The squeak of the axle built to an urgent trill. He tried to glance back. The chair hit a patch of reeds. The wheels jammed and the chair tipped.

From the top of the hill, Delphine heard the splash.

She waited for him to surface. Ripples radiated from the handles of the wheelchair. She almost ran to help him.

Then she remembered Mr Garforth.

Delphine took the Mauser from the wet grass and flipped up the safety lever with her thumb. She stepped over splinters of wood and ducked inside the ice house.

Rain drummed on the domed roof. The interior stunk of wet cement. Why on earth had Lord Alderberen wanted to take her here?

She squinted against the gloom. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She was on the precipice of a deep conical pit. Perhaps thirty feet across and built of brick, its sloping sides narrowed to a funnel. She could not see the bottom. Rainwater drooled from the ceiling, finding channels in the brickwork so the pit seemed to ripple and flow.

She remembered following Propp here. What was all the fuss about? It was just a hole.

And then, she heard voices.

She could not make them out the dimensions of the ice house turned every sound into a strange, keening echo but when she closed her eyes and concentrated, it sounded like a woman crying.

Delphine pulled back the bolt on the Mauser and checked the box magazine. A cartridge sat in the chamber and there were more beneath. Lord Alderberen had fired twice, and once more when he shot Wightman. Assuming he had started with a full magazine and hadn't reloaded in between, she had seven rounds left.

Delphine sat down on the cusp of the pit. She slid her legs over the side. The walls were steep, but not sheer. Parts of the brickwork had crumbled, forming toeholds. She wedged the head of the crab hook into the mortar between two stone floor slabs, then turned and began lowering herself into the pit. She dug her foot into a crack, tested putting her weight on it. The brick held. Slowly, she descended, towards the voices.

Sections of brickwork were slimy with rainwater. She picked her way around them. Near the bottom the gradient flattened out, till she could turn onto her backside and shuffle the final few feet. In the floor's centre was an opening the size of a wishing well. Two rusted hooks were set into its perimeter. She held her breath. The pit seemed to close in around her. She glanced up at the distant roof. How would she get back out?

The voices were clearer; she was sure she heard Propp's sister crying. One of the others had the fruity, grating cadences of Mr Cox. And then, unmistakable, deep and lulling: 'I forgive you both.'

Cox's sigh echoed through the chamber below.

'Do you know, from the very first time we met, I knew you were a fraud. But like all habitual, inveterate liars, you have spent so long at your poisonous arts that you have deceived yourself. Even now, you act as if you are the injured party.'

In a series of small, cautious movements, Delphine lay on her belly and peered over the lip of the hole.

She saw a cave, illuminated by what looked like lamplight. The drop to the ground was at least twelve feet. A long shadow stretched into her line of sight, gesticulating.

'It's over,' said Mr Cox. 'You will return with us and be tried in public. Then you will be executed.'

'I am glad to hear justice will be done,' said Propp.

'Oh, cling to your sarcasm if it comforts you. Dozens of my loyal staff were murdered today. They came without guns, intent only on ensuring the safe return of my daughter. You slaughtered them wholesale.'

Delphine dug her toes into the brickwork behind her and leant forward a little more. She could see the horned silhouette of a harka no, wait, it was just a statue but Propp and Stokeham were still out of view. Where was Mr Garforth?

'Why did you do it, Ivan?' said Miss DeGroot. 'What did you want?'

'Same thing as any dancer.'

'What's that?'

Propp made a short, throaty sound that might have been a grunt or a pained laugh. 'Balance.'

Delphine leant forward a little more. She felt her foot pop loose from its toehold. She threw an arm out to steady herself and slid forward on her tummy, knocking a nugget of mortar click-clack echoing to the floor below. Blood rushed to her head. The cave swung above her and she flailed at the edges of the hole, dropping the crab hook, grasping wet stone as she fell. She lurched rightways up before falling. She landed on her backside so hard that she saw white and her eyes watered.

Over three seconds Delphine saw and heard and thought this: She was sitting in the middle of a cavern. There were six stone statues of harka, vesperi and humans. Mr Cox was standing to her left. He had taken his jacket off and the silk of his dirty gold waistcoat scintillated in the light of an oil lamp burning on the floor behind him. Miss DeGroot was to her right, thick arm swaddled in crimson fabric, cowlick bobbing over the knuckle of shrapnel lodged in her eye socket. Reggie sat beside her, milk-white under his short red hair, hollow-eyed, twitching. Propp was on his knees, his wrists bound maybe he had never managed to untie them? directly in front of her. Lying on her back in the centre of the chamber, next to a black and twisting pool the channel, surely was the old lady, Propp's sister. She was pawing at the air, clenching and unclenching her delicate fingers. Between Propp and his sister, statuesque in a long black overcoat, stood Stokeham. A crack ran across the beak-mask, twisting its dour, aloof frown into a sneer.

She saw no child. Delphine felt the broomhandle grip of the Mauser in her palm. Miss DeGroot said 'Hey!' then her arm burst its wrapping, sprouting wet pink cords that whipped towards Delphine.

Delphine raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She had left the safety on.

A tendril wrapped round her arm.

'You little rat!' Cox was charging at her.

Delphine thumbed the safety down and fired once, twice. She hit Miss DeGroot in the torso and chin. Reggie grunted and collapsed. The impact of the second shot twisted Miss DeGroot's head back; the cord round Delphine's wrist sagged, melting into stringy mulch. Delphine yanked her arm free, brought the gun round and shot Cox in the gut. He pivoted with the shot, his momentum carrying him into her. Delphine was thrown flat against the floor. Cox stank of tobacco and cologne and something chemical.

Propp was up on one foot. He stood with a gasp, grey eyes bulging. Stokeham did not react for a moment, then the mask swivelled, owl-like, to regard him.

Delphine's gun arm was trapped under Cox. He was heavier than he looked.

Stokeham marched at Propp. Propp let out a small, mournful sound, 'Ah,' then Stokeham's leather gauntlets were round his throat.

Delphine rolled. Cox groaned above her. She tugged at the gun. Her hand slipped free. The splattered puce remains of Miss DeGroot's arm coalesced on the wet stone, knitting themselves into a single grasping limb. Even though Cox had been shot in the stomach, he raised a fist to pound Delphine.

Delphine rested her temple against the ground and closed one eye.

She shot Stokeham twice in the shoulder, feeling Cox buck with the impact. She tilted the muzzle up and blew a hole in the beak-mask's right lens. A spritz of juice and bone splinters left the back of Stokeham's skull. Stokeham toppled and performed a little jig on the ground.

Freed from Stokeham's grip, Propp staggered towards the pool. Miss DeGroot made a blustering sound 'Pwah aw pah!' and her half-reconstructed arm reared up like a giant python. Propp had an arm round the old lady's shawl-wrapped shoulder.

He smiled.

'Adieu.'

Miss DeGroot's big crude claw of a hand lunged at his throat. He tipped backwards into the pool, pulling the old lady with him. Delphine heard a slop, like a rock dropping into a swamp. The long liquid limb dived after him.

It surfaced clutching a triangle of shawl.

'No. No!'

Miss DeGroot staggered across the cavern, ranting, swearing. She paused at the threshold of the pool. Her arm retracted and solidified, fingers pushing out of the undifferentiated stump, lengthening and separating. She made a fist, shaking with the effort, then unfurled her fingers one at a time. She was marinating in sweat, glorious. For a moment, she looked almost human.

She glanced back. Lamplight glinted in her eye.

'Come on, Reggie.' She held out her other, human, hand. Reggie stood and walked to her.

'Reggie, wait!'

Delphine tried to drag herself out from under Mr Cox. She felt a sharp pain in her hip. His coils of chestnut hair brushed her throat and it was this, of all things, that made her gag.

Reggie did not look back. He took Miss DeGroot's hand. They looked at their reflections in the pool. Miss DeGroot nodded.

Together, they fell.

Mr Cox caught hold of Delphine's wrists. She was trapped. A beaked silhouette appeared in the corner of her vision.

'Well,' panted Cox, one eye screwed shut, 'this is disappointing.'

CHAPTER 42.

THE FIRST BLAST OF THE TRUMPET.

Mr Cox released her.

As he stood, he kicked away the Mauser and it skidded to the foot of a vesperi statue. Now she had time to examine the figure, it looked like Mr Loosley stocky shoulders, small, bunched wings. A white streak of lime bisected its left eye and ran down over its chin, where water had dripped from the ceiling.

Mr Cox slipped his hand inside his tawny waistcoat and poked a finger through the hole in the stomach. The finger wriggled, like a white worm breaking the surface of a molehill. He removed the waistcoat. Underneath, leather straps held a black metal cuirass plate to his sternum. He pressed his thumb into a shining dent at its centre, gasped with pain.

When he had got his breath back, he slipped his waistcoat back on. He glanced at Delphine.

'Get up.'

Perhaps the sedative had finally worn off, because Delphine found it hard to breathe. She looked around the chamber. She saw vesperi corpses, a fallen harka at the foot of the stairs, her sawn-off beside the mound of its corpse. Attached to the south wall, obscured by shadow, was a cluster of aluminium washing-up bowls. So Mr Garforth had been here.

'You've lost,' she said, trying to ignore the catch in her throat.

Mr Cox tilted his head back and looked at her. He and Stokeham made a swatting gesture.

'Yes, all right, then,' said Cox, the trace of a smile playing on his lips, 'stare at the herald. I suppose you've earned the privilege.'

He plucked at a loose thread trailing from the hole in his waistcoat. Delphine glanced at Stokeham. They seemed in no hurry to kill her. She could not understand it, and that made her heart race because it meant they knew something she didn't.

'How did you find us, by the way?' said Cox, without looking up.

Delphine shot a glance at Stokeham. Cracks radiated out from the beakmask's shattered lens. The eye beneath was in shadow.

'Your son brought me here.'

'Really?' Cox began dabbing at the tacky blood with a handkerchief. 'What happened to him?'

'I . . . I pushed him into the lake.'

Cox and Stokeham exchanged a glance. It was the first time Delphine had seen them acknowledge one another's existence directly, and she felt the frisson of a weird taboo snapping.

Mr Cox looked back down at his stomach. He sniffed, nodded. He began to chuckle. He patted his belly, threw his head back and laughed.

'It's not funny. He might be dead.'

'No, Delphine, no.' Cox wagged a bloody finger at her head. 'That is precisely why it is funny. The father dies in a fire, and his son, some eighty-one years later, drowns on the same estate! The Stokeham Curse strikes again.'

'But you didn't die, did you?'

Again, Cox shot a glance at Stokeham, who appeared to return it.

'No,' said Cox. 'I did not. Do you know you're an incredibly resourceful young lady, getting this far? How old are you, fifteen?'

'Thirteen,' said Delphine, a little proudly.

'Thirteen.' Cox whistled. He supported his elbow with one hand and tapped his chin with another.

She gritted her teeth against the cold weight in her chest. 'Are you going to kill me, then?'

Cox rolled his eyes. 'No. I am not going to kill you.'

She looked at Stokeham, whose arms were folded. To Stokeham, she said: 'But I helped Mr Propp escape.'

'Is that what you think you did?' Cox strode to the pool in the centre of the chamber. He ran his fingers along the low, flat wall surrounding it. 'What, you think that waiting for him on the other threshold is a lovely party with plum cake and macaroons and a dancing bear? The soldiers you saw tonight were just a bridgehead, a forlorn hope, uh . . . les enfants perdus. Back in Avalonia, I command an army. The false prophet has merely handed himself and my daughter into their custody.'

'What do you mean, your daughter?'

'I mean the child who was here but minutes ago.' Stokeham gestured at the pool.

'She wasn't a child.'

The beakmask tilted. 'You don't understand a thing, do you?'

Delphine made herself focus on Stokeham, struggling to formulate a plan while she kept her expression meek and engaged. She mustn't give up now. Mother said there was always a way.

'Teach me,' she said.

'Very well.' Cox appeared shocked at the words leaving his mouth. He turned to Stokeham, aghast. 'But, Endlessness, you can't . . . ' At this, Stokeham's body stiffened. Cox dropped to one knee and bowed, colouring. 'Forgive me, Endlessness. I forget myself. Naturally, you can do anything.' A long auburn forelock swung before his eyes. 'If my words implied disrespect, I am mortified, Endlessness, I only intended to advise, ah . . . that is, to clarify . . . ' He took a deep breath. His eyes rose slyly. 'Endlessness are you sure?'

Stokeham did not answer. A gloved hand signalled for Delphine to rise. This time, she did not resist. If she got the opportunity to run, it would be easier from a standing start. Her whole body ached and stung.

Still bowing, Cox said: 'We are of one mind, you and I.'

Delphine glanced towards the exit.

'By all means, run. I shall not stop you. Unlike my enemies, I would not murder a child in cold blood. I have achieved my aims for the time being. You can cause no more mischief. Go, if you wish.' Stokeham held up a palm. 'Or, if you prefer, you may hear me out.'