They passed Bohrum Junction where houses converged in a wedge of antique architecture, past dry fountains where war orphans played some catchpenny game and tied shell-casings to a dog too diseased to eat. Toro walked, making no effort to hide himself, and the children pointed and catcalled. Hey Bull, hey Bull, what you going to do? Who you going to kill? Cutter did not know if they thought Ori just a man in a strange uniform, or if they knew they had seen the bandit kithless himself that night. Perhaps in the exotica of the Collective, gods and the unique arcane were not worth awe.

Rahul came with saurian gait, knives in each human hand, his muscular reptile claws clenching. "Come come on," said Qurabin.

Each wall of graffiti Ori would stop and stare at with light- emitting Bull-mask eyes. With an effortful grunt he straightened his legs, poked into nothing, and then there he was again in a new rent scant feet away, so fast Cutter could not be sure his feet had not still dangled from the first hole as his head emerged yards off.

"He’s here," Ori said. "Trauka Station. Come."

Not a mile off. They passed near the riverwall through long- emptied markets, where the integuments of the stalls were left, metal ribs slotted together, a herd of skeletons.

They were just one of the running groups that night. Into Trauka through narrow old streets in a mix of ugly architecture, under paint proclaiming Free Collective Territory and Fuck You Stem-Fulcher written then crossed out and Been done mate appended in another hand. Toro disappeared, reappeared a street from them, beckoning, splitting worldskin to keep sure of his quarry’s motion, coming back to the party to direct them. As if they were directed by a dozen identical bull-faced men throughout the city.

The smoke and miracle-colour blood that dripped from Toro’s helmet was thick; the horns were sparking as if with friction. So much violence against ontology was straining the thaumaturgic circuits. "Come," Toro said again, and beckoned. "Just here, two turns from here, left left, he’s moving, come now."

Judah stopped, quickly set down ceramic conductors and a funnel in the darkest part of a brick overhang. There was a snap of thaumaturgy. He sounded an invocatory whisper-no not an invocation-he had told Cutter that the difference was crucial-not an invocation but a creation, a constitution of matter or ideomatter. Cutter watched and Judah gathered. Cutter felt the creep of awe on his skin, watching the man for whom he felt and had always felt so animal an emotion, surely the most potent golemist in New Crobuzon, its autodidact magus.