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unsettling implications of the Hexmachina’s plea for help. This was the machine that had once helped her defeat a slavering army of mad demon revolutionaries and their allies from the nation of Quatérshift. What could possibly overwhelm something as powerful as the Hexmachina?
    ‘Are the ancient enemy trying to breach the walls of the world again?’
    The Hexmachina’s voice carried as an echo across the space. ‘No, Molly, this threat is not something that I was designed to defend against. My pursuers are operating firmly across our level of reality, and they know the fabric of the world as well as I do myself. This is a force manipulating the channels of earthflow, sabotaging the leylines, turning my own techniques and cunning against me. They are masters at it.’
    ‘But you must be close,’ pleaded Molly, ‘I can see you, hear you. Rise to the surface and I can pilot you. Together we can—’
    ‘No, I am far from your location. I created a channel between us within your mind, Molly, before we took our leave of each other after the last war. When you were the only operator left alive in Jackals.’
    ‘There are others born with the gift now, operators other than me?’
    Hovering above the shiny material of the sphere, the child’s face nodded in confirmation. ‘Hundreds have passed through their age of puberty in the years that have passed, those who share the blood of your distant kin. But while the blood of those that can pilot me is carried by a new generation, they may soon not have a craft left to direct.’
    The white expanse trembled, distortions washing through it like waves. Molly fell over. As she picked herself up, she saw that the facsimile of the Hexmachina was being absorbed slowly into the ground, the featureless white plain that bore their weight becoming an albino quicksand.
    ‘Stay back,’ shouted the Hexmachina as Molly ran towards the god-machine. ‘The purpose of this mental construct is to allow us to communicate without your position being traced. Do not touch my avatar’s skin, or my attackers will be able to mark your position.’
    ‘What is happening to you?’
    ‘I am being frozen,’ cried the Hexmachina, its female voice growing fainter. ‘Sealed within the heart of the Earth inside a tomb of modified diamond-lattice carbons. I have never seen the building blocks of matter being manipulated so adroitly, my own powers leeched, vampirized, to strengthen the bonds of my captivity.’
    ‘But you must be able to escape,’ pleaded Molly. ‘In the name of the Circle, you’re the Hexmachina. Who has the might to trap you?’
    ‘Locusts, despoilers. What are they, indeed? It is almost as if they understand the principles of my construction, but that would mean … no, no it cannot be …’
    ‘Please!’ Molly tried to scrabble around the featureless floor, searching for a way to stop the Hexmachina from disappearing.
    ‘You must stop them, Molly, my beautiful young operator,’ whispered the child’s face, rising up the side of the Hexmachina’s hull as the god-machine was submerged. ‘You alone, this time. I cannot help you in this struggle. Seek out the scheme of defence: together you may be able to save Jackals.’
    ‘I haven’t seen Oliver Brooks for years,’ said Molly. ‘Not since he started wearing that stupid hood and scaring the constabulary out in the shires.’
    The child’s face, the Hexmachina’s body, had almost disappeared. ‘You – this – the comet, it is the—’
    With a snap reality returned and Molly found herself lying in the gutter in the shadow of the hansom cab, Commodore Black splashing crimson-tinged rainwater over her face.
    ‘Ah, lass, I told you that you’ve been working too hard on your novels, too much time spent crouching over a writing table, knocking around the dusty corridors of Tock House with the likes of Coppertracks and myself, rather than accepting the invitations of those gentlemen callers whose cards pile up unanswered