It made very little sense, Derkhan realized, to have begged Pengefinchess to help at this last stage of the hunt. Undoubtedly it had made things easier, but they could have managed without her, with the help of more of the Council’s vodyanoi followers. And it made little sense to feel affected by her leaving, even if remotely; to wish Pengefinchess luck; to wave with feeling and feel a faint lack. The vodyanoi mercenary was taking her leave, was disappearing for more lucrative and safer contracts. Derkhan owed her nothing, least of all thanks or affection.

But circumstances had made them comrades, and Derkhan was sorry to see her go. She had been part, a small part, of this chaotic nightmare struggle, and Derkhan marked her passing.

The arm and bow disappeared. Pengefinchess submerged again.

Derkhan turned her back on the river and headed back into the Council’s labyrinth.

She followed the trail of decaying cable through the twists of the junkyard scenery, into the Council’s presence. The avatar stood waiting by the diminished coil of rubber-swathed wire.

“Is the crossing successful?” he asked as soon as he saw her. He stumbled forwards, the cable that burst from his brainpan rattling behind him. Derkhan nodded.

“We’ve got to get things ready here,” she said. “Where’s the output?”

The avatar turned and indicated for her to follow him. He stopped for a moment and picked up the other end of the cable. He staggered under its weight, but he did not complain or ask for help, and Derkhan did not volunteer.

With the thick insulated wire under his arm, the avatar approached the constellation of rubbish that Derkhan recognized as the Construct Council’s head (with a slight unsettling jolt, as at a child’s book of optical tricks, as if an ink drawing of a young woman’s face had suddenly become a crone’s). It still lolled sideways, without any sign of life.

The avatar reached up over the grille that doubled as the Council’s metal teeth. Behind one of the enormous lights Derkhan knew were its eyes, a tangled knot of wire and tubing and rubbish burst out of a casing, in which the stuttering valves of some vastly complex analytical engine were working.

It was the first sign that the great construct was conscious. Derkhan thought she saw light glimmer faintly, waxing and waning, in the Council’s huge eyes.

The avatar pulled the cable into position beside the analogue brain, one of the network that made up the Council’s peculiar inhuman consciousness. He untwisted several of the thick wires in the cable, and in the explosion of metal from the Council’s head. Derkhan looked away, sickened, as the avatar placidly ignored the way the vicious metal tore jagged holes in his hands, and sluggish, greying blood oozed fitfully out and over his decaying skin.