The woman glanced back at this man. He had taken off the jacket that had been her last loving gift to him, and thrown, it over the back of the chair. The shirt beneath was sweat sodden at the armpits, and the flesh of his face looked waxen in the afternoon light. Despite all she felt for him - and that was enough to make her tearful of computation - he was only human, and today, after so much heat and travel, he wore every one of his fifty-two years plainly. In the time they had been together, pursuing the Fugue, she had lent him what strength she could, as he in his turn had lent her his wit, and his expertise in surviving this realm. The Kingdom of the Cuckoo, the Families had always called it, this wretched human world which she had endured for vengeance's sake.

But very soon now the chase would be over. Shadwell the man on the bed - would profit by what they were so very dose to finding, and she, seeing their quarry besmirched and sold into slavery, would be revenged. Then she would leave the Kingdom to its grimy ways, and happily.

She turned her attentions back to the street. Shadwell was right. They had been led a dance. But the music would cease soon enough.

From where Shadwell lay Immacolata's silhouette was clear against the window. Not for the first time his thoughts turned to the problem of how he would sell this woman. It was a purely academic exercise, of course, but one that pressed his skills to their limits.

He was by profession a salesman; that had been his business since his early adolescence. More than his business, his genius. He prided himself that there was nothing alive or dead he could not find a buyer for. In his time he had been a raw sugar merchant, a small arms salesman, a seller of dolls, dogs, life-insurance, salvation rags and lighting fixtures. He had trafficked in Lourdes water and hashish, in Chinese screens and patented cures for constipation. Amongst this parade of items there had of course been frauds and fakes aplenty, but nothing, nothing that he had not been able to foist upon the public sooner or later, either by seduction or intimidation.