“No one’s friends with a carnie, Kid,” the Conjurer said. “They ain’t got no friends and they ain’t got no moral compass and they’d knife you as soon as look at you. I don’t know what they’re doing this far into the Doinklands. They live on the edges of the Désert de Soleil and war with the strongmen tribes and their bearded ladies. Shit, Kid. Nobody likes a carnie.”

“Keep your hands nice and loose where I can see them.”

The man who stepped forward was taller and lankier than the others and his hair was long and dirty, and a scar ran down the left side of his face. The four clowns went past with their cargo of substance. Behind them the Stranger could see the next cart, and the one behind it, already emerging out of the mist.

“And who might you three gentlemen be?”

“Just travellers, passing through,” the Stranger said, pleasantly enough.

“Armed like this?”

The Conjurer barked a laugh. “Wouldn’t you be?” he said.

The carnie inched his head, acceding the point.

“Jericho is fallen,” the Stranger said. “Colossi and pupae are battling once more in the Thickening. We had no desire to become embroiled in the war, so we headed as far away as possible. . . . We’re looking for work.”

“Work? What sort of work?”

“The sort a man can do with a gun in his hand,” the Conjurer said, and laughed.

“Or a pack of cards,” the Kid said.

“There ain’t no work here,” the carnie said, and spat. “Not unless you’re a carnie . . . or a clown.” He laughed. His teeth were white and even.

“Just what is this place?” the Kid said. “It’s not on any maps.”

“Hole,” the carnie said.

“Hole?”

“Hole,” the carnie said, with finality.

The carnies edged them along. The three travellers had no choice but to be led. They moved deeper into the territory. More and more carts arrived and more and more clowns. Some pulled the loaded carts and others ferried rocks and others carried large planks of wood, and all this while the air was thick and hazy with fine powdery substance, and it was not long before the men came to the ledge and then they finally saw it.

The hole gaped out of the broken land like a giant wound in the Escapement. Even the Colossi would have been dwarfed inside it. The walls on the far side were visible only as a hazy, unreal cliff-face. It looked as though a giant’s fist had come out of the sky and punched clear through the abdomen of the Escapement, tearing it open and bleeding.

The hole was filled with clowns.

There were more clowns down there in that crater than the Stranger had ever seen. Whitefaces, Augustes and tramps, Grotesques and Pierrots, Bozos and Dinks and jesters and Fools.