Gluck came and went, supplying fresh files and fresh tea at intervals, but otherwise doing as little as possible to disturb Cal's concentration. It was difficult, Cal found, not to be sidetracked by many of the more bizarre accounts, but by disciplining himself severely he sifted out the one in every hundred or so that contained some detail that might connect the event described with the Fugue or its inhabitants. Some he knew of already: the destruction of Shearman's house, for instance. But there were other reports - of words seen in the air, of a man whose pet monkey quoted the Psalms - which had occurred in places he'd never heard of. Perhaps the Kind were there now.

It was only when he decided to take a short break from his labours that Gluck mentioned he'd unpacked the boxes they'd brought from Scotland, and asked if Cal wanted to examine the contents. He followed Gluck back into the map room, and there - every item tagged and marked meticulously - was the litter events in the valley had left behind. There wasn't much; either the survivors had destroyed the bulk of it, or natural processes had done the job. But there were a few pitiful reminders of the disaster - personal belongings of no particular interest - and some weaponry. Into both categories, weapon and personal effects - fell the one item that made Cal's skin run with gooseflesh. There, laid across one of the boxes, was Shadwell's jacket. He stared at it nervously.

'Something you recognize?' said Gluck.

Cal told him what, and from where.

'My God,' said Gluck. That's the jacket?'

His incredulity was understandable; viewed by the light of a bare bulb there was nothing so remarkable about the garment. But it still took Cal a minute to pluck up the courage to pick it up. The lining, which had probably seduced hundreds in its time, seemed quite unexceptional. There was perhaps a gleam in the cloth that was not entirely explicable, but no more evidence than that of its powers. Perhaps they'd gone out of it, now that its owner had discarded it, but Cal wasn't willing to take the risk. He threw it down again, covering up the lining.

'We should take it with us,' Gluck said. 'When we go.'

'Go where?'

To meet with the Seerkind.'

'No. I don't think so.'

'Surely it belongs with themI Gluck said.

'MaybeI Cal replied, without conviction. 'But we have to find them first.'

'Back to work then.'

He returned to the reports. Taking a break had been an error; he found it difficult to re-establish his rhythm. But he pushed on, using as a spur the sad remains next door, and the thought that they might soon represent his last keepsakes of the Kind.

At three-forty-five in the morning he finished going through the reports. Gluck had taken the opportunity to sleep for a while in one of the armchairs. Cal stirred him, and presented him with the nine key files he'd selected.

'Is this all?' said Gluck.

'There were others I wasn't sure about. I kept them aside, but I thought they might be red herrings.'

"True enough,' said Gluck. He went over to the map, and put pins in the nine locations. Then he stood back and looked. There was no discernible pattern to the sites; they were spread irregularly over the country. Not one was within fifty miles of another.

'Nothing,' said Cal.

'Don't be so hasty,' Gluck told him. 'Sometimes the connections take a little while to become apparent,'

'We don't have a while,' Cal reminded him wearily. The long hours of sleeplessness were catching up with him; his shoulder, where Shadwell's bullet had wounded him, ached; indeed his whole body ached.

'It's useless,' he said.

'Let me study it,' said Gluck. 'See if I can find the pattern,'

Cal threw up his hands in exasperation.

There is no pattern,' he said. 'All I can do is go to those places one by one - ' (in this weather? he heard himself thinking, you 'II be lucky if you can step out of the door tomorrow morning.) 'Why don't you go lay your head down for a few hours. I prepared a bed in the spare room. It's up one more flight, second on your left.'

'I feel so bloody useless.'

'You'll be even more useless if you don't get some sleep. Go on.'

'I think I'll have to. I'll get going first thing - '

He climbed the stairs. The upper landing was cold; his breath went before him. He didn't undress, but slung the blankets over him, and left it at that.

There were no curtains at the frost-encrusted window, and the snow outside cast a blue luminescence into the room, bright enough to read by. But it didn't keep him from sleep more than thirty seconds.

IV.

PAST HOPE.

They came at the summons, all of them; came in ones and twos sometimes, sometimes in families or groups of friends; they came with few suitcases (what did they have in the Kingdom worth weighing themselves down with?), the only possessions they cared about those they'd brought out of the Fugue, and carried upon their persons. Souvenirs of their lost world: stones, seeds, the keys of their houses.

And of course they brought their raptures, what few they had. Brought them to the place Nimrod had told Suzanna about, but had failed to name. Apolline had remembered it, however. It was a place, in the time before the Weave, that the Scourge had never found. It was called Payment's Hill.

Suzanna feared that the Cuckoos would have wrought some profound change on the area; dug it up or levelled it. But no. The Hill was untouched, and the copse below it, where the Families had spent that distant summer, had flourished, and become a wood.

She'd also questioned the wisdom of their taking refuge out of doors in such appalling weather - the pundits were already pronouncing this the bitterest December in living memory -but she was assured that beleaguered as they were the Kind had solutions to such simple problems.

They had been safe below Rayment's Hill once; perhaps they would be safe there again.

The sense of relief amongst them at being reunited was palpable. Though most had survived well enough in the Kingdom, circumstances had obviously required that they keep their grief hidden. Now, back amongst their own people, they could reminisce about the old country, and that was no small comfort. Nor were they entirely defenceless here. Though their powers were vastly reduced without the Fugue to fuel them, they still had one or two deceiving raptures to call into play. It was doubtful they'd keep the power that had destroyed Chariot Street at bay for long, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

And when they were finally gathered in the groves between the trees - their collective presence working a subtle transformation upon bush and branch - she felt the indisputable rightness of this decision. If the Scourge eventually found them, they'd at least be together at the end.

There were only two notable absentees. Cal was one, of course. The other was the book she'd given into his hands; a book whose living pages had contained echoes of this midwinter wood. She prayed they were both safe somewhere -the book and its keeper. Safe; and dreaming.

2.

Perhaps it was the thought he'd been in the process of shaping when sleep came (that the snow-light was bright enough to read by) which prompted the dream he had.

He imagined that he woke, and reaching into the pocket of his jacket - which was unaccountably deep - took out the book which he'd saved from destruction back at Chariot Street. He tried to open it, but his fingers were numb and he fumbled like a fool. When eventually he got the trick, there was a shock waiting, for the pages were blank, every one of them, blank as the world outside the window. The stories and the illustrations had gone.

And the snow kept falling on the seas of Viking and Dogger Bank, and on the land too. It fell on Healey Bridge and Blackpool, on Bath and Devizes, burying the houses and streets, the factories and the cathedrals, filling the valleys until they were indistinguishable from the hills, blinding the rivers, smothering the trees, until at last the Spectred Isle was as blank as the pages of Suzanna's book.

All this made perfect sense to his dreaming self: for were they not part of the same story, the book and the world outside it? Warp and weft. One world, indivisible.

The sights made him afraid. Emptiness was inside and out; and he had no cure for it.

'Suzanna . . .' he murmured in his sleep, longing to put his arms around her, to hug her close to him.

But she wasn't near. Even in dreams he could not pretend she was near, couldn't bring her to his side. All he could do was hope she was safe; hope she knew more than he did about keeping nullity at bay.

'I don't remember being happy,' a voice out from the past whispered in his ear. He couldn't put a name to it, but he knew its owner was long gone. He pressed his dream into reverse, in pursuit of its identity. The words came again, more strongly.

'I don't remember being happy.'