The Conjurer liked conjuring. He always said you had to be good at at least three things in this world to have a happy life, and he was good at exactly three: conjuring, drinking, and killing people. Now he pulled out a small brown cheroot, struck a match on the sole of his boot, and lit it. He drew in breath, and blew out three perfect smoke rings in succession. He stared at the pitiful little Pierrot.

“Well?” he said.

“There’d been . . . consciousnesses here before,” the Pierrot said.

“Ah, yes,” the Conjurer said. “Whoever left those fucking dream machines scattered about.”

“Yes, perhaps,” the Pierrot said, though he didn’t seem sure. “But anyway, sooner or later, they all went away.”

“So?”

“The p . . . the stalemate held, for a thousand thousand—”

“Yes, yes, you already did that part. You need to work on your patter, friend.”

“May I?”

The little Pierrot gestured beseechingly at the bottle of moonshine. The Conjurer sighed, conjured a tumbler, and poured one exact measure for the little creature. Jericho, he thought. It used to be the flotsam and jetsam of the Escapement kept well away or, anyway, hid themselves thoroughly in the nooks and crannies of that weird old city. Now they seemed much more . . . visible. As though they knew something the Conjurer, as yet, did not.

The Conjurer did not like that particular feeling. Knowing things other people didn’t was his business.

The Pierrot drank. His little white hands held the tumbler like an offering.

“Well?” the Conjurer demanded.

“A thousand th—ah, yes. Sorry.” He coughed. “But when the people came, the balance shifted. It seemed the stalemate could be broken, with the right tools.”

“The right tools being . . . ?”

“People,” the Pierrot said, surprised at the question.

“Forgive me. Of course.”

“Shadow battles stone; the lizard scuttles from the glare of the sun.”

“Indeed.”

“And so the . . . opponents, they began to, err . . .”

“Recruit?”

“That’s right. That was the word.”

The Conjurer wondered how old the little Pierrot was. Those creatures weren’t like people, not exactly. He wondered how far back the creature’s memory went. He wondered if he remembered the Battle of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. The Conjurer was old, and he remembered that one, though he’d elected, then, not to take part. He had merely been a . . . a witness. That, if he recalled, was the last time that the pupae umbrarum and the Colossi had attempted to redress the balance.

The result had been a massacre.

“So what’s changed?” he said.

“Eh?”

“What’s changed? Now?”

“Ah,” the little Pierrot said, and he tapped his nose, and winked, or tried to, his features didn’t quite work right. Then the Conjurer’s gun was in his hand and the muzzle was pressed to the small creature’s deathly pale face.

“Yes?”

“That which was lost is believed to be found!” the Pierrot said.

“What?”

“That which was l—”