He saw a one-armed bandit performing the three-card monte, and a bearded lady pouring water out of a giant ear held high in the air. He saw giraffes walk high on wires strung between the rooftops. He saw clouds coalesce at head height and rain down pennies. He trudged on. This meant nothing to him. He was a child of the Escapement, he had an instinctive mistrust of the land and its illusions.

Now, this is the thing about conjurers: they’re inherently honest about their intent to deceive you.

The Conjurer must have known the Kid was coming, even if he didn’t exactly know why. People sometimes tried to kill him. He was not the world’s nicest guy. The Kid hunted him through streets covered in muddy straw, dodging between burly prospectors, bounty hunters, clown posses, snake charmers, street vendors, vagabonds, and clochards. He traced him methodically, without passion.

It was the doves that gave the Conjurer’s location away.

He had always had a flair for theatrics. His doves were almost a part of him, hidden as so much of him was hidden, nesting warm and comfortable in his clothes. He would raise his arms dramatically and release them, a flock of white doves bursting out of him and into the air.

He performed in a town square with the broken toe of a Colossus towering at its centre . . .

His audience were drunk on Sticks or moonshine. But he was used to that . . .

He was tall and thin and wore black evening clothes, white gloves, a tall black hat, and pistols black and worn with silver handles. He smiled, and his teeth were white and even . . .

The Kid came strutting into the square with his guns on his hips and a dove flew overhead and shat on his shoulder. He barely noticed.

“Listen,” he said. He felt there was a need to fill the air with voice. “I’ve come to kill you—”

With that same smile on his face the Conjurer shot him. It wasn’t a killing shot, exactly. It hit the Kid in the shoulder and spun him round and tossed him like garbage on the ground, where his blood dirtied the straw. The Conjurer came and stood over him for a moment and just looked at him and then after a moment he shook his head, as though he were disappointed. “Words are slower than a bullet,” he said. Then he was gone, in a puff of smoke, from a canister that was hidden in his sleeve: he always did have a flair for the dramatic.

The Kid survived. Someone relieved him of his possessions. Someone else cleaned and bound his wound. His pride took a knock and he had a neat little scar after that, but he survived and he learned his lesson.

By the time he’d recovered, the Conjurer was long gone.