“Did you see it?” said Derkhan. “We’d just come up—it took us ages to work our way through the damn sewers, we kept hearing things . . .” She shook her head at the memory. “We found our way up through a manhole and we were in a street not too far from here. It was chaos, total chaos! The patrols were all running towards the temple, and we saw some . . . that light-gun thing. It was quite easy to make our way here. No one was interested in us . . .” Her voice trailed off. “We didn’t really see what happened,” she concluded quietly.

Yagharek breathed in deep.

“The moths are here,” he said. “I have seen their nest. I can take us there.”

The assembled company were elyctrified.

“Don’t the damn cactus know where they are?” said Isaac. Yagharek shook his head (a human gesture, the first he had learnt).

“They do not know the slake-moths sleep in their houses,” said Yagharek. “I heard them shouting: they think the moths come in to attack them. They think them intruders from without. They do not . . .” Yagharek stopped, thinking of that panic-stricken scene on the top of the cactacae sun-temple, of the helmetless cactus elders, the brave, idiot soldiers charging up, lucky enough to have missed the moths, saving themselves from pointless death. “They do not know how to deal with the moths at all,” he said quietly.

As he watched, Pengefinchess’s undine swept over her shirt from below, wetting her skin, rinsing the dust from her and her clothes, leaving them incongruously clean.

“We should find the nest,” said Yagharek. “I can take us to it.”

The adventurers nodded and began an automatic inventory of their weapons and equipment. Isaac and Derkhan looked nervous, but set their jaws. Lemuel looked away sardonically and began to pick his nails with a knife.

“There is something you must know,” said Yagharek. He was addressing everyone, and there was something peremptory in his tone, something that would not be ignored. Tansell and Shadrach looked up from carefully rummaging through their backpacks. Pengefinchess put down the bow she had been testing. Isaac looked at Yagharek with a terrible forlorn resignation.

“Three moths left by the broken roof, dandling mindless cactacae. But there are four. Vermishank told us. Perhaps he is wrong, or perhaps he lied. Perhaps another has died.

“Or perhaps,” he said, “one has stayed behind. Perhaps one is waiting for us.”

Chapter 44

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The cactacae patrols huddled together at the base of the Glasshouse, arguing with the remaining elders.

Shadrach crouched behind an alley, out of sight, and pulled a miniature telescope from some hidden pocket. He flicked it out to its full extent, played it over the congregated soldiers.