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“Vocabulary’s a tool and a hobby of mine, ex-Agent; fills in the blanks and keeps thing sharp, used judiciously. But believe you me, it’s not as though I enjoy seeing one of the finest minds of our generation thus reduced, designing weapons for a second Civil War under the command of a near-madman, a hopeless hophead. It sets me all of a jargogle to think what Mister Asbury might whip up next.”

“We should find a way to talk to him, Frank,” Thiel said. “For months now I’ve tried to deconstruct that Manifold of yours, bend even a tenth of its powers to our side — but all to no avail. I’m but a humble ’tec with some Corps of Engineering experience left over

from the War. Professor Asbury’s brand of science is as far beyond mine as Nobel’s Blasting Powder is to a tinderbox. And if he’s finally reached the limits of his appetite for our old boss’s more off-putting . . .

shenanigans . . .”

Ludlow glanced from man to man. “I believe I begin to reckon what you have in mind, Mister Thiel — and as it just so happens, I can help. You see, though he chose not to attend the maybe-late Missus Love’s little shindig, I received a secret communiqué from Mister Pinkerton this very morning. He wants an interview, a general-at-the-front sort of deal, and believes I would be the perfect . . .

now, what was the phrase he used? . . . ‘chronicleer’ to record his upcoming Campaign against the Hex for journalistic posterity. I’ll need a bodyguard on my journey, of course, things being chancy as they are right now. Any volunteers?”

“Given the last time Pinkerton saw you, he called you out as a traitor — ” Thiel began, to Geyer.

“Last time he saw you,” Geyer pointed out, in return, “he ended up sending me to kill you — and the way he is these days, I doubt he’d even notice I was there, I took enough pains with my appearance. You’re needed elsewhere anyways, to lead the Texican charge, if and when the Mexican attack occurs.”

“When, not if.”

“So if it’s all the same, I believe I’ll take my chances.”

“Very well.”

Ludlow clapped his hands. “Perfect. How I do love theatricals!”

Once again, both detectives considered him narrowly. “You do know you may see things you don’t want to in that stronghold, Mister Ludlow,” Thiel said, finally.

“Oh, don’t worry yourself concerning the quality of my sleep, sir; I was caught downtown during the Draft Riots in ’63. Which sanguinary event marks the very moment I discovered my gorge doesn’t rise too easily, sad to say, when a good enough story’s involved.”

“I read the dispatches, in our Chicago office,” Geyer replied. “But I’ve always wondered — was hexation involved?”

“Here and there, yes. New York’s vastly diverse populace extends even to the hex-born — and since the gangs aren’t exactly inclined to turn down any weapon falls to hand, they tend to use whoever turns hex under combat’s excesses as heavy artillery, clearing the way for more natural incursion: hordes of immigrants and Nativists alike, all wielding bricks, bats, fists, knives, axes . . . but no pistols. Still, with the city a powder-keg always awaiting spark, we’ve never needed hexation’s prompting when it comes to exercising our civic pastime, not within Gotham’s precincts — or anywhere else human nature holds sway.”

Above, the moon shone down like a dead man’s eye full of secret glee, absorbing it all. No secrets in Night’s house, after all. Not with everything that ill light touched transformed near-alchemically, the same way a spell renders metaphor real, into a spy for some hidden Enemy.

Miles away, Yancey came to shivering top to toe with her teeth too locked to chatter, tongue worried bloody. Though Yiska and her braves had laid her out already — piling all the rugs they had on top of her, high as they’d go — the chill of the Underneath still ran all through her, worse than before. Just how damn deep had she had to dive, in order to whisper upward directions in English Oona’s slippery ear?

Not as deep as she might yet have to go, she suspected.

Even as she formed this thought, a pale palm appeared at either temple, briskly stroking heat into her. “You look ill, dead-speaker,” Songbird observed, with a nasty touch of satisfaction. “The Ten Thousand Hells do not agree with you.”

“D-don’t think they were . . . made t’appeal . . . t’most,” Yancey said, with effort. “’Sides, that . . . seemed like one Hell only, t’me. An’ . . .

more’n enough.”

“Yes, you long-noses lack imagination, as a rule; I have observed this.”

Yiska laid a gentle hand of her own on Songbird’s shoulder. “Ohé, bilagaana, it gladdens me to see you returned safe, after such a long journey. Might it be you caught sight of our Enemy, while yo

u were down there?”

Yancey tried to shake her head, and regretted it. “N’huh, no. Don’t think so.”

“You would know, if you had,” Songbird said. “He is . . . distinctive.”

“I do know — met the sumbitch twice before, and not when he was all dressed up in Chess Pargeter’s meat, either. How many times’s it been for you?”

Songbird coloured, flush slight but noticeable. “Never you mind, innkeeper’s daughter. He would have to be clumsy indeed to let either of us see him, if he did not wish to be seen.”

“You speak the truth, for once,” came Grandma’s voice. “He is not to be underestimated, this Smoking Mirror.” She moved out into the fire’s light, earth shaking beneath her tread, then lowered herself down by slow degrees. “The tale of Tollan’s Fall . . . have you heard it?”