At the door, they turned their heads once, quickly. They both raised their hands in farewell to Derkhan. Isaac looked over to where Pengefinchess watched them placidly. Hesitantly, he raised his hand to her, raised his eyebrows in a query—Will I see you again? he might have been asking, or Will you help us? Pengefinchess raised her great splayed hand in noncommittal response and looked away.

Isaac turned away, set his lips.

He and Yagharek began the dangerous journey across the city.

They did not risk crossing the rail bridge. They were afraid in case an irate train driver did more than blast them with a steam-whistle as he tore past. He might stare at them and clock their faces, or report to his superiors at Sly or Spit Bazaar Stations, or at Perdido Street Station itself, that three stupid dossers had blundered their way onto the rails and were heading for disaster.

Interception was too dangerous. So instead, Isaac and Yagharek clambered down the crumbling stone slope by the railway line, hanging on to Andrej’s body as it tumbled and sprawled towards the quiet pavements.

The heat was intense, but not fierce: it seemed instead like some absence, some enormous citywide lack. It was as if the sun was etiolated, as if its rays bleached out the shadows and cool undersides that gave the architecture its reality. The sun’s heat stifled sounds and bled them of substance. Isaac sweated and cursed quietly beneath his putrid rags. He felt as if he stalked through some vaguely realized dream of heat.

With Andrej supported between them like a friend paralysed with cheap liquor, Isaac and Yagharek tramped through the streets, making for Cockscomb Bridge.

They were interlopers here. This was not Dog Fenn or Badside or the Ketch Heath slums. There, they would have been invisible.

They crossed the bridge nervously. They were hemmed in by its lively stones, surrounded by the sneers and jibes of shopkeepers and customers.

Yagharek kept one surreptitious hand clamped on a cluster of nerve and arterial tissue at the side of Andrej’s neck, ready to pinch hard if the old man gave any sign of waking. Isaac muttered, a coarse babble of swearing that sounded like drunken rambling. It was a disguise, in part. He was also steeling himself.

“Come on, fucker,” he grunted, tense and quiet, “come on, come on. Fucker. Scum. Bastard.” He did not know who he was swearing at.

Isaac and Yagharek crossed the bridge slowly, supporting their companion and their precious bag of equipment. The flow of people parted around them, let them pass with only jeers behind them. They could not let the opprobrium grow and become confrontation. If some bored toughs decided to kill time by harassing beggars, it would be catastrophic.