After an hour of talk Isaac could not stay awake any longer. His head slumped as he listened. He began to drool on his collar. His tiredness spread out and infected Derkhan and Lemuel. They slept, briefly.

Like Isaac, they rolled unhappily in the muggy air, sweating in the close air of the shack. Isaac’s sleep was more disturbed than theirs, and he whimpered several times in the heat. A little before noon, Lemuel pulled himself up and roused the others. Isaac awoke moaning Lin’s name. He was fuddled with exhaustion and bad sleep and misery, and he forgot to be angry with Lemuel. He hardly recognized that Lemuel was there.

“I’m going to get some company,” said Lemuel. “Isaac, you better get ready to prepare those helmets that Dee tells me about. We’re going to need at least seven, I reckon.”

“Seven?” mumbled Isaac. “Who’re you getting? Where you off to?”

“As I’ve told you, I feel safer with a little protection,” said Lemuel, and smiled coldly. “I put the word out that there was a little protection work going, and I gather there’ve been a few responses. I’m off to assess ’em. And I will guarantee to bring a metalhexer for you before the evening sets in. One of the applicants, or failing that there’s a guy who owes me a favour in Abrogate Green. I’ll see you both at . . . um . . . seven o’clock, outside the dump.”

He left. Derkhan moved closer to Isaac in his exhausted misery and put her arm around him. He sniffled like a child in her arms, the dream of Lin still clinging to him.

A homegrown nightmare. A genuine misery from deep in his mind.

The militia crews were busy fitting enormous mirrors of polished metal to the backs of the airship harnesses.

It was impossible to refit the engine rooms or change the layout of the cabs, but they covered the front windows with thick black curtains. The pilot would spin the wheel blind, instructed by the yells from the officers halfway along the gantry, staring out of the rear windows above the enormous propellers, into the angled mirrors that offered a confusing but complete view of the sky before the dirigible.

Motley’s hand-picked crew were escorted to the top of the Spike by Eliza Stem-Fulcher herself.