David fell asleep, exhausted and miserable. He slept in his chair that night. Isaac took over caring for Lublamai. The food had passed through him, and the first noisome duty was to clean up his shit.

Isaac bundled up the fouled clothes and shoved them into one of the warehouse’s boilers. He thought of Lin. He hoped she came to him soon.

He realized he was pining.

Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Things stirred in the night.

In the morning, in the small hours and again when the sun had risen, more idiot bodies were found. This time there were five. Two vagrants who hid under the bridges of Gross Coil. A baker walking home from work in Nigh Sump. A doctor in Vaudois Hill. A bargewoman out beyond Raven’s Gate. A spattering of attacks that disfigured the city without pattern. North; east; west; south. There were no safe boroughs.

Lin slept badly. She had been touched by Isaac’s note, to think of him crossing the city just to plant a piece of paper on her door, but she had also been concerned. There was a hysterical tone to the short paragraph, and the plea to come to the laboratory was so utterly out of character that it frightened her.

Nevertheless, she would have come immediately had she not returned to Aspic Hole late, too late to travel. She had not been working. The previous morning she had woken to find a note thrust under her door.

Pressing business necessitates the postponement of appointments until further notice. You will be contacted when resumption of duties is possible.

M.

Lin had pocketed the curt note and wandered to Kinken. She had resumed her melancholy contemplations. And then, with a curious sense of amazement, as if she was watching a performance of her own life and was surprised at the turn of events, she had walked north-west out of Kinken to Skulkford, and boarded the railway. She had taken the two stops north on the Sink Line, to be swallowed by the vast tarry maw of Perdido Street Station. There in the confusion and hissing steam of the enormous central concourse, where the five lines met like an enormous iron and wood star, she had changed trains for the Verso Line.

There had been a five-minute wait while the boiler was stoked in the cavern at the centre of the station. Enough time for Lin to look at herself in incredulity, to ask herself what in the name of Awesome Broodma she was doing. And perhaps in the name of other gods.