Nina. “These designs. They are all hers.”

Dick shook his head, uncomprehending.

“The Venislarn devices Boulton was ‘inspired’ to build. She designed them first. The oculus. The star clocks that mess with local geography. The wand.”

“This thing?” said Dick and held out Isabella’s yellis wand.

Nina nearly gave a squeal of delight as she took it from him. “Where did you find this?”

“In the bedroom. Under all her frilly underwear.”

Nina gave him a shrewd look.

“I was being thorough, weren’t I?”

“This…” She marvelled at the wand. “This could put everything right.”

“I done good?” he said.

“Deserves a high-five,” she said and held up her hand.

Dick looked at it and then slapped it and then looked disappointed when nothing further happened.

“Is that it?”

“Goodness is its own reward,” said Nina.

“Is it though?” he asked as she left to go back to the kitchen.

“Not in my experience,” she said, “but it’s what people say.”

Algie was still tied to the stove although he now had a pastry cutter marks on his face and the handle of a wooden spoon shoved up his nose.

“He been giving you trouble?” Nina asked Steve.

“Ha!” laughed Steve, and even put his hands on his hips like a pirate king. “There’s no human alive who can give me trouble.”

“Good. Just checking. I —”

“I am never given trouble, fleshling. I am the one who gives the trouble.”

“Sure, so —”

“Troublegiver, not taker,” he affirmed and gave the spoon up Algie’s nose a vicious corkscrew twist.

Nina unlocked the larder door and held the yellis wand out to the huddled prisoners. The needle prongs of the Venislarn artefact glowed lightning blue.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” said Dick fearfully.

“I’ve used it before,” she said. “In the future. Will have used it before. My past, its future. I don’t know what the correct tense is, okay?”

“But do you know what — ?”

She shushed him, twisted the wand and intoned. “Ye-ach zu.”

The wand flared. The people crammed in the larder blinked.

“What’s happening?” said one.

“Why am I in a larder?” said another.

“What am I wearing?” said an older woman indignantly. “George! George!”

A man in grubby workman’s gear towards the rear of the larder pushed forward with a sudden self-importance.

“I demand to know what’s going on!”

“I’m sure you do,” said Nina, “but I’m very busy and so I’m only going to say this once. You were all put under a magic spell by an evil Spanish woman who escaped from hell with a squiddly Venislarn demon with the intention of taking over the world. They’ve used your house as their base and messed with your memories to make you their slaves. I’ve just restored your memories and now I’m off to Soho House to talk to some clever — but not as clever as they think — men to stop them building machines for this woman and, in the process, try to stop the apocalypse arriving before its due.”

The man made a noise like a horse. “This girl’s talking High Dutch. I’ve never heard such nonsense.”

“Well, I’m not going to repeat it,” she said, “particularly to a man who keeps dirty playing cards in his study.”

The older woman gave her husband a gratifyingly sharp stare.

Nina turned to Dick. “Saddle up, Charlotte.”

“She is saddled up,” he said.

“I mean…” She tutted. “I meant, we’re off. Steve, let’s go. Oh,” she said to the people still stood, deeply confused, in the larder. “The man tied up by the stove is a thief and a pineapple counterfeiter, who helped the woman steal your house and has been sponging off your wealth for I don’t know how long. I should imagine some judge somewhere would be interested in having him transported to the colonies or something.”

“Why would you say that?” whined Algie, somewhat nasally with a spoon stuck up his nose.

“Cos I’m a stone cold bitch,” smiled Nina. “And it’s no less than you deserve.”

On the way out, with the folder of Isabella’s plans and a wooden pineapple under her arm, Nina saw a three-cornered hat hanging on a peg in a corridor.

“Ye-es!” she said, slipped it off the hook and onto her bonce. It was a bit big but she didn’t care. “I am the dandy highwaywoman.”

“Still can’t ride a horse,” said Dick quietly.

HELL

Heralded by a buzzing rumble, a tide of Preinic drones poured into the throne room and, even as the drones threw themselves on ineffectual courtiers, the bulk of a Skendax paladin bent to enter.

To one side of Yabandeman, Crippen-Ai drew himself up, quiet and still, the very essence of non-participation. To the other side, Sha Datsei took up the Menscuzo wordblade and held it over her head, ready to strike.

Yabandeman gripped the sides of his pool and tried to push himself out.

“This… This will not…”

He grunted but his air-filled bladder of a body wasn’t moving anywhere.

“This…”

The incorporeal presence in the God-Heart swelled around Vivian. Her own consciousness shrank as it grew. She moved from the pool of experience that comprised her own body, her own heartbeat, her own sensations, to a wide of sea of universal experience of relatively infinite being.

She was being drawn into the mind of Hath-No and she allowed herself be taken. She mostly allowed herself to be taken; a critically rational part of her kept pointing out that this was probably just a delusional state brought on by her dying mind but she kept that rational part of her compartmentalised. Yes, it was probably quite correct but, right now, she didn’t want it to be correct.

Yo Hath-No.

She was a speck on his hide. A benign lesion. A stray thought in his mind.

Yo Hath-No, the god, had never left this place. This place was not the fortress he had built for himself. It was not the shell he had once inhabited. The fortress of Hath-No was the body of Hath-No. This vast orb was his flesh. War raged in his veins. Folgis sacs and war vehicles were tethered to his lips. The scriptorium in his bowels burned. Another creature, a would-be king, crouched in the chambers of his lungs.

The thought that had been Vivian flitted among the titanic and enigmatic workings of his mind.

See, my lord, she spoke to his mind. You are under attack.

Yo Hath-No saw.

They do not serve you, she said. None of them.

Yo Hath-No’s perception swung through the passages and vessels of his body.

Except perhaps those, she said.

Yo Hath-No saw. He reached out…

In the tunnel, the walls around the three August Handmaidens of Prein contracted abruptly. Legs, shells and drooling mouths were mashed together in the twinkling of a sphincter’s eye. Barry yelped as the leg holding him was pulled in.

The humans drew up sharply in surprise.

The sphincter wall relaxed for an instant. Steve grabbed at Barry.

The walls just behind him closed in on the Prein again. Armour splintered loudly and soft bodies exploded.

In the throne room, every entrance to the room closed. There were no doors to be closed but the entrances closed nonetheless, sealing themselves like fleshly valves. The Skendax paladin disappeared as the opening he stood in ceased to exist. Preinic drones scattered in panic.

“What magic is this?” said Yabandeman, amazed.

“If I may conjecturalise…” said Crippen-Ai but got no further.

There was a deep thrum from beneath Yabandeman’s pool and a tortured orchestral shriek from within. His flabby flesh vibrated under tension.

“It’s pulling me!” he cried. His eyes were wide with a fear and surprise that Sha Datsei had never seen in him before. His long hands raked at the lip of his pool, unable to engage with whatever was attacking him. Those courtiers who weren’t attempting to fight off the Preinic drones, shouted in panic.

“It’s sucking me down!” shouted their king.

Sha Datsei saw that ‘it’ might be sucking him down but Yabandeman wasn’t going anywhere. He plugged the whole of the pool.

The Menscuzo wordblade was in her hand.

It seemed to her that next act was inevitable. It was not rational, logical or chosen. It simply was.

Sha Datsei swung with the wordblade across Yabandeman’s belly.

Yabandeman’s body burst with an explosive and grisly squelch and then, upon the same instant, he was gone, sucked down into a shaft that had not been there before. His death cry echoed as he plummeted. Yabandeman’s food tasters stared. The more mindful had a fleeting moment in which to grab at their umbilical pipes and then they too vanished, every one of them dragged swiftly into the centre of the room, over the edge and down. Gone.

Yo Hath-No saw and he acted.

The parasites in and upon his body were snuffed out.

Vivian, barely enough of herself to be called Vivian any longer, barely indifferentiated from all the other thoughts and viewpoints in Yo Hath-No’s great mind, also saw and she yearned to see more.

My lord, she said, where is Steve the Destroyer?

Yo Hath-No reached out.

Vivian saw a room. A human room, a room on earth…

The heavy bed, the white walls, the simple furnishings; all suggested a private hospital room. Morag Murray lay on the bed.

Morag was losing track of time. Constant napping was all very well but she had no idea if she’d been shut in here for half a day or maybe a couple of days. She felt simultaneously ravenous and nauseous, so she couldn’t rely on how much food she’d eaten. It seemed as though her distended stomach was now at least six months pregnant, but perhaps it was just gas?

Steve the Destroyer stood at the foot of the bed. Vivian saw he was not the ragdoll she knew. His bottom half had been replaced with legs made from printed cotton material, dotted with little red flowers.

“The microwave is broken,” Steve said to Morag proudly.

“How do you know it’s broken?” asked Morag.

“It’s black with soot deposits all over it and the door has blown off.”

“Yes, sounds broken,” agreed Morag. “What about the Yedankhi obfuscator?”

“It’s still inside. Looks about the same,” said Steve.

My lord, said Vivian. Where is Steve?

Vivian was plunged in darkness and motion. Cold air whipped by…

Nina Seth rode on a horse called Charlotte (the horse’s name appeared as fact in Vivian’s consciousness, certain and unexplained). A youth called Dick Trumbull sat in front of Nina, in closer proximity than Nina would have liked.. Steve rode on the brim of Nina’s tricorn and offered a running critique of Dick’s riding skills.

They were riding to Soho House with some evident urgency. Picking a way along the country roads by moonlight alone couldn’t have been easy, especially with the wind blowing a stiff cold breeze and shaking the tops of the trees. Nina wished they could go a little faster, not least because pressed up against a teenager with a dismissive attitude to washing was making her itchy and queasy. Also there was something sharp digging into her thigh.

Nina reached down and felt at it. It took her a second or two to recognise the cold, highly detailed handles or the blue john and ormolu vase.

“You stole that vase?” she said.

“Payment for us freeing them from that witch’s spell.”

She grumbled. “We’re going to Soho House to, in part, explain that I’m not a thief and I didn’t steal their pineapple. Turning up with someone else’s valuables tied to the side of our horse is hardly going to help.”

What is happening? Vivian called out to the god that surrounded her. How can Nina possibly be there?

Vivian’s consciousness leapt again, this time to a far more familiar place: the Vault beneath the Library of Birmingham…

“In Massachusetts it’s illegal to play the Star Spangled Banner as part of a medley,” said Rod Campbell.

“Yes, not exactly useful at this moment,” said Nina, next to him.

“You said that potion might help. Scottish people have four hundred and twenty one words for snow.”

“Yes, but it is - as I might have said! – a bit hit and miss!”

Rod heard a noise, elsewhere within the Vault. “The Jharrad-hai sect of Carcosa believe enlightenment can only be found through auto-cannibalism,” he blurted and then shushed himself.

“Who are you shushing?” said Nina.

He shushed her too, held his own lips closed and listened out. There were voices.

“That’s Omar,” said.

“And who else? There are thirteen dead flies inside that light fitting there.”

Nina glared at him. “Do we go meet them or keep looking?”

“You found anything?”

She opened her hand. In her palm was a black spherical stone, etched with gold sigils.

“Barbie only got a belly button in the year two thousand,” said Rod. “By which I mean, what’s that?”

“It’s a Mi-Yono displacer.”

“Will it help us find Morag?”

“No, but I’ve always wanted one.”

Rod sighed. “Billy goats urinate on their own heads to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex. Come on. We’re gaining nothing here.”

They walked towards the voices. Omar’s voice was raised in argument.

“You know we’re just gonna get kicked out or arrested or something,” said Nina, beside him.

“We’re wasting time,” said Rod.

They rounded the aisle and saw Omar and three other men by the Vault entrance. All three were in consular mission security uniforms. Rod recognised Malcolm but the bearded guy and the blond chap were unknown to him.

PRESENT DAY

Rod stepped into the aisle. There was Omar and Malcolm and two guys in security uniform he didn’t recognise.

“Ay up,” said Rod with a wave.

The blond guy twitched, his hand darting to the pistol at his waist.

“Easy,” said Malcolm to his colleague. “Hey, Rod. Nina.”

The concrete ‘playground’ monster bent slowly to investigate the top of the bearded guy’s head. The man batted it away nervously.

“Good, good,” Omar said, peeved. “There they are, safe as houses and right as ninepence, now can we please take this outside.”

The three security guys looked super-twitchy. No, Malcolm looked calm, was exuding a deliberate air of calm, but the other two were on edge.

“Is there a problem?” said Rod casually and then, “Truro is the county town of Cornwall.”

“That’s nice, Rod,” said Malcolm, like he was trying to talk a nutter down from a ledge.

“Sorry,” said Rod.

“He drank something he shouldn’t,” said Nina.

Omar huffed and rolled his eyes. “And this is why soldiers and academia do not mix. Now, I’m sure there’s all been some misunderstanding but can you take the firearms and machismo outside and –”

“We’re just trying to find Morag,” said Rod.

“Then let’s go talk about that upstairs,” said Malcolm, stepping forward past the curled up shambler. “Maybe find her together.”

The playground monster nudged Beardy again. The guy stepped aside and eyeballed it warily. There was a streak of sweat on his brow.

“I don’t think Vaughn believes us,” said Rod.

“He’s a reasonable bloke,” said Malcolm.

That was so daft as to make Rod laugh.

“Malcolm McKenna will open fire in forty-nine seconds,” he said.

“What?” said Malcolm.

“Sorry,” said Rod. “That’s just my – Are you going to?”

“Am I what?”

“Why are you going to open fire?”

“I didn’t say – Who says I was?”

“He did,” said Nina.

“I did,” said Rod, “but it wasn’t me.”

Blond had his holster unclipped and a hand on his weapon.

“The elixir never lies,” said Nina.

“Outside, everyone, please,” said Omar loudly. “We are not going to do something stupid in here.”

“Why do you think I would open fire?” said Malcolm.

“Where were you?” said Nina.

“What? When?”

“You were on duty at the Think Tank today, weren’t you? Around the time Morag was kidnapped. I was tasered.”

“Right, I don’t know who gave you this silly idea –”

“Outside!” said Omar.

“Heart attacks are most likely to happen on a Monday,” said Rod.

“And stop that!” said Omar.

Beardy moved tensely, looked up at the playground monster and drew his pistol.

“He’s one of them,” said Nina softly.

“What?” said Rod whose mind had been silently counting down the seconds in his head.

“The Maccabees. Forward Management.”

“Clearly there’s been some confusion,” said Malcolm in an attempt at reasonableness.

Rod put a hand on Nina’s shoulder to propel her away. Malcolm saw the action and his hand went for his pistol.

“Warz-iz!” shouted Omar.

On the command word, the Bondook shambler beneath Malcolm’s feet awoke and sprang up like an umbrella, albeit an umbrella with vast leathery wings for a parasol and a mass of teeth and tentacles at its centre. Malcolm was propelled up and away, over the top of the nearest bookstacks.

There were gunshots from the security guys, maybe at the shambler, maybe gone wild. Rod pushed Nina back into the cover of the nearest shelves and drew his own pistol. Further shots were fired off. Further down the aisle the spine of a book exploded. Someone somewhere screamed.

Rod looked to Nina tersely.

“This has gone sideways a bit,” she said.

“The German word ‘kummerspeck’ literally means ‘grief bacon’,” he replied.

“Exactly,” she said.

1773

Nina, Dick and Steve, riding Charlotte, neared the brow of the hill. Soho House had come into sight. At this angle, Nina recognised the house as the same one still standing in the future Birmingham suburb in which she’d grown up. Although the rest of the farmland and countryside around was alien to her, if she focussed on the house, she could mentally fill in the landmarks of her future childhood. St Michael’s primary school would be down there. The ornate and imposing Sikh temple would just be up there. Her mum’s house and her own bedroom would be somewhere over there. She was so close to home and yet so far away.

Her list of objectives was still clear in her mind: get the oculus, get back to the future, find Morag, save Rod and save the world. Five things, but no longer in that order. Saving the world might come a little earlier now.

The gates of Soho House were open. Two carriages were parked around the side. The night of the full moon; Boulton would be having Lunar Society friends visit. Nina slid from Charlotte’s back (she had at least learned how to dismount from a horse with some grace) and hammered on the front door. The wind was howling now and she hammered again.

A servant answered and Boulton’s man, Jonathan Angus, knobbly club in hand, was just behind him.

“Who is it Jonathan?” called Boulton’s voice from deeper in the house.

Nina tossed Algie’s wooden pineapple and the servant caught it. Jonathan was agog.

“It’s the pineapple thief!” he called back to Boulton. “And she’s brought us a pineapple!”

“I say!” exclaimed another voice within the house.

“I need to talk to Mr Boulton,” said Nina.

“You’ll do not such thing!” said Jonathan and readied his knobstick.

Nina raised the yellis wand. “Ye-ach zu.”

Changes rippled on Jonathan’s face and, to a lesser extent, the servant’s. Jonathan looked at her, frowned angrily and then anger slipped unwillingly away, replaced by confusion, a sudden realisation and a deeper confusion still.

“Miss Nina Seth. The consular mission…”

“- to the Venislarn,” she said. “Well remembered.”

“Now take us to Boulton, pipsqueak,” commanded Steve from his position atop Nina’s hat.

Jonathan’s mouth dropped open and he feebly backed off and pointed which way for them to go.

HELL

In the God-Heart, Vivian spiralled through the thoughts and memories of a vast god.

Rod and Nina, she said. Do they find her? Where is she?

Through the power of the God-Heart, Vivian’s mind was propelled elsewhere. She instinctively understood that there was something wrong with this place and this time.

It was night-time. The black-orange sky of the city boiled. Red cracks wormed their way through reality.

Below was a tumbledown stately home that had been carefully maintained to appear in a dilapidated state. Inside the house was a white room where Morag was giving birth and which Rod had just entered.

Rod was covered with mud and blood and carried a soldier’s rifle. Intermittent gunfire could be heard in other parts of the building but neither Rod nor Morag paid it any attention.

“Help me, Rod,” Morag grunted.

Rod dropped his weapon and came immediately to her side.

“I gotta push!” she said.

“Good. You push as hard as you can.”

“There’s no fucking stopping now!” shouted Morag as the final contractions hit. She reached out with desperate hands, clawed Rod as she tried to assist her.

“Bloody hell,” said Rod, either at the pain of her grabbing him or at the fact that with a suddenness he wasn’t expecting, the baby slid free and into his hands.

“Chuffin’ heck, it’s a baby,” he said.

He turned the newborn around his hand, mindful of the umbilical cord that was still attached. The baby began to cry. The sky outside split like a volcanic fissure. Venislarn hordes tumbled, spilled and clawed their way through.

Nina Seth was in the room now, ignoring the baby, eyes only on the window and the horrors falling from the sky. When she spoke, her voice was only a whisper.

“What’s the time?”

Vivian blinked.

Vivian Grey looked and there was something wrong with her vision. It look her a long while to realise that the thing that had struck her as wrong was that she was looking out of her own eyes again. She was on the floor of the God-Heart. She was no longer one with the god of this place. She was left with the residue of a memory of what it had been like to have creatures running through her body, of how it had felt to reach into her own body and cleanse it of the parasites within and then that residue faded and she was back again, fully and painfully in this shattered human frame.

There were noises, pounding feet. She rolled onto her back and coughed in pain.

“Thith way!”

Barry ran into the God-Heart. Steve was by his side. A press of armed humans followed behind.

“She’s alive,” said Barry.

There were hands beneath her now. They lifted her away from the floor of the God-Heart, peeling her from the pool of drying blood of Bakhan Sand.

“Careful, fools!” said Steve. “You! More support!”

They carried her out, a dozen hands holding her. Barry the thoggan marched proudly beside her. When he saw her looking, he grinned at her.

“What have you got to look so cheerful about?” she asked him witheringly.

Barry’s grin was undimmed. “Big thmile. Everybody happy.”

The battle was over. The invaders had been destroyed in an instant by the fortress itself. Tunnels had become walls. Floors had become pits. The fortress had rearranged itself and destroyed every individual fighting for the Prein and Sulu Sukram. It was impossible to ascertain how many of Yabandeman’s forces had been destroyed by the attackers and how many had been caught in Hath-No’s sudden and vengeful act.

In the throne room, Sha Datsei surveyed what little remained of Yabandeman’s retinue. The war chiefs, sycophants and monsters who had principally allied themselves to the barbarian king were all gone; some fled, some struck down in battle, many dragged away to whatever hole Yabandeman now occupied. A smattering of Kerah-han soldier-beasts, an even smaller number of Yabandeman’s patchwork nightmares and the surviving court visitors, functionaries and servants. However many they were, it was too few to be called a kingdom.

Crippen-Ai positioned himself in front of the gaping pit that had once been Yabandeman’s bathing pool, his throne.

“Hath-No is ours,” he declared. “Our hold is feeblurent but we must maintain it. As Yabandeman’s high chancellor, I am the proximal ruler of Hath-No until such tempution in which he is return –”

“You are not Yabandeman’s high chancellor.” Sha Datsei, in her new body, insectoid and nimble, not Preinic, not quite un-Preinic, circled the pit, walking along its rim. “You were never raised to that position.”

“A minor formedure,” said Crippen-Ai. “Let us not quiddicate over the details. What is important, people, is that we unify. Unify, rebuild, seek our own vengeance against those who tried to bring us down. They shall be bound in hooks, their limbs and hearts hacked from their bodies and their living remains sealed in amber so that all might see what becomes of traitors!”

Sha Datsei stepped over him to face the court, what little of it remained. “Yabandeman named me as his heir.”

There were murmurs and hisses from the court.

“Did he?” said Crippen-Ai. “I do not recall that and I recall everything.”

He scanned the room and Sha Datsei did too. She did not recognise any faces that had been present when Yabandeman had made his proclamation.

“You are a liar and a vile whore,” said Crippen-Ai. “And Yabandeman was right to imprison you.”

“You’re right,” shouted a small voice from across the room.

Steve the Destroyer strode in, a parade of filthy, armed humans behind him. “She is a liar. And she is a whore. And locking her up was the most sensible thing Yabandeman ever did,” he said.

Crippen-Ai shock at seeing the cloth man lasted but a moment before he composed himself and nodded politely.

“But,” said Steve, “Yabandeman did proclaim that Sha Datsei was his ‘one true love’, was to be pardoned of all her crimes and would return to the court as his co-ruler. I was there and you were too,” he said and pointed at Crippen-Ai.

The stern attention of those present swung back on Crippen-Ai. The air of the court was dark and they were in a condemning mood. Sha Datsei could not be certain who they would back in the end. It was just as likely that they would set upon both her and the shapeshifter and have them both tossed into oblivion.

“But she cannot be his heir,” said Crippen-Ai. “She was the one who killed him. She took up that sword and cut him wide open.”

This did not have the effect on the court he perhaps desired. Proclamations and decrees were all well and good but Yabandeman’s people had no problem with someone taking power by force. King slayers were as good as crowned.

Crippen-Ai took in the changed mood, the murmurs of approval for Sha Datsei and rose up indignantly.

“You can’t take that plaything at its word!” he insisted. “It’s with the humans. They betrayed us. Yabandeman – our king! – also proclaimed that every human was to be slaughtered. This you know to be true,” he said, eyeballing Sha Datsei and Steve.

“It is true,” said Steve. “He specifically said every human in the scriptorium was to be killed.” He waved imperiously at the nearest Kerah-han. “Take whatever men you like. Go to the scriptorium. If there are any humans there, kill them.”

“But all the humanth are here with uth,” the thoggan child next to him pointed out.

“They are,” agreed Steve, “but maybe these soldiers should go check all the same.”

“But these humans betrayed us all!” said Crippen-Ai. “They destroyed Yabandeman’s word armour.”

There was a commotion in the midst of the humans and a figure was carried forward. Sha Datsei at first thought it was a corpse, a dried up and venerated mummy. But it was a living human – a female she hazarded – and although it was emaciated and twisted with pain and more besides, she was able to stand, supported by men on either side.

“Crippen-Ai sold you all out to the Prein,” she croaked. “He set the fire in the scriptorium. He thrives on chaos and he would make himself king if he could.”

“What?” said Crippen-Ai. “You think the Venislarn will believe the word of a crippled crone? Mrs Vivian Grey, you are the worst of them all.”

Vivian Grey hopped and even that small action caused her obvious pain but her gaze remained fixed on Crippen-Ai.

“I am Vivian Grey. I am Kreylah ap Shallas, the living black and white. I am the three-limbed fury. And –”

“And the greatest scribe whoever lived and if anyone ever looked on your true face, it would melt their brains,” mocked Crippen-Ai. “Lies, all lies. I see your true face. It’s perfectly plain and not in the least horrific.”

“I spoke to Hath-No – Yo Hath-No – the god who still resides in this place. He destroyed the Prein because I asked him. He could reach out in a heartbeat and take you too.”

Wind sighed from the shaft which had swallowed Yabandeman, a hollow moan, like breath across a bottle top. It was perhaps a coincidence but it did not go unnoticed by Crippen-Ai.

He slapped two paddle limb together jovially.

“Then let us all give thanks that we have a friend in Hath-No. My most bathous thanks, Lord Hath-No!” he called to the hole. “And I stand by my word. I am happy to serve the victorious king in whatever capacity he desires. Lord Hath-No, I am yours. And you, Mrs Vivian Grey. Forgive me for saying your face was anything other than hideous. It is ghastly.”

“But what about the punishment?” said Sha Datsei.

“Punishment?” said Crippen-Ai, his nervousness unhidden now.

“For burning the word armour in the scriptorium.”

“The day has been won,” the shapeshifter replied with false cheer. “The armour was not needed!”

“They shall be bound in hooks, you said. Their limbs and hearts hacked from their bodies and their remains sealed in amber so that all might see what becomes of traitors.”

Crippen-Ai squirmed. He visibly squirmed. It gave Sha Datsei a delicious thrill to see. The shifter’s body twisted and turned in on itself as though he was looking for an exit when there was none to be had. An unexpected pink glow began to emanate from within his pale body. If that was the physical expression of shame and fear then Sha Datsei approved.

“The coward’s escaping!” shouted Steve.

“He’s going nowhere,” said Sha Datsei.

“He’s right,” said Vivian and tried to hop forward. “The bodu-papa’s jewel. He’s using it to flee to another world.”

A swirling pink nimbus, a whirlpool in the air, had grown around Crippen-Ai and the viscous near-liquid of his being was being drawn into it.

“Stop him!” yelled Steve, running forward.

Kerah-han troops ran at the pink tunnel of light but Sha Datsei was ahead of them. She leapt from the throne, the Menscuzo wordblade already swinging. She hacked, back and forth, slicing chunks from Crippen-Ai, carving him up. He shouted out angrily and as each piece fell from him, it opened a mouth and added its own voice.

Nonetheless, strands of his putty-like body were disappearing through the vortex. Only when Sha Datsei brought the blade up and severed the flesh holding the now visible Gellik rose orb in his hand did the tunnel to another world flash and die.

The heavy jewel dropped to the floor, surrounded by flopping and confused segments of the shifter. Steve grabbed the nearest of these and tossed it into the deep shaft.

“Don’t let any escape,” said Vivian.

Those nearest the remains scooped them up or flipped them with their weapons into the hole. A small human child picked up the pink jewel and peeled away the scrap of Crippen-Ai still clinging to it.

“I will have that,” said Sha Datasei.

“The queen wants the jewel, Isabella,” the thoggan youngling told the girl.

The child dutifully dropped the jewel into Sha Datsei’s outstretched claw and turned away. The nugget of white flesh wriggled in her hand.

“It says it wants to be my friend,” Isabella told the thoggan.

1773

In the Boulton’s dining room, Nina held the yellis wand aloft and pointed out each of the mesmerised men in turn.

“That’s Matthew Boulton.”

“I know that,” said Dick. “I have worked in his manufactory these past weeks.”

“That tubster is Erasmus Darwin,” she continued. “I’ve seen him through the oculus several times. He might look like a fat politician but he’s a right clever so-and-so.” Her pointing finger moved on and she tried to remember what she’d seen through the oculus in her own time and read in the books she’d taken from the Soho House museum gift shop. “That’s Wedgwood. The bloke with the wooden leg. He makes pottery stuff. Plates and cups and that.”

“I know who Josiah Wedgwood is,” said Dick. “I like a bit of Wedgwood.”

“You’re a fan of fancy crockery?”

“I know it fetches a bob or two.”

Nina tutted.

“Ye-ach zu,” she said and gave the wand a Harry Potter flick for good measure as she restored their stolen memories.

There were grunts and gasps from the men.

“Damnably queer,” said Wedgwood to himself.

Boulton blinked at Nina.

“The thief… No…” His brow knitted furiously as he tried to think. “Nina Seth.”

“Yes!” said Nina.

He pointed. “The one with the knees. Who said… she was from the future?”

Darwin patted himself as though to check he was still there.

“It is as though a door has been opened in my mind. To a cellar of hidden memories. Or dreams.”

Boulton reached into his jacket pocket and felt around with increasing urgency.

“The magic box with the pixies. The Candy Crush. Where…?” He checked himself. “Miss Isabella took it.”

“Isabella,” breathed Darwin in recollection. “The Mad Maid of the Wilds. She harassed the men at the blue john mine for months and then followed me to Lichfield.”

Wedgwood shifted indignantly in his chair. “Well, I for one have no idea what is occurring here and I would appreciate it if someone would tell me.”

“Then you need to listen up,” said Nina.

“We do not have time for this, mortal!” said Steve.

“The pygmy savage!” declared Boulton.

“I remember!” cried Darwin loudly, spraying spittle.

“The demonic sprite,” said Jonathan Angus.

“I am no sprite,” sneered Steve. “I am Steve the Destroyer, former outrider of the entourage of Prein, ex-emissary of the shattered –”

Nina grabbed him off the peak of her hat and set him down on the table.

“We definitely don’t have time for that. There is a creature, gentleman, called Crippen-Ai. He is a Venislarn. You can call him a demon, though you’d be quite wrong. He attempted to flee to this world from hell — not that hell, just hell — with a dimension-shifting jewel. He only partly succeeded and the fragment of him that made it through ended up buried in the Peak District hills. Guess you need to careful where you point that thing. Anyway, he ended up just entombed rather than tele-fragged.”

“Tele…what?” said Wedgwood.

“Fragged,” said Nina. “Look, it’s like when Marty McFly went back to 1955 and immediately ran into a tree. You can’t just point and jump with time travel or dimension hopping. Anyway, cue Isabella. She escaped from hell – still not that hell – and she and the other humans and Steve here appeared in Merrie Olde England.”

“In fifty-eight,” said Darwin. “The missing Spaniards. Found wandering the hills near Sheffield and none with a clue how they got here. I told you both about it.”

“I vaguely recall…” said Wedgwood dubiously.

“Them,” said Nina. “She’d be ten at the time. She’d already built up a rapport with Crippen-Ai in hell. Or part of him. He’d been sliced ‘n’ diced on his way out but that didn’t kill him. It was Isabella’s mission to free him.”

“Except it was we three who freed him,” said Wedgwood. “Our experiments with electricity and the creature embedded in blue john.”

The same look of ghastly comprehension was on the face of the three men.

“Both Isabella, now a grown woman, and Steve here were on his trail. Steve had himself posted up here. Isabella had already come to Birmingham and then…”

She pulled a face, not quite having all the pieces of the story in her mind.

“Either Crippen-Ai was inspiring you with Venislarn knowledge to build the tech he needed or all the designs came from Isabella.”

“That wand…” said Boulton, gesturing.

“Made in your own manufactory,” said Nina. She produced the leather folder of Isabella’s drawings and tossed them on the table. Plans spilled out across the tablecloth. The men inspected them.

“My rocket engine…” breathed Darwin, grasping a sheet. “I had a notion of a propulsion device in which dephlogisticated air and inflammable air could be mixed in a combustion chamber and…” He looked up at Nina, quite fearful. “Was it my notion or hers?”

Nina shrugged. “Whichever it was, she has plans for all these things.”

Boulton looked at the plans. He stood and went to a clock on a stand in the corner. With a now trembling hand, he turned the key in the clock’s face. Nina had seen both the clock and the key before. The clock had been in the basement storage of the Soho House museum. The key she had found in Vivian’s house after her death.

“You ought to be careful with that,” said Nina.

“But is it science or witchcraft?” Boulton said.

The clock’s tick, far deeper and wide-reaching than any clock’s tick had the right to be, echoed around and through the room.

“Look,” whispered Boulton, past Nina and Dick.

All heads turned. Wedgwood gasped. In the silence, the groan of trees bending in the wind outside was clearly audible.

After several seconds, Dick whispered, “Haven’t they seen a door before?”

“But it was not there before,” said Jonathan Angus.

Nina crossed to it and cautiously pulled it open. The room on the other side was higher than Soho House and its far end so distant it disappeared into darkness.

Dick stammered in awe.

“But that’s…”

“Isn’t it?” said Nina and closed the door. “If you built it, Matty boy, then she wants it for some reason.” A thought came to her abruptly. “The oculus.”

Boulton lifted aside a napkin to reveal the oculus, a set of snugly concentric flat brass rings that made a single hoop like a frisbee.

Boulton looked at Nina suspiciously. “You knew about this? Before?”

“Time travel,” she replied. “I’m from the future.”

Darwin laughed in disbelief. “The future?”

“Two hundred years or so,” she said.

“And the people of the future,” said Wedgwood, his mouth split wide in an equally incredulous smile. “Are they like… like you?”

“Hot and foxy?” said Nina. “Nah. Not really. The future is fat, tattooed and addicted to Love Island.” The businessmen looked at her blankly. “Right,” she sighed. “The future. On the plus side we stopped wearing stupid wigs. Someone invented underpants, tampons, actual toothpaste and wi-fi. Wi-fi is awesome. Downside, the planet’s fucked — whole range of reasons there — but number one of the list is the Venislarn who are going to turn the entire world into an unending torture theme park.”

“So far into the future, man has surely created many wonders?” Boulton asked.

“Woman too,” corrected Nina.

Outside, a tree creaked. Through the window, light flared distantly.

“Was that lightning?” said Jonathan Angus.

“Never seen pink lightning before,” said Dick.

“Fools!” said Steve. “I know what that light is.”

He grabbed a pronged cheese knife off the table and jumped onto the floor and sprinted to the front door. Jonathan Angus followed him. There was the sound of the door opening and the wind whistling in.

“So, what would you have us do?” Boulton asked Nina.

“Destroy the devices you built for Isabella. Burn the plans. If she doesn’t have them then she can’t use them to get what she wants.”

“But what does this mad harridan want?” asked Wedgwood.

“She mentioned an army and enslaving the world. It’s your basic bad guy play. Details I’m less certain on.”

“Then we destroy them,” said Boulton. He put his hands on the door-conjuring sidereal clock. “Some are already loathsome to me.”

Nina considered the yellis wand in her hand. “Wait,” she said. “You can’t.”

Boulton looked at her.

“I need these,” she said. “This wand. This wand. I use it in my time to mindwipe a nasty handmaiden of Prein. And if the clock is destroyed then Mrs Fiddler and I won’t use it to open up the cellars and find the oculus.”

“Who is Mrs Fiddler?” asked Darwin.

“My old primary school teacher. She’s dead clever and gives out gold stars and she’d have done a lot better with this time travel thing than me. Point is, these things have to survive. If they don’t then I’d never have come back here to tell you.” She frowned. “But then you wouldn’t have destroyed them so I would have come back. But then you would have destroyed them…” Just thinking about it made her brain hurt.

“Are you sure she is from future times?” Darwin asked his friends, aside. “I have attended to lunatics and simpletons with more credible delusions.”

“Hey, Erasmo, don’t be getting cheeky,” she retorted. “I’ve told you my story. You know it’s true. You need actual physical evidence?”

The front window of the dining room smashed – panes, wooden frames, all – and Jonathan Angus flew in backwards to crash against the dining table. He cried loudly, tried to get to his feet and failed.

Outside on the driveway, something roared.

“Time’s up,” said Nina. “She’s here. Matthew!”

Boulton was, along with Darwin, already crouched by the bloodied and groaning Jonathan’s side.

“Matthew!” she shouted.

He looked up.

She pointed at the sidereal clock and she hoped, by implication, the oculus too. “Hide them. He’s a doctor. Hide them. We can’t let her –”

Another roar from outside. It was a deep and layered. There were screams of alarm from elsewhere in the house.

“My family,” breathed Boulton.

“Go to them,” said Wedgwood.

“Dick, with me,” said Nina.

The boy didn’t look like he wanted to go anywhere but he followed her nonetheless.

“Gun,” she said.

He offered her his pistol.

“You’re going to cover me,” she said.

“I’m what?”

“Shoot anything that tries to hurt me.”

“But the charge. It’s been in there for months.”

“Whatever!” she snapped and marched out of the front door onto the doorstep.

There were three sources of light outside. The lamps of the house cast a yellow aura over the area nearest the house. The full moon, skipping between wind-whipped clouds, gave a silvery edge to the world. Ahead, the pink glow of the gemstone around Isabella’s neck marked the silhouette of Isabella, her coach, the skulking thug Bill and two much, much larger creatures.

“Kobashi.”

Nina had never seen one in the flesh before but she had seen the skeleton of one, in a vast room beneath twenty-first century Soho House. Kobashi at Soho House… These ones alive, a dead one in the future. She was struck by sudden déjà vu – no, the opposite of déjà vu, not the feeling that she had been here before but that she would be here again…

Both in skeleton form and in the flesh, the Kobashi only looked superficially ape-like. Their arms were much longer, longer than their bodies and legs combined and their heads were little more than flattened domes between their over-muscled shoulders. But five metres? Nina guessed that was about right.

“Hyet-pa!” shouted Nina but Isabella was ready to deflect the yellis wand’s power with a gesture.

Isabella sneered.

“Now what?” said Nina. She regarded the Kobashi dismissively. “Is this your ‘army’?”

“Not even my foot soldiers.”

Isabella’s hands worked over the pink Gellik orb. A corridor of light blossomed in front of her with a dark shape at its centre: a third Kobashi. It clawed its way out of the pink portal, a birthing nightmare. It pushed itself upright with knuckled fists. Even in the gloom, the terror on Bill’s face was clearly etched.

“Waik qeniyat,” said Isabella.

The three Kobashi monsters stepped forward.

Steve squeezed out from under the foot of one.

“I’m a bomb! I’m a bomb!” he shouted as he ran at Isabella. “One word and I’ll kill us all!”

As bluffs went, it at least created a moment of panic.

“Vashan!” yelled Isabella. “Shu’phro as beyyiddi!”

The nearest Kobashi almost fell over themselves in their attempts to stamp on Steve before he reached Isabella. They stomped with elephantine feet but Steve was small and quick.

“Can you shoot her from here?” Nina asked Dick.

“Shoot a woman?” said Dick.

“Are you being squeamish or sexist?”

“I’m a bomb!” said Steve. “I’m a –”

THUMP. A Kobashi foot found him and squished him into the earth. The Kobashi lifted its foot to see if it had killed Steve.

“I’m a bomb!” hollered the muckier and much flatter doll and ran on.

“Skan-gichak!” screamed Isabella.

A monster arm swung down and scooped Steve up. Isabella was backing away.

“I’m not afraid of brutes like you,” laughed Steve.

“Cur in dacha!” said Isabella.

The Kobashi twisted Steve between fingertips that were too big for such fiddly action.

“I’m Steve the Destroyer! You can’t – nnh! My legs!”

The Kobashi ripped the cloth creature in two and flung both bottom and top halves away towards the distant trees.

“Bastaaaard!” screamed Steve’s fading voice as he flew.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Nina. “I’ve…”

What did she have? A quick mental inventory revealed a wand that wouldn’t work on Isabella, an explosive ideogram in her purse which was too powerful for close quarters use, a filthy sidekick with moral qualms about shooting women, even if they were crazy bitches.

What did Isabella have? Three Kobashi servants plus a human one, a slimy Venislarn ally, a gemstone that could open gateways to Venislarn worlds and a head full of plans.

“What do you want?” asked Nina. “Seriously? What are you after here?”

Calming herself now that Steve was gone, Isabella approached at a leisurely pace. Nina stepped forward to meet her.

“The oculus. The sidereal clock. Boulton,” said Isabella.

“But why? What are you planning to do?”

A curious smile creased Isabella’s lips.

“Didn’t you warn me against ‘monologuing’?” She shook her head at herself.

“I know that you’re not from round here. I know where you’ve been.”

The curious smile twisted into a much uglier expression.

“You know nothing, Nina Seth. I was born in a country I do not remember. I was raised in hell. I lived among Kerah-han and yathki. I was traded like livestock by bodu-papa. I rode the great traversers. I knelt before gods. I lived in a world where no sun ever shone.”

“It was terrible. I get it.”

“It was home!” she yelled, her lip trembling wetly. “And it was taken from me!”

“But…”

“What?” she snapped. “You think this, this cold wet world is where I belong? The only things I’ve ever had here are things I’ve taken by force. The moment we arrived here, far from any place or time we recognised, we were paraded around like sideshow curios. I was traded by men no gentler than the bodu-papa. I was…” Her expression was bitter enough to seal her lips.

The Venislarn creature Crippen-Ai slithered up from her cleavage and wrapped itself around her neck. Isabella calmed almost instantly at his caress.

“This world hates us,” she said.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Nina and instantly felt it for the lie it was. “Okay. Maybe it’s not ideal. It’s crappy. You know I’m not from round here either, yeah? I’ve spent too long here myself. Everything stinks of shit and I’ve got used to it. I’ve actually got used to it. But things will change.”

Isabella laughed suddenly, a crunching emotional gear change, like a morose drunkard suddenly laughing at a private joke.

“Things will change,” she said. “The end of the world is coming. What did Vivian call it? The Soulgate.”

“Not for at least another two hundred years,” said Nina.

“We’re going to change that,” said Isabella. “Across time and space, Crippen-Ai called to me. I am despised by my own kind. He doubly so.” She saw Nina frown. “Most hated among the Venislarn. They have rejected him utterly.” She raised a finger and tangled it lovingly around one of Crippen-Ai’s pseudolimbs. “We are going to divert the Soulgate to this place and time. I will bring hell – my hell – to this world. And Crippen-Ai will make the apocalypse his own and they will recognise him for the prince among Venislarn he truly is.”

“You can’t ‘divert’ the Soulgate,” said Nina. “It’s an event, a fixed event and only the Venislarn gods themselves know the day and the hour...”

She stopped. The oculus and the sidereal clock. A portable hole to other times and a space-time manipulator that could stretch that hole to gargantuan dimensions. With those two devices, all Isabella would have to do is look forward in time to the moment of the Soulgate and then, like an airlock opening, let it pour through to here and now.

“Azbhul,” whispered Nina.

Her heart sank. Isabella was a credible threat. She wasn’t going to just summon Venislarn monsters. She wasn’t just opening doors to one of the Venislarn hells; she could do that already. She was going to bring the end of the world itself, a sea of torment, pain without end.

And her heart sank doubly. Getting home, saving Morag, undoing Rod’s death. They were no longer the priority. They were perhaps no longer real possibilities. Her best chance – the earth’s best chance – was to destroy the oculus and the clock before Isabella could use them. And if that created some time paradox that blew a hole in the universe then that might be considered a victory at this point.

“The oculus is strongest in locations where it has already been used,” said Isabella.

Nina remembered the resistance the oculus offered the first time she tried to put her hand through it. Her travelling from the twenty-first century to here would have helped widen any channel the Venislarn needed to come through.

“This is bad,” she said. She needed a distraction. “Dick!”

“Yes?” said a trembling voice.

“If I told you to saddle up Charlotte and ride as fast as you could would that - ?”

The boy was scarpering already.

“I didn’t get to tell you the plan,” she hissed.

Charlotte, tied up near the front corner of the house had been twisting, wild-eyed against her reins throughout. She had a perfectly natural and justified fear of flat-headed apes from beyond. Dick slipped her reins from the iron pipe on the wall and barely had time to launch himself astride her before she bolted.

“There goes your oculus,” Nina smirked.

Isabella’s eyes widened. “Tenzu bech’yo!” she yelled. The Kobashi gave chase, pendulous arms knuckling the ground, swinging their shorter legs forward. Arms, feet, arms, feet. The ground shook as they accelerated.

Nina ran back for the house. Isabella yelled at the Kobashi again. She might have all the cards in her hand but she was a rubbish player.

“I’ll get her,” Nina heard Bill say.

Nina ran through the front door. Upstairs, she heard Boulton pleading with his wife and children to stay hidden, to stay safe. In the dining room, Darwin has placed a folded up coat underneath Jonathan Angus’s head. He had slipped into unconsciousness. Could have been dead for all Nina knew.

Wedgwood had picked up Jonathan’s fearsome knobstick clubs but didn’t look like a man who had ever been in a fight.

Nina made straight for the oculus and sidereal clock.

“Gotta destroy them. Shit,” she added, seeing the plans on the table. “And burn those!”

Bill the bald-headed bastard ran in, knife ready.

“Come no further, man!” declared Wedgwood, hefting the club in an entirely unthreatening manner.

Bill’s eyes twinkled with grim amusement and thrust at him. Wedgwood stepped back and swung. Bill ducked it with ease and stabbed. The knife went through the trailing edge of Wedgwood’s coat and, by the sound of his cry, more besides.

Nina held the oculus. It consisted of two concentric sliding brass rings, etched with Venislarn writing. It was solid metal, had virtually no moving parts and she had not real clue how to destroy it. The sidereal clock, she thought. At least she could smash that…

As she turned to look for a clock-smashing tool, the front of the house shuddered. Dust cascade from the ceiling. Hands like digger claws gripped the edges of the shattered window and ripped frame, plaster and brickwork from the front of the house to make a hole big enough for a Kobashi to crawl through.

“Muda!” swore Nina.

Darwin hauled Jonathan into the corner and tried to shield the servant’s body with his own.

No time for clock-smashing. It was time for an exit, to get the oculus out of Isabella’s reach, to get the Kobashi away from these stupid innocent people.

She dashed for the door that the sidereal clock had created, the door to conjured space. It would have to do.

She flung the door wide and ran pell-mell into the giant space beyond.

“Oi!” her heard Bill shout and he gave chase. The echoes of his flapping feet changed as he passed over the threshold into the cavernous darkness. A second later, there was the further sound of brick and timbers being ripped away and she knew that the Kobashi was with them too.

PRESENT DAY

Steve stood on the end of Morag’s bed. The plans to destroy the obfuscator had probably come to nothing.

“Hmmm. New plan needed,” said Morag.

I told you mother, I can help.

“I’ve got to be honest, that isn’t my favourite plan,” said Morag. “We need to overpower whoever comes in here next. If it’s Kathy, we’re going to need the element of surprise. And weapons. Makeshift crappy weapons are better than no weapons at all.”

“A device for throwing balls of flaming pitch is a better weapon,” said Steve.

“I’m starting to picture what an ambush might look like,” said Morag, ignoring him. “Steve, I need you to fetch some of the things from the other rooms.”

While Steve went in search of supplies, Morag dragged the cupboard over to the bed so that she could use it as a work surface. She assembled the dressings from the drawer unit.

“I cannot believe that I am attempting to base a weapon on the adhesive properties of medical dressings,” she said. “The A-Team didn’t have such adn-bhul raw materials to work with.”

There was a loud scraping noise from above, followed by a shower of plaster and dust from the ceiling as Steve appeared with a mop. He thrust it down through the gap in the tiles and Morag grabbed it. She lined a scalpel up with the end and fastened them together with self-adhesive dressings (large).

Steve waggled the end of the mop and the scalpel flopped uselessly. “This weapon would not pierce the gossamer wing of a wen’doffler, maggot. It is a useless weapon.”

“It’s all about distraction,” said Morag. “We need it to look just dangerous enough to manoeuvre Kathy into position.”

“Position for what?” asked Steve.

“So we can stick her with an IV and pump her full of sedative,” said Morag, holding up a bag of liquid.

Steve brought some extra cushions from the other rooms so that they could fake the appearance of a slumbering Morag in the hospital bed. The plan was that Morag would hide behind the door and use the spear on Kathy. With a bit of luck she might actually stab her, but it was fine if she didn’t because all she really needed to do was get Kathy underneath the designated ceiling tile where Steve would drop down with the cannula and the sedative. He would land on Kathy’s neck, stab in the cannula and squeeze the bag until it was empty. It was a plan that was so wildly optimistic and utterly without a sensible hope of success that Morag felt quite upbeat about it.

She’d been standing behind the door for less than a minute and her back was already killing her. Now she felt the need to pee creeping up on her again, and it wasn’t going away.

“Er, listen. I can’t say I’m a fan of this, but I’m pretty sure I can play my part from the commode if needs be.”

She dragged the commode over and hoisted herself into position. Moving around felt more like shifting a mattress than manouevering something that was part of her. How was it possible for her own body to feel like such an alien thing? She looked up and saw Steve’s wooden eyes fixed upon her. For a face with so few features, it could be remarkably expressive.

“What?” she said. “What?”

Steve said nothing.

It was another fifteen minutes before Morag heard a noise outside the door. She nodded up at Steve and rolled slightly on the top of the commode, to relieve the numbness that had permeated much of her lower half. The key turned in the lock and the door opened.

“Hmph. Snoozing are we?” Kathy said, advancing into the room, her eyes on the bed.

Morag lunged forward with her spear, and a mighty war cry of “Eat muda and die you glun’u!”

Kathy turned at the sound, but instead of backing over towards the area that was within Steve’s range, she stepped forward, towards Morag and clutched the mop handle. Her hand closed firmly over Morag’s. With a swift twist she had the mop out of Morag’s grip, the scalpel toppled harmlessly off the end. Morag and Kathy both turned to look at the blade as it clattered onto the floor.

“I’d like to say nice try Morag, but frankly that was a bit embarrassing,” said Kathy.

Morag massaged her twisted wrist.

“I did tell you I had learned the bartitsu fighting style, didn’t I?” said Kathy.

“It just sounded so made up,” said Morag.

“Although I’m intrigued to know how you got hold of the mop. I’m certain it wasn’t in here before.”

A woman stepped in behind Kathy. She was a large woman with frizzy hair.

“Everything all right, Dr Kaur?” she said.

“Perfectly, fine, Winnie,” she said. “Our guest is being a little feisty.”

Kathy looked Morag up and down. “You look like you’re at least seven months pregnant, the way you’re carrying,” she said in amazement.

Morag had been wearing the doctor’s coat since Steve had retrieved it, and she’d thrown her vomit-covered trousers into a corner. She looked absurd but she was way past caring.

“Hell of a bedside manner you’ve got there,” spat Morag.

Kathy sighed. “I should examine you to make sure this stupidity hasn’t caused any harm.”

“Is she staying to watch?” said Morag, nodding at Winnie viciously.

Kathy shook her head. The woman hesitated.

“There are armed guards on every floor of the house,” said Kathy. “I think I can handle a heavily pregnant woman and, even if she made a run for it, where would she go.”

Winnie nodded and withdrew.

Morag said nothing. She was careful not to glance up at Steve, because she hadn’t given up hope that he might be able to administer the sedative if Kathy would just step a little back and to the left.

A hail of gunfire – a semi-automatic weapon, Rod noted – and a shelf of books spluttered a row of papery explosions. One of the books bled a viscous green liquid across the floor of the Vault.

Rod put a hand on Nina’s head to keep her low and hurried her away a half dozen aisles.

“Okay, they’re the bad guys,” he admitted, involuntarily, adding, “The tuxedo gets its name from the village of Tuxedo Park, in Orange County.”

“How much of the elixir did you drink?” she said.

Rod ignored her and took a quick mental stocktake. There were, at last count, six humans in the vault – himself, Nina, Omar (who was an innocent bystander in this case until proven otherwise), Malcolm, Beardy and Blond. These last three, it was reasonable to assume from the sudden and unprofessional use of semi-automatic weaponry, were working for the enemy – the organisation that hid behind Forward Management Ltd. There had also been two further security guards outside the vault when Rod and Nina had arrived but whose side they were on was unclear.

Personal inventory. Rod had his Glock 21 pistol, fully loaded. He had enough concealed blades and mini-weapons to turn a couple of these guys into kebabs.

Nina… Nina had a jaunty tricorn hat, a list of Forward Management properties, a Mi-Yono displacer stone (whatever that was) and, if the gadget website hadn’t been lying to him, she was invisible to wolves and bears, smell-wise at least.

“This is less than ideal,” he said.

“I’ve got a possible way out of here,” she said.

“Possible?”

“How far up is it from here to the level above?”

“What?”

She didn’t get chance to ask again. With a roar and a flap, the awkward wingbound bulk of the bondook shambler came flying over the shelves, gouged out a dozen ceiling tiles with its head and then crashed down almost on top of them.

“Over there!” Malcolm shouted.

There was more shooting.

As the shambler rolled, lashing out with claws as it tried to right itself, Rod and Nina split. Nina ran low off deeper into the Vault. Rod scuttled away.

He looked back and saw that the shambler wasn’t going anywhere. It was dying. There were three or more gunshot wounds to its dark, leathery chest. It wasn’t just bleeding though. The wounds bubbled and fizzed with blue foam, as though it had been shot with a powerful caustic substance. Rod wondered what the hell the Forward men were using for ammo.

“The heat in chillis is measured using the Scoville scale,” he said.

He moved on, not sure what direction Nina had taken.

He saw spots of blood on the floor – bright red human blood – and, checking each aisle as he crossed it, followed the trail. By the table desk where he’d perhaps unwisely drunk from the fart licker potion, Professor Sheikh Omar sat in an ungainly slump against the wall.

His light blue shirt was soaked shoulder to hip with blood. His face was pale, the colour of sun-bleached straw. Rod dropped down beside him, already reaching for his super-condensed first aid kit. Omar only seemed to notice him then.

“I was meant to die in Rome,” he said, lips smacking drily.

“You’re not going to die,” said Rod. “Just a flesh wound.”

Things were very rarely just a flesh wound. Rod ripped open the shirt and saw that the bullet wound was in Omar’s upper right chest. It might have missed his lung but there were arteries and veins and all manner of important stuff there. The body didn’t keep any areas of the body conveniently empty of vital stuff. There was a lot of blood.

Rod holstered his gun, took out the tobacco tin in his jacket pocket and then removed and applied the self-adhesive haemostatic gauze wound seal. Omar grunted as Rod smoothed the spongy disc into place.

“Ralph Lauren’s real name is Ralph Lifshitz,” said Rod.

“I’m sure that would be of great comfort to some,” whispered Omar and then had to break off to focus on breathing.

Rod began to pull him forward to see if the bullet had gone right through when there was movement to his side. He looked up. Beardy stood ten feet away, semi-automatic at the ready and with the drop on Rod.

“You do this to him?” said Rod.

“Hands up,” said Beardy.

Rod shook his head but got up slowly, blood-soaked hands raised.

“What do you even want?”

This question apparently threw Beardy a little. “McKenna!” he shouted.

The man had come in here, guns blazing and he didn’t even know why. That made Rod angry. He didn’t have much love for Professor Sheikh Omar – in the ledger of the man’s life there was as much red as there was black – but the man was a non-combatant, collateral damage and this bloody pillock didn’t seem to care.

As Rod slowly turned, his fingers brushed the edge of the nearest shelves. He scooped the nearest heaviest object to hand and hurled it at Beardy. A jar of forty nine angry whelks smashed against the man’s temple. Beardy staggered in surprise. Rod charged at him as snapping bivalves tried to attack the man’s hands and face.

Rod grabbed the man’s gun arm with one hand, with the other he grabbed the man’s jaw. Beardy fired reflexively to no good purpose. Rod pushed him off balance by brute force and rammed him against the shelves. Objects rattled and fell onto the floor.

Something nipped sharply at Rod’s ankle and he hissed at the pain.

Beardy took the opportunity to shake free and headbutted Rod on the bridge of the nose. Rod dragged the man with him, swung and smashed him head first into the wall. Rod felt consciousness exit the man like air from a lilo.

“Freeze!” shouted Blond.

Rod just about had Beardy upright as a shield but he was a heavy guy and Rod had his hands full. On the floor, forty nine angry whelks flipped and snapped among the Venislarn artefacts that had been knocked onto the floor. Rod saw something like looked important.

“What’s that?” he said, nodding.

The grayl-ing looked like the exact thing needed in this situation. Rod couldn’t say for sure what this situation was or what it required but the grayl-ing – which definitely had a shape and a texture and a colour, though Rod would struggle to define any of them – was certainly an object whose time had come.

“No tricks,” said Blond, pistol kept level as he crouched to pick up the grayl-ing.

Blond clutched it and gave a momentary murmur of contentment. He then frowned as it appeared to grow instantly heavier in his hand. He tried to shake it off but it wouldn’t come free.

“Bloody useless…”

He shook it more violently. It shifted and seemed to consume part of his arm, not eating it, but clawing its way up to the top. Blond, panicked, glanced at Rod.

“Wait! Wait! It’s…”

Rod dropped Beardy and drew his own pistol. At that moment, Nina clonked Blond from behind with a fire extinguisher, hard. Beardy and Blond hit the floor in a moment of each other.

“Where’s Malcolm?” he said.

As if in reply there was a muffled explosion somewhere else within the Vault and a purple haze drifted up over the shelves.

“Left a surprise for him,” said Nina.

Omar groaned, although it was uncertain whether this was in pain or finally giving up his hold on life or in annoyance at the havoc that was being wrought in his Vault.

“A newly hatched dnebian land-squid will travel hundreds of miles to locate its herd and its mother,” said Rod.

“Now, that is a fact we can use,” said Nina and hurried over to where Professor Omar lay.

“Fine, let’s get this over with,” said Morag and shuffled over to the bed.

She shoved the extra cushions that had made fake Morag aside and lay back. As she did so, she looked over to where Steve had been. He had disappeared, which was probably a good thing, but what was he doing?

Mother, Steve has communicated a plan to me.

Morag tried to convince herself that this was a good thing.

When he’s in place, he’s going to let me know and then when I count to three, you need to roll out of the way and Steve will make his attack. Cough lightly if you can do that.

Morag wished she had more than the option of coughing or not coughing. Quite aside from the whole Lethal Weapon question of whether it was on three or after three, there were further questions like what sort of attack Steve had planned. She coughed lightly.

Kathy pulled out a stethoscope. She opened Morag’s white coat to expose her stomach and probed none-too-gently with her firm, bossy doctor hands.

“That’s a whopper, Morag,” she said with a frown. “How many weeks are you again?”

“No idea,” said Morag. She wasn’t planning on being helpful.

“It feels as if you’re well into your third trimester, but you haven’t even lived in Birmingham long enough for that to be possible. Let’s have a listen, shall we?”

She put the stethoscope to her ears and placed the end over Morag’s distended belly. “Good strong heartbeat.”

I don’t like that woman touching us like that mother.

Well, that made two of them.

“Now, I just want to do a quick internal examination,” said Kathy. “Knees bent, ankles together, just let your legs flop apart for me.”

“Not on your adn-bhul life,” said Morag.

Kathy folded her stethoscope. “We can do this the easy way or hard way. I can invite several strong men to come in and pin you down if I must.”

“Where are we?”

“Does it matter?” said Kathy. “We’re in one of many many properties we own across the world.” She met Morag’s gaze. “We are ready to take the fight to the Venislarn.”

One, two, three!

Morag heaved herself sideways across the bed, although her enormous bulk made it hard to achieve the distance that she wanted.

Steve dropped from the ceiling with a piercing yell, holding a pair of cannulas like pistols. The tubing and bags of fluid snaked down behind him. He jabbed a cannula into Kathy’s arm, but then a bag marked Midazolam slammed down on his other arm and had the unfortunate side effect of spearing Morag in her left buttock.

“Did he do it mother? Did he stick that adn-bhul woman with his fearsome weapon?”

“Sort of,” she mumbled.

Morag felt her body melting back into the centre of the bed as her consciousness slipped away. The last thing she registered was that her weight was now pressing on the bags of fluid and pumping the two of them full of sedatives. Kathy lay across her, a dead weight already.

In the Vault beneath the Library of Birmingham, Nina held the wounded Omar.

“How far up is the next level above?” she said, juggling the Mi-Yono stone in her hand.

Omar murmured something, weak and unintelligible.

“We could wait for one of these guys to come round and beat the answers out of them,” said Rod, looking at Beardy and Blond.

“Get over here and hold my hand,” said Nina.

Rod didn’t understand but went to her anyway.

Coughing, Malcolm appeared around some far shelves, coated knee to neck in bright pink liquid, like paint or octopus ink. He fired his pistol. Rod fired back with better accuracy, driving Malcolm back a second.

“Take hold of me!” said Nina.

Rod grabbed her. Nina held Omar with one hand and turned the Mi-Yono stone over so certain golden runes were facing upward.

“Hag’ad mi-yun!”

There was a bright change in light. Rod felt himself fall, just an inch or two. They landed on smooth stone.

They three of them were in the lobby of the Library of Birmingham, exactly above where they had just been Rod guessed.

Omar sagged in Nina’s arms, on the edge of consciousness.

“Medic!” shouted Rod. He looked round. The staff at the lobby café stared at them. A customer in a bobble hat, phone in her hand, gawped.

“Use that now!” Rod instructed. “Call an ambulance!”

The woman stammered. “B-but… you just… Was that magic?”

“Ambulance. Now. Nine nine nine. He’s been shot.”

The instructions and the urgency finally struck the woman and she began to make the call. A member of library staff was coming over with a first aid kit, not that they’d achieve much with that.

Rod helped lower Omar to the ground and pulled Nina away.

“I think we’re in even more trouble now,” he said.

She nodded. “We need to get a dnebian land-squid.”

“What?

“To find Morag.”

“And you know where we can get one?”

“Pupfish does,” she said.

HELL

Nina and Rod hurried to the exit and out into Centenary Square in search of Pupfish. [wrote Vivian.]

“Quickest way to Fish Town?” said Nina.

“He’s not in Fish Town,” said Rod.

“Oh.”

“He’s in Tinsel Town.” Rod pointed across the square in the direction of the Mailbox.

There were shouts from within the Library. A couple strolling by looked pointedly at them. Rod and Nina’s unkempt and unprofessional appearance had been added to by smears of blood across their arms and bodies.

“It’s okay, it’s not ours,” Nina called out to the staring pair.

“Six hundred and fifty million bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup are sold around the world each year,” added Rod which Nina correctly judged to be unhelpful.

They hurried across the square towards the

“It’s time,” said Steve the Destroyer.

Vivian wrote the word ‘Mailbox’ and put in a full stop before putting her pen down. She flexed her new arm.

The arm had been a gift from Sha Datsei.

No enemy fighters had survived the attack on Hath-No but the searching of every hole, crawlspace and tube continued long after the moment of victory. The scriptorium store rooms that had been destroyed by fire were reclaimed and repurposed. The diced remains of Bakhan Sand were recovered from the God-Heart and disposed of with such honours as the Venislarn could give or comprehend.

Vivian thought about the severed limb Bakhan had given to her to replace her lost one. She briefly considered having it attached, as a keepsake and as a way of honouring him but she was neither sentimental nor stupid and had it destroyed. She would honour him in another way. Instead, Sha Datsei had fashioned her a new arm from the segmented bone-metal that made her own body and Vivian accepted that as far more practical, even if it did make her think of those ridiculous Arnold Schwarzenegger cyborg films (which she had rejected out of hand as having a weak grip on the rules of time travel and having far too glib an attitude towards global annihilation).

Vivian needlessly flexed her new hand as she and Steve the Destroyer walked to the throne room.

“You understand what needs to be done?” she said, not for the first time.

“Get the pathetic humans back to earth, find any remains of Crippen-Ai, notify the authorities.”

“And the authorities are?”

“The consular mission. The ginger cow, Morag Murray, if I can.”

“Failing that?”

“Scientists. Doctors. Anyone who is not a brainless fool.”

She made a sceptical noise. “This mission might be harder than it appears.”

“You could come with us,” said Steve. “You’re not half as annoying as some of these creatures.”

“No. I am staying here. I have to write the Book of Sand,” she said. “It’s self-evident.”

Steve shook his head at her stupidity. “You have to write it because you know you’re going to write it?”

“And I must therefore be writing it for some greater purpose. Perhaps it is the key to this whole thing.”

“Thing?”

She looked at her new hand. “The end of the world. Judgement Day.”

There was light at the end of the tunnel ahead.

“I never understood,” she said quietly. “You are one of the Prein. You had a chance to switch sides and join the invading forces.”

“Well,” he said, “I could have. I could have done that and they would have been lucky to have me. I’m an uncontrollable force of destruction if I want to be.” He punched a plush fist into his open palm to emphasise the point. “I could have turned the tide, changed the outcome.”

“But you didn’t,” she said.

“We had an agreement, woman. We’re allies.”

“Yes,” she conceded, “but if you’d just let me die then no one would know about the explosive ideogram I’d sewn inside you. You’d be free.”

Steve stopped dead and stared.

“Wh…?”

She looked down at him. “I’m saying, logically, you should have let me die. But you didn’t.”

“I’m an idiot,” he said.

“Don’t worry. You’re not alone.”

In the throne room, the court of Queen Sha Datsei had gathered. Officially, it had been declared that she was regent of Hath-No, ruling in Hath-No’s name and in accordance with his wishes as interpreted by Mrs Vivian Grey, workmaster of the scriptorium. Sha Datsei had no throne. She wore bodies that were happy to squat at the edge of the central pit or hang from the ceiling above.

Steve saw that her court had grown since the battle. News that Hath-No was prepared to defend itself from all-comers attracted certain types. Hath-No had become a haven, but only for those who were willing to live inside the belly of a god. It was a court of brave cowards.

To the side, away from the court, the humans had been gathered. Most were Spanish, some were from the Tupigatu tribe of the “river bank” (this imprecise explanation caused Vivian some annoyance) and others were from other places and time as yet unidentified. They were all dressed for travel and Steve suspected only some of them understood what was about to happen.

Barry gave the smallest human a hug and waved her to join the others.

“They are ready, Mithuth Grey,” he said and then bowed to Sha Datsei. “Your majethty.”

Sha Datsei unfurled an arm and presented the Gellik rose orb to Steve.

“I hope I can trust you with this.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he told her curtly, staggering under its weight.

“I have given it considerable study,” said Mrs Vivian Grey, “and devoted no small number of pages to notes on its function and purpose.”

“How goes the Book of Sand?” said Sha Datsei.

“It goes,” said Vivian.

“It’th a big bloody book,” said Barry.

“It will be.”

“And when will it be finished?” asked the queen.

Vivian was shaking her head as Steve carried the jewel towards the gathered humans.

“There is no time in hell,” her heard Vivian say. “Which means there is all the time I need. Ready?”

This was directed at Steve. He turned at the head of the band of humans to face her.

“Yes. Do your worse, woman.”

Vivian intoned the opening syllables of an incantation. In his arms, the jewel vibrated and a pink light flowed out around him.

“Right, you lot!” he shouted, not caring if they understood or not. “Follow me. Keep your arms and legs inside the tunnel of light at all times. If you get a leg chopped off on the way, don’t come running to me for sympathy.”

He looked up to Mrs Vivian Grey. The old woman, her hair pulled back in a fiercely tight ponytail, her face marked with lines of long service. The old woman, draped in a ragged cloak that hid her body but for one hand of flesh and one hand of bone-metal. Her eyes were sharp and piercing and fixed on him. Steve watched her until the pink light flooded all and she was gone.

1773

“I will peel away their flesh and play their nerve endings like harp strings.”

Flop.

“I will dissect their brains and pour acid on their pleasure centres.”

Flop.

“I will… I will…”

Steve the Destroyer stopped. Hauling yourself through thick undergrowth in search of your own amputated lower body in the middle of the night was not easy. He had no idea where his legs had gone to and had no idea if he was even searching in the right place. And he was losing a lot of stuffing.

This was not what he’d signed up for when he’d agreed to be sent from Hath-No to earth by Mrs Vivian Grey. His task had been to come back, find Morag Murray or some other similar fool, and pass on a message. There had been no mention of getting thrown down wells or having his legs ripped off or losing all his stuffing.

He sniffled. He wasn’t ready to lose all his stuffing. He wasn’t ready for, if not death, then some form of bodily dissolution.

“I’m Steve the Destroyer!” he yelled at the howling winds, “former outrider of the entourage of Prein, ex-emissary of the shattered realms and –”

He sniffed back the growing misery and self-pity.

“I’m not crying! You are!” he shouted at no one and nothing.

He pressed on. A few short steps with his arms and then a flop to the ground. A few more steps and a flop again.

He heard horse hooves, someone picking their way carefully but quickly through the woods. He swung round towards the sound.

“Hey! Hey!” he called.

“Steve?” whispered Dick.

“Fleshling, come over here.”

A Dick-shaped shadow approached on horseback.

“Quick. Up,” said the boy.

Steve tried to jump and discovered that legs were a key component to jumping. Dick dismounted and bent to pick him up.

“Now help me find my legs,” said Steve.

“We’re fleeing,” said Dick. “Those things aren’t far behind me.”

“But my legs…”

“Fuck your legs,” said Dick and remounted the horse. “You can come with me or you can take your chances.”

“Steve never flees,” said Steve.

Somewhere in the night, something large and clumsy smashed through the trees.

“Although he is happy to ride away quickly to seek reinforcements,” he added.

PRESENT DAY

The strange and meteoric rise of Michael Gilbert AKA Pupfish was a masterclass in promotion through dead men’s shoes. The world had dealt him a poor hand at the very moment of his conception. His father was one of the true samakha, the Venislarn fish creatures who inhabited The Waters, the home of the god Daganau Pysh. His mother was a human woman who had made a series of increasingly poor life choices that had culminated in Pupfish’s conception. The world did not want or respect human/Venislarn half-breeds.

Treated as ethnic inferiors by their samakha fathers and denounced as monstrous fishmen by any human who saw them, Pupfish and his contemporaries had to carve out what living they could between two worlds that rejected them. That living was mostly illegal, undignified and precarious.

The young men of the Waters Crew gang in Fish Town saw themselves as up and coming gangsters. They saw their role models in TV, film and music videos. They subscribed to the credo of get rich or die tryin’. They tried, some died.

When Billy the Fish, leader of the Waters Crew, decided that his boys were ready to make their move from petty thieves and dealers to the world of adult entertainment, Pupfish got his first break as a film actor, albeit in low budget interspecies porn pieces such as Debbie Does Dolphins and Confessions of a Bottom Feeder. Certain lines were crossed, there was a body count and Billy the Fish was taken by their irked god.

Tony T swiftly stepped up from gang lieutenant to captain and they went back to the simpler life of stealing what they could and selling what they shouldn’t. A deal involving dried fish eggs and forbidden runes caused an interdimensional incident in a Broad Street night club and Pupfish and a human girl called Allana found themselves spending a long night in hell on the other side of the rift. Of such things, great romances are made and when the pair were rescued from Kal Frexo leng-space, they decided that they should try to make a life together; it couldn’t be worse than the hell they’d endured.

Tony T’s leadership style of the Waters Crew was typified by bullying and stirring up aggravation between his underlings. This culminated in Tony in coercing one of the gang, Fluke, into challenging a visiting movie actor (a man who wanted to go full method on playing a samakha) to a race to the death across The Waters.

Both Fluke and the actor survived but Tony T, after inadvisably taking pot shots into the sacred waters at the swimmers, ended up in Daganau Pysh’s fatal embrace, just like his predecessor. The top spot in the Waters Crew was empty once more and the method actor (who had got more method than he bargained for) was rendered incapable of returning to his screen work in the city. By simply being in the right place at the right time, Pupfish got to fully realise his acting ambitions and was taken on by the producers of Man of War to fill in for the incapacitated actor.

The replacement of a thespian in a CGI motion capture suit by an actual real-life samakha was explained to the mostly oblivious film crew in terms of prosthetics and make-up wizardry and a change in directorial vision. Nonetheless, on the film set at the Mailbox in Birmingham, Pupfish was kept very much in his dressing room until each scene in which he was needed to perform his fishy acting duties.

From nobody to Hollywood actor and Pupfish wasn’t even twenty years old. It was impressive in an odd way.

Rod waved his ID at the production company security guys at the doors to the Mailbox. He’d got to know them over the days he’d spent on the set, well enough that they didn’t question the state of his clothes or the blood on his hands. He pushed Nina through ahead of him and took the opportunity to wipe most of the blood off on the shoulders of her coat.

“Hey!” she said.

“Like anything could make that coat look or smell worse,” he said.

It was early evening and Rod could tell from the lack of palpable tension in the air that the day’s filming had finished. Various crew and production staff greeted Rod as they went about tidying up their own corners of movieland. Movieland, in this instance, being a former Royal Mail sorting office, now an upscale shopping centre being temporarily used as the corporate lair of a fictional supervillain with dastardly plans for bringing the Venislarn apocalypse upon the world. The crew didn’t know that in as little as six hours they could get some cinema verité footage of the apocalypse without the need for any special effects.

“Rod!” shouted Jayda, the set armourer.

Rod glanced round and saw the ex-marine plying her buddy, Skye, with coffee.

“Hey,” he waved, not stopping.

Jayda did a double-handed point downwards. “Giant blob monster?” she called.

“Fixed,” Rod replied. “Can’t stop.”

“You’re a popular guy,” said Nina.

“This way,” said Rod and directed her through a converted retail unit, through a short maze of partition walls created to provide individual spaces for cast and crew and into Pupfish’s dressing room.

“Oi,” said Allana, the girlfriend. “You have to knock.”

Rod glanced about. “We interrupting something?”

“Michael needs his meditative calm,” she said. “He needs to prepare for tomorrow’s scenes.”

Pupfish, laid back in a recliner, a can of Pepsi Max in his hand, rolled his giant yellow eyes in irritation and embarrassment.

“It’s just Rod and Nina,” he said. He gave them an apologetic look. “Allana’s enjoying the…” He waved his webbed hands about the indicate the whole world of Hollywood film production. “I’m not ‘preparing’. Ggh! I’m just chillin’.”

“We get it,” said Rod and plucked a grape off the top of a mountainous fruit basket.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Dnebian land-squid,” said Nina.

“Yeah?” said Pupfish and then clocked her outfit. “Crazy duds, Nina. You – ggh! – off to a fancy dress party?”

“Dnebian land-squid,” she repeated. “You said you knew where to get one.”

“I told you I didn’t want one,” said Allana. “No one wants a pet squid.”

“An egg,” persisted Nina. “One about to hatch.”

“I’m not into dodgy stuff no more,” said Pupfish.

“You’d be doing us a favour,” said Rod.

Pupfish popped his fish lips. “Okay. I know where there is one.”

“Where?”

The samakha looked about as though spies might be listening. “Dudley.”

Rod did a quick mental calculation. Dudley, in the Black Country to the north west of the city, was a good ten miles away and with the evening rush hour already underway was a good hour or more by car.

“I don’t know if we’ve got the time,” he said.

He pulled out the still buzzing phone from his pocket. It was Vaughn Sitterson’s number. Was the man calling to tell them to turn themselves in? Or to tell them that the police were already outside, ready to take them into custody for whatever crimes he imagined they had committed?

“You know – ggh!” said Pupfish, “we have got a helicopter film crew on the roof.”

Rod and Nina looked at each other. Nina made an excited ‘ooh’ face.

Rod sighed wearily.

1773

In the darkness of the clock-conjured hall attached to Soho House, it was easy to lose your bearings. Nina had definitely lost her bearings some time ago. A twinkle of light way over there – a hundred metres? half a mile? - was the door to Boulton’s dining room. She had also found a wall which was oddly comforting although the angle of the wall bore no relation to the door and didn’t seem to her to either be facing it or aligned with it. Without light, there was no way of seeing anything of the layout of this insane room.

Light. She had the yellis wand. She dipped into one pocket in her dress. No, that contained her purse and the Tyriat ideogram of unmaking. She put her hand in the other pocket.

“Ah-ha.”

She pulled out the wand.

“Hyet-pa.”

The many prongs of the wand gave off sharp blue lights. By its glow, she turned to inspect the wall and hopefully make sense of where she was and where she could hide.

The light illuminated a sprinting shape for just an instant. A fist flew out and connected with her jaw. She was bounced off the wall and rolled to the floor.

“No damned witch gets away from me,” spat Bill.

Away some distance, there was an animal roar. The Kobashi, if it hadn’t seen the light, had now certainly heard them.

Bill stood over her. There was a lopsided smile on his ugly face but the smile held no human emotion. It was just a muscle reflex.

“Din’t no one ever teach you no manners, witch? Ain’t ladylike what you did to Algie.”

“I thought you liked a girl with spirit,” she spat.

He reversed his knife into a stabbing grip. She swung up with the oculus and gouged his arm with the sharp brass disc. He raised a foot to kick her. Nina rolled and tried to find her feet but she was too slow. His boot caught her in the stomach and lifted her bodily up and away.

There was a pounding sound but she didn’t know if it was the blood in her ears or a charging Kobashi.

“You cut me!” screamed Bill. “Cow cut me!”

While he was shouting, she was stumbling upright and away. The pounding got nearer, got louder. It wasn’t the blood in her ears.

Bill ran at her. She pointed the wand.

“Forget how to walk,” she said.

Bill slumped forward, bellowing, shocked and furious. He thrashed about but his legs weren’t doing what he asked. He began to claw hand over hand towards her, a grown man reduced to a baby’s crawl.

The Kobashi, invisible in the black, was thundering towards them. This close, at least she could pinpoint the direction. She spun round and ran.

“Don’t you leave me!” yelled Bill. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me!”

His shouts were suddenly cut off, accompanied by loud crack and squelch, both hard and wet, such as might be made by a head or chest cavity imploding under a two tonne Kobashi foot.

Nina ran faster. The Kobashi hadn’t slowed.

The small light of the door she’d entered through was her guiding light, her second star to the right and straight on till morning, not that she’d reached it before the Kobashi had her. This Temple Run mofo would mow her down. Humans weren’t built for outrunning predators, short-legged Nina especially so.

She held the yellis wand high, swung it right then left, right then left and then let it go, a flare of bright blue lights flung wide to the side in this darkness. It was all she had. She ran on, feeling her energy reserves going already and her legs beginning to wobble.

The Kobashi’s roar of frustration – yes, some way off to the side – spurred her on for the final dash.

She fell through the door as much as ran, grabbing the door jamb to spin herself round and slam the door shut. The Kobashi smashed into the frame but, expending most of its impact energy on the surround masonry rather than the door itself, miraculously failed to break it.

She flung herself at the sidereal clock on its stand. With no consideration for the frailty of clockwork, she twisted the key in its face anti-clockwise. A moment of simple silence washed across the room. When she looked back, the door she had just come through was gone, replaced by unblemished papered wall, and the Kobashi had gone with it, trapped in whatever place magic rooms went to when they were no longer needed.

“See you in a couple hundred years,” she whispered.

Erasmus Darwin was strapping up Jonathan Angus’s leg. The manservant was conscious, just, and moaned at the doctor’s touch. The sounds of screams and shouts from elsewhere in the house – which must have been there all along – filtered through Nina’s perception. Wedgwood, still armed with a club he had little skill in using, turned to face the ravaged front wall of the house.

Isabella stepped daintily over the rubble and into the house. She pointed at the clock then the oculus.

“I want that. And that.”

“You’re not having them,” said Nina and wished there was a hammer close to hand so she could at least smash the clock. She saw the plans for these devices and others on the table and half-scooped half-threw them into the fireplace. Flames licked round them but with none of the urgency that Nina felt.

“I will have them,” said Isabella.

“You’ve lost your reinforcements, haven’t you?” said Nina.

There was the smash of glass from above somewhere and a Kobashi swung down to crouch on the driveway behind Isabella. It held Boulton in one hand and something in the other that was only visible as a scrap of white crocheted blanket poking out between massive fingers. A baby cried.

“Give me that,” said Nina, waving at Wedgwood for the club.

“She has Boulton and his child,” said Darwin.

“And this is the end of the world we’re talking about,” she said.

“But the boy…” said Wedgwood.

“Give me the club!” she demanded but he would not move.

“I knew Vivian Grey as well as anyone in Hath-No,” said Isabella, conversationally. “She was – is – a woman of so very a pragmatic nature, so much so that it bordered on indifference towards anyone’s suffering.”

The Kobashi outside shifted its position. Boulton grunted in pain.

“Vivian would not hesitate to let a child die in order to save the wider world.”

“Damn right,” said Nina.

“But you’re not Vivian Grey.”

“Try me,” said Nina.

Isabella smiled thinly. “You’re brave. But you’re human.”

Nina raised her eyebrow questioningly.

“Oh? Am I capable of such outrages?” said Isabella. “My abiding childhood memories are of a tannery in hell where human hides were hung up to dry. Storehouses of organs, the lights, the sweetbreads. I was as intimate with the dead innards of other men as I was to their outsides. If you will not comply, I will instruct the Kobashi to rip off the child’s arms and then its legs.”

Boulton groaned wordlessly.

Wedgwood held the club up but it was Nina he was aiming it at.

“Give her what she wants, Miss Seth.”

She scowled at him. “But if she takes them…”

“Give them to her!”

“You’re being sentimental,” she said. It was the kind of thing Vivian would have said but as Nina spoke the words, she knew that she could never be like Vivian, could never make such a cold, heartless choice, not with other people’s lives.

Out in the night, beyond the demolished wall, Nina saw lights, only pinpricks of lights but lights nonetheless, moving towards the house. They looked like lanterns. Nina wasn’t sure if those people were reinforcements or just fodder for the Kobashi. Isabella hadn’t seen them yet. Maybe it was still possible to play for time.

“Put the kid down,” Nina told Isabella. “Gently.”

Darwin collected the clock from its stand. “Whatever she intends. We can stop her yet.”

“Yeah?” said Nina. “Good. I hope you’ve got a plan.”

Nina and Darwin approached Isabella. She stepped back through the hole ripped in the house to receive the oculus and clock.

“The yellis wand,” she said.

“Lost,” said Nina, realising abruptly that more than two hundred years into the future, she would find it again, exactly where she had dropped it.

“Tahret vuz du!” Isabella said to the Kobashi.

The shambling beast put its fist to the ground and let the toddler roll from its fingers and then, tenderly, took the heavy clock from Darwin’s arms between massive fingertips. Darwin hurried to pick up the child.

“Boulton. Release him too,” he said.

Isabella ignored him and held out her hand for the oculus.

“Here,” said Nina and thrust it at her.

Isabella looked at the blood on the rim as she took it.

“You killed Bill?”

“Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique,” said Nina, because she could. She really wanted to tell Isabella that all these deaths, past and future would be on her conscience alone but she guessed that wouldn’t bother Isabella much.

Isabella turned to the coach parked out front.

“Don’t do this,” Nina called after her.

“The site is prepared,” Isabella replied, not looking back. “It is already done.”

As she climbed up onto the driver’s seat, she saw the lights of the approaching men. “Chai us berin-gn!” she instructed the Kobashi.

The brute dropped Boulton to the floor and placed the clock on the roof of the carriage behind Isabella. She gathered the reins. “Pherri khor llang’o!” Kill them all.

The Kobashi raised itself up on its shorter hind legs and roared at the night sky. Somewhere in the distance, the other surviving Kobashi roared its reply.

The Kobashi thumped the ground. Isabella had swished the reins but the terrified horses needed no encouragement to run. She drove at speed through the crowd of men, men in night dresses, in workers smocks, men from the manufactory. And there was Dick at their head on Charlotte.

The Kobashi wheeled towards them.

“No!” shouted Nina, running forward. “Ib fenq muise!”

The Kobashi pawed the ground.

“Fight me, you pabbe-grru shaska!” she yelled.

The Kobashi looked aside at her and snorted contemptuously.

“Yeah, well I just beat your brother, doi glun’u. So, ked-zior adn-bhul mudi khi umlaq!”

That did it. The Kobashi barked in anger and spun at her. It was fucking massive.

“Okay, now you run too, Nina,” she reminded herself.

She sprinted for the house. Darwin hurried aside, babe in arms, to where Boulton lay groaning.

“Out the way,” she yelled at Wedgwood who stood transfixed in the cave-like opening ripped from the front of the house.

The Kobashi had started to chase her.

Nina had spent her whole life faced with people who were bigger than her. The Kobashi was just an extreme example. Sure it had longer legs. Sure it had a longer stride and much more of a reach. Sure, in a straight run it was going to be faster but she was a small target and if she could duck and weave through to the back of the house, leading it on then maybe…

She had no idea what that ‘maybe’ was and she didn’t get chance to find out.

She’d vaulted over the rubble lip into the dining room, pushed past the dining table and then an arm, a crazy long arm with a fist the size of a suitcase on the end reached through and a with a prod at her back spilled her over to slam into the fireplace. She put a hand to stop herself and touched the hot grate. She yelled and rolled as mantelpiece ornaments dropped down around her.

The Kobashi climbed through the opening. There was no running now. It towered over her, flat head scraping the plaster from the ceiling. Its mouth, a semi-circle of triangular teeth in the space between its wide shoulders and domed skull, widened.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

This was no way to go. Nina had always expected to die at some point. Dying young had always been part of the plan. But not now. Not like this. She fumbled for the pocket in her skirts and the purse containing the Tyriat ideogram of unmaking but her dress was all twisted round in her coat and she couldn’t find it. She didn’t need to. She just needed to say the words.

The Kobashi lowered its head, mouth wide. It should have stunk of rotten meat. It should have had dog breath but its breath was the a sweet multi-layered tang of organic matter, blood and bile and juices. It was a Kobashi straight off the production line. A newborn and it was going to kill her.

Furious, she reached for anything to hand to whack it with. Just to show her disdain before blowing them both to oblivion. She latched onto the cold smoothness of a heavy ornament. She swung it round and, at the same time, inhaled to incant the activation words. The candlestick connected with its flat temple and the creature reared at once. Nina hadn’t even expected it to notice but now vapours were curling from its eyesocket and the side of its head was foaming in bloody bubbles.

“What the…”

The Kobashi made a surprised, high pitched fluting noise and toppled back, although in the confines of the dining room it could do nothing more than slump against the wall, trapped at a crooked angle. It twitched, tried to raise its hand for a moment and then was still.

“I killed the fucker,” she whispered, astonished.

The candlestick in her hand, hideous ormolu wrapped around a stone base, fizzed with boiling Kobashi blood.

“That was unexpected.”

Dick tripped and stumbled into the dining room through the hole in the wall. “What the hell happened here?”

PRESENT DAY

Night was falling on Birmingham. Possibly for the last time.

From their vantage point in the film company’s Eurocopter, the city was a sea of grey and green, liberally sprinkled with orange street lights and shot through with the white and red lights of queuing traffic along the city’s arteries.

The pilot had been initially and understandably reticent to take them on a jaunt across the city to Dudley but a few words of exhortation from a A-list Hollywood actor buddy and a begrudging promise from Producer Tammy that the studio would cover any fines they incurred changed his mind.

Rod looked at the distance to the ground.

“Tell me again,” he said into his headset, “how did I die in the other timeline?”

“You fell,” said Nina with a smile. “A hundred miles an hour into the roof of the Mailbox.”

“Because…?”

“You were fighting with a zombie on the runner leg things of the helicopter and slipped.”

“Slipped?”

“Uh-huh.”

Rod sneered. “Doesn’t sound very noble.”

“It’s totally Sean Bean.”

He shook his head. “The Sean Bean way to go would have been to sacrifice myself by falling off while holding onto a zombie.”

“Sure. Whatevs.”

“Who’s – ggh! – Sean Bean?” said Pupfish.

“Seriously?” said Nina. “Ned Stark? Game of Thrones? Always dies before the end of the movie.”

“Never seen it,” said Pupfish.

“You don’t have Sky in Fish Town?”

The samakha looked at her levelly.

“Five minutes to Dudley,” said the pilot.

“Right. Whereabouts are we going to find this land-squid egg?” said Rod.

“It’s right near the centre,” said Pupfish.

“Where?” said Rod.

“You know the castle, dog?”

“Aye.”

“And there’s the zoo next to it?”

“Ye-e-es?” said Rod, seeing where this was going.

“Right between the two.”

Nina looked at Rod and blinked.

“So, in the consular mission menagerie?” she said.

“If you like.”

The consular mission to the Venislarn operated a number of facilities across the region. The Library of Birmingham housed its central offices, the Vault underneath its collection of valuable and dangerous artefacts. The Dumping Ground in Nechells stored the vast quantities of Venislarn materials that had yet to find a home or, like the occult equivalent of radioactive waste, simply needed holding somewhere. And the Think Tank was home to the experimental laboratories for research into the Venislarn. Humans infected by Venislarn diseases and parasites were kept securely at the Restricted Ward of the Queen Elizabeth hospital. But none of these places were suitable for containing the non-sapient Venislarn creatures that the consular mission either could not destroy or did not want to destroy. These went to the menagerie, hiding in plain sight in facilities next to Dudley Zoo. What was one set of animal smells among hundreds? What was one weird trumpeting or fluting sound among the various honks and bellows of Dudley Zoo?

“So,” said Rod, “the land-squid you were going to get for us is in our facility anyway?”

“You didn’t aks that,” said Pupfish.

Rod gave an empty, weary laugh.

“To the castle,” he said to the pilot. “There’s a flat open space in the middle of the ruins. I’ll find you the map co-ordinates.”

Rod directed him down. Floodlights lit up the exterior of the ruined eleventh century castle but the centre was in darkness.

“No welcoming party,” said Rod. “That’s something.”

The pilot touched down.

“Keep the meter running,” said Nina. “We’ll be back in a mo.”

She pressed her hat to her head to keep it on as she scuttled under the chopper rotors. Rod and Pupfish followed, away from the helicopter, out along the dimly lit path to the edge of the tumbledown castle wall and then down the hill towards the zoological gardens and the menagerie.

Nina stopped at a rusted steel plate gate set into a stone wall overgrown with creepers.

“Light please,” she said.

Rod shone his credit card torch, Nina located the swipe panel and waved her stolen ID over it. The door buzzed loudly and unlatched.

“And in we go,” she said.

Intermittent security lights did little more than give shape to the gloom in the menagerie but Rod had been here before and remembered the layout. The menagerie used compounds and enclosures that had once been part of the zoo next door, built at a point in the previous century when animal enclosures had not taken the animals’ welfare or natural habitat into consideration.

“What’s all this ugly concrete muda?” said Pupfish.

“Modernist architecture,” said Rod.

Pupfish made a noise in his throat, the piscine equivalent of spitting. “Like you want your zoo to look like a multi-storey – ggh! – car park.”

In a cage a long-limbed creature swung across ceiling bars and hooked its armoured fore-legs around the bars to get a closer look at them. In a vast aviary to the other side, something man-sized and bat-like shifted in its sleep.

“Where will we find the land-squid?” Rod asked Pupfish.

“I ain’t got a map,” he said.

“Multiforms will be in the old reptile house down there,” said Nina.

“Ggh! Like she said,” said Pupfish casually.

Rod tapped the fishboy on the arm. “When you said you could get hold of a land-squid what exactly was your plan to get it?”

“We gettin’ it, ain’t we?”

“Before we decided to help you?”

Pupfish shrugged. “My man, Fluke, he got mad lock-picking skills.”

Rod tried to still his temper. Some days it just felt like he was surrounded by idiots.

Growls from a long, low cage drew their attention. A trio of wolf-equivalent Venislarn padded along, keeping pace with them. Rod judged that their glinting eyes were fixed only on him and Pupfish. Maybe that anti-pheromone spray worked on dendooshi too.

“There will be guards here somewhere,” he said as they continued onward.

“I’ll just show them my ID,” said Nina.

“Uh-huh. Three people, one of them a samakha, with one ID between them and that ID is…?” He held out his hand for Nina to pass it to him. “Lois? You stole the ID off our sweet and harmless receptionist?”

Nina scoffed. “Sweet and harmless? Clearly you ain’t heard her bitching about people behind their backs. Here.”

A dark path led to a door in a solid shed-like building. The door was locked and there was no swipe panel. Rod put his torch in his mouth and went to work on the lock with his tie-clip lockpicks. Fifteen seconds later it sprang open.

“Mad lock-picking skills like that?” he said to Pupfish.

“Fasho,” said Pupfish without hesitation.

The interior of the building was close, humid. Low, green lighting added to the rainforest feel. Something that was more mouth than anything else slapped itself against a plate glass barrier and worked its mucous membranes hungrily.

“Unpleasant,” said Rod.

A red light blinked high up on the wall: a CCTV camera.

“We probably haven’t got long,” he said.

“This way,” said Nina.

The whole building was a winding corridor between storage tanks and vivariums. Nina appeared to actually know what she was doing and led them to a glass-fronted cabinet that looked like some sort of chiller. On its shelves, in their own little racks sat a number of eggs of various sizes.

“We want that one,” said Pupfish, pointing at the largest.

“Course we do,” said Rod. He looked at its mottled brown surface, the unearthly ridges worked into the alien shell. “Yeah, I’ve seen that movie. It does not end well for John Hurt.”

“Who’s John Hurt?” said Nina.

“We need it to hatch,” said Rod.

“It’s ready to hatch. Get it out in the warm for a second or two, maybe give it an encouraging tap…?”

“Do you know that’s what you’re meant to do or are you guessing?”

She gave Rod a hurt look.

“And when it hatches,” she continued, “it will sniff out its mother or, in this case…”

She drew from her pocket several fat strands of brown thread.

“You got that from Morag?” said Rod.

She shook her head. “From Steve the Destroyer.”

Rod frowned.

“It’s material from his legs. When they got ripped off by a Kobashi, back in seventeen-wotsit-wotsit.”

“And?”

“Morag had him when she was kidnapped and maybe she’s got him still.”

“This is all wild and crazy conjecture,” said Rod.

Pupfish opened the chiller and lifted the heavy football-sized egg out with both hands. “Then let’s give it a go.”

1773

Even after Isabella had gone, nothing resembling a calm settled upon Soho House. The third Kobashi, which had chased Dick into nearby woods, had not returned. The enemy were gone, apart from the massive corpse of a Kobashi in the dining room. The men who had been roused from their beds by Dick Trimbull and the foreman John Scale, milled about in shock and amazement. A few numbly tried to clear the rubble from the smashed front of the house but this was only mental displacement – it felt better to do something than to do the obvious which was to stand and stare and totally re-evaluate one’s view of the world.

Those men were left to it under the foreman’s supervision and various people regrouped to the parlour at the rear of the house. Boulton laid out on a chaise longue, pale and clutching his side where, Nina suspected, he had a number of cracked ribs. His wife, Anne was in the room next door tending their daughter (another Anne) and their toddler son (another Matthew) who had been more than startled by the fighting in the house. Wedgwood took a seat next to Boulton, still holding Jonathan Angus’s knobstick and tapping it in the cup of his hand like an impatient cricketer. When Darwin returned to the room, having settled the seriously injured Jonathan in his bed, he took the largest chair by the fire. Dick stood at the window and stared out at the night. Nina stood by a little piano thing that she was sure was called a petrichor or a clavicle or something. Steve, legless (but not in a good way) had clawed his way up her boots and her dress like a sock-puppet zombie to hang grumbling and self-pitying on her shoulder.

Darwin grunted as he settled his bulk into the chair. Nina spelled it out for everyone.

“We have to stop her.”

“I’ll have John Scale send word to the magistrates and call up the local constables.”

“She’s not got unpaid parking tickets,” said Nina bitterly. “Magistrate? I said, we have to stop her. I mean us. Tonight.”

Wedgwood was shaking his head already. “This… This is unnatural. This is sorcery. And I am not Merlin or John Dee. We are men of commerce and science.”

“Then bend your mind to this very real problem, mate,” she replied. “Isabella gets her way and there is no more commerce. Ever. No British Empire, no industrial revolution, no more tea and crumpets in your idyllic Jane Austen England.”

“Who is Jane Austen?” asked Darwin but Nina ignored him.

“She’s planning on using the oculus to bring the end of the world back in time to the here and now. And the Venislarn aren’t magic. They’re just from some other place where the rules of science are different and written in crazy crayon. We can stop her, if we can find her.”

“Stop her?” scoffed Wedgwood in a high-pitched and almost hysterical tone. “She summoned three demonic ogres and they have all but killed us. And she intends to cause worse?”

“This is all my doing,” whispered Boulton, as loudly as his chest injury would allow. “I created those terrible devices.”

“To her designs.”

He shook his head weakly. “I have them all in here,” he said, and tapped his skull. “I can see how the oculus works. I know its capabilities, its limitations.”

“Good. Good. Well, that’s something.”

Darwin gestured at the candlestick that Nina had brought into the room and placed on the Terpsichore or clavier or whatever it was called.

“The brute seemed to react adversely to that,” he said.

Nina nodded vigorously. “This stone. This is blue john, right?”

“It is.”

“And Dick and I were talking about the slime Crippen-Ai produces. He was found encased in the stuff.”

“You talk about a lot of stuff,” Dick said off-handedly. “Dun’t mean I listen.”

“The creature was found encased in blue john,” said Boulton.

“Solidified Crippen slime.”

“Blue john.”

“Yes. It can only be found in one place in the world. One small tiny place. Why?” Nina knew she was onto something. “There’s this eel-fish thing that produces slime to fight off predators.”

“The hagfish,” said Darwin.

“Yes! Yes! You watched the same CBBC programme as me. That’s it. The slime is a defence mechanism. Isabella said Crippen-Ai was the most hated among all the Venislarn. Why?”

“Because he is toxic to them,” said Boulton, understanding.

“Yes! He or his kind evolved this slime defence.”

“Evolved?”

“You know, changed over time. Genetic mutation, survival of the fittest and all that.” She glanced at Darwin. “Ask your grandson.”

“I don’t have a grandson!” he said, frowning deeply.

“This stuff is utter poison to them,” said Nina. “Death means nothing to the Venislarn, not in the conventional sense but blue john… This is their Kryptonite. Kryptonite… Crippen-Ai… Jeez. It’s what that Japanese fish poison is to people.”

“There was boxes and boxes of it at her ‘ouse,” said Dick. He was right.

“She thinks she can control the Venislarn,” she said. “She thinks she can steer the end of the world because she can kill them.”

“This all sounds like the ravings of a madwoman,” said Wedgwood. “A fever dream.”

“Hey,” she said. “This is the bus for problems solvers and heroes. Either get on board or shut the fuck up, Josiah.”

“Such vulgarity!” he protested loudly. “And it is madness, I say! You talk of the oculus as a portal, a gateway to the end of days and some final ritual but you have no idea where this will occur!”

“Well, if someone hadn’t threaten to bash my brains out if I didn’t hand the oculus to the bloody woman!”

“Coward!” agreed Steve with passion.

“Please…” sighed Boulton, a hand raised. “This arguing does us no favours. And besides, Josiah raises as valid point. The oculus, my design or not, was intended as a viewing device. The runes… the symbols…” He crushed his eyes shut, pained in some way. “The energy required to force one’s way through physically would be great.”

Nina remembered when she’d first tried to reach through the oculus from twenty-first century Birmingham into the past. It had been very difficult, almost impossible to force her fingertips through but that each successive attempt from that same room had seemed easier, as though a protective seal had been broken.

“‘The site is prepared.’ Isabella said that,” said Darwin. “She has a place in mind.”

“Somewhere the oculus has been used before,” said Nina. “Or, I guess, will be again. Time is all screwy where this is concerned.”

“I know the place,” said Steve.

“Do you?”

“Of course I do, fleshling,” he snorted. He was arrogant even when he had been sliced in two. “She was talking about it to that jumped up Crippen-Ai when she first captured me and then threw me down the well.”

“There?” said Nina.

“Where?” said Darwin.

“Hagley Wood,” said Dick.

“Beyond St Kenelm’s Pass?” said Wedgwood.

“Then we ride,” said Boulton.

“You’re going nowhere, friend,” said Darwin. “If we must fight them with this miracle stone then the very most you must do is tell us where in the manufactory to find your supplies.”

“John Scale will know.”

“Then it is as good as done. We will load up my spring-wheeled carriage and hurl fistfuls of the stuff at them if we must.” He pushed himself from his chair with a creak and went out to organise men.

Nina fidgeted with an impatient inner energy.

“We don’t have time,” she said. “We just don’t. We’ve got to go there now.” Once she’d articulated it, there was no stopping it. “Dick, I’m taking Charlotte.”

“I will ride her,” he said.

“No. You need to show Darwin where to go, once he’s got his carriage loaded.”

“You reckon you know where you’re going?” he asked, in only mildly insulting disbelief.

“I’ll take Steve.”

“Once we’ve found my legs,” said the mutilated dolly.

“We don’t have time,” she repeated tersely.

“An’ can I point out that you still can’t ride?”

“What are you talking about?” she scoffed. “I’ve got the hat and everything now.”

She picked up the three-cornered highwayman hat and flipped it onto her head.

She hurried to the front of the house to where Charlotte had been tied up. Dick followed her out.

“You’ll get lost,” he argued.

“I have an excellent sense of direction,” said Steve. “Even better than my sense of smell, boy!”

“You’ll fall off.”

“I’ll hold on tight,” said Nina and patted Charlotte’s neck.

Nina put her foot in the stirrup and swung herself up into the saddle. It was a fluke but it felt like it actually looked like she knew what she was doing.

“She will kill you,” said Dick.

Nina gave him an honest look and said nothing. He held out his gun to her. “Take it.”

“You said it hadn’t been used in months.”

“Don’t even know if the charge is still in there,” he admitted.

She took it in the spirit it was intended. “Follow as quickly as you can.”

The teenager put his hand on her booted calf.

“I love you. You know that.”

“The fleshling is besotted!” guffawed Steve.

Nina gave Dick a smile, a not wholly unkind one, and tapped Charlotte with her heels to spur her into a walk. Her goal was to avoid falling off the horse until they were out of sight. Everything beyond that was a bonus.

PRESENT DAY

It took what felt like an age for the dnebian land-squid to hatch on the floor of the old reptile house. In reality, it took less than ten minutes, ten minutes of the three of them watching, strands of Steve the Destroyer’s severed legs draped over the top of it, ten minutes of Rod repeatedly checking the time and thinking this wasn’t how he wanted to spend his last couple of hours before the Day of Judgement arrived.

And then it did hatch and Rod’s belly squirmed with recollections of Alien movies and worse things he’d seen in real life. The topmost curve of the egg cracked and came away in a solid triangular lump. A tentacle, the brown of a camouflaged river fish, looped out and snagged the threads.

“This is so exciting,” giggled Nina.

“I still think Allana would have – ggh! - liked one as a pet,” said Pupfish.

“You’re both mad,” said Rod.

The egg bulged and the juvenile land-squid emerged like thick lava. It was nobbly, multihued and misshapen and Rod couldn’t make out any specific features. It was like the root section of a tree, gnarled and chaotic, had been remade with the consistency of spongy rubber and given the desire to go a-wandering. It squatted on top of its shell, glistening with amniotic juices.

“Mwwa-waa!”

“Did it just say ‘mama’?” said Rod.

“It’s not intelligent,” said Nina. “They can’t speak.”

“Mwwa-waa!” squeaked the land-squid.

“Sure,” said Pupfish, indifferent. “It wants its momma.”

The creature pitched off the top of the egg, rolled confidently onto the floor and rolled towards the exit.

“It’s off!” said Nina, pushing Rod up and after it. “It’s following the scent.”

“Already?”

He stumbled after it, caught sight of it at the door and followed it out into the night by torchlight. He heard Nina and Pupfish coming after.

“No,” he shouted back. “Get to the chopper. I will track its direction and call you. We’ll try to triangulate!”

He looked ahead and for a heart-stopping moment thought he’d lost it and then saw it flipping and flopping towards the gates at the bottom of the hill.

“Mwwa-waa!”

“What’s that?” he said to himself. “East? North East?”

There was the sudden sputter and flash of gunfire from directly ahead. It was aimed at him but it missed.

“Oi! Freeze!” shouted a voice. The blond guy from the Vault. They must have driven straight here and made good time against the traffic. Rod could only see him in silhouette but he seemed to be struggling in some way.

Rod didn’t slow. The land-squid was already past the man and close to the main gates.

Blond bent and wrestled against himself. He had his gun in both hands but now the cumbersome grayl-ing item he had unwisely touched in the Vault had wrapped itself around both hands and the gun.

As Rod ran past, he swung out his arm and clothes-lined the guy.

Blond went down with an ‘oof’ and a string of curses. A few seconds later, the man tried firing again.

Rod drew his own pistol, turned, fired three shots with as much accuracy as he could get in the darkness and ran on. There were no further shots from behind him.

The squealing land-squid, with a decent turn of speed on the downhill, rolled through the gates and into the town. Rod ran on. As he did, he tried to get out his phone to access map apps whilst continuing the chase and keeping his torchlight steady.

“You hear something?” said Pupfish as they made their way back up to the castle and the helicopter.

“Like what?”

“Ggh! - gun shots.”

“I thought that was a car,” she said. “Do you know how to triangulate on a map?”

“No,” said Pupfish

“Sounds like maths to me.”

“I don’t like adn-bhul math,” said Pupfish and Nina grunted in agreement.

The helicopter, still prepped for flight, sat in the open green at the centre of the castle.

“We gonna – ggh! – take off without Rod?” Pupfish shouted over the sound of the rotors.

“Dunno,” Nina shouted back. “I’ll message him when we’re inside.”

As she ducked low to get to the cabin, she saw a shadow inside. She hesitated but then he gestured with the chunky gun in his hands. She didn’t rate her chances of running without getting shot.

It was the bearded twat from the Vault. She wondered where the others were. She’d definitely like words with Malcolm.

The pilot sat in the cockpit, stock still and frightened.

“Where’s the other one?” Beardy shouted.

“Muda,” said Pupfish, seeing the man for the first time.

“Who?” Nina shouted back.

“Campbell,” said Beardy.

She pointed vaguely down the hill. “Gone off with his pet squid. We’re supposed to triangulate.”

Beardy raised his gun to aim at and indicate her.

“You! You will show me where he is!”

She could see the direction of his body language, the slouch of his shoulders as he was about to turn and gun down Pupfish.

“Wait!” she shouted, hands raised. “I’ve got what you need.”

Beardy gave her a quizzical look. She had no idea what he was after, perhaps he wasn’t really after anything.

“In my pocket,” she said.

He raised his chin slowly and fixed his aim. She dipped slowly into her pocket – no sudden moves – and took out the Mi-Yono displacer. The stone was ball-sized, round, and could be easily mistaken for a grenade, so she offered it carefully casually.

He held out his hand to take it. He held it loosely, made sure it was as near to her as it was to him. He was thinking grenade also.

“What is it?” he said.

“Don’t suppose you’d tell us where you’re keeping Morag.”

Beardy smiled and closed his fist around the displacer stone.

“Ah, didn’t think so,” she said. “Hag’ad mi-yun!”

Beardy vanished. No puff of smoke, just vanished.

“Wha’?” exclaimed Pupfish.

There was the beginnings of a scream from above. Nina didn’t look up. The rotor barely slowed.

Rod caught up with the dnebian land-squid at a road junction. It didn’t look like it was going to obey the little red man at the pedestrian crossing and Rod instinctively swept it up into his arms before it flung itself out in front of a lorry.

It squirmed and flapped in his arms, squawking, “Mwwa-waa! Mwwa-waa!” repeatedly.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, fighting its slippery many-limbed attempts to get free. “We’re going to find your mum, okay?”

It didn’t seem to be in conciliatory mood and slapped his face and body with its wild tentacles. He hoped it didn’t have teeth. Or even a mouth.

“You’re… not… listening,” he grunted.

He pulled at the paracord line woven into his wristband and pulled out a sufficient length to wrap round and round the struggling creature’s central body section and then let it drop so he could use both hands to tie it off.

The land-squid jumped and twisted and yanked at the line but, by luck more than design, Rod’s knots held.

“Mwwa-waa!” it screamed indignantly.

“Aye! All right!” he snapped back. “We’re going. Just gonna keep you on the lead, lad.”

The land-squid pulled him towards the road edge. Rod checked for traffic.

“Heel, Fido,” he said and they crossed together.

The pilot, who had perhaps gone through more in the past hour or so than a pilot might normally expect to, shut down the engine and, shaking, tried to inspect his rotors for damage.

Pupfish had spent the last five minutes brushing himself down, wiping his face repeatedly, trying to rid himself of any last crumbs of minced gunman.

“Right in the adn-bhul face,” he muttered, not for the first time.

Nina scowled at him. “Barely touched you.” She swept her arm round at the distant darkness. “He’s mostly over there. And there.”

“That’s some nasty muda, Nina.”

Nina had a map of the city open on the floor of the cabin, inspecting it by the overhead cabin light. It took her a while to find Dudley and then Dudley Zoo. When Rod phoned she was ready for him. There was a lot of noise on the line. A car engine, the squealing land-squid and someone – the driver? – complaining in a loud, high voice.

“Where are you?” she said.

“In a taxi,” said Rod, huffing as though he physically struggling.

“Good,” said Nina. “Now, where are you?”

“Let me…” Rod grunted and then said sharply to the driver. “No, he’s not going to ‘crap on the seats’. If he does, I’ll pay!”

“Mwwa-waa!” shrilled the land-squid.

“That way!” said Rod. “Left! Left!” His voice changed as he returned to the phone. “We’re in Sandwell.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Nina.

“About three miles from you. We’ve just gone past Sandwell Hospital. Now coming past the Red Lion pub. Now, what you need to do is get a ruler –”

“Way ahead of you,” said Nina. She’d got a pen from a little well between the cabin seats and used the edge of a laminated flight safety leaflet as a straight edge. Sandwell Hospital was a pink regular blob on the map. She drew a line from the zoo through the hospital and beyond.

“We’ll get a more accurate reading the closer we get,” said Rod.

“Uh-huh.” She followed the line. “Goes through Hilltop Golf Course, Great Barr, Sutton Park and then Sutton Coldfield.” She dug out the Forward Management projects and properties. They were in the form of pictures of some of the finished properties, with bulleted lists at the bottom detailing similar properties. After Rod had yanked them from their frames, they were now much creased and torn.

Nina laid them out on top of the map. “Pupfish.”

“Yo.”

“We need to check these off on the map, see if these bhul-tamade have any properties along this line.”

Pupfish nodded.

“You get in the air,” said Rod. “Start following the line.”

“Sure. Once Pilot McPilotface has cleaned the blood off his blades.”

“What?”

Rod shouted something, possibly at the driver, possibly at the land-squid.

“Tell you later,” said Nina and started to run through the list.

1773

Besides the smell and the misogyny and the lack of decent wi-fi, one of Nina’s major gripes about holidaying in Georgian England was how bloody long everything took to do. You wanted a bath, you had to spend several hours heating up the water. You wanted to get a message to someone, you either had to dictate it or write it down and then find a small boy to deliver it (it was probably even worse than in the bad old days when you sent e-mails via dial-up modem).

The pursuit of Isabella covered less than ten miles but took her two hours as least. Nina had no watch or phone, only the moon to light her way and only Steve’s incessant chatter to mark the passage of time. So, it took maybe two hours or, alternatively, fifteen rants from Steve about what he would do to the Kobashi who ripped him in half, eight gripes about Nina failing to help him find his legs and a weird little interlude in which he recounted how he had been rejected by his own people, by a ‘really mean’ Skendax paladin, and how he hated them all now.

Even though he was doing most of the guiding, and half of the steering by perching between Charlotte’s ears and tugging this way and that, it was Nina who saw their destination first. Off to the right of the track they were following round Clent Hill, a light glowed in the wood: a coach lantern.

“She’s there,” said Nina.

“Might not be her,” said Steve haughtily.

“Oh, yeah. There might be someone else out after midnight, carrying out a ritual summoning in this very wood. Bet sometimes you can’t move for bloody occultists.”

“Exactly,” he said, oblivious to any sarcastic subtext.

She reined Charlotte to a halt, quite successfully, and then caught her foot in something tied to the saddle and dismounted quite unsuccessfully. She finessed it out. The thing tied to the saddle which had tripped her was the vase Dick had stolen from Isabella’s house. The blue john vase. She untied it and carried it with her.

“We go on foot from here,” she whispered.

“Are you being deliberately offensive?” said Steve.

She snatched him down from Charlotte’s head and, moving by feel, tied the horse against a nearby tree branch.

“Remember where we parked,” she told Steve.

“It’s not like I can do much else.”

She pressed through the trees, trying not to trip on roots, get slapped in the face by branches or fall down concealed wells.

“Is this how you’re going to be from now on?” she whispered. “A bitter and miserable git, harping on about your lost legs.”

“Until I get them back, yes,” he said decisively.

“We might never find them.”

“We must!” he insisted. “I’m leaking stuffing constantly. I could bleed to death.”

“You can’t die of lost stuffing.”

“Do you know that? Do you know that?”

“Shhhhh. We’re trying to be sneaky, idiot.”

“Probably lightheaded from all the stuffing loss,” he grumbled.

“If we can’t find them, I’ll make you new ones,” she said in a conciliatory tone.

“Make them? Make them?”

“Well, I’m hardly likely to find some spare legs lying around, am I?”

She crawled now to the edge of a shallow hollow. Isabella’s carriage stood to one side, the ormolu star clock on its driver’s seat. Across the hollow from it, at the base of a tree, the oculus had been positioned. Isabella crouched in her heavy dress, rotating the concentric discs. There were words, mutterings of support and encouragement. The voice was low. Nina could be certain if it was Isabella talking to Crippen-Ai or Crippen-Ai talking to Isabella. It certainly wasn’t directed at the Kobashi squatting obediently at the far edge of the trees.

“That’s the one!” hissed Steve. “That’s that one that took my legs!”

She shushed him again.

He humphed. “I should march over there and giving him a good kicking and… oh.”

The Kobashi’s low head swivelled slowly side to side. It had no visible ears. Nina wondered how sharp its other senses were.

“If I had that explosive rune still inside me,” said Steve, “I would incite the brute to eat me and then blow his head off.”

“Well, you don’t,” she said and patted the pocket and the purse where the ideogram was still stored. “Although…” She fumbled with the gun and the cumbersome vase and delved into her skirts to dig out the ideogram.

She finished reorganising herself. Isabella was still minutely fine-tuning the oculus, trying to find the end of the world.

“Don’t reckon the others are going to get here in time,” said Nina.

“Weaklings and procrastinators,” sneered Steve.

“We’re going to have to brazen this out, think of something on the fly –” As she stood, she stopped and stared. “Where’s the Kobashi gone?”

The spot where it had squatted before was now an empty patch of scuffed earth. She’d not seen it move but she’d been momentarily preoccupied. She turned.

A hand swung down from behind to grab her. She held up the vase and, as it touched the Kobashi’s fingertips, it roared. The grab morphed into a swipe and flung her down into the hollow where she struck the ground hard. Gun and vase flew from her grip.

Isabella turned, surprised but not dismayed.

“Rhe-duhv!” she commanded.

The Kobashi groaned and waved its injured fingertips at her.

“Kad bhisu!” she sighed irritably. “Rhe-duhv yeh!”

The Kobashi loped forward and pressed Nina into the earth with the flat of his hand, forcing all but a whisper of breath from her body.

“You are persistent, Miss Seth. I can see why Vivian Grey liked you,” said Isabella.

Nina coughed and just about managed a grin. “She likes me? She actually said that. Wow. I didn’t realise that I was motivated by the approval and validation of a crusty old moo cow. Now, I can die happy. Hey, bhul-tamade, crush away!”

The Kobashi looked questioningly at Isabella.

“Unless, of course,” grunted Nina beneath the pinning claw, “you want to go the whole villain and keep me alive to see your glorious plan come to fruition?”

Isabella frowned.

“I know I would,” said Nina. “Just saying.”

Isabella bowed her head. White, oily tentacles curved around her chin: a conversation taking place.

Nina saw movement in the leaf mold at the edge of the hollow. Steve, chucked aside in the tussle, pulled his way out of the debris.

“Sko nha-Tdusai,” said Isabella.

The pressure lifted off Nina for a second and then the Kobashi lifted her upright and held her in a tight grip around her torso.

“Okay, this has gone seriously King Kong now,” she told the Kobashi.

Isabella left the oculus and crossed to the coach, kicking aside the dropped pistol. The vase was much closer to Nina, although the Kobashi, a quick learner, kept some distance. Isabella climbed to the driving board of the coach, adjusted the hands of the sidereal clock and turned the key. The clock’s unnatural loud tick echoed through the woods and the world seemed to groan and flex in response. The shadows of trees above swayed and turned. What was that word Vivian trotted out occasionally? Eldritch. Yeah, it was dead eldritch.

The oculus rippled in a way that metal never should and expanded like a smoke ring, from a discus twelve inches across to a great circular opening you could drive a van through. Or an apocalypse.

Isabella returned to the oculus and ran her hands over the many symbols. She and the slimy Venislarn in her cleavage whispered in conversation.

“I’ve got it!” Nina declared.

“What?” said Isabella.

“This whole thing you got going on. Seemed so familiar. Totally bugging me. I mean you’re doing some ridiculous Stargate shit here but that wasn’t it and then it came to me. Harry Potter!”

“Who?” said Isabella.

“At the end of the first movie. The really old one, the one they made before, like, people learned to act and stuff. And there’s the evil wizard teacher. That’s you, Isabella, and he’s got Voldebonce’s face stuck on the back of his head. Like some real ropey CGI. That’s Crippen-Ai there, except you’ve stuffed him down your boobs because… well, I don’t wanna go there.”

“Yes?” said Isabella. “What is your point, Miss Seth?”

“Oh, I don’t have one,” said Nina. “It was just totally bugging me. Except, maybe I’m Harry Potter and I’m going to kill you.”

“Kill me?” said Isabella, amused.

Steve crawled doggedly towards Nina, tiny hand over tiny hand. Isabella had not yet noticed him.

“As in not let you drag it out for the sequels,” said Nina. “Just end it all. Boom.”

Isabella made a bored noise and activated the oculus. The hollow was flooded with a cold grey light. It was daytime on the other side of the portal circle. The world beyond was still woodland. Nina thought she glimpsed a piece of barbed wire fence in the distance but no other clues as to how far into the future they were looking. There was an odd quality to the light though, a purple-red tinge like someone had gone to work on a sunset with the most drastic of Instagram filters. But, besides that, there wasn’t anything notably hellish going on.

“Er, are you sure you’ve tuned that thing to the end of the world?” asked Nina.

“Listen,” said Isabella and cocked an ear.

At first, Nina could hear nothing except the breeze blowing in from a warmer world and then she heard the screams and the roars. It came like the rolling sea, not one sound because it was composed of hundreds of thousands of voices raised in pain and terror and exultation. Then she saw it.

It rolled over the distant hills visible through the trees. Sprinting, galloping, oozing, flying. It was blood red lava, a tide of gore. It was a zombie swarm but with added tentacles, claws, hooks and flails. It was a stampede of Venislarn but no ordinary stampede. It was like… if at the end of the forty days and forty nights, Noah’s ark rocked up on the top of that mountain and two of every species in the world, hungry and starving and sick of being in the ark with each other came down the gangplank. This was the other ark, the shitty ark, the ark of absolute fucking nightmares and they were mowing their way across the landscape.

Isabella stared, speared to the spot by the spectacle.

The light, the hole into a future day, threw sufficient light into this world that Nina could now see distant figures moving in the woodland. Dick and the others, finally here and about to be the first swallowed by the Venislarn apocalypse.

Steve clawed his way onto the tip of Nina’s boot, a drowning man grasping at driftwood. “Help me,” he said in his best I’m-dying-and-you’d-best-do-something-about-it voice. Nina paid him no mind.

The bubbling, sprinting leading edge of the Venislarn bore down. Dendooshi and dhius loped with bloody mouths agape. Kaxid winds howled and ripped up trees and turf in their way. An impossible and unknowable god of the Ogdru Jahad appeared in forms that would drive any normal human mad. Inverted near-human Voor-D’yoi Lak, never witnessed in groups, ran in packs, their uncanny four jointed arms clawing the earth ahead of them.

“So, is that what you wanted, Isabella?” she said. “Really?”

Isabella hesitated only a second. Crippen-Ai’s morphing limbs caressed her.

“It is what must happen,” she said.

Nina tutted. “Fine. Then I’m gonna have to stop you.”

“Really?” said Isabella, not turning away from the sight beyond the oculus portal. “How will you do that?”

“With the Tyriat ideogram of unmaking,” said Nina.

Isabella whirled as the leading edge of the Venislarn horde neared the oculus.

Nina flicked up her foot and flung Steve the Destroyer (or at least the half she had balanced on her boot) at Isabella. The woman screamed and tried to run as Steve, shouting the beginnings of a long and indignant swear, flew with some accuracy at her. The Kobashi jumped to help Isabella and let Nina drop. Nina landed on all fours and then raced for the vase. A scoop, a long throw and it was, by luck, a decent throw and landed just before the oculus opening.

Isabella still believed the explosive ideogram was inside Steve. She was wrong, of course. The ideogram was in Nina’s purse. The purse she had stuffed inside the neck of the blue john vase.

A dendooshi, all hair and teeth, leapt through the oculus. The Ogdru Jahad appeared, flickering, at its entrance. The claws of Voor-D’yoi Lak reached through hungrily from that world to this.

Nina had recognised the Tyriat ideogram when she removed it from Steve but had no skill in drawing them. She hoped Vivian hadn’t made any mistakes. As a wall of sound and flesh and hunger slammed against the breach between worlds, Nina shouted the simple two-syllable word of activation and threw herself to the ground beneath Isabella’s carriage.

The explosion was light and thunder and a billion flying fragments of superheated blue john. It was too fast to register. Nina didn’t see it scythe through the seething mass of Venislarn creatures pouring through the oculus but the blood mist that blossomed across the hollow, red and green and a couple of colours that were beyond human comprehension, was evidence enough that the powerful rune and the Venislarn poison had turned the rampaging vanguard into Bolognese sauce.

As the crack of the explosion echoed it seemed that everything, human and Venislarn, was screaming. The oculus boiled, the circular rim of a cauldron, raised to vertical. Venislarn flesh melted in the aperture and, forced by the pressure still mounting behind it, squashed mangled meat through into the hollow like the biggest, shittiest sausage machine in existence.

In the ruin and confusion, Nina couldn’t see Steve, Isabella or Crippen-Ai. The Kobashi, grazed by the explosion was running in mad circles, howling in pain.

Time to shut this thing, Nina thought and propelled herself up and at the oculus. She hurdled a dribbling mound of gore, avoided the snapping jaws of a Voor-D’yoi Lak which had made it through almost entirely whole. She came up against the brass circles and, thrusting her hand through the evil minced meat of dead Venislarn, gave the wheel a random spin.

The door closed, moved to another time, another night, one where the world wasn’t ending. The mess of Venislarn bits on this side of the door fell to the ground with a rich ‘schlopp!’

The howling Kobashi turned her way, its little eyes focused on her or perhaps the world behind her. Its very stance gave her but a moments notice that it was going to charge.

“Crap.”

The Kobashi ran at her. Dick’s pistol lay before her, just beyond the edge of the gory slurry. She made for it but she knew she was going to be too slow. The Kobashi leapt over her towards the oculus as her fingers touched the gun. Up on the carriage there was a brittle smash and, behind Nina, a ringing metallic slicing sound.

She turned with gun aimed. The oculus had shrunk to its original size. In front of it, just inside this world, was a pair of thick Kobashi legs, neatly and utterly severed from the torso that had managed to make it through to whatever time the monster had tried to flee too.

On the coach driving board, Dick Trimbull crouched, eyes wide in astonishment, chest heaving. The sidereal clock lay on the board at his side, its delicate face smashed in with a chunk of dead branch.

“Good work, Dick,” said Nina.

His eyes, still filled with horrible wonders, struggled to register her.

“Those legs!” shouted Steve the Destroyer. He lay on the ground, waving a fingerless fist at the bisected Kobashi. “I’ll have those legs!”

Something moved in the mound of Venislarn offal. A Voor-D’yoi Lak lifted itself slowly out of the bloody filth. One of its arms was missing and a gaping wound in the thing that was supposed to be a face. It turned carefully and surveyed the scene.

Human-shaped or not, Voor-D’yoi Lak were unreasonably powerful and, generally speaking, immortal. And they were complete bastards. Nina had never met one before. She knew only one person who’d met one before and he’d barely survived the encounter.

The Voor-D’yoi Lak finally latched its gaze onto her. Something that might have been breath or might have been a mass of insects rattled behind its teeth. Nina aimed the pistol.

“Helluva day, huh?” she said.

The creature tilted its head at her. It was probably thinking that the pistol was a useless weapon against it, which it was.

“I’ve totally lost count of the Venislarn I’ve killed today,” she continued conversationally. “I’ve killed three Kobashi for starters. Totally diced and juiced the leading edge of the Soulgate. I’ve saved every single human being in this world, for now at least. What have you done with your day, eh?”

The Voor-D’yoi Lak tilted its head the other way and hissed. Nina reckoned it was now thinking that a person facing it down with only a primitive pistol in her hand might not just have a pistol at her disposal.

“If you were sensible, you might think of going somewhere else now,” she said. “I’ll give you a head start. That will make it more fun for me.”

The Voor-D’yoi Lak shifted and turned, limbs clicking, and considered its options.

“Flee as fast as you can,” she said. “Run to the hills. Run to… to the Shetland Islands. I’m Nina Seth and I’m still coming for you. Ey un, bhul-tamade.”

The creature gave her one last look and then fled.

“Basically, run motherfucker,” she said softly and let out a deep sigh.

Dick trip-stumble-climbed down from the driving board.

“You let it get away,” he said.

“Yeah, something like that,” she said.

Down through the sides of the hollow, slow with fear and shock, perhaps already knowing what sights would populate their nightmares for years to come, came Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood and the factory men who had come to assist.

“Damn it, woman. Help me!” shouted Steve.

It took a moment or two for her to spot him. He was riding low through the dirt, clinging to a flat shape as it flapped and slapped its way across the earth. It was Crippen-Ai, without Isabella, now reduced to something like a shell-less crab.

“Muda,” said Nina and jumped on it to grab it. It was cold and almost frictionless, a piece of soap in the bath. It squeezed beneath her hands, releasing slime. Her hands gripped its flesh.

…

Nina was plunged into memories that weren’t her own. A pink tunnel of light, an avenue of escape. The Menscuzo blade in the hands of that foul whore Sha-Datsei cut at him again and again, hacking away chunks of Crippen-Ai, hacking away chunks of his self. Knowledge and intellect fell away with each blow. Crippen-Ai’s plans to seize the throne of Hath-No and the recognition he surely deserved were removed from him, slice by slice. He screamed and fled along the tunnel of light, driven by self-preservation and hatred.

Coldness. Hardness. Crippen-Ai was entombed in solid rock. From one plane of existence to another and he had burrowed through to a space within the crust of the world. Trapped, panicked, he squirmed against himself, releasing his protective slime against an enemy he could not fight.

There was no escape. There would be no escape, not for aeons, until the rock crumbled and he was freed.

In the flicker of consciousness and memory he retained in this dissected form, he warmed himself at the fire of his hatred and waited. Someone would come someone would assist him.

…

A tear rolled down the side of Nina’s nose. She had utterly misjudged this creature. It wasn’t her enemy. It needed her help.

“Poor, poor thing,” she sniffed.

“Are you kidding me, gobbet?” screamed Steve.

“But he’s all alone and -” Nina stopped and gave herself a good mental kick. “Sneaky sod,” she grunted.

She whipped off her hat and slammed it over Crippen-Ai, pinning him down without having to touch him.

“A container!” she shouted. “We need something to put this bastard in!”

Wedgwood hobbled forward at speed on his wooden leg, a metal cannister in his hand. He pulled off its snug lid as he approached and emptied the blue john samples within on the ground.

“Here, Miss Seth.”

It was a clumsy and awkward effort that got the shape-shifting con-artist into the cannister without losing Steve in there too or letting any drop of the creature escape but they succeeded well enough and Wedgwood pressed the lid down hard and then used a leather belt to secure the lid even more firmly in place.

“You fiends!” said Isabella.

Nina had not seen her since the explosion and turned to look. Isabella was not a well woman. Her skirts were peppered with shrapnel from the explosion. Shrapnel holes in her bodice were near hidden by blood that expanded through her clothes. Her jawline was torn open and bleeding. Barely able to hold herself up, she moved from one supporting tree to the next.

“You’re injured,” said Nina which was a stupidly obvious thing to say but Isabella didn’t appear to have noticed.

“I will return,” Isabella grunted.

“You’re not going to make it to morning, hun,” said Nina.

Isabella made a noise that might have been a cough, might have been a laugh. Nina realised only then that she had the oculus in her hand. The woman twisted the rings.

“A path has been forged,” she said. “The journey will be easier.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” said Nina, even though it wasn’t true.

Isabella held the oculus over her head and fed her hands through it. Men swore as her hands and then her arms disappeared through the descending hoop. Isabella was a slender woman but nothing like as tiny as Nina. Nina couldn’t see her managing to get the thing past her hips which was just going to be embarrassing really.

“It feels strange,” said Isabella as the oculus neared her head and shoulders. She flashed a buck-toothed smile, giggled, and then she gasped in alarm. The oculus dropped to the ground, forced down, pushed down, as Isabella was hauled through to the other side.

Isabella had gone. The oculus sat on the ground on a pile of ripped skirt wet with blood.

“Lord in Heaven help us!” breathed Dick.

Nina went over and picked up the oculus. In the shredded remains of the woman’s garments, the corner of Nina’s smartphone poked out. Nina picked up her phone then turned the oculus over and looked through.

“Shit. Tele-fragged.”

“What has occurred?” said Darwin.

“Did I ever tell you about Marty McFly?”

“The man who travelled back in time to 1955?”

Nina was impressed. “You do pay attention. So you remember how I said that when he went back in time he ran into a tree that wasn’t there in his own time…?”

PRESENT DAY

“Wake up, maggot. I have conquered our enemy!”

Morag had known hangovers before, but this one was a doozy. Quite apart from the crippling headache and a tongue that felt as if it had been used for stripping paint, this one spoke to her in the voice of Steve the Destroyer.

She groaned and tried to shift position to something more comfortable, but then she realised that her entire body had joined in with the hangover. It was a symphony of discomfort, from the sharp pains in her lower back, to the tenderness of her breasts. Hell, even her ankles were joining in with a dull throbbing. If she had the energy to vomit, she’d give it a go, but it sounded way too much like hard work.

“Even the kaatbari slumbers! You need to wake up and enjoy the glory of an adversary crushed and belittled.”

“You’re a gobby little shit, aren’t you?” came Kathy’s voice from somewhere nearby.

Morag knew that she needed to open her eyes, but it was certain to bring fresh agony. She licked her lips, but that simply confirmed that no movement was too small to hurt.

Mother, I feel funny. Did someone hurt us?

“S’all fine baby,” lied Morag. “Steve’s got this.”

Speaking aloud was definitely a step too far. Maybe she could nap for a while longer and try the whole waking-up thing later.

There was a monstrous flipping sensation inside her and she yelped in shock and horror. What the hell was going on?

I’m coming out shortly, mother, I am definitely needed.

Morag made a monumental effort to muster some calm. “Let’s not do anything hasty,” she said, as a general comment to the world at large, but definitely to the baby who had set his sights on making an entrance.

She opened her eyes. It was night outside the room’s window. Institutional strip lights starkly illuminated the room.

Kathy was strapped to the commode with silicone tubing that wound around her waist and down her legs. Her wrists were bound together with micropore tape. Morag took satisfaction in the fact that Kathy was suspended over a pot of urine, but wished she’d had time to rustle up something stinkier. Steve had a compact taser in his hand and bounced on the bed in excitement.

“This device she had on her is a most excellent weapon. I shall enjoy using it when our prisoner attempts an escape.” Steve thought for a moment. “I shall enjoy using it even if she doesn’t attempt an escape.”

“You should be careful what you do with me,” said Kathy, who looked fragile, but nowhere near as bad as Morag felt. This seemed like a huge injustice, and Morag added it to the list of things that Kathy needed to suffer for.

“Careful?” sneered Steve. “You will feel the cuts of a thousand knives, you will be roasted over a bed of white hot coals and you will beg me for death as I laugh at your piteous cries!”

“No, you need me,” said Kathy. “I’m a doctor and it looks very much to me as though Morag’s going to be giving birth quite soon. I can’t help if you tase me and I’m a useless blob of jelly for twenty minutes.”

Steve turned to Morag. “Can this be true? On Holby City a human pregnancy lasts for a long time, many episodes.”

Morag smiled. “It’s amazing what you picked up from watching TV in my flat,” she said. “A pregnancy lasts nine months. I’m only a few weeks. Nice try Kathy, but no babies are being delivered today. As soon as I get my head straight, I’m out of here.” She put a protective hand on her bump. “What’s best for me is best for baby.”

“I think we’re all in the dark about what a typical kaatbari pregnancy looks like,” said Kathy, “given that this is the first, and almost certainly the last.”

“You don’t know nothing, Kathy Kaur.”

“I can offer you a safe delivery, which is more than you’ll get with a pabash kaj doll to help. Especially one who’s already accidentally sedated you.”

“You talk a good game, I’ve got to give you that,” said Morag, “but there’s absolutely no way I’m letting you near me or my baby with your murderous hands.”

“Murderous?” She took a deep breath and refocused on Morag. “We are on the side of life. I know - ”

“Bhul!”

“I know you hate me right now but we both want to save humanity. Governments think that appeasing the monsters and playing politics is the best option. That won’t work. You’re Neville Chamberlain waving his little bit of white paper. We’re the Churchill option.”

“The bulldog spirit?” said Morag, derisively.

“If you like.”

Morag gathered all of her resolve and sat upright.

“Except in this war, the enemy had nukes and you’ve got the equivalent of little pointy sticks."

“I can do terrible things with a little pointy stick,” said Steve, tapping his pencil spear with one foot.

“I will help you deliver the baby,” said Kathy, trying to pour as much human warmth into those words as possible.

“So you can kill it?” said Morag.

Kathy shook her head. “We don’t know exactly how the Soulgate event will play out. I spent a lot of time talking to Polliqan Riti, the creature that became Crippen-Ai. He was very knowledgeable. The kaatbari might herald the Soulgate but the world is not doomed until the arrival of Yoth-Bilau.”

Morag was in too much pain and discomfort to listen to her nonsense.

“Come on, Steve. Let’s get out of here.”

Her vision swam and a banging headache took centre stage, but she kept going. She breathed deeply and levered herself off the bed, buttoning the doctor’s coat as she tried to straighten. It struck her that she didn’t even know what straight was any more. Where exactly was her centre of gravity, anyway? She braced her legs and tried to imagine what it used to feel like when she was a normal shape. It was no good, although she didn’t feel quite so ready to topple forward as she did the last time she stood up.

“I think you’ll find that the baby’s head’s engaged,” said Kathy.

Morag stared at her suspiciously. “What does that even mean?” she asked.

Kathy smirked. “I forgot. You probably haven’t even had time to read any pregnancy books. Have you even been to any antenatal classes? Actually, have you been to any antenatal appointments?”

“I’m not much of a joiner,” said Morag. “So what does it mean if the baby’s head’s engaged?”

“It’s when the head drops down into the pelvic cavity, just prior to birth. It means that the baby’s weight isn’t all out front any more, so it can actually feel more comfortable for the mother.”

Morag didn’t feel more comfortable, but she had a sense that Kathy might be right. She wasn’t going to let it change her mind though, so she staggered forward.

Steve looked at her, and looked at the taser in his hand. “If we’re leaving, can I tase her anyway?”

She nodded. “Knock yourself out Ste —” She felt a rush of fluid from between her legs. She looked down to see an alarming puddle at her feet. More like a lake. “Oh, muda!”

“I think your waters broke, Morag,” said Kathy. “It looks as though the kaatbari will be with us within the hour.”

“An hour, huh?” said Steve, and he tossed the taser lightly in his hand before pressing the button. The two metal darts shot out and there was a brief electrical fizz before Kathy slumped in her commode seat.

Morag looked at him.

“What?” he said. “Even a puny human should recover from that. Probably. Do we really need her?”

“I don’t even know what all this means,” she said, waving a hand in the general direction of the pool of water that surrounded her. “When a person’s waters break, does it mean that the baby will come soon?”

“I shall go and find a television so that I can watch Holby City to find the answer,” said Steve, making for the door.

“You will do no such thing!” yelled Morag. “You will stay with me and provide moral support until I tell you otherwise. Baby, is this your doing?”

YES, MOTHER. I’M SO MUCH CLOSER NOW. I CAN HEAR YOU MORE CLEARLY. CAN YOU HEAR ME MORE CLEARLY?

“Whoa!” Morag, clutched at her temples. The voice was so loud that it filled her entire head. She looked at Steve as he went rigid and dropped the taser. He obviously had the same voice in his head.

“I certainly can hear you more clearly. In fact you’re quite loud. If you could tone it down a bit then —”

IT’S GETTING VERY TIGHT IN HERE. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING.

Morag felt it hit her. A vicious cramping pain that made her cry out in shock. She bent over, unable to move, but knowing that she wouldn’t be able to stand up for much longer. She hobbled towards the bed. It seemed like an epic journey and when she got there she clutched the end rail with relief. Was this a contraction? She’d gained the impression over the years that childbirth could be difficult and perhaps painful, but had been very unclear on the specifics. Splinters were painful, but this was like pain that had been re-imagined for a CGI blockbuster with surround sound. She hung on, certain that contractions were things that came and went. She could make it through, she was pretty sure, but she was having serious doubts about whether she could handle another one any time soon.

“Shall we leave now?” asked Steve, sauntering over, seemingly oblivious to her distress.

Morag had so much that she wanted to say in reply, but managed only a strangled “Busy!” in reply.

She wondered how much time had passed since this contraction started. It felt like an hour, but it was probably less than a minute. Surely it was time for it to be over?

“Steve!” she finally gasped. Did this mean that the pain was receding? It really didn’t feel as if it was anything less than excruciating, but she’s been capable of speech, so maybe it was. “Steve, I’m having the baby now.”

It was long past eleven at night and Rod was physically battling with an overeager land-squid and verbally battling with a taxi driver who either didn’t like having pet cephalopods in the back of his cab or didn’t like customers who only gave a direction and not a destination. Rod could think of better ways of spending what might be the last night on earth.

Rod had been employed by the consular mission to the Venislarn for something like a decade and the Venislarn apocalypse, the Soulgate, had been an ever-present reality throughout that time. The end of the world had been coming all that time. Cleverer people than him had declared it to be an ironclad certainty, unavoidable. The world would drown in blood and pain. All Rod and the rest of the team could do until that point was to limit the pain, staunch the flow of blood and maintain order and sanity until there was none left to be had.

And now it was here. Possibly. Probably. And Rod felt… He paused to analyse his feelings. His feelings were something he rarely took out to inspect - they were usually buried under the dust and clutter of more important matters – and it took him a moment or so to bring them into the light. He felt frightened, yes, although it was a distant fear, more akin to excitement than actual terror. And he was intrigued. Now, that the end of the world was here, a suicidally curious part of him wanted to know how it played out. And yet, he also felt a powerful sense of disappointment. He didn’t want the world to end. He wasn’t finished with his life yet. He had unfinished business. He chuckled. He had unstarted business even, a life he’d not got round to properly living even at his age.

Fido the land-squid slapped itself eagerly against the passenger window. “Mwwa-waa!”

“Left,” he said to the driver. “Turn left somewhere.”

“Where?” demanded the driver, peeved. “Where is it you want me to go?”

“I don’t know. There!” Rod pointed down a side road, almost invisible in the dark.

The driver had to brake sharply and the car wobbled on the turn.

“This is a housing estate,” he said, critically.

Rod’s phone rang. He juggled his land-squid passenger, tugging its lead to keep it in the back seat with him.

“Campbell,” he said.

“Great Barr Hall,” said Nina.

“Yes?”

“It’s on that line, just about. There was this Lunar Society guy, Galton, who owned it way back when.”

“Where now?” said the taxi driver, as he followed the sweeping loop of the estate’s roads.

“Just keep going,” said Rod and then, to Nina, “I think I’ve heard of it. It was a mental hospital or something, out in the woods, back when they called such places mental asylums. It closed years ago.”

“It’s owned by Forward Management Ltd,” she said. “Where are you now?”

“Great Barr. Driving in circles.”

The housing estate was recent. Narrow pixie semis, three and four storey apartment blocks and, up on a hill, a broad white apartment block that looked like a converted cotton mill or factory but was probably an entirely new build, built with a faux industrial look to create an urban rustic feel. The roads looped around green communal spaces, the whole a closed off community. There was no sign of an old hall here, no abandoned mental hospital.

Fido ran excited back and forth across Rod’s lap, trying to get somewhere.

“You know where Great Barr Hall is?” Rod asked the driver.

“No.”

“We’re on our way,” said Nina. “I’m calling Ricky Lee.”

“I didn’t think the police were on our side,” said Rod.

“If they’ve got Morag prisoner there, they can back us up.”

“Sure, but – stop!”

Rod slapped the driver’s chair. The guy slammed the brakes.

“We’re here?” he said.

They were at the top on the estate, where the last houses backed onto trees. Rod had spotted a dirt track, a construction access road with a sturdy single bar gate across it to prevent vehicle access.

The land-squid squirmed against the window, trying to get out.

“I think we’re here,” said Rod to Nina and then checked his phone. Great Barr Hall didn’t come up on a regular map search but a general google search brought up an older map and, from a cursory comparison with a navigation map, Rod concluded that it could possibly be up there.

He took several bank notes out of his wallet and passed them to the driver.

“You have family?” he said.

“What?” said the driver.

“You should go home and be with them.”

“What?”

Rod shook his head, opened the door and was almost dragged out by Fido. He just managed to slam the door behind as the land-squid yanked on the leash in its urgency to go up the dirt track.

There was no public lighting away from the road proper and Rod was soon walking in darkness, the feeling of a mud and hardcore track beneath his feet, the impression of dense woodland to both sides of him. He didn’t get out his torch. If this was it then he was approaching the enemy’s position and didn’t want to advertise. He had plenty of night-vision gear but that was all at home. Instead, he walked slowly and let his eyes adjust to the murk.

There was never true darkness in the UK, except in the most remote pieces of wilderness. Light pollution from near and far diffused through the overhead cloud and gave a low level orange-grey shape to the world.

Fido yanked and dragged and meeped in excitement. Rod shushed it to no effect.

The path rose into the woods and then descended and broadened. Off to Rod’s side, mesh security fencing appeared, dotted with warning signs that it was too dark to properly read. Then, shadow on shadow, he saw a building. It was high and broad, a forest of narrow chimneys appeared as silhouettes along its partially collapsed roof.

Great Barr Hall was a ruin, its façade now crumbling and scoured brick, its windows empty black holes devoid of glass. If this was a secret base of operations then Forward Management had carefully maintained the ruined look. Rod would have been doubtful but the baby land-squid was insistent.

“Okay,” he whispered.

If the Maccabees were in there, they’d have security measures. If they had any expertise, they’d have already picked him up on a camera. They’d know he was coming. He didn’t know their numbers or armaments. He had almost no advantage. If he had had the time, he would have stepped back, re-armed, re-planned, called for back up and then taken out any surveillance gear they had and slip in through their blindspots. He had no time. What he had was a pistol, a dozen gadgets, an over-excited squid-monster and a career’s worth of the best military training in the world.

“I’d kill for some grenades,” he said, drawing his pistol. “I guess we’re gonna have to wing this.”

“Mwwa-waa!” squeaked Fido.

“Exactly,” he said.

The building security fencing had no breaks in it but where it ran around the base of a tree, fifty feet from the entrance to the seemingly abandoned building, it was angled badly and there was a gap big enough for Fido to scamper through and for Rod to force and squeeze himself through afterwards.

Rod jogged with his eager squid across the cleared earth towards the house. Halfway there, security lights came on, high above. He was expecting that. It provided him with some much needed illumination, a chance to see the layout of the house. It also gave him some small confidence that he was in the right place and not wasting his time at all.

He ran forward and pressed himself against the front house wall, beneath a boarded up window.

Lit up, the house looked even more like a ruin. Exposed brickwork was crumbling and marked with graffiti here and there. The windows were either shuttered with anti-trespass grilles or, higher up, were empty black holes. If this was their base of operations, they kept up a believable façade.

Fido pulled left, anti-clockwise round the building. Keeping his eyes peeled and gun ready, Rod followed.

At the corner of the house there were was clear and probably recent tire tracks: a possible entrance round the back.

Fido scampered up a broken drainpipe and began to claw its way, tentacle over tentacle, up the brickwork. Rod glanced up. So, Steve and Morag were possibly up there. He made a note, fixed Fido’s direction of travel into the mental map of the place he was building up of the place.

“Fine, go,” he said and released the paracord leash. “Go suck someone’s face off.”

He moved forward and poked his head round the corner. Two SUVs were parked side by side in front of a garage door. Right close to the house there were low parallel walls marking steps going down to a basement level. A silhouette moved into the light and opened fire. Rod had pulled back after the first shot but the guy kept firing. It was a single, controlled burst: either a sub-machine gun or an assault rifle.

Rod steadied himself, held back only a second or two and then aimed round the corner and fired. The man made a sound, no more than sigh, and then went down. Rod stayed where he was, waiting to see if he moved.

Rod looked back – no one coming round the front of the house for him – and then back – the man on the floor, still not moving. He ran forward, grabbed the man by the collar, snagged the assault rifle and then dragged him over the little wall and dropped onto the stairs. There was a short door at the bottom, bolted and padlocked.

Rod quickly searched the dead man. The assault rifle was an Enfield SA80, standard British military kit. The man had a comms piece in his ear. Rod took it from him and slipped it on. The man had no other weapons, no side arm, no grenades. Rod searched pockets for keys or spare magaziens. He came up with a folded card and shone his torch on it. It was a stag list, a guard rota with timings. A cursory inspection indicated there were maybe a dozen individuals assigned to guard duties.

One versus a dozen. SAS or not, they weren’t good odds.

There was chatter on the comms. A lot of instructions, a lot of reference to places and people that Rod could do nothing with. People on the move, people knowing he was coming.

The keys didn’t work on the padlock but the bolts and hinges were rusty and the wood looked rotten. Two kicks and the door gave in.

He peered over the top of the little wall onto the side drive of the house. Still no movement. But now there was shouting from in the house. Mostly men, most of it barked orders. There would be combatants coming for him soon enough.

Rod crept up the stairs and tried the rear door of the nearest SUV. It opened. He took out his wallet and drew from it a credit card that wasn’t a credit card and a bank note that wasn’t a bank note. With the magnesium fire-starter and the cordite infused dollar, there was suddenly a small but intense fire on the back seat. He moved away, down the stairs and before he was out of line of sight, turned and fired three shots into the SUV’s petrol tank.

He didn’t stop to see if the petrol caught. It either would or it wouldn’t.

He pushed through the broken cellar door and into the darkness.

1773

Nina stood with Matthew Boulton on the lawns of Soho House and looked down the hill, across the fields and towards the town of Birmingham. It was a Sunday afternoon. Anne Boulton’s kitchen staff were preparing a roast Sunday lunch and the smell of delicious fatty gravy permeated even out here. Wedgwood and Darwin sat on the bench by the back of the house. Darwin was apparently explaining his idea for a rocket-powered carriage to his friend.

“It feels weird,” said Nina.

Boulton breathed deeply and then gave a little cough. Even after a fortnight of recuperation, his ribs still ached.

“Knowing that all this land will one day be swallowed up by the city?”

“Not that,” she said. “Well, definitely that but…” She felt a moment of perverse civic pride. “It’s a good city, you know. Future Birmingham.”

“Is it?” said Boulton. “The way you have described it… the ‘tarmacked’ roads, the rubbish, the chaos.”

“Oh, but it’s good chaos. You’ve got your clubs and the shops. We’ve got fried chicken and Amazon Prime next day delivery and wi-fi.” She tapped at her smartphone again, in case it the dead battery had miraculously sprung back to life. “Did I mention wi-fi?”

“Once or twice,” he said, politely. “But then there’s the ‘global warming’ and all the fish eating plastic, although I don’t quite grasp that fully, and several autocrats who you say are ‘like, as bad as Hitler’ although I really don’t know who that is. The world of your time sounds dreadful.”

“Still worth fighting for,” she said. She hesitated, recalling the thread of the conversation. “What’s weird is that I can spend as long as I like here and still be back in time to save Rod and Morag.”

“Yes?”

“And yet it feels urgent, like I have to go. They are two hundred and wotnot years in the future but they’re also suffering, needing me, right now. It’s like…”

“Look at me!” declared Steve, running across the lawn towards them. “The maid-slave has attached my new legs! And with far more skill than your clumsy efforts, mortal!” he added.

Nina crouched and he jumped onto her hand with strong legs fashioned from printed fabric. Steve had bullied and pleaded with anyone who would listen to help him find his original sackcloth legs but they were never recovered. Anne Boulton and Nancy the maid produced a new pair (in proportion to the rest of his body and not the beefed up super-legs Steve requested).

“Nice material,” said Nina. “Did you pick this?”

“It is called cotton,” he instructed her. “Good and strong! And see the images printed on it, red explosions of fire and blood? A warning to my enemies!”

“Explosions of fire and blood, huh?”

“Yes!” said Steve fiercely.

“Not little red carnations then?”

“What are they?” he asked.

“Um. They’re, er, explosions of fire and blood. Totally. You’ll have them quaking in their boots.”

“Indeed!” said the little doll and adopted a bold and heroic pose.

A thought occurred to Nina, a memory slotting into place. She called out.

“Hey, Wedgwood!”

Josiah Wedgwood sat forward. Nina turned in her best model pose, Steve on her arm and her phone to her ear. “You should put me on one of your vases. You know one of your, um, jasperware ones.”

“Perhaps,” he said, genially unconvinced.

“You will,” she said. “Trust me.”

The household gathered at the edge of the garden to watch Nina depart. The manservant, Jonathan Angus, sat in a chair brought out especially for him. He was pale and either healing slowly or not at all. Dick Trimbull, sat astride Charlotte, watched her from the path at the end of the garden.

Boulton, carrying the oculus, walked out into the centre of the lawn with Nina.

“I thought you might have wished to have your old clothes back,” he said, contemplating the short dress and long coat she was wearing.

“I might want to rock this look for a bit,” she said. “’Sides, I’ve got a proper highwayman hat to go with it. I’ve got all I need.”

She patted one pocket in which she carried her phone and her consular ID badge. Steve hung out of the other, happy to be carried.

“I thought you would ask to take Crippen-Ai with you,” said Boulton.

The Venislarn was still in the metal cannister, itself placed within a thick glass jar with a heavy seal. Venislarn, cannister and jar were in a locked safe in Boulton’s study.

“I would ask,” agreed Nina, “but I know he stays here and he’ll be there in my time.”

“Ah. This will be another matter of continuity.”

“Exactly. There are lots of things I would like to tell you to do but I know you won’t. I could tell you to not repair the sidereal clock.”

“I won’t!” he assured her vehemently.

“But you do. Or someone does. I could tell you to destroy the oculus but if you do I would never have got here in the first place.”

“A logical paradox.”

“I could tell you to forget about the Venislarn, ignore anything you hear, put any thought of them from your mind. You won’t.”

“But how could we? Evil must be resisted.”

She stopped and faced him. “Nobody’s going to win.”

“You can’t know that,” he said.

She shrugged. “It’s going to end badly. All of it.”

He shook his head fiercely. “How can you go on? How can you live with such an abhorrent belief in your heart?”

She gave him her sexiest pixie grin. “Simples, Matty boy. Because it’s not about how it ends. It’s about all the other stuff that happens before it ends.”

She took the oculus from him and twisted the brass hoops. “If I had some battery power, I could get a time check. That’s if data can travel through the oculus. Hold the edge for me, yeah?”

Boulton held the hooped artefact out for Nina to step into.

“Breathe in,” she told Steve. “It’s gonna be a squeeze.”

She looked round, sought out Dick and gave him a wave and then stepped one foot and then the other into the oculus, like she was climbing into a barrel. She felt her feet touch twenty-first century grass. She wriggled and Boulton obligingly lifted the oculus up. Steve gave an “urgle!” of surprise as he was squished through the gap.

“Ooh!” said Nina.

“What is it?” said Boulton.

“Your wife.”

“What?”

“For Christmas or whatever.”

“Yes?”

“Get her pockets.”

“Pockets?”

“Pockets and tampons. She’ll love you forever. Trust me. Here I go.”

She lifted her arms, bent her knees to let gravity pull her through and Boulton slid the oculus up and away from her.

She was standing on the lawns of Soho House – modern day Soho House, half the size it once was, with new windows and guttering and the lines of telephone wires cutting through the skyline behind it. The hole to the past was not visible from this side.

“You okay, Steve?”

“Steve the Destroyer is never okay,” said the ragdoll, shaking himself back into shape. “He is always superb!”

“Good,” she said. “Cos we’ve got friends to save.”

PRESENT DAY

The helicopter took off and followed Nina’s instructions to fly the seven miles north east to Great Barr Hall. Nina listened to the engine as they flew, listening out for any indication that the rotors had been fatally compromised by minced bad guy. She’d called Chief Inspector Ricky Lee and told him all she knew. He tried to give her some guff about the chain of command and his standing orders but she soon put him straight on that.

Pupfish, who had found Beardy’s gun (still clutched in Beardy’s hand) a dozen metres from the helicopter, now cradled it on his lap in the seat opposite her.

“I hope we get there in time,” she said.

“Before Rod finishes them all off without us,” Pupfish nodded.

“Well, no…”

“Ah – ggh! – before the end of the world, right?”

“Well, that,” she conceded. “Before he gets himself, or Morag, killed.”

Pupfish shrugged. “When it’s your time, it’s you time,” he said philosophically.

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” she said.

Morag felt herself coming out on the other side of the latest contraction and she panted with relief. She tried to ignore the fact that she would almost certainly have to put up with more of the same.

THIS IS VERY DIFFICULT, MOTHER. WHY IS BEING BORN SUCH HARD WORK?

“You’re doing great, baby,” said Morag.

Steve ran back and forth, as if unsure what exactly he should be doing. In the end he settled for trying to wake Kathy.

“Maggot! You said we had an hour! I hope that your doctoring skills are superior to your estimation skills! You need to pull yourself together and help!”

Morag could see that Kathy was moving her mouth, but she was dribbling, not talking and her eyes were still closed.

“I think another contraction is coming,” said Morag, gritting her teeth. “Untie her.”

“But she’s the enemy!” said Steve.

“Untie the bloody doctor now!” she growled.

She prepared herself for this one by lying down on the bed. She needed to give in and ride it out.

WHAT DID YOU DO MOTHER? I WANT TO GO THE OTHER WAY!

“What?”

THIS IS MUCH HARDER FOR ME.

“You’re fucking kidding me. You want me to stand?” Morag struggled to her feet.

THAT IS MUCH BETTER, THANK YOU.

“Grabbily,” slurred Kathy, raising her head.

“What?”

“Grabbily wuss for the bagey.”

“Gravity works for the baby? Right. Brilliant. Are we saying that I have to keep upright?”

Kathy nodded. Steve undid the last of her bonds and, as Kathy slid groggily onto the floor, went back to the taser and tried to work out how to respool the dart wires.

Morag propped herself up and groaned. The pain had her in its grip again and it was brutal beyond belief.

“How the hell has this been allowed to happen?” she yelled at Kathy. “Seriously, have women since the dawn of time been putting up with this? If men had to deal with this sort of shit, they’d almost certainly have found a way to make it fucki —”

She had to cut short her rant as she was rendered incapable of speech once again, and resorted to howling instead. She retreated into her world of pain and knew nothing else for long, long moments.

There was no light in the cellar beneath Great Bar Hall. There was a low ceiling on which Rod had grazed his head more than once. There were metal support beams to either side of him, flaking rusting things. There were gurgles in the darkness, like the pipes of an ancient central heating system. He paused a moment to dig out his torch and, when he turned it on, he nearly dropped it in surprise.

He was surrounded by monsters.

In iron cages all along both sides of him, like police cells on American cop shows, were various Venislarn creatures. Most were chained, shackled to brick walls. Rod, never an expert on Venislarn creatures, recognised a few.

A giant dinh’r spider creature turned circles on the floor. Its once hypnotic pink silver eyes were just weeping holes in its head, gouged out. A presz’ling, its huge spindle legs too long to allow it to do anything but squat in its cage, shifted and swayed like a deranged zoo animal.

The most lively creature was an absolute horror, a mockery of the human form. Its flesh, pink and raw, seemed to be boiling in slow motion. The features of its face were cruelly-inflicted wounds.

“Bheri at Voor-D’yoi Lak – the Voor-D’yoi Lak,” whispered the presz’ling, speaking and translating for itself at the same time. –“Shengu ap – it hungers.”

The Voor-D’yoi Lak fought against its chains to try to reach Rod. Even if it hadn’t been he would have known that its very presence, its very nature, was one of hunger. It wanted to eat him, to consume him in more ways than the merely physical. And Rod suspected that if he hung around long enough, he would let it.

“Why do the Maccabees have Venislarn prisoners?” he murmured.

The presz’ling started to speak but Rod ignored it. He was thinking of the dying shambler in the Vault and the foaming wounds in its side. He ejected the magazine and looked at the rounds in the magazine. There was a blue tinge to them and a sheen that suggested something other than metal.

“Venislarn-killers,” he said.

There was a thumping explosion that rattled the door he’d come in. The SUV’s tank had exploded. That would bring them running outside.

The Voor-D’yoi Lak hissed and lunged futilely at Rod. He moved on, down the aisle between caged creatures and to the stairs at the far end.

A rumbling bang, more heard than felt, jolted Morag back to her senses.

Kathy was shouting to someone. When had Kathy got up from the floor?

“Find out what it is, Winnie!” she shouted to someone out of sight and then turned briskly to Morag. “I do need to perform an internal examination though,” she said as though continuing an earlier conversation with Morag had already forgotten. “Do you want to lie down?”

Did she want to lie down? Morag crawled onto the bed and tried to grab a nap before the next contraction. It wouldn’t work, but she felt duty bound to try.

With almost no warning and zero preamble, Kathy parted her legs and pushed a hand up inside.

“Fuck!” Morag yelped in response.

MOTHER!

Morag was no longer sure if this swollen mass of her lower half was even her body anymore, as Kathy’s whole arm looked as if it had disappeared. She had no energy to resist, but this was going on the fucking list of wrongs to be righted as well. Whatever rummaging around Kathy was doing seemed to satisfy her.

“You’re eight centimetres,” said Kathy.

“And? Is that like a Richter scale for pain? I can tell you I’m way past ‘mauled by a bear’ by now. You need bigger numbers than eight.” Morag couldn’t believe she was getting competitive about her pain, but eight sounded way too lame.

“It’s cervical dilation,” said Kathy. “When you’re ten centimetres then the baby can come out.”

I WANT TO COME OUT NOW!

“So how much more of this can I expect?” asked Morag.

Kathy shrugged and Morag wanted to stomp on her head to punish her for being so casual.

“If this was a normal birth it could be one hour, it could be six. This isn’t normal, though, is it? All bets are off.”

SHE’S NOT VERY NICE IS SHE? boomed the baby’s voice. Morag wondered why Kathy couldn’t hear it as it reverberated through her skull, through her entire being.

“You can say that again,” said Morag.

The outside of the building was a ruin but it was clearly a carefully maintained façade. The interior stairs and the corridors off it were modern, clean and well-lit. This place had once been a hospital and whether it was the faint bleach smell or the off-white paint on the walls but it retained its old hospital vibe.

Rod climbed to the ground floor, sweeping in full arcs and prepared to put down anyone who came into sight who wasn’t Morag. There was no one on the ground floor landing and he continued up. Chatter on the comms line was confused; there were men outside, the dead guy’s body had not yet been found. Someone instructed two people to go up and guard the ‘patient’. That would be Morag. Unhelpfully, that instruction didn’t include a floor or location.

Rod stepped out onto the first floor. Institutional linoleum squeaked under his boots.

Kathy stood up, hands on hips. “It’s so momentous that I feel I should be documenting the occasion. Who knows what we could learn?”

She fished in her pocket for her mobile phone.

“If you even think about taking photos of my fucking lady parts, I swear I will find a way to make you suffer for it, even if I have to claw my way out of Hell to do it,” hissed Morag.

Kathy gave her a smile as she stabbed at her phone. “Photos? No, I was going to make a video, so we can have the audio as well. We might need to send proof of the birth to Yo Morgantus along with our demands.”

“Fucking demands?”

People will also be fascinated to hear the magical if slightly profane Scottish utterances that accompany the birth of the kaatbari. They will also be fascinated to see that you’re obviously a natural redhead.”

Morag lunged ineffectually for Kathy, but then the next contraction started and she drew her arms back into her body to ride out the pain.

Rod moved along the corridor, checking rooms. Most were unlocked. Most were empty. Mothballed offices it appeared. As he stepped out of one, a large woman with frizzy hair down the corridor saw Rod, waved a hand and began to approach him, the beginnings of a question on her lips. The woman then did a double-take, realised Rod wasn’t one of their people and turned to flee.

Rod aimed low with the SA80 and put a bullet in her buttock. She fell with a cry.

“Okay, that was definitely gunfire,” said Morag. In her current position, she felt particularly vulnerable. She didn’t know who was shooting or why but she didn’t want it happening in her vicinity.

“Shall I zap her again?” said Steve.

“What good would that do?” said Kathy. “Nearly fully dilated, you’re making excellent progress.”

Morag had nothing sensible to say to that, but it sounded as though she might be almost at the end of this hellish ride, so perhaps it was good news.

Rod ran to the woman he’d shot and flipped her over. The woman yelped and whimpered, her eyes screwed shut. Rod had never been shot or stabbed in the arse but he guessed it hurt as much as it did anywhere else. He might have struck a major blood vessel – Rod wasn’t going to check – but the woman should have some short time before she bled out. Rod pushed aside the worry that he’d shot a woman rather than a man, conscious that it was sexist in some way.

“Open your eyes!” Rod barked. “Open them!”

The woman blinked like she was trying to see underwater.

“It’s Winnie, isn’t it?” he said.

She mouthed silently in fear.

“We met earlier today. You were unhelpful. Where is Morag Murray?”

The woman’s lips wobbled and moved, struggling with speech.

“Where’s the ‘patient’?” Rod snarled.

“Third f-floor. At the back.” She raised a feeble hand to point, saw the blood on her own fingertips and began to keen loudly in pain and panic.

Rod left her to it. He ran back to the stairs.

There was another sound. Rod had to remove the earpiece to check that he’d heard it. Yes, a helicopter passing overheard and, even fainter, sirens of multiple police cars.

He grinned grimly. Rogue paramilitary or not, the arrival of the cops would set these guys into a panic. Maybe they had a chance of getting to Morag before it was too late. He looked at his watch and the grin vanished.

The door to Morag’s room crashed open and a security guard entered, pistol drawn.

“Dr Kaur, we have to move!”

He stopped in surprise at seeing Steve on the bed. Steve swung the taser (which was nearly as big as himself) and fired. The man flinched and the little darts embedded themselves in the plaster wall, two feet off target. Kathy turned with a back-handed swipe and whacked Steve off the bed and into one of the cupboard units.

“What’s happening?” she said.

“The police are here,” said the guard. “And at least one armed intruder.”

His eyes kept flicking to Morag’s undignified position on the bed and then averting his gaze, as if toxic rays from Morag’s exposed lower half might fry him. That would be a superpower that Morag could use right now.

“We can’t leave her,” said Kathy.

“We can’t hold the building,” he replied. “We can maybe get to the cellar and the tunnel to Horseshoe Crescent.”

“Right,” said Kathy, her voice the crisply clipped tones of someone struggling to deal with the situation. “Let’s get you up.”

It took Morag a good few seconds to realise this ridiculous instruction was being directed at her.

“Go?” she screamed. “I’m not going anywhere! I can’t work out if I’m being fucking ripped apart or I’m about to shit myself!”

Kathy stood back. Morag didn’t like the look on her face. It was anxious. It was deeply distressed. It was contemplating things that Morag didn’t like being contemplated in her general vicinity. Kathy could see that Morag was indeed going nowhere.

“You’ll have to kill her,” she said softly.

“What?” said the guard.

“What?” snarled Morag.

Kathy took hold of the man’s arm and woodenly lifted it to point the pistol in Morag’s direction.

“We can’t let them live.”

“Oh, I am so fucking killing you,” said Morag.

I’M NEARLY THERE, MOTHER!

“No, baby. Stay inside. Mummy can’t…”

Tears and screams welled up inside her.

Rod peered through the pane in the door to the stairs. Two armed men coming up. He moved back out of sight and then shot the first man as he came through the door. He crouched, took aim and waited for the second to present himself in either the doorway or at the window of the ajar door. It was the window pane. Rod put him down with a single shot.

He moved back through the stairs, checked they were both dead and continued up, quicker now. The sounds in the building and the chatter on the comms suggested that, despite the importance of the ‘patient’, the panic and activity was more confined to the lower floors.

He pushed to the stairs and ran to the third floor.

The ashen look on Kathy’s face showed she knew how terrible shooting a pregnant woman was.

The guard’s nervous twitching showed that he was far from happy with the idea also.

It didn’t mean they weren’t going to do it but Morag guessed she was supposed to draw some solace from their reticence.

“Not my baby,” she whispered.

The guard’s finger was on the trigger. He licked his lips nervously.

The door banged and some… thing, all mottled limbs and energy, barrelled through squealing “Mwwa-waa!”

It leapt up on coiled tentacles, up and over the bed. The guard instinctively tracked it, firing and missing, firing and missing.

The thing shot into the cupboard unit and a voice cried out, “Back, hell beast! Back! Lest you taste the wrath of Steve!”

“Mwwa-waa!”

Over the comms, Rod could hear in amongst the other garbled voices, the repeated shouts of “Armed police! On the ground!”

Closer to hand, Rod had heard fresh gunshots, possibly from the third floor. He reached the top stair. He was hurrying now but he didn’t just rush through. There was no point in rushing into the firing arc of an enemy.

He checked all directions, rifle aimed, as he progressed through the door. As he swung to the rear of the building, he saw two figures at the far end of the corridor in the doorway, a man and a woman. The man saw Rod. He had an SA80 but not raised. Rod shot him in the chest – one, two – and he went down. The woman was Kathy Kaur.

Her face was a frozen mask of shock. Rod stepped forward, rifle aimed.

Less than twenty-four hours ago they had been colleagues, friends even. He’d even thought they could be much more.

She raised her empty hands.

“Rod…”

There was a scream from a side room, a scream of pain. It was Morag.

Kathy took the distraction to dash through the doorway. Rod fired, creating explosions of plaster in the wall where she had been moments before.

Rod’s instinct was to give chase but Morag was more important.

In the grounds in front of Great Barr Hall, Nina was getting ready to lose her cool with Chief Inspector Ricky Lee. He had both hands on her upper arms, physically keeping her behind the cover of a police transit van and stopping her from running into the building.

“When we’ve got the all clear,” he told her, not for the first time. “Then we can go in.”

“This is consular business,” she told him. “You defer to me.”

Ricky gave her a vicious look. For a police officer, he rarely did forceful or dominant gestures, and she was willing to consciously concede that ‘angry Ricky’ was kinda hot.

“This is a bunch of insurgent whackjobs with automatic weaponry. That’s police territory.” He looked past her at Pupfish, lurking in the blue light streaked shadows. “Nina, did you give that… thing a handgun?”

“Who you calling ‘thing’ – ggh! – pig?”

“Pupfish is fine,” said Nina.

“I got a licence, man.”

“A handgun licence?” said Ricky in disbelief.

Inside the house, sporadic gunfire continued.

Morag felt the next contraction starting when Rod entered the room.

He looked an exhausted mess, speckled with dirt and blood, though none of the latter appeared to be his. Not that Morag cared. She really didn’t give a hot goddamn for anything but the huge mass of incomprehensible wrongness that was destroying her lower body.

“Help me, Rod,” she growled.

Rod – God bless him – hesitated for only a second before putting the rifle he carried aside and coming to her and taking her hands.

“I gotta push!” she said.

“Good,” said Rod for lack of anything better to say. “You push as hard as you can.”

PUSH MOTHER. I’M ON THE WAY!

Morag pushed with all of her might. She had no idea that her body was capable of such power. It was well and truly behind the idea of expelling this baby, even though the space it had to squeeze through was so ridiculously small. It was like shitting a space hopper, and she was vaguely aware that whatever musculature or fleshy obstacles stood in its way were unimportant. The baby was coming out and she was to push as if her life depended on it to make it happen. Was her flesh tearing? Was she clawing at Rod’s and drawing blood? Was she screaming blue murder? She was only dimly aware of anything except pushing and pushing.

MOTHER I CAN’T DO THIS, IT’S TOO DIFFICULT!

“There’s no fucking stopping now!” screamed Morag. Her hands were slick with sweat and they slipped off whatever she’d been holding. She clawed at the air and whatever part of Rod she grabbed hold of must have been a delicate part because her own screaming was accompanied by Rod’s gentlemanly swearing. It was oddly helpful.

AAARRRGH!

The baby screamed too and it filled Morag’s head. Her baby was distressed and she was the only person who could fix it! She had no idea that she had further reserves to call upon, but somehow she did. She pushed harder, putting every muscle in her body behind it. She made the muscles in her upper body, her shoulders and even her face join the ones that were working to push the baby out. She had no idea where the sound was coming from now. There was the screaming in the room, there was the screaming in her brain and there was the screaming from every cell of her body as she caused untold ruin with the impossible things that she was asking of it. She had no regard for the consequences, no room to consider anything other than the immediate goal of getting the baby into the outside world.

It was out. There was a sudden movement that removed all of the pressure and Morag felt as if she’d surfaced from a deep dive. She sucked in a ragged breath and tried to understand what was happening. Surely the baby had been born. She looked down at Rod who was between her straddled legs, covered in scratches and blood.

“Chuffin’ heck, it’s a baby,” he said, stunned by the obvious as he eased it out.

His hands came away , and there was a baby in them. He turned it over, although there was still a fleshy cord attached that disappeared up inside Morag. He reached for the nearest bedsheet, and wiped the baby’s face. It began to cry.

There was a sound outside, distant but so loud and huge and layered that distance meant nothing. It didn’t drown out the baby’s cry but matched it, harmonised with it and echoed it back a millionfold.

Nina heard the noise – a gazillion rusted and badly played trumpets - as she ran up the stairs of Great Barr Hall. She collided with the armed response officer holding the door open at the top of the stairs, rebounded off him and skidded down the corridor to the open door.

Morag sat in the bed, knees bent, a mewling bundle gathered in her lap, wrapped in blankets. Rod stood at her side, hands slick with baby goo. From a cupboard came the sounds of smallscale wrestling and a cry of “No! You will not hug Steve. Steve is unhuggable, fiend!”

Through the window, a light that managed to be both red and green at the same time, flooded the room. Nina stepped towards the window in slow trepidation.

“What’s the time?” she whispered.

Rod looked at his watch. “Ten past midnight.”

“The kaatbari.”

“A healthy baby boy,” said Rod.

“Girl,” said Morag, correcting him.

“Really?”

“You didn’t notice?”

Nina looked out the window. The night sky outside had been ripped in two, opened like a savage vertical wound a mile high.

“The anti-Christ is a woman,” said Rod. “Figures.”

“Sexist,” said Nina.

Rod shrugged.

The edges of the sky-wound bubbled and boiled and bled, except it wasn’t blood. Fat, impossible shapes spilled from the heavens.

“Those are gods,” said Nina, guessing.

“The Soulgate,” said Morag. “The world ends today.”

Rod tutted. “So, the world ends on a Friday?”

“We don’t even get the weekend off,” said Nina.

“Can we stop it?” he said.

“No,” said Morag. “That’s it. The end is actually literally nigh. It’s fucking here. The Venislarn have won.”

“But maybe we can make them wish they hadn’t,” said Nina.

“And what does that mean?”

Nina gave a crazy head jiggle. “Dunno. Just sounded like something cool to say.”

She turned away from the impending end of the world and looked at Morag. Morag looked like shit, hardly an advert for motherhood.

Morag looked Nina up and down. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“More important question,” said Nina, “is the baby a carrot top?”

“With her mum and dad, the odds were against her,” said Morag, cracking a tired smile.

Nina peeked into the swaddling blankets and the mass of sticky pink flesh and ginger wisps of hair. Such a little thing. She squeezed Morag’s arm.

“She’s going to be trouble, you know.”

Rod drew his pistol and checked his ammo. “Kids always are.”

Author Notes

YES - Matthew Boulton (1728 – 1809), Anne Boulton (1735 – 1783), the Boulton children, Erasmus Darwin (1731 – 1802), John Scale (1737 – 1792), James Watt (1736 – 1819), Josiah Wedgwood (1730 – 1795) and Samuel Galton Jr (1753 – 1832) are all historical figures and, we hope, are somewhat like the characters we have made them out to be. Nearly all other characters in this book are fictional creations.

YES – Pineapples were of extraordinarily high value in Georgian England. It was common practice for wealthy families to hire pineapples as centrepieces for society dinners. Few would be able to own one, let alone eat it.

YES – Theft was one of dozens of crimes that, in Georgian England, were punishable by death or transportation.

YES – Soho House is, to the best of our abilities, as described in this book. It is now a museum and a much appreciated source for this novel.

YES – Soho House was, in Boulton’s time, two to three miles from Birmingham but the city has now expanded to surround it.

YES – The Soho Manufactory was arguably the first true ‘factory’ in the world. It revolutionised production methods and helped cement Birmingham’s reputation as an industrial powerhouse.

YES – Matthew Boulton did create a number of sidereal clocks, including the one described in this book.

NO – The sidereal clock does not have any actual magical properties.

YES – Client Hills, St Kenelm’s Pass and the Hagley Wood are as described in the book. One of the authors spent a very instructive afternoon there, trying to find the location of a famous tree.

NO – There is no well (containing demons or not) in Hagley Wood. However, this was inspired by St Kenelm’s Well in the Parish of Romsley a couple of miles away. The spring is said to have healing powers. One of the authors has a bottle of the holy water at home but has not had cause to use it yet.

YES – The Crown Inn in Deritend is real and is the oldest secular building in Birmingham. Parts of it date back to the mid-fourteenth century although the pub building Nina visited (both in past and present) was probably constructed in the early fifteen hundreds.

YES – Georgian sausages were frequently called ‘mystery bags’. Why this honest piece of terminology fell out of favour is a mystery.

NO – It would be unfair to attribute Erasmus Darwin’s rocket designs to the entirely fictional Isabella. The designs were real but the rocket was never constructed.

NO – A band of wandering Spaniards were not found on the South Yorkshire hills in 1758. We just made that up.

YES – The ruins of Dudley Castle sits on a hill above the Black Country town and Dudley Zoo sits at the bottom.

NO – There is no alien menagerie halfway between the two.

YES – Dudley Zoo features a number of modernist concrete animal enclosures. They were designed and installed by the Tecton Group, an architectural group who helped bring European modernism to Great Britain. The modernist enclosures are listed buildings and thus protected from demolition. Most of the other zoo buildings are art deco.

YES –Great Barr Hall is real place although you might struggle to find it these days. It was built in 1777 but then leased by Lunar Society member Samuel Galton 11 years later. From that point on it became a favourite meeting place of the society. For nearly all of the twentieth century, the hall was part of St Margaret’s Mental Hospital but the hall was abandoned in 1978 and the rest of the hospital finally closed in 2004.

YES - The exterior of Great Barr Hall is as described in the book. The building is, unfortunately, a ruin. One of the authors spent an instructive afternoon exploring the site of the house (we are fans of instructive afternoons) but there was no act of criminal trespass and you can’t prove otherwise.

NO – Great Barr Hall is not being used as the secret base of a shadowy organisation. The property company managing the site is nothing like Forward Management Ltd, which is entirely fictional.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank James Brogden, horror author and friend, for an instructive tour of Hagley Wood and St Kenelm’s Pass.

We would like to thank Pilar Esteban and John Greenan for their assistance with Spanish dialogue.

We would also like to thank Sgt Mark Smith for being our military advisor and pointing out many of the things Rod should have done (but didn’t) in our first draft of this novel.

Any mistakes in the text are definitely ours, not theirs.

Thank you from the authors!

Many thanks to you, the reader for taking the time to read this book.

We'd be incredibly grateful if you could leave a review. Reviews mean so much to authors, and it helps other readers to find our work as well.

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The next few pages will tell you about some of our other books.

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The world’s last day has arrived. Hell itself has come to earth. Streets of fire, rivers of blood and the trains aren’t running on time.

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US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B084M6BT5H/

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B084M6BT5H/

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US: http://www.amazon.com/Clovenhoof-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG/

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clovenhoof-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG/

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UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spell-Country-Heide-Goody-ebook/dp/B078NRFL93

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UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowflake-Heide-Goody-ebook/dp/B07F3X4XF2

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UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SMPH3DB