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they hurry up and let us out?” Willow asked again.
    “We’ve got to get out,” said Boy again.
    The window was high up, but when she stood on Boy’s shoulders Willow was able to peer out across the City below. “I think it’s going to snow today.” For some reason it reminded her of when she was small, just a little child, when she hadn’t had to work to survive. On a day like that there had been a lovely, thick fall of snow, and she had played in it, carefree.
    The sunrise was casting a pinkish light across the whole City. Mile after murderous mile of it stretched away as far as she could see. From high in the dungeon inside the Citadel of the City Watchmen the sprawl of buildings was laid out before her like a carpet. Even this early in the morning the City hummed and bustled with the noise of tradesmen up before the sun. In the gentle pink light, and from this height, the City looked almost beautiful to Willow. Almost. In recent years she had spent too long ducking and weaving her way through its narrow lanes and dark alleys to ever think of the place as beautiful. From where she teetered on Boy’s back she could see a very long way. Could she even see the edge of the City, or was she just imagining it? Remembering it, maybe. A trip to the country when she was a little girl, with her parents. She was imagining it. She’d been too little when her parents had died to remember them.
    “Have you ever been out of the City?” she asked Boy.
    “Are you going to get down?”
    “Oh, sorry, yes.”
    She slithered off his back and landed nimbly beside him.
    “Thank you,” he said. “Well?”
    “I think it’s going to snow.”
    “The
window,
Willow?” he said.
    “Oh, there’s no way we’re going anywhere. The bars are solid and besides, there’s a drop that’d squash you flat. We’re stuck.”
    Boy slid back down into the straw.
    “Then I’m as good as dead.”
    “Korp
is
dead,” said Willow, and shivered again.
    They were both silent.
    “I don’t even know your name,” said Willow after a while.
    “Yes you do,” said Boy.
    “What? Boy? That’s just what
he
calls you, isn’t it?”
    Boy said nothing.
    “That’s your real name? Boy? That’s not a name. You must have a real one.”
    Boy looked at her.
    “That’s my
only
name. Before Valerian found me no one called me anything at all.”
    Willow stared at Boy.
    “So where did you come from?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “No,” said Boy, beginning to wish he’d been arrested on his own.
    “How can you not know? Where did you live before Valerian found you?”
    “In the City.”
    “Where?”
    “Anywhere.”
    “Always?”
    “Yes,” said Boy. “Is that so strange?”
    “No,” admitted Willow, “but I know my name and I know I was born in the City, though I can’t remember where.”
    “And so do I,” said Boy angrily. “My name’s Boy and I was born in the City too! All right?”
    Willow was quiet, flicking her feet with a piece of straw. “Sorry.”
    Boy mumbled something.
    “Why are they taking so long?” she asked again.
    “We’ve got to get out,” said Boy again.
    There was a rattling of keys in the huge iron lock and the door swung back on its heavy hinges.
    The Watchman who had locked them up several hours before ducked his head as he came back into the cell. He seemed surprised to see them. He glanced at the sleeping figure by the wall.
    “Lucky for you he drank so much,” he said.
    “Did you go to the theater and look?” asked Willow.
    “Oh yes,” said the Watchman. His hat had a pink plume in it. This meant he was more important than the red-plumed one who’d arrested them. Willow thought this was a good sign. He could let them go. She’d told them about finding Korp and explained about the blood. She’d told them to go and see for themselves, so they knew she was telling the truth. And Boy had just let them imagine that the blood on his clothes was the same blood that was on