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By Root 723 0

perhaps for the first time. There was something strangely familiar about it, as if he had seen this sort of printing, this sort of binding, before. "The Bookman's book," Moriarty said. "So clever…" He sighed, and kept leafing through the empty pages. "It is hard to run an empire when your masters' grasp of their own technology is virtually non-existent," he said. "I often wished we could have worked together with the Bookman. Yes," he said, smiling into Orphan's surprised face, "I know what he is, what he wants. Les Lézards' servant, and their store of knowledge too. And yet – a revolutionary element, like our own. A dangerous one. It's a shame…" He closed the book, holding it in both hands. "I will have it sent to the technicians for analysis. Perhaps something useful could be gleaned of it yet. Now, as for you, young Orphan…"

Those were the words he was hoping not to hear. "What will you do with me?" he said.

The Prime Minister turned the book in his hands. He seemed fascinated by it. And now Orphan knew what it reminded him of – the bibles at Guy's Hospital, the ones in every room that had made Inspector Adler so uncomfortable. "I'm afraid," Moriarty said, "that I won't have any choice but to have you executed–"

And at that moment the book in Moriarty's hands suddenly glowed, the binding showing a flash of intense radiation, and Moriarty cried out, but the voice was strangled in his throat. Orphan watched, horrified, and the book tumbled from the Prime Minister's hands and fell to the floor. Moriarty slumped on the desk. He was still breathing, just. His hands, and face, were badly burned. And as he fell a section of the wall slid silently open – revealing, to a horrified Orphan, a small control panel, and a curious screen, and the image of the cannon with people like ants moving around its base. Orphan snatched the book from Moriarty's hands and tucked it back in his pocket. He stared at the prone Prime Minister, and then at the control panel, no longer hidden, and at the cannon it was showing, the cannon it was there to control, and he thought, with a sudden, overwhelming uncertainty – what do I do?

And now he was running, running through tunnels, his sweat burning on his face and getting into his eyes; behind him the pursuers followed, and a shot echoed, a burst of stone hit his face and cut his skin. Away from the stunned or dead Moriarty, away from capture and death, onwards, in a mad frightened rush to get away.

Orphan ran, slipped, found the ground sloping sharply away from him. He stumbled. The air was hot, clammy and humid like the inside of an engine-room; from somewhere unseen he could once more smell the sea. He was in some sort of duct. He surrendered to the slide, arching his back away from the floor, his body resting on his heels and back, and so, like a child at play, he slid downwards, his speed increasing with each passing moment.

More shots behind him, but none coming close. Air rushed into his face. The smooth floor offered no resistance, no way to slow down. He thought of hitting something hard and ending up a blot of red against stone walls.

Don't, he thought.

Somewhere nearer, the cry of birds. The space he was in expanded, and a light grew ahead. An opening. He went through it–

He was flying through the air.

He had the sense of a wide space opening below him. Green and blue, a sense of free-falling, the ground opening below him–

He crashed into warm water with a huge explosion. His lungs burned. He had the sense of dark, heavy shapes moving below him. He kicked out and broke back to the surface. He looked at where he was. He was in a large pool of water.

The pool was surrounded by lizards.

The pursuers hadn't followed him. He knew why. And thought that now he truly was in trouble.

He was in the Nursery. Around him, lizard young milled on rocks and watched him with curious, unblinking eyes. Every now and then a tongue would dart out and taste the air, and the eyes would blink, slowly and ponderously, and focus back on him. He got the distinct impression