It really was so very hot in the room. The smell of grease made the Stranger nauseous. He said, “Excuse me,” and stepped outside. He could not hear a living thing, no birds, no crickets. All he could taste was substance on his tongue. The man paced outside the hospital. He thought he saw the same shadowy figure as before and went towards it, out by the shrubberies. The Stranger walked amidst the tombstones in the graveyard, looking at the names. here lies master jessup, esq., lately of this parish, who was kind to clowns. The same one-eyed woman from earlier approached him.

“You must help us,” she whispered. “The General has enslaved all the clowns, he’s taken them for slave labour.”

“Lady,” the Stranger said, “my path lies away from here and to the Mountains of Darkness, wherever they may be. I have no time for the affairs of men and clowns.”

“You have kind eyes,” she said. “And I seem to recall a stranger, much like yourself, distracted from the purpose of his quest once to exact justice for a troupe of massacred clowns. . . .”

She raised her face to him then, and winked.

“Temperanza?” He’d not seen her since she vanished on the train. “What are you doing here?”

“There has been unrest,” she said. “The Colossi and pupae are renegotiating the balance, and the Major Arcana are once more loose upon the world. Justice and the Devil are up to their old tricks once again. I’m after the Devil’s fortune, myself. General Barnum’s.” She winked again. Her eye was very blue. “Don’t get in my way. It’s taken me forever to infiltrate the preacher’s congregation, and I had hoped today to make the switch and go with the General’s men to Hole. But you ruined that plan . . . so I’ll have to do it the hard way.”

“Do what?”

“Kill the General and steal his fortune. Were you not listening? Oh, and you might want to go back inside. The preacher’s just about to murder your friends.”

She punched him in the shoulder and disappeared down the row of tombstones. He stared after her, then rushed back into the kitchen.

The Kid and the Conjurer were half-asleep in their chairs. The preacher held a hammer and two of his congregation women were creeping up on the men with razor blades in their hands. He could see now the outlines of a trapdoor underneath the chairs. He drew his gun and fired.

The women died first, and they died quietly and without a fuss. The preacher was hit in the shoulder and he fell back but he was like a mountain. The Stranger shot him again, and then again.

“You were the Benders?” he said.