They want us to take our leave.'

Jerichau was standing in the passageway behind her. She stared at the closed door for a moment longer, as the sound of the lions faded, then turned to him.

‘Are we being thrown out?' she asked.

‘No. They just want to debate the problem awhile.' he said. ‘Without us.'

She nodded.

‘I suggest we walk a little way.'

By the time they opened the door, Romo and the animals had gone; about Mimi's business.

2

So they walked.

He had his silence; she, hers. So many feelings to try and comprehend. Her thoughts went back to Mimi, and the sacrifice she'd made, knowing Romo, her beautiful lion-tamer, was sleeping in a place she could not trespass. Had she touched the knots where he was concealed, she wondered?; had she knelt and whispered her love for him to the Weave? The very thought of it was beyond bearing. No wonder she'd been so severe, so stoical. She'd stood guard at the paradise gates, alone; unable to breathe a word of what she knew; fearful of dementia, fearful of death.

‘Don't be afraid,' Jerichau said at last.

‘I'm not afraid,' she lied, then, remembering that the colours from her would be contradicting her every word, said: ‘Well ... maybe a little. I can't be a Custodian, Jerichau. I'm not the equal of it.'

They'd emerged from the myrtle copse and walked out into a field. Several huge marble beasts stood in the knee-high grass, their species either mythical or extinct, but either way chiselled in loving detail; tusk and fur and tiny eye. She leaned against the flank of one and stared at the ground. They could hear neither the debate behind them nor the bells in the branches; only night-insects going about their business in the shadow of the beasts.

His gaze was upon her - she felt it - but she couldn't raise her head to meet it.

‘I think maybe -' he began, then stopped.

The insects chattered on, mocking his struggle for words.

Again, he tried.

‘I just wanted to say: I know you're the equal of anything.'

She was going to smile at this courtesy, but:

‘No. That's not what I wanted to say.' He took a fresh breath, and with it said: ‘I want to go with you.'

‘With me?'

‘When you go back to the Kingdom. Whether it's with the carpet or without it, I want to be with you.'

Now she looked up, and his dark face was that of an accused man awaiting verdict; hanging on every flicker of her lash.

She smiled, searching for a response. Finally she said:

‘Of course. Of course. I'd like that.'

‘Yes?' he gasped. ‘You would?'

The anxiety fled from his face, replaced by a luminous grin.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘I want so much that we should be friends.'

Then friends we'll be,' she replied.

The stone was chilly against her back; he, in front of her, exuded warmth. And there was she, where Romo had advised her to be: between.

VII

SHADWELL ON HIGH

Let me down.' said the Salesman to his broken-backed mount. They'd climbed a steep-sided hill, the highest Shadwell could find. The view from the top was impressive. Norris, however, wasn't much interested in the view. He sat down, labouring for breath, and clutched his one-handed drummer to his chest, leaving Shadwell to stand on the promontory and admire the moon-lit vista spread beneath him.

The journey here had offered a host of extraordinary sights; the occupants of this province, though plainly related to species outside the Fugue, had somehow been coaxed by magic into new forms. How else to explain moths five times the size of his hand, which yowled like mating cats from the tops of the trees? Or the shimmering snakes he'd seen, posing as flames in the niche of a rock? Or the bush the thorns of which bled onto its own blossoms?

Such novelties were everywhere. The pitch he'd offered to his clients when tempting them to the Auction had been colourful enough; but it had scarcely begun to evoke the reality. The Fugue was stranger by far than any words of his had suggested; stranger, and more distressing.

That was what he felt, looking down from the hill-top: distress. It had come over him slowly, as they'd journeyed here, beginning like dyspepsia, and escalating to the point where he felt a kind of terror. At first he'd tried not to admit

its origins to himself, but such was its force the feeling could now no longer be denied.

It was covetousness that had come to birth in his belly; the one sensation that no true Salesman could ever indulge. He tried to get the better of the ache by viewing the landscape and its contents in strictly commercial terms: how much could he ask for that orchard?; or the islands in that lake?; or the moths? But for once the technique failed him. He looked down over the Fugue and all thought of commerce was swept away.

It was no use to struggle. He had to admit the bitter fact: he'd made a terrible error trying to sell this place.

No price could ever be put on such mind-wracking profusion; no bidder, however wealthy, had the wherewithal to purchase it.

Here he was, looking down on the greatest collection of miracles the world had ever seen, with all ambition to lord it over princes fled.

A new ambition had taken its place. He would be a prince himself. More than a prince.

Here was a country, laid before him. Why should he not be King?

VIII

THE VIRGIN BLOODED

Happiness was not a condition Immacolata was much familiar with, but there were places in which she and her sisters felt something close to it. Battlefields at evening, when every breath she drew was somebody else's last; mortuaries and sepulchres. Anywhere death was, they took their ease; played amongst cadavers, and pick-nicked there.

That was why, when they'd got bored with searching for Shadwell, they came to the Requiem Steps. It was the only place in the Fugue sacred to death. As a child Immacolata had come here day after day to bathe in the sorrow of others. Now her sisters had taken themselves off in search of some unwilling father, and she was here alone, with thoughts so black the night sky was blindingly bright beside them.

She slipped off her shoes, and went down the steps to the black mud at the edge of the river. Here it was the bodies were finally relinquished to the waters. Here the sobs had always been loudest, and faith in the hereafter had trembled in the face of cold fact.

It was many, many years since those rituals had been in vogue. The practice of giving the dead to this or any other river had been stopped; too many of the corpses were being found by the Cuckoos. Cremation had taken over as the standard method of disposal, much to Immacolata's chagrin.

The Steps had dramatized something true, in the way that they descended into mud. Standing there now, with the river

moving fast before her, she thought how easy it would be to pitch herself into the flood, and go the way of the dead.

But she would leave too much unfinished business behind. She'd leave the Fugue intact, and her enemies alive. There was no wisdom in that.

No; she had to go on living. To see the Families humiliated; their hopes, like their territories, in dust; their miracles reduced to playthings. Destruction would be altogether too easy for them. It hurt for an instant only, then it was all over. But to see the Seerkind enslaved: that was worth living for.

The roar of the waters soothed her. She grew nostalgic, remembering the bodies she'd seen snatched beneath this tide.

But did she hear another roar, beneath that of the river? She looked up from the murky waters. At the top of the steps was a ramshackle building, little more than a roof supported by columns, in which the lesser mourners had loitered while the final farewells were made at the river-side. She could just see movement there now; fugitives in the shadows. Was it her sisters? She didn't sense their proximity.