'Buying their way in with blood. You have no more blood to offer.'

'Respectfully, Majesty, you are mistaken. The blood is for the dead, to give them enough substance to appear to the living.'

'I am never mistaken.'

'As you say. But I am insubstantial now myself, and can talk to the dead as an equal.'

'I am never mistaken and I never lie.'

'Truth is the will o' the wisp of the living, Majesty, and therefore only we lie.'

'A subtle answer, warm thing. And a courteous one. If you were in fact able to talk to one here, who would it be?'

'Sebastian Chiltern.'

'Hmm. There are so many...'

'He came only recently.'

'That word has no meaning for me.'

'He is incomplete, Majesty.'

'Incomplete?'

'Only a piece of his... of the spirit... was lodged in his body. The rest is '

'You talk nonsense.'

'I assure you, I do not. He '

'There is no soul here like that you describe. It is true that and it may be that this was in a time that you might call recent two came who had one soul and many bodies. But the other, no.'

'As you say, Majesty. His name in life was Sebastian Chiltern. That is all I know.'

'What information do you want from him?'

'A location.'

'That is a very short answer for such a long journey. Is there treasure there?'

'No.'

'What is there?'

'A monster and a machine.'

'And will you kill this monster?'

'If I can.'

'And if you cannot, will it kill you?'

'Yes.'

'It is a good bargain for me either way.'

'As you say.'

'How polite you are.' The touch again, at the nape of his neck. 'Perhaps I will mark you, so that I know you when you come again. Are you afraid?'

'We all fear you,' he whispered. 'Every one of us.'

'Another pretty answer. I think I will let you speak to this Chiltern.'

'To thank you would be to insult you.'

'Very wise. One would think you had done this before.'

Perhaps I have, thought the Doctor, though he hoped not. Throughout the conversation a feeling had been growing in him so intense that he'd become certain that, even without flesh, he was freezing to death. Now he realised that what he had taken for a physical sensation was terror. He had been near Death too long, and its dark radiation was poisoning him, burning the fabric of what he thought of as his self. He clutched frantically at the empty side of his chest. There, just there, the shimmer and shiver, the thread of life. So fragile, stretched so thin what had he done?!

'Ask your questions,' said Chiltern.

Chapter Twenty-one.

The Angel-Maker wept, a sniffling, gulping series of sobs, punctuated by wipes of her nose on her sleeve and raking tears at her hair. Roused from sleep, the landlord threatened to throw her out if she didn't quiet down, so she pulled the pillow from the bed and buried her face in it. Sabbath didn't notice.

She had realised there was trouble even before her knife went into the Doctor. He had helped her helped her! and what could that mean? and then when he had fallen with the blood coming out of him, he hadn't died. The Angel-Maker knew something about lethal wounds, and he should have been dead instead of lying there all pale and his blood black in the moonlight and him still moving a little, and moaning.

She had run. Sure and he was one of the Gentry after all, and what would become of her? They never forgave, and their vengeance was cruel. For herself, she didn't care. But what if they punished her by punishing Sabbath?

And they had. She rocked back and forth on the bedside chair, bent over, pressed into the pillow, half-smothering herself. Around her, the inn was in an uproar. Still furious at her hysterics over what looked to him like a simple case of a man's having a drop too much, the landlord was forced to tuck his nightshirt into his trousers and fetch the dog-cart when Fitz came panting in with news of the Doctor's injury. Miss Jane had passed by in the hall, looking in at her timidly. The Oxford don on a fern-collecting holiday was wandering around asking what was going on. Anji had initially tried, without success, to calm her, but after talking with Fitz she had returned and started yelling at her.

'You did it, didn't you? Look at me, look at me! You little bitch, it was you, I know it was you!' In some part of her mind, Anji was appalled at her rage, even frightened. But she reeled with it like a drunk. She grabbed the Angel-Maker's tangled hair and pulled her face from the pillow 'You tried to kill him! That's your solution to everything, yours and this bastard here. Did he set you on to it? Well, did he? It's backfired, then, hasn't it? Not as smart as he thought, is he?'

The Angel-Maker didn't seem to know Anji was there. Certainly, nothing Anji shouted was registering with her. Her eyes were fixed on Sabbath, and she continued to cry as loudly as a child. Anji finally looked at Sabbath too. He was on his back, a hand resting on his chest, sweating and breathing harshly. Anji stared at his hand. Over his heart. Hearts. Her anger drained out of her. What had the Doctor done?

The Doctor sat and Chiltern stood. A stream flowed between them. It was only a few inches wide but when the Doctor had peered into its lead-coloured waters he couldn't see the bottom.

Chiltern was grey too, as if he were made of the drab mist through which the Doctor had passed on his way down. He seemed to have difficulty holding his shape, except for his head, which was solid and opaque and exactly as the Doctor remembered from life. Well, the Doctor thought, it would be, wouldn't it? Everything here was being filtered through the prism of his conceptions and memories.

Perhaps not everything... Far above, in what appeared to be only a dull, undefined void, there were occasional darting, flapping sounds. Not quite like birds. Not quite like anything he recognised at all, actually...

'I want to know who you are,' said the Doctor. 'And who Nathaniel is. And who or what that third one is. And what happened to the others of you.'

'There are no others,' said Chiltern. His voice was dull and flat, though his eyes, fixed on the Doctor, were attentive.

'Just the three of you.'

'There are only two.'

'Two?' said the Doctor stupidly. 'But then... Wait, I see Nathaniel is is your twin. Not a fractured piece of you your natural brother.' your twin. Not a fractured piece of you your natural brother.'

'Yes.'

'So you're complete, aren't you? You never went into the machine.'

'I never went into the machine. I sent Nathaniel. Then I was to follow him.'

'Follow him where?'

'Into the future. Until I found the cure.'

Though Chiltern's face had no expression, for a moment the Doctor could not look at him. 'He was mad, your brother.'

'Yes.'

'You thought you were to blame. That you stole his life. You must have told him, because the fragment of him that I know as Nathaniel remembers that, has made it a part of him. He took your guilt because it matched some subliminal guilt of his at not being turned into a monster.'

Chiltern didn't respond. It doesn't work like that, the Doctor wanted to say. You could no more have stolen your brother's sanity than his taste in wines or his musical preferences. It wasn't your fault. You've put everything, everything everything, at risk to make up for this, and it wasn't even your fault. But he kept his mouth shut. Why tell a dead man he'd wasted his life?

'Why did your brother split into two pieces instead of eight?'

'You waste your questions,' said Chiltern.

'Yes,' the Doctor agreed. He was, he realised, hesitating, afraid to get to the important question, afraid of having to face the possibility that it might not have an answer. 'The other one... He's fled Dartmoor. He can't return to the clinic. Where might he have gone?' Chiltern wavered, as if he might vanish. 'Tell me,' the Doctor pressed, 'and possibly I can help him.'

'Capel Gorast.'

'Wales?' said the Doctor in surprise.

'On our mother's side there is a ruined house. For generations we could neither afford to live in it nor find anyone to buy it, only let it fall apart. We were taken to see it once as boys.' Something like expression crept into Chiltern's face. 'Tell me,' he said falteringly, 'is my brother...? He's alone now. Is he all r'

With a shriek, a cloud of claws and wings swept down on Chiltern. His head flew back and his mouth opened, but he was gone before any cry emerged, either carried away or dissolved to smoke, the Doctor couldn't tell which. He sprang to his feet in horror, and a bony hand closed on the back of his neck.

'Intruder,' said the clammy voice in his ear. 'Desecrater. Defiler. Did you truly think you could come here and with mere pleasing words avoid my judgement?'

The Doctor's head rolled on the pillow and he gave a tiny cry. Anji jumped up and bent over him. His lips were parted, his face creased with pain. Sweat beaded on his brow, but when she felt his forehead he was cold. 'Oh God.'

Fitz was suddenly in the room with her. 'What's happening?'

'I don't know. He's so cold.'

'I'll get another blanket.'

'And a new hot water bottle,' she called as he ran from the room. She went to the fire and added wood. 'And more wood,' she muttered. 'And... and...' Abruptly, she sat down on the floor. This is it, she thought, slumping against the fireplace surround, her cheek pressed to the brick. If he survives this, if I survive this, I'm going home. I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm 'Anj?' Fitz was back.

'I'm all right.' Embarrassed, she quickly got up.

'You sure?'

'I'm fine, really.' She moved to help him tuck the blanket around the Doctor. From down the hall, the Angel-Maker's sobbing could still be heard. 'I wish she'd shut up.'

'It's that old Irish grief you hear about, isn't it?' Fitz said soberly. 'Like the banshee.'

'I suppose.' She wiped the Doctor's damp brow with the towel from the washstand. 'Useless, though, isn't it? She'd be better off getting him a hot water bottle.' Anji hung the towel on the headboard. 'I suppose I could do it,' she said grudgingly.

'Yeah.'

She left for the kitchen. Fitz watched the Doctor. His breathing was rapid and shallow, but at least he could breathe. Not like last time when, Fitz would swear to the end of his days, his lungs hadn't even been working. He became aware that the Angel-Maker had stopped crying and was relieved until he looked up and saw her in the doorway. With her wild hair and red-rimmed eyes, she looked like a banshee herself. Fitz wondered nervously where her knife was. She was staring at the Doctor. He saw fear creep into her face. 'It's that he helped me,' she said. 'Almost he took the knife from my hand.'

'Yeah,' said Fitz without surprise. He'd half-guessed it already. The Doctor's strange mood on the tor... The way he had talked... He must have known the Angel-Maker had followed them, known too what she would do.

'Why?' she said. 'Only to kill him?'

'Sabbath?' said Fitz. 'This isn't about Sabbath. Sabbath's just his... his anchor to life. His way back. This happened before when he was nearly killed in Liverpool. Did something happen to Sabbath then?'

She nodded and approached the bed. Fitz watched her cautiously. He didn't think she'd attack the Doctor after the disastrous consequences of her previous attempt, but she was one weird, scary bird. 'When one falls the other falls,' she said, looking down at the Doctor's white face. 'And which one was it I stabbed, then?'

'Both of them.'

She pointed. 'Look,' she whispered.

At the edge of the blankets, which the Doctor, shifting, had pushed down, was a red stain. Fitz jerked back the covers and tore open the Doctor's shirt. The stab wound had stopped bleeding, but now blood from the old ridged scar was seeping through the bandage. 'Oh hell.'

She ran from the room. Fitz pulled off the bandage and pressed a damp towel to the scar.

'Oh God, what now?' said Anji, rushing in. 'Sabbath's bleeding. She says the Doctor's bleeding '

'Yeah, but it's not bad.'

She came over. 'No,' she breathed thankfully.

'What about Sabbath?'

'The same.'

Fitz glanced towards the door. 'She's awfully quiet.'