In the last room on the attic corridor, they found a militiaman sitting with his back to the wall, comatose and alone. A bizarre, beautiful glass flintlock lay across his lap. A game of tic-tac-toe was scratched into the wood by his feet.

Crosses had won, in three moves.

Part 8

We run and hide like hunted vermin, but it is with relief and joy.

We know that we have won.

Isaac carries Lin in his arms, sometimes hauling her over his shoulder apologetically when the way is tough. We race away. We run as if we are spirits. Weary and exhilarated. The shabby geography in the east of the city cannot restrain us. We clamber over low fences and into narrow swathes of backyards, rude gardens of mutant apple trees and wretched brambles, dubious compost, mud and broken toys.

Sometimes a shade will pass across Derkhan’s face and she will murmur something. She thinks of Andrej; but it is hard that night to retain guilt, even when it is deserved. There is a sombre moment, but under that spew of warm rain, above the city lights that bloom promiscuous as weeds, it is hard not to catch each other’s eyes and smile or caw softly in astonishment.

The moths are gone.

There have been terrible, terrible costs. There has been Hell to pay. But tonight as we settle in a rooftop shack in Pincod, beyond the reach of the skyrails, a little way north of the railway and the squalor of Dark Water Station, we are triumphant.

In the morning, the newspapers are full of dire warnings. The Quarrell and The Messenger both hint that severe measures are to come.

Derkhan sleeps for hours, then sits alone, her sadness and her guilt finally given space to flower. Lin moves fitfully, in and out of consciousness. Isaac dozes and eats the food we have stolen. He cradles Lin constantly. He talks of Jack Half-a-Prayer in wondering tones.

He sifts through the battered and broken components of the crisis engine, tuts and purses his lips. He tells me he can get it working again, no problem.

At that I come alive with longing. A final freedom. I want it badly. Flight.

He reads the pilfered papers over my shoulder.

In the climate of crisis, the militia are to be given extraordinary powers, we read. They may revert to open, uniformed patrols. Civilian rights may be curtailed. Martial law is mooted.

But throughout that blustery day, the shit, the filthy discharge, the dream-poison of the slake-moths is sinking slowly through the æther and on into the earth. I fancy I can feel it as I lie under these dilapidated planks; it subsides gently around me, denatured by the daylight. It drifts like polluted snow through the planes that entangle the city, on through layers of materia, leeching out of our dimension and away.

And when the night comes, the nightmares have gone.