But it was alone. Trapped under brick, in a claustrophobic warren that constricted it, flattened its wings, left it nowhere to go. Assailed on all sides by murderous, endless pain. The fire came and came again too fast for it to heal.

It staggered the length of the corridor in Motley’s headquarters, a white-hot ball, reaching out to the last with ragged claws and spines, trying to hunt. It fell just before the top of the stairs.

Motley and the Remade looked on in awe from halfway down, praying that it lay still, that it did not crawl over the lip of the stairway and tumble flaming onto them.

It did not. It was still while it died.

When they were sure the slake-moth was dead, Motley sent men and women up and down the stairs in quick columns, carrying sodden towels and blankets to control the blaze it had left in its wake.

It took twenty minutes before the fire was subdued. The beams and boards of the attic were split and smoke-fouled. Massive footprints of charred wood and blistered paint stretched the length of the passage. The smouldering body of the moth rested on the top of the stairs, an unrecognizable pile of flesh and tissue, twisted by heat into an even more exotic shape than it had had in life.

“Grimnebulin and his bastard friends’ll be gone,” said Motley. “Find them. Find where they went. Track them down. Trace them. Tonight. Now.”

It was easy to see how they had escaped, out of the window and onto the roof. From there, though, they could have gone in almost any direction. Motley’s men shifted, looking uneasily at each other.

“Move, you Remade scum,” raged Motley. “Find them now, track them down and bring them to me.”

Terrified gangs of Remade, of humans, of cactacae and vodyanoi set out from Motley’s terrace-den, off into the city. They made pointless plans, compared notes, frantically raced down to Sunter, to Echomire and Ludmead, to Kelltree and Mog Hill, all the way to Badside, over the river to Brock Marsh, to West Gidd and Griss Fell and Murkside and Saltpetre.

They might have walked past Isaac and his companions a thousand times.

There was an infinity of holes in New Crobuzon. There were far more hiding places than there were people to hide. Motley’s troops never had a chance.

On nights like that one, when rain and streetlamp light made all the lines and edges of the city complex—a palimpsest of gusting trees and architecture and sound, ancient ruins, darkness, catacombs, building sites, guesthouses, barren land, lights and pubs and sewers—it was an endless, recursive, secretive place.

Motley’s men made their way home empty-handed and afraid.

Motley raged and raged at the unfinished statue that taunted him, perfect and incomplete. His men searched the building, in case some clue had been missed.