Isaac ducked down, scrambled half down off the wall into the little yard. The open manhole wafted up noisome stenches from below.

Lemuel stared at him in disbelief.

“Help me!” he shrieked. “Jabber, fuck, no, oh Jabber no . . . Don’t go! Help me!”

He swung his arms like a child in a tantrum, the cactus people descending on him, his nails breaking and his fingers scraping raw as he tried frantically to claw his way up the wall pulling his useless legs behind him. Isaac stared at him in mortification, knowing that there was nothing at all he could do, that there was no time to go down for him, that the cactus people were almost on him, that his wounds would kill him even if Isaac could pull him across the wall, and knowing that even so, Lemuel’s last thoughts as he looked up were of Isaac’s betrayal.

From behind the mouldering concrete of the wall, Isaac heard Lemuel’s screams as the cactacae reached him.

“He’s nothing to do with it!” he shouted out in a rage of grief. Pengefinchess, her face set, dropped out of sight into the sewer that toiled below. “He’s nothing to do with it at all!” screamed Isaac, desperate for Lemuel’s wails to stop. Derkhan followed the vodyanoi, her face white, her ruined ear-hole bleeding. “Let him go you fucks, you shits, you stupid cactus bastards!” Isaac shrieked over Lemuel’s cacophony. Yagharek descended to his shoulders and gripped Isaac’s ankle fiercely, gesticulating at him to come, his inhuman beak clattering as he snapped in agitation. “He was helping you . . .” shouted Isaac with exhausted horror.

As Yagharek disappeared, Isaac gripped the edge of the manhole and lowered himself in. He squeezed his tight fat bulk past the metal lips and scrabbled with the lid, preparing to replace it as he dropped out of sight.

Lemuel continued to shout, in pain and fear, from over the wall. The brutal sounds of the terrified, triumphant cactacae punishing the intruder went on and on.

It’ll stop, thought Isaac desperately as he descended. They’re frightened and confused, they don’t know what’s going on. They’ll put a chakri or a knife or a bullet in his head any moment, finish this, put an end to this. They’ve no reason to keep him alive, he thought, they’ll kill him because they think he’s with the moths, they’ll do their bit to cleanse the dome, they’ll finish this, they’re panicking, they’re not torturers, he thought, they just want to stop the horror . . . They’ll end this any second, he thought in misery. This will stop now.