The daylight had spread and the occasional guttural sound of the trains increased. The raucous and filthy early morning dialogue of the barge-families began, shouted across the water on the other side of the rubbish. The early shifts of workers began to trudge into the factories and abase themselves before the vast chains, the steam engines and juddering hammers of those profane cathedrals.

There were only the five figures left in the clearing: Isaac and his companions; the ghastly lich that spoke for the Construct Council; and the looming Council itself, moving its segmented limbs sedately.

Isaac, Derkhan and Yagharek rose to go. They were exhausted and in varying degrees of pain, from knees and hands flayed by the barbed ground to Isaac’s still-shuddering head. They were smeared with muck and grime. They shed dust as thick as smoke. It was as if they burned.

They stashed the mirrors and the material to make helmets in a place they would remember in the dump. Isaac and Derkhan looked around in confusion at the landscape so utterly changed by daylight, its threatening demeanour become pathetic, the half-glimpsed looming forms revealed as broken prams and torn mattresses. Yagharek picked his bound feet up high, stumbling a little, and walked unerringly towards the pathway from where they had come.

Isaac and Derkhan joined him. They were utterly drained. Derkhan’s face was white, and she dabbed in miserable pain at her missing ear. As they were about to disappear behind the shifting walls of crushed rubbish, the avatar called out.

When Isaac heard what the avatar said, he began to frown, and did not stop while he turned away and walked out of the Council’s presence with his companions, nor did he stop all the while he wound his way through the channels in the industrial midden and out into the slowly illuminated estates of Griss Twist. The Construct Council’s words stayed with him, and he thought them over, carefully.

“You cannot hold on safely to everything you carry, der Grimnebulin,” the avatar had said. “In future, do not leave your precious things beside the railway.

“Bring your crisis engine to me,” it had said, “for safekeeping.”

Chapter 41

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“There is a gentleman and a . . . a young boy to see you, Mr. Mayor,” said Davinia, through the speaking tube. “The gentleman told me to tell you that Mr. Rescue sent him regarding the . . . plumbing in R&D.” Her voice faltered nervously over the obvious code.

“Let them in,” said Rudgutter instantly, recognizing the handlinger passwords.