Maxie liked Ollie, but she never quite knew what he was thinking, what was going on in that scheming clever mind of his. Coming to the palace they’d had an aim, something to look forward to. It had kept them going. Kept them bound together. But since they’d arrived she wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

The park opened out to their left into a larger patch of grass. There was evidence of cultivation, mostly trashed, but someone had obviously tried to grow some new stuff. A few scrawny plants were drooping under the downpour. Other plants lay flat and dying in the mud.

It was a sorry sight.

“Months of work wasted,” said Jester. “This bunch don’t know anything.”

Blue looked around and spotted a bedraggled knot of kids sheltering under the awning of the old café. A modern structure of wood and glass. They appeared to be armed, and a couple of them sprinted off in the other direction.

“I guess they’ve seen us,” said Blue.

“Let’s keep going,” said Jester. “Get this over with.”

“Yeah.” Achilleus spat into the rain.

They soon arrived at the outlying tents of the squatters. A mixed bag, large and small, expensive and cheap, flimsy and watertight. They clustered around the end of the park with no sense of order. A few sections of ramshackle barricade had been erected, and two boys were keeping watch from under a piece of plastic sheeting.

The party from the palace walked into the camp. There was litter everywhere, strewn all over the muddy ground, hanging in the trees, piled up in corners. There was an old stroller filled with scrap wood. Apart from the few sentries they had seen, there was nobody else around. They were all either asleep or sheltering in their tents.

Across the road at the end of the park was Horse Guards Parade, a large drill square enclosed on three sides by buildings. Behind the buildings the great circle of the London Eye was visible, rising up into the rain-heavy sky.

The squatters had built more permanent dwellings here: shacks and sheds and lean-tos knocked together from scavenged materials. More plastic sheeting covered many of the structures, but much of it was sagging under the force of the storm and simply pouring water onto the already sodden gravel of the square. It looked like a refugee camp.

The palace party trudged through puddles into the center of the square, where a welcoming party was coming out to meet them. They were a ragged bunch, tanned and raw-skinned from living outdoors.

At their head was a teenager armed with a thick staff that had three knives taped to the end of it. He was wearing a pair of long baggy shorts and nothing else. His bare chest was crudely tattooed, and his short hair had been shaved into patterns a little like Achilleus’s. He had several teeth missing and a hard, bony face.