Motley’s men tried to aim their weapons around him, but his towering bulk occluded their line of fire. They shouted to each other and tried to devise strategies, but they could not. They gazed into their mirrors, watched the huge, predatory moth under Motley’s arms and limbs, through gaps in his outline. They were cowed by the monstrous sight.

Isaac stretched his arm back, reached for Derkhan.

“Come here, Lin,” he hissed, “and don’t look behind you.”

It was like some terrifying children’s game.

Yagharek and Derkhan shifted quietly, moving towards each other behind the moth. It chittered and looked up at their motion, but it remained more wary of the mass of figures before it, and it did not turn round.

Lin slid fitfully along the floor towards Isaac’s back, his clutching arms. A little way from him, she hesitated. She saw Motley, transfixed as if amazed, gazing past Isaac and over her, captivated by . . . something.

She did not know what was happening, what was behind her.

She knew nothing about the moths.

Isaac saw her hesitate, and began to howl at her not to stop.

Lin was an artist. She created with her touch and taste, making tactile objects. Visible objects. Sculpture to be fondled and seen.

She was fascinated by colour and light and shadow, by the interplay of shapes and lines, negative and positive spaces.

She had been locked in the attic for a long time.

In her position, some would have sabotaged the vast sculpture of Motley. The commission had become a sentence, after all. But Lin did not destroy it or skimp in her work. She poured everything she could, all her pent-up creative energy into that one monolithic and terrible piece. As Motley had known she would.

It had been her only escape. Her only means of expression. Starved of all the light and colour and shapeliness of the world, she had focused in her fear and pain and become obsessed. Creating a presence herself, the better to beguile her.

And now something extraordinary had entered her attic world.

She knew nothing of the slake-moths. The command don’t look behind you was familiar from fables, made sense only as a moralistic injuncture, some heavy-handed lesson. Isaac must mean be quick or don’t doubt me, something like that. His command made sense only as an emotional exhortation.

Lin was an artist. Savaged and tortured, confused by imprisonment and pain and degradation, Lin grasped only that something extraordinary, some utterly affecting sight had risen up behind her. And hungry for any kind of wonder after the weeks of pain in the shadow of those drab, colourless and shapeless walls, she paused, then quickly glanced behind her.

Isaac and Derkhan screamed in terrible disbelief; Yagharek called out with shock like some livid crow.