It’s the first smile they have shared since their reunion. Perhaps they came here just for that. A night and a day cooped up at Grendel’s house. Watching Lady Naylor bustling about; Sebastian coming and going. The child in the mask. They needed air. And to see whether Lady Naylor would let them go; whether they were prisoners or free.

They found their way back to the market square almost mechanically. This is where they were meant to have met. But when Charlie arrived here, long after nightfall the previous day, there had been no one to greet him. Cold and hungry, he had sought shelter in the church. The door had been locked but the priest had heard him; had listened to his explanations; and had realised that this dirty, shivering lad was the very Charlie Grendel’s newfound friends were looking for. Next came Charlie’s introduction to the man without Smoke. It made him happy somehow: that such a thing could be. Happy — until Thomas and Livia returned, her mother in tow.

Now he casts around for words to say what he feels.

“My cousin gave me some naughty books last Christmas,” Charlie states abruptly. “Not naughty, really. Risqué. Five volumes that he found in his late grandmother’s study. All five of them romances, translated from the French. They all have the same plot: two men love the same girl. They all end in a duel.”

Thomas does not deny what Charlie is implying. His features are gaunt in the pale light. They have all lost weight these past ten days. It makes them look old. “It may be an illusion, Charlie. A lie. Borrowed emotion. Round here, it drifts on the air.” Thomas frowns, clearly worried by the thought. “In any case, she does not even like me. She hates me.”

“No, not quite hate.”

Their words sound hard in the cold, pewless nave. Suddenly, scared by this coldness, they reach out and grab each other’s hand, fiercely, like two children lost in the woods. They race out of the church, still clutching each other, back out into the square. The sun is low in the sky, and for a moment it is beautiful, London’s haze of sin, soaking up the slanting rays and unfurling in orange Smoke rings high above their heads.

ф

They walk back slowly, recounting to each other the days spent apart. They have done this before, but then there were other listeners and the tales tailored to another purpose. Charlie does not linger on Renfrew; the day he spent chained to the schoolmaster’s bed. He does tell Thomas how he got sick on the way back.

“From the stomach. Rotten potatoes and all the snow I ate tramping through the night. They never write about that in stories. Getting the runs.”