Content that he had some grasp on the situation, he hurried back to the car to put his report through to headquarters. He was stymied, however. There was white noise on all frequencies. No matter: he'd informed them of his location on first arriving. They'd come to his aid presently. In the meanwhile his task was to watch this landing like a hawk.

That task rapidly became more difficult, as the invaders began to bombard him with extraordinary illusions, designed, no doubt, to conceal their operations from human sight. The waves of force that had burst from the house threw the car on its side (or at least that's what his eyes informed him; he was not about to take it as Gospel); then vague forms began to roil about him. The tarmac beneath his feet seemed to sprout flowers; bestial forms were performing acrobatics above his head.

He saw several members of the public similarly ensnared by these projections. Some stared up at the sky, others were on their knees praying for sanity.

And it came, by and by. Knowing that these images were merely phantoms gave him strength to resist them. Over and over he told himself that what he was seeing was not real, and by degrees the visions bowed to his certainty, grew faint, and finally faded almost entirely.

He scrambled into the over-turned car and tried the radio again, though he had no idea if anybody was hearing it or not. Oddly, he wasn't that concerned. He'd beaten the delusions, and that conviction sweetened his vigil. Even if they came for him now - the monsters that had landed here tonight - he would not fear them. He would put out his own eyes rather than let them bewitch him afresh.

2

‘Any further word?'

‘There's nothing, sir,' said Richardson. ‘Only din.'

‘Forget it then,' said Hobart. ‘Just drive. We'll sniff them out if it takes us all fucking night.'

As they travelled, Hobart's thoughts returned to the scene he'd left behind him. His men reduced to babbling idiots, his cells defiled with shit and prayers. He had a score to settle with these forces of darkness.

Once upon a time he would not have cast himself so readily in the role of avenger. He'd been squeamish in admitting to any degree of personal involvement. But experience had made an honest man of him. Now - at least in the company of his men - he didn't pretend to be removed from the issues at hand, but confessed freely the heat in his belly.

After all, the business of pursuit and punishment was just a way to spit in the eye of one who had already spat on you. The Law, just another word for revenge.

IV

ALLEGIANCES

1

It was eighty years, give or take half a decade, since the three sisters had trodden the earth of the Fugue. Eighty years of exile in the Kingdom of the Cuckoo, worshipped and reviled by turns, almost losing their sanity amongst the Adamaticals, but driven to endure countless mortifications by their hunger one day to have the Weaveworld in their avenging grasp.

Now they hung in the air above that rapturous earth - its touch so antithetical that walking upon it was a trial - and surveyed the Fugue from end to end.

‘It smells too much alive,' said the Magdalene, lifting her head to the wind.

‘Give us time,' Immacolata told her.

‘What about Shadwell?' the Hag wanted to know. ‘Where is he?'

‘Out looking for his clients, probably,' the Incantatrix replied. ‘We should find him. I don't like the thought of his wandering here unaccompanied. He's unpredictable.'

‘Then what?'

‘We let the inevitable happen,' said Immacolata, gently swinging round to take in every sacred yard of the place. ‘We let the Cuckoos tear it apart.'

‘What about the Sale?'

‘There'll be no Sale. It's too late.'

‘Shadwell's going to know you used him.'

‘No more than he used me. Or would have liked to.'

A tremor passed through the Magdalene's uncertain substance.

‘Wouldn't you like to give yourself to him once?' she enquired softly. ‘Just once.'

‘No. Never.'

‘Then let me have him. I can use him. Imagine his children.'

Immacolata reached out and grasped her sister's fragile neck. ‘You will never lay a hand on him,' she said. ‘Not a finger.'

The wraith's face grew absurdly long, in a parody of remorse.

‘I know,' she said. ‘He's yours. Body and soul.'

The Hag laughed. The man's got no soul,' she said.

Immacolata released the Magdalene, filaments of her sister's matter decaying into sewer air between them.

‘Oh, he has a soul,' she said, letting gravity claim her for the earth beneath. ‘But I want no part of it.' Her feet touched the ground. ‘When all this is over - when the Seerkind are in the Cuckoo's hands - I'll let him go his way. Unharmed.'

‘And us?' said the Hag. ‘What happens to us then? Will we be free?'

‘That's what we agreed.'

‘We can go into extinction?'

‘If that's what you want.'

‘More than anything,' said the Hag. ‘More than anything.'

‘There are worse things than existence,' said Immacolata.

‘Oh?' the Hag replied. ‘Can you name one?'

Immacolata thought for a short while.

‘No,' she conceded, with a soft sigh of distress. ‘You may be right, sister.'

2

Shadwell had fled from the disintegrating house moments after Cal and Nimrod had escaped through the window, and had barely avoided being caught by the cloud that had swallowed Devereaux. He'd ended up face down, his mouth filled with dust and with the sour taste of defeat. After so many years of anticipation, to have the Auction end in ruin and humiliation, it was enough to make him weep.

But he didn't. For one thing, he was an optimist by nature: in today's rejection the seeds of tomorrow's sale. For another, the spectacle of the Fugue solidifying about him was a fine distraction from his sorrows. And for a third, he had found one worse off than he.

‘What the fuck is happening?' It was Norris, the Hamburger King. Blood and plaster dust vied for the right to paint his face, and somewhere in the maelstrom he'd lost both the back of his jacket and most of his trousers; also one of his fine Italian shoes. The other he carried.

‘I'll sue the ass off you!' he screeched at Shadwell. ‘You fucking asshole. Look at me! Fucking asshole!'

He began to beat Shadwell with the shoe, but the Salesman was in no mood to be bruised. He slapped the man back, hard. Within seconds they were brawling like drunkards, indifferent to the extraordinary scenes coming to life all around them. The tussle left them more breathless and bloody than they'd started out, and did nothing to resolve their differences. ‘You should have taken precautions!' Norris spat. ‘It's too late for accusations,' Shadwell replied. The Fugue's woken whether we like it or not.'

‘I would have woken it myself,' said Norris. ‘If I'd got to own it. But I would have been ready and waiting. Had some forces to go in and take control. But this? It's chaos! I don't even know which way is out.'

‘Any way'll do. It's not that big. If you want out, just walk in any direction.'

This simple solution seemed to pacify Norris somewhat. He turned his gaze on the burgeoning landscape.

‘I don't know though ...' he said, ‘... maybe it's better this way. At least I get to see what I would have bought.' ‘And what do you make of it?'

‘It's not the way I'd thought it'd be. I'd expected something ... tamer. Frankly, I'm not sure now I'd want to own the place.'

As his voice faltered an animal that could surely be found in no menagerie jumped from the flux of threads and snarled a welcome at the world before bounding off.

‘See?' said Norris. ‘What was that?'

Shadwell shrugged. ‘I don't know,' he said. ‘There's things here that probably died out before we were born.'

‘That?' said Norris, staring after the hybrid beast. ‘I never saw the like of that before, even in books. I tell you I want none of this fucking place. I want you to get me out.'