He climbed the steps very slowly, mindful of Sita's injured leg. She was too tired for her usual chattering, but she would say something every few steps, to reassure him that she was still there. 

He didn't know if he was imagining it, but her voice seemed to get a little fainter and more slurred every time she spoke, as though she was falling behind, or falling asleep. He slowed his pace even more, half-hoping she would walk into the back of him – but then, that would be bad, wouldn't it? The Queen had said he mustn't touch her.

Because he didn't want his eyes to wander – he was terrified of looking back by accident, just in a moment of forgetfulness – he watched his hand on the smooth stone balustrade, white-on-black, until he could still see it when he closed his eyes. It left a spider-print across his vision. But each time he passed one of the statues, he couldn't help looking up at them. He hadn't realized before how frozen they seemed – not as if they were posing, but as if they'd been caught in the middle of a snarl, or a leap, or a yawn. As if the wind had suddenly changed.

Everything was still apart from him. He could see dust-motes hanging in the air – not drifting, but hanging – even swaying from time to time, like poor Lily Hamilton must have done.

And then there was a sound. It probably wasn't very loud, but it sounded loud in the stillness. A catch of breath, a soft, dull thud, as of somebody falling but not crying out. He could only think that Sita had collapsed, or tripped over, and he wasn't allowed to go to her. He wasn't even allowed to stop. For half a second, he paused, his toe on the next step.

"Sita?"

Another catch of breath. Another soft slither. And then he heard her, half-whispering. "Oh no, no, no, nooooo."

"What's happening?" said Jack, forcing himself to raise his other foot onto the step. It was a trick, it had to be. They wanted to make him look round. She would have told him if she'd fallen down. There was no way to shut her up when she was conscious, and she must have been conscious, because she was whispering.

Jack screwed up his eyes very tight, and took another step. That was when she screamed. The sound crackled along his nerves like physical pain. The closest thing he'd ever felt was an electric shock.

He couldn't stop, he couldn't turn back, he couldn't even reach out a hand behind him to comfort her.

"What is it?" he said, raising his voice above the screams. "Tell me what it is."

She didn't respond. She probably couldn't hear him. But it had to be a trick. The Queen had said this road was arduous, and this was what she'd meant. He had to endure the thought that Sita was being tortured. Not just the thought, but the sound...

As soon as he'd worked this out, he wanted to run. He wanted to get the ordeal over as quickly as possible, and leave those screams far behind him. But the real Sita, who – please God – wasn't really screaming but couldn't make him hear her, she was presumably still following. And she had to struggle up the staircase with an injured leg. If he ran, he might really lose her. She wouldn't be able to keep up.

Taking the next step was the hardest thing he'd ever done. A thousand images crowded in on him, a thousand horrible things that could have been happening to her behind his back. He couldn't help it. He had to fight the instincts of every tired, terrified muscle in his body just to keep going – there was no time to fight his imagination as well.

Sometimes she screamed, and sometimes she sobbed. Sometimes, it was just that drawn-out, half-whispering moan, like someone lamenting over a broken tea-set. "Oh no, no, no, noooo."

He knew it was a trick. Why wouldn't her screams have got fainter as he climbed? Were her attackers carrying her up every step as they tortured her? Come to that, why were they quite happy to focus their efforts on her and ignore him?

He knew it was a trick, but he wasn't certain.

The only thing he had to fall back on was the hardness he'd learned from Robin – the lessons in which he'd been taught to overcome his instincts of horror and disgust.

It had started out with killing chickens. The Palace of Pandemonium owned half the city, so there were plenty of hen-houses, dairy-farms, and stables on their land. They also had a reputation for lavish expenditure, which meant they had a good relationship with the tradesmen who paid rent to them.

Robin had taken him to a dilapidated hen-house on the city's edge – a grotty courtyard, where the creatures pecked and flapped and sheltered from the perpetual drizzle under sheets of corrugated iron.

City boy as he was, Jack had imagined straw. He had assumed it was impossible to keep chickens without straw. OK, they didn't eat it, but didn't they need it for warmth or something? Or to keep them from catching their feet on the cobblestones? The only things they had to soften their way through the world here were feathers and bird-shit.

Jack hadn't said anything – he had only raised his eyebrows – but Robin had been over-brimming with jovial sarcasm that morning, and had responded accordingly.

"Oh, already an expert, are we?" he said. "Think we know better than the master, do we? Step right up, golden boy, and show me how you wring their necks."

"I didn't mean–" Jack protested, and then gave up. "I just thought we'd be learning something a bit more relevant."

"This is relevant. Though, admittedly, not advanced. This part of your education, golden boy, any idiot could teach you. Country people learn it all the time. Of course, they haven't usually had much of a sentimental upbringing, but I'm guessing neither did you. In spite of the concert-halls and conservatories, you've got the look of someone who starved as a child. You never lose it. Every time you sit down to a meal, I can tell."

"Thanks," said Jack coldly.

"So you'll make as good a scholar as any country-boy."

"Thanks again."

Robin spread his hands innocently. This was how their relationship worked. One of them had to be happy, and one of them had to be annoyed. Jack was grudgingly reconciled to letting Robin be the happy one this morning. Heavens knew, it was his turn.

"You've never wrung a chicken's neck?" Robin went on.

"No. We lived on bread and dripping at the orphan asylum. Butter on Sundays for a special treat."

"Did you get milk?"

"No."

"Not even your mother's, I'll bet."

Jack didn't like the assumption there – true as it was. "I had other people's mothers'."

"Hmm," said Robin. "I'll assume by that you meant: 'I've had the milk of other people's mothers', but it was intriguingly phrased..."

Jack laughed. He couldn't help it. He could – back then – never stay angry with Robin for long.

"Anyway, golden boy, I've bought ten of these," said Robin, motioning towards the chickens which were milling uncertainly around their ankles. "That ought to be enough to give you some practice. When we're done, we'll give them to Ellie to roast for the officers."

"We've only got twelve officers," said Jack, frowning.

"Right. So we'll have just under a chicken each."

"But you could feed twelve men with three chickens!"

Robin gave him a pained look. "Golden boy, I'm happy to explain to you how to be a killer. Don't make me explain how to be a member of the upper classes."

He scattered a handful of seed to the chickens, who wriggled and shoved like mad to peck it up, blithely unaware of their future.

"So you're going to learn what country-folk learn at a far earlier age. I'm not here to teach you any of the bullshit they use to justify it – cycle of life, better this way, they've had a good innings, wouldn't be around at all if we didn't farm 'em. I'm not interested. I'm just here to give you practical tips on how to view a living thing as a piece of matter. It's all matter, golden boy. Can't hurt you if you clean your hands well enough."

"You know, I have killed someone before," Jack pointed out. "I told you that."

Robin waved a dismissive hand. "Anyone can do it with a pistol from twenty paces. Takes grit to do it with your hands. Here are my basic rules," he said, picking up a chicken and cradling it almost tenderly in his arms.

"Rule one: breathe through your mouth until you get used to it. Smell is too intimately linked to disgust to be overcome. It'll have your stomach heaving however well-prepared your mind is. Rule two, living bodies are tough. Finesse is certainly required, but it's not a patch on physical strength. Rule three: living bodies are messy. You'll need to befriend a laundress, a tailor, and a surgeon. A laundress for when your clothes get dirty, a tailor for when your clothes get too dirty to be salvaged, and a surgeon because, with the best will in the world, you're going to need someone to sew you up from time to time."

It had been strange, to wrench and twist things in your hands, and know they were feeling it – to actually feel the shudder and the limpness which represented life and body parting company. He'd never had much of a taste for it, before or since. But Robin had said that enjoying it was not the point. He could tell the ones who were going to enjoy it right away. They'd been born with something missing – or something extra – he wasn't sure which, but there was no changing it.

"You're never going to be one of the ones who enjoys it, golden boy. I don't want to impute sensitivity to country people, but I don't think many of them enjoy it either. Just so long as you can stand it, you'll be OK."

***

It was hard to think of Sita as just matter. It was hard to think of her screams as just sound-waves. But the emotional callouses he'd developed at Pandemonium really did help him keep going. 

It occurred to him that nobody but the man he was right now could have done this. Oh, Robin could have climbed the staircase without batting an eyelid, but he wouldn't have cared enough about the girl to go slowly, or to refrain from turning round and joining in. And a man like Elliott or John Danvers would have lost his wits.

How was it Ellini had described him, when she'd written that letter to Emma Hope? Strong and sentimental. She had known plenty of people who were strong, and plenty who were sentimental, but only he and Manda had been both.

The thought was comforting – the thought that she might have handpicked him for this mission, the way she had handpicked him to look after her girls. It was, for a moment, like a cool hand on his brow. It was as though she'd bent down from somewhere on high to kiss him.

He wished he could have caught hold of her before she evaporated and whispered, 'Please – am I doing the right thing? Is she there behind me?' But his muscles were frozen, and his imagination was busy with too many other things. The momentary coolness would have to be enough.

Still, it changed the texture of the air just a fraction. If someone had once had faith in you, they never really left you. He knew how disastrously that faith had ended, and how painstakingly he'd revived it, but none of that mattered here.

Nobody but the man he was right now could have done this. Which meant that, on some level, all the mistakes he had made, all the people he'd killed, everything he had done to make his mother ashamed of him, had been worth it. Or, if not worth it, not wholly, irredeemably bad.

He couldn't quite see it from the right angle – he couldn't phrase it in a way that didn't sound appalling – but it was the beginning of forgiving himself, wasn't it? A step in the right direction? When every step was agonizing, that had to be something to be proud of.

The effort of restraining himself was such that his joints locked, his legs seized up, and it was very difficult to bend them in order to take the next step up. He realized later that he'd balled his hands into fists, when he saw the deep welts made by his fingernails in his palms.

He stopped noticing the scenery after a while. He was watching the imaginary horrors too intently. He didn't notice when they reached the top of the staircase and stepped out into the meadow. He didn't see the door, or the swirling of sand which marked the passage from one world to the other. He didn't even realize he was plodding resolutely towards John Danvers until he was level with the man's face.

It occurred to him then that he might fall down – it was half an option and half an inevitability – but he grabbed Danvers by the lapels as his knees gave way, pulling him down into a kind of bow.

"Is she there?" he said, grinding out the words between clenched teeth. "Is she all right?"

"Why can't you turn around and-?"

"Just tell me!" Jack shouted.

"Yes, she's–"

There was a rushing beside him. Someone had just come up from the cellar and was hurrying towards the door he'd come in by.

"Sergei?" said Jack. He couldn't turn his head to make sure. It might not be safe yet. This might be another trick.

"Could be a broken leg," said Sergei's voice. "She probably passed out from the pain of walking on it." Jack felt the doctor's reproachful look on the back of his head. "You couldn't have carried her?"

He wasn't sure whether he burst into tears or burst out laughing. He was so grateful, even for the reproachful look, but he couldn't put it into words, and he knew he wouldn't be conscious for long enough to try. He was still holding Danvers by the lapels, still pulling him down as he sank. Perhaps because his muscles had been bunched so tightly, he was having trouble collapsing all in one go. He fell in painful, shuddering increments, half-supported by Danvers, until he was on his back, looking up at the chandelier and the great oak staircase.

Sergei and Sita were already gone. He was grateful for that too. You didn't need to tell Sergei Petrescu his business. Also, he wasn't confident that he was allowed to look at Sita yet. If this was real – and not just a lovely oasis in the black desert – then it would probably take him a long time to get used to looking at Sita.

"Where's Manda?" he said, to the blurry image of Danvers's face. "I want Manda."

"She's with the Inspector, I believe."

"Bring him too," Jack burbled. "T'watch the door. And you're supposed to splutter and be idealistic," he added, tapping Danvers on the arm. "Don't forget."

"Jack, I–"

"Where's Leeny?" he said, because he always liked to get this question settled before he went to sleep.

"She's not back yet," said Danvers. "You've only been away three days. Elsie must have miscalculated – or you didn't stay for the full hour?"

"I stayed for twelve million years," said Jack. It didn't seem like much of an exaggeration.

"Was it dreadful? You look–"

"Fine," said Jack, as the image of the chandelier began to slide out of focus. "It was fine – I'm fine. And it's good that it's all fine, because I have to go back tomorrow."