The Conjurer grinned in savage appreciation, but more and more mimes were converging on their trail.

“We have to go higher!”

“Where!’”

“That tower, it’s Mooky’s Spire! If we get to the top we can get away!”

“How!”

“Magic,” the Conjurer said, and grinned again.

The Stranger fired methodically, running, stopping, firing, resuming. So this is what it came to, he thought, chilled. The pupae at last had the device, and it was their agents who’d brought it into the city.

If so, their opponents would not be far away.

They reached the tower and he and the Kid leaped after the Conjurer, onto a sturdy metal ladder that rose up to the top. They began to climb and it was then, from high above, that he at last saw the Colossi.

They were ranged beyond the city, illuminated by the moon. Vast figures carved of stone, with sneering visages of cold command. Behind them came the storm. He heard inhuman laughter, punctuated with awful bursts of opposing silence.

“Colossi . . . ,” he said.

“Climb, you idiot! Climb!”

A hand grasped the Stranger’s boot. He kicked, then fired down, and a mime fell soundlessly through the air. There was no way out, he thought. No way out but death.

Still, he climbed. They reached the top and fell inwards through a window. Winds howled against the tower walls.

“Ain’t she a beaut?” the Conjurer said, fondly.

Standing in the middle of that turret was the deflated envelope, gondola and burner of a hot-air balloon.

The Stranger took one window and the Kid another. They fired methodically at the mimes climbing the walls. The mimes mimed getting hurt. The mimes fell, hitting invisible obstacles. The Conjurer attended to the Fat Lady. Her envelope inflated slowly. Gas jets hissed from the burner. The roof had fallen down years in the past, and been covered over with a tarp to keep out the elements. Now the Conjurer tore it off (with a flourish that went unnoticed by his audience, who were otherwise engaged) and the envelope expanded outwards towards the dark skies.

“Come on!” the Conjurer said. He hopped inside the gondola. The other two kept firing. One of the mimes had almost reached the turret. The Kid was out of bullets and with a shout of disgust he pulled out a knife and stabbed the creature in the neck. The mime gave him the finger, then clutched his neck, which was bleeding an unhealthy green.

“Got something to say?” the Kid screamed. He plunged the knife down again and the mime let go of the wall and fell, hitting two others on his way down. The Kid abandoned the window and climbed into the gondola. The Fat Lady was rising fast.