Something wilted inside Harris. He knew that, in Doc’s eyes, he had to have just ceased being an adult human and had become a child. Dammit.

He sat down and yanked off his shoes and socks. If he were going to do this, he wouldn’t do it on slick leather soles. Then he rose, poised for a long, long moment at the edge of the wooden platform . . . and stepped out onto the cool metal girder.

One step. Still alive. Two steps, still alive. He reminded himself that as a kid he was always good at walking on the top of the curb, graceful and balanced.

Then he looked down, watched the girders of the steel skeleton growing together far, far below, and he was suddenly reminded that a fall off an Iowa City curb led to a four-inch drop. This sudden impulse of his would kill him if he slipped. A wind brushed at him and his stomach lurched.

He reached the first upright girder and clung to it. Still, there was no going back. He edged around the ­obstruction to the horizontal girder on the other side and kept going, making slow and steady progress, grabbing hard onto each upright beam as he came to it.

He heard a dry chuckle from one side. There stood the partners of the giant construction worker, one girder-length off to his left. They leaned casually against an upright, helpfully staying out of the way of this high-steel virgin, and lit smoking-pipes as they laughed at his progress. Then one of them glanced down at Harris’ bare feet and his chuckle choked off. Harris shot them both a scowl and kept going.

An eternity later, he crept around the final upright. Ahead stood Doc, his back to Harris. Doc faced the big, bare-chested worker, and Harris realized that his estimation of size was correct; the worker towered over Doc, more than a head taller than the white-haired man.

Doc must have heard Harris’ approach; he turned. ­“Joseph, this is Harris Greene, the grimworlder I told you of. Harris, this is Joseph.”

Harris said, “Hi,” looked up into Joseph’s face . . . and froze.

Joseph’s features were just somehow wrong. He had high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a wide mouth—a strong combination. But there was something incomplete about his features, as though he were a doll who had not been detailed after emerging from the mold, or a cartoon character suddenly brought to life in the real world. Seen by himself, he might have been considered handsome. But alongside Doc, the perfection of his features seemed alien.

Joseph, expressionless, gave Harris a slow nod, then returned his attention to Doc. “I don’t want to remember that. I don’t want to remember you. I have a life now, and good pay for easy work. Don’t drag me back into your circle.” His voice was a deep, throaty rumble; Harris thought he could feel it vibrating in the steel under his feet.

“Joseph, this is important. Angus Powrie and his new master are up to something. Using devisements and ­devices worthy of Duncan Blackletter himself. Sending agents to the grim world and bringing people like Harris back.

“You owe it to me. I freed you. Now I need you.”

Joseph stared. His expression did not change, nor did his eyes, but something did, and Harris imagined the huge, unfinished man swinging out an arm and casually batting Doc off the girder. Doc must have felt it too; he took a step back and balanced himself for trouble.

But Joseph crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “Death follows you, Doc, and strikes down those who help you and love you while leaving you unharmed. But you’re right. I owe you a debt. I will pay it. I hope you don’t kill me in collecting it.”

Doc was silent a long moment and Harris wished he could see his face. Then Doc said, “Did Duncan ever talk about the grim world?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know devisements to take people there?”

“He went there. Not long before you caught up to him. He took gear and spent a day in that place. He left the gear there. When he returned, he said the grim world was ghastly. I think he loved it.”

“What sort of gear?”

Joseph shrugged. “Crates. Boxes. He took gold to spend.”

Doc fell silent. Harris broke in, “So did he have one of those conjurer’s circles? Do you know where it went?”

“He did. In his conjuration laboratory. It went to the grim world, as I said.”

“I meant, where in the grim—”

Doc said, “Wait. I don’t remember a conjuration laboratory. Was this at Wickhollow?”

“Yes. It was well-hidden. You never asked about it. You just wanted help dealing with your dead friends.”

Doc didn’t answer for a moment. Then, his voice more quiet: “We’ll go there tonight. You need to show me this laboratory.”

“Meet me here at four bells. Leave me alone ­until then.”

“Thank you.” Doc turned to leave, and Harris began to grope his way back around the girder he clung to.

But Joseph spoke again. “Goodsir Greene.”

Harris looked back. “Yes?”

“If you are not bound to this man, leave him. Else you will die with him.”

Harris looked away from Joseph’s glum features and didn’t reply. He just crept back across the girders.

“What did he mean?”

“About what?” Doc drove back to the Monarch Building more slowly than he’d left it; there was a shadow of gloom over his features.

“About your friends.”

Doc was slow in answering. “Joseph was made by a deviser named Duncan Blackletter.”

“Made?”

“He is not a man. He is a thing of clay and powerful devisements. One with a beating heart and, I think, a soul fit for rebirth. But he was Blackletter’s slave, and did many bad things for him. He had no will of his own where Blackletter was concerned.”

Harris thought about Joseph’s unfinished face. It didn’t look like clay. But he didn’t look exactly human, either. “Was this Blackletter guy . . . the one who gave you all that trouble a while back?”

Doc shot him a sharp glance, then nodded. His voice was weary. “Duncan was a very bad man. Full of charm and good cheer even as he was murdering people. He set nations against one another to advance his businesses or to obtain knowledge.

“The last thing he did was to make plans to enslave the king and queen of Novimagos. He managed to do great things for Novimagos, anonymously. He built up a debt they could not repay and used dark devisements to tap it so he could bind their will to his. That’s what he was about when my associates and I caught up to him in his home in Wickhollow, twenty years ago.”

“Twenty?” Harris had to reevaluate Doc’s age. “You don’t look it, but that makes you forty at least.”

Doc managed a faint smile. “At least.” Then the smile faded. “Duncan and I fought. The old way. Not with guns or swords but with strength of will and old, old ritual. I was able to redirect his will against him, and he was ­destroyed, consumed by fire. I nearly was.

“But I’d had to concentrate all my attention on him. While my associates fought his allies, Angus Powrie and Joseph among them. And died, one by one. Micah Cremm. Siobhan Damvert, Jean-Pierre’s mother. Whiskers Okerry. All dead.” Doc’s voice was barely audible over the engine noise.

“I’m sorry.”

“They were neither the first nor the last. Joseph is correct, Harris. Death wanders around in my shadow. My associates know it and stay with me anyway. But as soon as we can find your path back to the grim world, you will go, and be safe.”

“Yeah.” Safe to do what? Harris shook his head and tried to think of something else.

Just before dusk, as they rode in the vast red limousine Harris had seen last night, Alastair explained things to Harris.

“One bell” was midmorning. Two bells was exactly noon, straight up. Three was midafternoon; four near dusk; five was the shank of the evening; six was midnight; seven was the quiet time of the night—as quiet as a wide-awake city like Neckerdam ever got—and eight bells was around dawn. Each of the bells, so named for the ringing of the clock bells that marked their passing, was divided into twenty chimes; some clocks rang off the chimes as well. A chime was made up of five hundred beats, also called ticks.