Isaac turned at the sound of the bleating and was caught in a moist detonation of flesh. Shredded innards slopped noisily over the roof, rendering it treacherous.

The third moth had succumbed.

Isaac stared at the dark, lolling shape, hard and variegated, as big as a bear. It was spreadeagled in a radial burst of limbs and bodyparts, dripping from its emptied-out thorax. The Weaver bent forward like a child and prodded the splayed exoskeleton with a tentative finger.

Andrej still moved, though his scissoring kicks were fitful. The moths had not drunk him, but the massive wash of artificial thoughts that bubbled up from the helmet. His mind still worked, bewildered and fearful and locked in the terrible feedback loop of the crisis engine. He was slowing down, his body collapsing under the extraordinary strain. His mouth worked in exaggerated yawns to clear itself of the thick, rotten-smelling saliva.

Directly above him, the final moth had spiralled into the fountain of energy from his helmet. Its wings were still, angled to control its fall, as it dropped like some murderous weapon out of the sky towards the tangled carnage. It bore down on the source of the feast, a clutch of arms and hands and hooks extended in frantic predation.

The militia lieutenant rose a foot or so over the grooved guttering at the edge of the plateau. He faltered and shouted something at his men—“. . . ing Weaver!”—then fired wildly at Isaac. Isaac leapt sideways, grunted in quick triumph when he realized that he was uninjured. He grabbed a spanner from the pile of tools by his foot and hurled it at the mirrored helmet.

Something rocked unsteadily in the air around Isaac. His gut tensed and fluttered. He looked around wildly.

Derkhan was moving backwards from the edge of the roof, her face creased with inarticulate horror. She was staring around her in inchoate fear. Yagharek was holding his left hand to his head, the long knife dangling uncertainly from his fingers. His right hand, his whip, was motionless.

The Weaver looked up and muttered.

There was a small round hole in Andrej’s chest where the officer’s bullet had caught him. Blood was welling out of it in lazy pulses, dribbling across his belly and saturating his filthy clothes. His face was white, his eyes closed.

Isaac shouted and rushed to him, held the old man’s hand.

The pattern of Andrej’s brainwaves faltered. The engines combining the Weaver’s and the Council’s exudations skittered uncertainly as their template, their reference, suddenly ebbed.

Andrej was tenacious. He was an old man whose body was collapsing under the oppressive weight of a rotting, wasting disease, whose mind was stiff with coagulated dream-emissions. But even with a bullet lodged under his heart and his lung haemorrhaging, it took him nearly ten seconds to die.