Albert looked hard at him. ‘I’m getting the feeling you know a lot more than you’re saying, Father. You see, I’ve heard of the this Code before. A man I’d seen every day for four years. He was shouting about the Code too, while they took him away. So, tell me then. What’s all this special business is about Theo and what on earth does she have to do with any of this? Just tell me!’

‘I am telling you, Albert,’ said Father. ‘The answer to your question is that she does not know why she is so special, or how, because the fact of the matter is that we do not know either. We only know that she is.’

‘Huh?’ said Albert, feeling like a man who has confidently stepped on to a firm, newly laid road, only to discover that things are not quite as they seem and that he must now devote the next few minutes of his life to devising a method of extricating himself from quicksand. ‘What the hell does that mean? And again, I ask you, what could Seekers possibly want with Theo?’

‘They think she might know where it is, which she does not, but—’

‘It? You mean the Code? What’s there to—it isn’t even real!’

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘Well, obviously! It’s just another stupid fairy—’ he stopped, looking at their faces, feeling a growing sense of unease. ‘You’re saying it’s real? That this one is true?’

‘Yes, Albert, that is exactly what I am saying,’ said Father quietly, looking at him. ‘Do you think so many people would risk so much for a mere legend? No, it is real, very real indeed.’

More than anything, it was Father’s placidity, the air of utter assurance, that staggered him. If he’d heard it from anybody else, he’d have been tempted to report the chap as addled or an addict or, perhaps, if he had felt the urge to be completely accurate, an addled addict.

But there was something about the man’s surety—his air of sincerity and, of course, the fact that he had not yet exhibited any outward signs of being a crackpot or a junkie—that convinced Albert at least that Father actually believed what he was saying. Even so, he was tempted to laugh aloud outright.

So he laughed aloud outright.

‘You’re mad,’ he said, when he was done laughing aloud outright. ‘I’ve spent most of my life listening to stories like this. Only, what you’re telling me is, that out of all the unicorns out there, this one just happens to be real? Next you’ll be telling me that there’s—’ At which point he happen to glance at Father’s face and, seeing the expression there, he faltered.

‘Tell me, Albert,’ said Father. ‘What do you know of the history of the City?’