When they’d brought me here before, the room had been empty except for minions, but now a padded armchair stood at the other end next to a desk. An oil lantern was set on the desk along with an ink-stand and piles of papers. Sitting in the chair was Embre. What was he doing here? At the bottom of the stairs, Fist gave me a shove toward the other end of the room; then he and Hand went back up the stairs. I went across the room and stood before Embre. “Hello,” I said. He looked me up and down, his black eyes sharp. He looked like a bundle of sticks wearing a too-large black suit and waistcoat. He wasn’t smudged with soot as he usually was. “You nearly did the rope jig yesterday,” Embre said. The hanging, he meant. I nodded. From the direction of the stairs came the tk-tk-tk of claws on stone. Pip. It crouched at the bottom of the stairs, not coming any closer. Embre saw Pip and looked at me with his eyebrows raised. I shrugged. “I assume this is the arrival of the bad magic you told me about,”
