“This isn’t a parlor game, 40. I’m not here to play Twenty Questions. I brought you here to see if you really were a dreamwalker.”

“In the flesh,” I said.

“Not always, from the sound of it. Sometimes you jump out of that flesh.” He looked me up and down. “They got you from the central cohort. From the inner sanctum of the syndicate. You must have been careless.”

“Not careless. Unlucky.” I stared him out. “What’s their concern with the syndicate?”

“It’s keeping all the good voyants for itself. It’s hiding all the binders and dreamwalkers and oracles—all the higher orders, the ones Nashira wants in her colony. That’s their concern with the syndicate, 40. That’s why they’re going to sign this new Act.”

“What does it say?”

“Nashira’s been struggling to get hold of decent voyants. They’re all protected by gangs. Until they figure out how to disband the mime-lords in London, they have no choice but to expand to get better ones. The Act promises that a Sheol II will be established within two years, with Scion Paris as its harvest citadel.” He traced the wounds on his chest. “And who’s going to stop them, with the Emim there to kill us if we try?”

A strange, cold feeling came over me.

Nashira considered the syndicate a threat. That was news to me. I knew the mime-lords as a band of backbiting, self-seeking egoists—at least, that was what the central ones were like. The Unnatural Assembly hadn’t met for years; the mime-lords had been allowed to do as they liked in their own areas, seeing as Hector was too busy whoring and gambling to manage them. Yet far away in Sheol I, the blood-sovereign of the Rephaim feared the lawless rabble.

“You’re one of her loyal followers now.” I glanced at his red tunic. “Are you going to help them?”

“I’m not loyal, 40. That’s just what I tell them.” He looked at me. “Have you ever seen a Reph bleed?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Their blood is called ectoplasm. Duckett’s ultimate obsession. Rephs are something like the æther in flesh. Their blood is the æther liquefied. You see ectoplasm; you see the æther. You drink it; you become the æther. Like them.”

“Wouldn’t that mean amaurotics could use the æther? All they’d have to do is touch a bit of ectoplasm.”

“Right. For rotties, in theory, ecto would act as a kind of substitute aura. Short-term, of course. The side effects only last about fifteen minutes. Still, if we did some science and smoothed out the rough edges, I’m willing to bet we could sell an ‘instant clairvoyance’ pill within a few years.” He gazed out down at the city. “It’ll happen one day, 40. We’ll be the ones experimenting on these bastards, not the other way around.”