The world greyed. He held onto the door, stood straight, shook his head. He could figure it out with Ayto. But Ayto had gone. Now he remembered. This time he’d picked one of the blocked doors at the back of the warehouse, smashed it in, discovered a corridor, and gone looking to see where it led.

Seeking another way out. Now Crimm needed a way out too. He had no better idea but to follow Ayto.

He lit a candle at the fire, and made for the back of the warehouse.

The door Ayto had opened was ajar. Crimm pushed it wide. Beyond was a dark corridor, bitterly cold, the growstone slick with ice. But already the air was a bit fresher.

He needed a coat. To get his coat meant crossing the room again, and he wasn’t sure he’d make it without passing out. There was a heap of blankets by the door, good alpaca wool shipped very expensively across the Western Ocean to Thaxa’s shop. He grabbed one, draped it over his shoulders, and walked down the corridor. Thinking more clearly, he tried to establish a sense of direction. He was heading deeper into the Wall, away from the land-facing side, towards the ocean face. He didn’t know how thick the Wall was here.

He came to the end of the corridor, and a choice of doors, to left, right, straight on. Which way would Ayto go? There was a mark on the door straight ahead, a few concentric squiggles. Ayto’s signature. This way then.

Another corridor, doors branching off, and then a fork, a narrower tunnel off to the right, a broader way straight on. Another scribble: straight on.

The latest corridor opened out into a larger chamber. It was warm, lit by a single oil lamp – and there was a stink of corruption that made Crimm recoil. Blankets and bodies on the floor, a kind of liquid mess.

Nobody moving. He was tempted to back out immediately, just shut the door. But there was an Ayto mark on the far wall; this was the way he had come, and evidently out through a door on the far side.

Crimm forced himself to follow, crossing the floor, trying not to touch the dead, their filthy blankets and clothes. Everything was covered with dried-up shit and vomit. Somebody had had the same idea he and Ayto had, to ride out the winter in the belly of the Wall. But one or more of them had come in here sick, and it had spread between the people, and got onto their clothes and their blankets and spread even more. It would have been much worse in here, he thought, if not for the cold, the lack of flies to attack the bodies.