"Where to, mate?"

He astonished himself with the reply, giving not Esta-brook's address but that of another place entirely.

"Clerkenwell," he said. "Gamut Street."

"Don't know it," the cabbie replied, and for one heart-stopping moment Chant thought he was going to drive on.

"I'll direct you," he said.

"Get in, then."

Chant did so, slamming the cab door with no little satisfaction and barely managing to reach the seat before the cab picked up speed.

Why had he named Gamut Street? There was nothing there that would heal him. Nothing could. The flea—or whatever variation in that species it was that crawled in him—had reached his elbow, and his arm below that pain was now completely numb, the skin of his hand wrinkled and flaky. But the house in Gamut Street had been a place of miracles once. Men and women of great authority had walked in it and perhaps left some ghost of themselves to calm him in extremis. No creature, Sartori had taught, passed through this Dominion unrecorded, even to the least—to the child that perished a heartbeat after it opened its eyes, the child that died in the womb, drowned in its mother's waters—even that unnamed thing had its record and its consequence. So how much more might the once-powerful of Gamut Street have left, by way of echoes?

His heart was palpitating, and his body full of jitters. Fearing he'd soon lose control of his functions, he pulled the letter to Estabrook from his pocket and leaned forward to slide the half window between himself and the driver aside.