Hard up against my left was a wall of what looked like compressed earth and to my right was a space blocked by a portcullis made of rebar that, had it been half a metre closer, would have neatly bisected me. Then, presumably, I could have been pickled, put into a glass case and displayed at the Tate Modern. Brit Art’s loss was my gain, but it did mean I couldn’t wriggle that way. As far as I could tell, I was currently lying inside a sort of concrete tent with no visible way out.

I extinguished the werelight – they burn underwater but I didn’t know yet whether they burned oxygen or not, and I decided it was better safe than sorry. In the renewed darkness I considered my options. I could try and use impello to dig myself out, but that would always run the risk of collapsing the rubble on top of me. I had to assume that a rescue attempt would be made. Even if Reynolds had been a casualty, Kumar had been further down the platform – he knew I was here. In fact, there had to be CCTV footage of the whole thing from the feed into the station control room. I bet it was spectacular and even now was probably finding its way to the news company with the biggest chequebook.

Any rescue attempt would involve people clumping around in big boots, yelling at each other and operating heavy equipment. Chances were that I would hear them long before they could hear me. My most sensible course of action would be to lie still and wait for rescue.

It was remarkably quiet. I could hear my heartbeat and I was in danger of starting to think about my breathing again, so I made myself think about something else. Like who the hell our pale-faced hoodie Earthbender was. Now, you could literally fill two whole libraries, complete with card files, reference sections and a brass ladder thing that whooshes around on rails, with everything I don’t know about magic. But I think, had it been at all common, Nightingale might have mentioned a technique for gouging great big holes in solid cement.

Nightingale aside, the only practitioner that skilled who I’d ever met was the Faceless Man – who could catch fireballs, deflect flying chimney stacks and also, possibly, leap moderately sized buildings in a single bound. I knew this hadn’t been the Faceless Man himself because the Earthbender’s body shape and posture had been all wrong. Could he have been an acolyte or a Little Crocodile or possibly one of the Faceless Man’s chimeras?

Lots of possibilities, not a lot of facts.