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the concrete’s cracks. Sullen-looking teenagers loped idly among the stalls and sized Arjun up for possible violence. Men in grey flannels and grey caps—every one of them in grey, slumping home or standing in little clumps smoking silently—glanced at Arjun as he staggered past and then ignored him, hunching their shoulders, hands in pockets. A pale woman with a single thick black eyebrow who was packing away a stall with three big metal tureens of reeking fish soup stared at him with nervous distaste: he was shirtless and bloody and strange.
    After all the Beast’s hysterical talk, he had expected something apocalyptic, awful, the wasteland, the end of days! Not
this
— though with the monster’s voice still echoing in his ears, even that ordinary market scene had something sinister about it, something furtive, unhappy, hungry, frightened … And then he stumbled and looked up, and saw that behind the pale woman—behind her soup stall, and behind the buildings behind that, an ugly industrial sprawl of tenement windows and fire escapes and water towers—and behind the fat-throated factory chimneys venting smoke and sooty flames—and behind the shallow looming domes of gasometers— and for a vertiginous moment it seemed even behind the dull yellow eye of the moon—behind everything was the vast darkness of the Mountain. Streetlights and firelight crawled its lower slopes, like abright spill of jewels and treasures, like signs, like bright insistent advertisements for something incomprehensible; but the peak, the peak was so dark. The Mountain was so
close
, here. Elsewhere, everywhere, it was a remote troubling shadow on the horizon; here it
loomed.
How did these people not go mad?
    Arjun ducked through the stalls, under their canvases, and into an alley, and another alley, and another. The Beast’s litany of street names rang in his head, floated up at him off street signs, until he wasn’t sure of the difference between the inside and outside of his mind. He ran where his feet took him, until he could no longer hear the men from the Museum stamping after him and shouting after him, and at that point he collapsed against a damp concrete wall and with relief he blacked out again.

Which Door?-Three Sisters-Maps,
Music-Ghosts-The Bosses’ Men
    A dog woke him. The mangy thing—naked spine and fly-thin legs, long whining muzzle—was sniffing and licking at the bloody rags on his hand. Arjun kicked it away. It retreated to the end of the alley, where its eyes shone in darkness.
    Darkness. It was night, still; he had not slept long.
    What light there was in the alley came mostly from that yellow moon—
sulphur
yellow. So this was a part of the city with smog-pumping industries—that was a thing to know. A little light spilled from the windows of some kind of upper-story meeting hall, where someone shouted angrily and some massed unanimous others stamped their feet.
    A large, ugly bird settled with a clang on the fire escape above Arjun’s head. It darted its yellow eyes, shifted its claws on the rails, and emitted a loud noise like breaking wind. There was something shiny in its claws.
    “Fak yoff,” it sang. “Faaaaak off. Fakoff.”
    It took off into the night on heavy thumping wings.
    Arjun recalled vaguely that he was not unfamiliar with fever and madness and hallucination. That was something worth knowing about himself.
    The alley stank of animals, coal dust, piss, rot.
    His whole arm was numb.
    He needed help.
    He stood, shakily. There were five, six,
seven
unmarked doors inthe alley’s brick walls. Some of them were painted in peeling red, others in peeling green; all were rusty underneath. Rubbish and slops and ordure were heaped beside each one. He staggered to the closest door and hammered on it with his unwounded hand.
    There was no answer and finally Arjun gave up and moved onto the next. When he rested his head against it he heard faint music, as if from a great distance. When he banged on it