From all the way across the city, from the four compass points, they converged in a frenzy of flapping, four starving exultant powerful bodies, descending to feed.

There was a tiny putter of lights on a little console. Isaac edged closer, keeping his body low, as if he could duck under the beacon of energy pouring from Andrej’s skull. The old man lolled and twitched on the ground.

Isaac was careful not to look at Andrej’s sprawling form. He peered at the console, making sense of the little play of diodes.

“I think it’s the Construct Council,” he said over the drab rainfall sound. “It’s sending instructions to get round the firewall, but I don’t think it’ll be able to. This is too simple for it,” he said, and patted the circuit-valve. “There’s nothing for it to get control of.” Isaac visualized a struggle in the femtoscopic byways of wiring.

He looked up.

The Weaver was ignoring him and them all, drumming its little fingers against the slick concrete in complicated rhythms. Its low voice was impenetrable.

Derkhan was staring in exhausted disgust at Andrej. Her head jerked gently back and forward as if she was rocked by waves. Her mouth moved. She spoke in silent tongues. Don’t die, thought Isaac fervently, staring at the ruined old man, seeing his face contort as bizarre feedback rocked him, you can’t die yet, you have to hold on.

Yagharek was standing. He pointed up, suddenly, into a far quadrant of the sky.

“They have changed course,” he said harshly. Isaac looked up and saw what Yagharek was indicating.

Far away, halfway to the edge of the city, three of the drifting dirigibles had turned purposefully. They were hardly visible to human eyes, darker blots against the night sky, picked out with navigation lights. But it was clear that their fitful, random motion had changed; that they were powering ponderously towards Perdido Street Station, converging.

“They’re on to us,” said Isaac. He did not feel fearful, only tense and weirdly sad. “They’re coming. Godspit and shit! We’ve got about ten, fifteen minutes before they get here. We just have to hope the moths are quicker.”

“No. No.” Yagharek was shaking his head with quick violence. His head was cocked. His arms moved quickly, motioning them all to silence. Isaac and Derkhan froze. The Weaver continued its insane monologue, but it was subdued and hushed. Isaac prayed that it would not become bored and disappear. The apparatus, the constructed mind, the crisis would all collapse.

The air around them all was welting, splitting like troubled skin, as the force of that unthinkable and burgeoning blast of power continued to grow.

Yagharek was listening intently through the rain.