‘That there, sir, is why you don’t have any friends,’ said Drusher. He turned away. ‘I’ll go do whatever I can. You go do what you need to do. I hope this isn’t goodbye, but I think it probably is, and so I wish you well in your efforts.’

He walked down the platform and began to descend the stairs. Eisenhorn stood and watched him for a while. Then turned, limping painfully, and disappeared in the opposite direction.

Drusher stopped and looked back. Eisenhorn was gone.

‘Throne,’ he muttered to himself. He had been quite sure Eisenhorn was going to change his mind and come after him. The old bastard really was as cold as stone.

And now Drusher was alone. He had no clue what he was going to do or how he could achieve it. Eisenhorn had been right. Valentin Drusher was no fighter. He wasn’t going to last a second against any of Gobleka’s ruthless minions.

He was way out of his depth. He had been since the moment Harlon Nayl had hammered on his front door.

He continued down the steps. For what little good it might do, he took the gun out of his coat pocket and clutched it tightly.

It took a while to reach the base levels of the tower. Longer, in fact, than Drusher fancied it should have taken, as if the tower were much taller than any real tower could be, as if its dimensions stretched down into impossible depths.

He moved slowly, hugging the shadows, flinching every time a metal step or platform panel creaked under him. The constant movement and whirring of the huge Loom’s gears around him kept making him start. He jumped at every shifting machine part, imagining each motion to be the movement of some Cognitae henchman stalking him.

Finally, he climbed down through the huge, wrought-iron girder frame that supported the weight of the Loom. The frame was as substantial as a major road bridge, and its fabric was built into the walls of the tower. Further high-tension steel cables were cross-anchored around the frame to support the immense weight.

Looking down from a catwalk that ran under the heavy frame, Drusher saw a platform built out from the tower wall in the void beneath. It was large, ragged and uneven, a patchwork of steel plates and flakboarding. It looked like part of the hull-skin of an old ship that had been peeled away and repurposed as flooring. Where it extended out over the void, it sagged and became more frayed, its feathered edge dangling above the darkness below.