Not that they have touched him yet. They are in awe of his death. He looks impossibly thin; the hands ready to snap off at the wrists, the shoulders sharp and angular. Only his stomach is oddly distended, half spherical, as though ready to burst with undigested Soot. Charlie watches Livia study him. She lifts her hand once, as though to rearrange him, then lets it drop again.

“He could have stepped through,” she says at last. “If his head fits, the rest would have, too. I wonder whether he realised.”

She frowns, steps forward suddenly, and takes hold of one arm and shoulder. A shifting of the weight, a twist, and Julius’s right shoulder and chest slide through the bars; the arm splayed out ahead of him, hand spread, the skin oddly white underneath the fingernails. His movement leaves a trail of tar along the iron of the bar.

They crouch down to him, Charlie and Livia. Thomas is behind them, a shadow watching from afar. Charlie wonders whether Livia wants to transport and bury her half brother; wonders, too, at the two other men lying beyond the barrier, out of reach. What she does, however, is unbutton Julius’s shirt. Charcoal skin, flaking off him; Soot and flesh fused. Charlie watches her touch Julius’s chest, recoil; pokes his own finger at the ribs, and feels it sink in to the knuckle.

“It’s like he is made of sin,” she mutters. Then: “You would have thought Mother would have noticed it. But she wouldn’t look at him. And she was in pain, in shock. It’s funny, I suppose. Crying over her failure. The means to reverse it a dozen steps behind her back.”

All at once, Charlie knows what she is thinking. It sends a shiver through him, gut-deep, of fear, of excitement; the burden of choice.

Revolution.

What young man has never dreamed of being its cause?

ф

Charlie stands, breathes. What is happening within him cannot be called thought. It has no words, for one thing, and knows no maths; does not calculate, but is simply the slow ascent of a decision already made, up from his centre to that sluggish organ that is his brain. He does not know how long it takes. His mouth, he notices, is full of Smoke.

Then he acts. Bends down to Julius, takes hold of his armpits, feels the brittle flesh move under his grip. Twists and pulls, trying to line up the shoulders, then the stomach and hips; that potbelly sticking, like a wine bladder pert with mud. Livia does not help him with his labour. Neither does Thomas; stands watching behind. Only when Julius’s thighs (emaciated; sticks of bone and black, the trousers torn beneath both knees) come sliding through, does Thomas step close. He pulls Charlie out of his crouch, looks him hard in the eye.

“What are you doing with him, Charlie?”

“You know what.”