He discovered he quite liked the sound of that. The truth of the Conjurer was not that he was entirely an amoral character, but rather that he had his own, somewhat idiosyncratic notion of morality, and one that did not perhaps chime exactly with the ideas other—or even most—people had. The wild strongmen and their bearded ladies had robbed him of something—something precious, something ill-defined—and though you cannot miss what you do not have, nevertheless, from time to time he’d feel a pang in the place where his heart should have been, an itch of the sort that you get from a ghost organ. And it was not compassion that made him get up, and make his way, stealthily, out of the bar and into the dark streets, but curiosity, a curiosity as dark as the streets of Jericho and as empty as the salt plains beyond which lie, or so it was said, the Mountains of Darkness.

The Conjurer was what one may term a purist. He killed cleanly and efficiently and only for money, and he applied the same methodology to his magic routine. Underlying both occupations was the most important thing one could do to achieve first proficiency and then excellence, and which is, of course, practice. There was no one whose patter was better perfected, no other whose linking rings routine seemed so flawless and natural, and no one better to dispose of a corpse than the Conjurer. He was not prideful. He always sought to become better than he was.

But this purity—of practice, of purpose—was the same aspect of him which made him loathe the city of Jericho as much as he did. For he was born on the edges of the world, and for all that he now dwelt in the Thickening, it felt to him an unnatural intrusion upon the body of the Escapement, like a malignant tumour that needs must be removed. Worst of all was its very heart, this fortified town, with its great train terminus and its garlanded avenues, its towers of solid stone and its cheery and practical and hardworking façade, which hid the truth of itself behind walls and deep in the ground. The Conjurer was an expert in misdirection, but even he was fooled, at first, by this city, which had been built, he had come to realise, as an exact and rather sinister act of manipulation of interest, so that one’s eyes were always drawn elsewhere, and it was only with effort that one could tear away from the illusion to see the ancient truth.