Iona looked around. Nobody was nearby, so she quickened her pace and stood in front of Carter, blocking his path.

Without missing a beat Carter took a step to his left, walked round Iona, and kept going. He hadn’t reacted like you would to a person being in your way—it was like he was walking around a pillar.

Iona followed, this time a few steps behind so she could observe him. He walked at a constant, brisk pace and stared straight ahead. When he reached the end of the street he turned neatly on his heel, faced right, and walked down the next street. He seemed to be going somewhere and it wasn’t his home, or the school, or even the bureau: if he was going to any of those places he’d have turned the other way at the junction. And wherever he was going, he wasn’t speaking to anyone or looking at anything on the way.

Iona wanted to know where he was going and the only way to find out was to keep following.

* * *

The king rolled over to find Clarence sitting on his pillow. “There’s a rumor going around that you’re dead,” the cat said.

The king blinked. “Okay, tell them I’m not.”

“They’re gathering outside the tower and demanding to see you.”

“But look what happened last time I went outside.”

“I’m not suggesting you go outside—just go downstairs and wave at the window.”

“But what if someone gets a bow and arrow and shoots me?”

“We’re policing the crowd. If anyone’s got weapons we’ll pick them up.”

“How big’s the crowd?”

“A hundred, maybe two.”

“Ohh . . . I don’t know about this.”

“People have to know you’re not dead—it’ll only cause more unrest if—”

“Alright, alright.” The king got out of bed and looked for some trousers. He couldn’t wait until they caught the people who were causing all this chaos and things finally got back to normal.

* * *

Carter attracted no attention from other pedestrians. To them he just looked like another person going about his business. And he did look like just another person, Iona noted: it wasn’t just Carter she’d perceived wrongly all these years—it was everyone. Her fellow citizens might all be different heights and builds, with their own distinct body language, but they were beings made of wood like Carter and they always had been. The engineering of their bodies was precise and elegant but the face had been left out entirely, as if that level of subtlety was not even worth attempting. Perhaps blankness left more space for the observer to read their own meaning into it—after all, this was exactly what Iona had done. Their expressions were entirely suggested by their movements and tone of voice, and her own imagination filled whatever gap remained.

But how could she have not seen? Did she simply see what she wanted to see? She looked down at her own body, spreading her fingers, expecting the illusion of flesh to fall away and be replaced by wood: but nothing changed. She was different from the others. Perhaps she’d wanted to believe she lived among her own kind and her perceptions had obliged. Or perhaps it was a trick she had only now seen through. Whatever it was she could not unsee it. The action of opening Carter’s hatch had broken the spell. Everywhere she looked she was surrounded by wooden automata and it was all she could do not to panic.