But much of the business conducted here was immensely important. The suites containing the embassies of Myrshock and Vadaunk had been extended some years ago, due to the expansion of paperwork and office space that commercial relations necessitated. The extra rooms jutted like ugly tumours from the interior walls of the eleventh floor, bulging precariously over the garden.

The mayor and his companions walked past a door marked The Cray Commonwealth of Salkrikaltor. The corridor shook with the pound and whirr of huge, hidden machinery. Those were the enormous steam-pumps that worked for hours every day, sucking fresh brine fifteen miles from Iron Bay for the cray ambassador and sluicing his used, dirty water into the river.

The passageway was confusing. It seemed to go on too long when looked at from one angle, and to be all but stubby from another. Here and there short tributaries branched from it, leading to other, smaller embassies or store cupboards or boarded-up windows. At the end of the main corridor, beyond the cray embassy, Rudgutter led the way down one of these little passages. It extended a short way, twisting, its ceiling lowering dramatically as some stairs above descended across its path, and terminated in a small unmarked door.

Rudgutter looked behind him, ensuring that his companions and he were not watched. Only a short distance of passageway was visible, and they were quite alone.

Vansetty was pulling chalk and pastels of various colours from his pockets. He pulled what looked like a watch from his fob pocket and opened it. Its face was divided into innumerable complicated sections. It had seven hands of various lengths.

“Got to take account of the variables, Mayor,” Vansetty murmured, studying the thing’s intricate working. He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Rudgutter or anyone else. “Outlook for today’s pretty grotty…High-pressure front moving in the aether. Could push powerstorms anywhere from the abyss through null-space up. Fucking poxy outlook on the borderlands as well. Hmmm…” Vansetty scrawled some calculations on the back of a notebook. “Right,” he snapped, and looked up at the three ministers.

He began to scribble intricate, stylized markings on thick pieces of paper, tearing out each one as it was finished and handing it to Stem-Fulcher, Rudgutter, Rescue, and finally for himself.

“Whack those over your hearts,” he said cursorily, stuffing his into his shirt. “Symbol facing out.”

He opened his battered suitcase and brought out a set of bulky ceramic diodes. He stood at the centre of the group and handed one to each of his companions-“Left hand and don’t drop it…”-then wound copper wire around them tightly and attached it to a handheld clockwork motor he pulled from his case. He took readings from his peculiar gauge, adjusted dials and nodules on the motor.

“Righto, everyone, brace yourselves,” he said, and flipped the switch that released the clockwork engine.

Little arcs of energy sputtered into multicoloured existence along the wires and between the grubby diodes. The four of them were enclosed in a little triangle of current. All their hair stood visibly on end. Rudgutter swore under his breath.

“Got about half an hour before that runs out,” said Vansetty quickly. “Best be quick, eh?”

Rudgutter reached out with his right hand and opened the door. The four of them shuffled forward, maintaining their positions relative to each other, keeping the triangle in place around them. Stem-Fulcher pushed the door closed again behind them.

They were in an absolutely dark room. They could see only by the faint ambient glow of the lines of power, until Vansetty hung the clockwork motor around his neck on a strap and lit a candle. In its inadequate light they saw that the room was perhaps twelve feet by ten, dusty and absolutely empty apart from an old desk and chair by the far wall, a gently humming boiler by the door. There were no windows, no shelves, nothing else at all. The air was very close.

From his bag Vansetty extracted an unusual hand-held machine. Its twists of wire and metal, its knots of multicoloured glass were intricate and lovingly crafted. Its use was quite opaque. Vansetty leaned briefly out of the circle and plugged an input valve into the boiler beside the door. He pulled a lever on the top of the little machine, which began to hum and blink with lights.

“ ‘Course, in your old days, before I came into the profession, you had to use a live offering,” he explained as he unwound a tight coil of wire from the underside of the machine. “But we’re not savages, are we? Science is a wonderful thing. This little darling-” he patted the machine proudly “-is an amplifier. Increases the output from that engine by a factor of two hundred, two hundred and ten, and transforms it into an aetherial energy form. Bleed that through the wires so…” Vansetty slung the uncoiled wire into the far corner of the tiny room, behind the desk. “And there you go! The victimless sacrifice!”

He grinned with triumph, then turned his attention to the dials and knobs of the little engine, and began to twist and prod them with intense attention. “No more learning stupid languages, neither,” he muttered quietly. “Invocation’s automatic now and all. We’re not actually going anywhere, you understand?” He spoke louder, suddenly. “We ain’t abyssonauts, and we ain’t playing with nearly enough power to do an actual transplantropic leap. All we’re doing is peering through a little window, letting the Hellkin come to us. But the dimensionality of this room is going to be just a damn touch unstable for a while, so stick within the protection and don’t muck about. Got it?”

Vansetty’s fingers skittered over the box. For two or three minutes, nothing happened. There was nothing but the heat and pounding from the boiler, the drumming and whining of the little machine in Vansetty’s hands. Beneath it all, Rudgutter’s foot tapped impatiently.

And then the little room began to grow perceptibly warmer.

There was a deep, subsonic tremor. An insinuation of russet light and oily smoke. Sound became muted and then suddenly sharp.

There was a disorientating moment of tugging, and a red marbling of light flickered onto every surface, moving constantly as if through bloody water.

Something fluttered. Rudgutter looked up, his eyes smarting in air that seemed suddenly clotted and very dry.

A heavy man in an immaculate dark suit had appeared behind the desk.

He leaned forward slowly, his elbows resting on the papers that suddenly littered the desk. He waited.

Vansetty peered over Rescue’s shoulder and jerked his thumb at the apparition.

“His Infernal Excellency,” he declared, “the ambassador of Hell.”

“Mayor Rudgutter,” the daemon said, in a pleasant, low voice. “How nice to see you again. I was just doing some paperwork.” The humans looked up with a flicker of unease.

The ambassador had an echo: half a second after he spoke his words were repeated in the appalling shriek of one undergoing torture. The screamed words were not loud. They were audible just beyond the walls of the room, as if they had soared up through miles of unearthly heat from some trench in Hell’s floor.

“What can I do for you?” he continued (What can I do for you? came the soulless howl of misery). “Still trying to find out if you’ll be joining us when you pass on?” The ambassador smiled slightly.

Rudgutter smiled back and shook his head.

“You know my views on that, ambassador,” he replied levelly. “I’ll not be drawn, I’m afraid. You can’t provoke me into existential fear, you know.” He gave a polite little laugh, to which the ambassador responded in kind. As did his horrendous echo. “My soul, if such exists, is my own. It is not yours to punish or covet. The universe is a much more capricious place than that…I asked you before, what do you suppose happens to daemons when you die? As we both know you can.”