“Now, Ms. Lin. Some very valuable items have been stolen from me. A clutch of little factories, if you like. Hence the lack of dreamshit. And d’you know? I have to admit I’ve been stymied as to who might have done it. Really. I’ve had nothing to go on.” He paused and a tide of icy smiles crossed his multiple features. “Until I heard Gazid. Then it all…made…sense.” He spat each word.

At some silent signal his cactus vizier strode towards Lin, who cringed and tried to break away, but was too late, as he reached out with his enormous meaty fists and gripped her arms tightly, immobilizing her.

Lin’s headlegs spasmed and she emitted a piercing chymical screech at the pain. Cactacae were usually assiduous in pruning the thorns on the insides of their palms, to better manipulate objects, but this one had let his grow. Clutches of stubby fibrous quills spiked her arms mercilessly.

She was pinioned, and dragged effortlessly before Motley. He leered at her. When he spoke again his voice was thick with threat.

“Your bugfucking lover has tried to screw me, hasn’t he, Ms. Lin? Buying up great swathes of my dreamshit, keeping his own moths, so Gazid tells me, and then stealing mine!” He roared the last words, trembling.

Lin could hardly think over the pain in her arms but she desperately tried to sign from her hip: No no no it’s not like that it’s not like that…

Motley slapped her hands down.

“Don’t fucking try it, you bug-head bitch, you cross-whore, you slut. Your scum-sucking man’s been trying to squeeze me out of my own fucking market. Well, that’s a very, very dangerous game.” He backed away a little and regarded her as she writhed.

“We are going to bring Mr. der Grimnebulin in to account for his theft. D’you think he’ll come if we offer him you?”

Blood was stiffening the arms of Lin’s shirt. She tried again to sign.

“You’ll get a chance to explain yourself, Ms. Lin,” said Motley, calm again. “Maybe you’re a partner in crime, maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s bad luck for you, I must say. I will not be letting this go.” He watched her try desperately to tell him, to explain, to squirm her way free.

Her arms were seizing up. The cactus was rendering her dumb. As she felt her head dull with the constricting pain, she heard Mr. Motley’s whisper.

“I am not a forgiving man.”

Outside the University Science Faculty, the quad thronged with students. Many were wearing the regulation black gowns: a few rebellious souls slung them over their arms as they left the building. Among the tide of figures were two motionless men. They stood leaning against the tree, ignoring the sap that stuck to them. It was humid, and one man was dressed incongruously in a long coat and dark hat.

They stood without moving for a long time. One class ended, and then another. The men saw two cycles of students come and go. Occasionally one or other would rub his eyes, stretch his face a little. Always he would return his apparently casual attention to the main entrance.

Finally, as the afternoon shadows began to stretch out, the men moved. Their target appeared. Montague Vermishank stepped from the building and sniffed the air gingerly, as if he knew he should enjoy it. He began to remove his jacket, then stopped and pulled it back around him. He set off into Ludmead.

The men below the tree stepped out from under the leaves and sauntered after their prey.

It was a busy day. Vermishank headed north, looking around him for a cab. He wound up Tench Way, Ludmead’s most bohemian thoroughfare, where progressive academics held court in cafes and bookshops. The buildings of Ludmead were old and well preserved, their façades scrubbed and freshly painted. Vermishank ignored them. He had walked this way for years. He was oblivious to his surroundings, and to his pursuers.

A four-wheel cab appeared through the crowd, pulled by some uncomfortable shaggy biped from the northern tundra that paced its way through the rubbish on back-bent legs like a bird’s. Vermishank raised his arm. The cabdriver attempted to manoeuvre his vehicle towards him. Vermishank’s pursuers sped up.

“Monty,” boomed the larger man and slapped his shoulder. Vermishank turned in alarm.

“Isaac,” he faltered. His eyes darted around him, sought the cab, which was still approaching.

“How are you, old son?” yelled Isaac in his left ear, and underneath it, Vermishank heard another voice hissing in his right.

“The thing poking your stomach is a knife and I will gut you like a fucking fish if you even breathe in a way I don’t like.”

“So glad to bump into you,” howled Isaac jocularly, waving the cab over. The driver muttered and approached.

“Try to run and I will cut you and if you get out of my hands I will shoot a bullet into your brain,” the voice crooned with loathing.

“Come and have a drink at mine,” said Isaac. “Brock Marsh, please driver. Paddler Way, you know it? Handsome beast, by the way,” Isaac kept up a stream of loud nonsense as he swung into the closed carriage. Vermishank followed, shaking and stuttering, goaded by the sting of the blade. Lemuel Pigeon followed him in and slammed the door shut, then sat looking straight forward holding the knife at Vermishank’s side.

The driver pulled away from the kerb. The creaking and rattling and complaining bleats of the animal cocooned the three men in the cab.

Isaac turned to Vermishank with the exaggerated delight gone from his face.

“You have a lot of talking to do, you evil cunt,” he hissed menacingly.

His prisoner was visibly regaining his poise second by second.

“Isaac,” he murmured. “Hah. How can I help you?”

He started as Lemuel jabbed him.

“Shut your fucking mouth.”

“Shut my mouth and do a lot of talking, Isaac?” mused Vermishank smoothly, then yelped incredulously as Isaac struck him, hard and suddenly. He gazed at him astonished, gingerly stroking his stinging face.

“I tell you when to talk,” said Isaac.

They were silent the rest of the journey, swaying south past Lud Fallow Station and over the sluggish Canker at Danechi’s Bridge. Isaac paid the driver as Lemuel hustled Vermishank into the warehouse.

Inside, David glowered from his desk, half turning to watch the proceedings. His russet waistcoat was incongruously cheerful. Yagharek skulked in a corner, half visible. His feet were wrapped in rags and his head was hidden in a hood. He had discarded the wooden wings. He was not disguised as whole, but as a human.

Derkhan looked up from an armchair she had pulled into the middle of the back wall, below the window. She was crying fiercely and without a sound. She was clutching a handful of newspapers. Front pages were strewn around her. “Midsummer Nightmares Spread,” said one, and another asked “What Has Happened to Sleep?” Derkhan ignored these pages, cutting out another minor story from page five or seven or eleven in each paper. Isaac could read one from where he stood: “Eyespy Killer Claims Criminal Editor.”

The cleaning construct hissed and whirred and clanked its way around the room, clearing the rubbish, sweeping up the dust, collecting the old papers and fruit debris that littered the floor. Sincerity the badger meandered listlessly along the far wall.

Lemuel shoved Vermishank into the middle of three chairs by the door and sat a few feet from him. Ostentatiously he drew out his pistol and aimed it at Vermishank’s head.

Isaac locked the door.

“Right, Vermishank,” he said in a businesslike fashion. He sat and stared at his former boss. “Lemuel is a very good shot, in case you have adventurous ideas. He’s a bit of a villain, actually. Bit dangerous. And I am not in any kind of mood to defend you, so I recommend you tell us what we want to know.”