Alice paused in front of the door to the basement steps, took a deep breath, and rapped loudly.

‘Mr Black!’ she said. ‘I’m coming in.’

The last time she’d been here, she and Isaac had crept down the stairs, dreading every creak. Now Alice marched down as if she owned the place, doing her best to ignore the fluttering in her stomach.

Mr Black was crouching in front of a squat round furnace, orange light flooding through a grilled window and painting the room with twisting shadows. Alice could feel the blast of heat even from the door. She cleared her throat conspicuously.

Slowly, the huge man got to his feet and turned round. His jaw worked from side to side, rustling his bushy black beard.

‘I didn’t think I’d see you in here again for a while,’ he said. ‘Awful bold, if you ask me.’

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ Alice said.

‘But I don’t care to talk to you,’ Mr Black said. ‘So get out, while you’re still able.’

‘I know you’ve been working with Vespidian,’ Alice said, as calmly as she was able. ‘I know you tried to sell him the Dragon. And I know you told him where to find me.’

There was a long pause. Something in the furnace popped with a shower of sparks.

‘That’s a dangerous thing to say,’ Mr Black rumbled. ‘If you know so much, why haven’t you gone to the master? Unless you don’t think he’d take your word over mine.’ He smiled, showing blackened teeth.

‘He wouldn’t have to take my word for it,’ Alice said. She swallowed hard. This was the crucial piece. ‘I still have the map we used to find the Dragon. If I give that to him, and he started looking into where it came from . . .’

Bingo. The narrowing of Mr Black’s eyes was all she needed to see. His breath rasped, and a tiny curl of smoke oozed from one nostril and lost itself in his beard.

‘Let’s say that’s the case,’ he said, after an obvious effort to master himself. ‘I ain’t admitting anything, but let’s say you’re right. Why would you do a foolish thing like coming down here to tell me about it?’ He balled his hands into fists. ‘After all, a man you’ve backed into a corner is a dangerous man indeed.’

Alice forced herself to stand her ground and fixed him with her most withering stare.

‘I bound the Dragon, Mr Black,’ she said. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

Mr Black’s lip twitched, but he’d lost, and he knew it.

‘Besides,’ Alice continued. ‘I need you to do something for me.’

Another long silence. Finally he shifted his gaze to glare over her head and muttered, ‘What sort of thing?’