The Ransom Wing was opened at precisely seven o’clock the next evening.

The doors appeared to open of their own accord, but a sharp-eyed observer would have noticed hair-fine spiderwebs stretching from the door handles up to the ceiling, where (almost invisible on the high walls) white eight-legged shapes twitched.

Sir Piers was pleased as he marched to the front row, steering his daughter ahead of him.

Smirke had done a good job: every plinth in the Ransom Wing boasted wild and dangerous-looking beasts, razor-beaked birds and gnarly plants, frozen in life-like attitudes. It was an excellent collection, a monument to the conquering power of the British navy.

A giant prehistoric tree trunk had been pulled upright and covered in vicious-looking flowers large enough to swallow a man. The body of a ghastly beast, longer than a warship, twisted around the walls. A plinth displayed its enormous snarling head beside its pearly egg.

Sir Piers shuddered. He hated magical things. He hated their glow, their spark, the unpredictable way they moved and shone and hummed. It made his paltry soul twitch with fury.

Everything magical in this museum would soon be firmly where it belonged: frozen in the past. Sir Piers looked to the cabinet in the middle of the room, currently covered by a red velvet curtain. It contained the key to finally ridding Britain of magic and making everyone permanently sensible.

He smiled down at his daughter. Soon she would be sensible too.

Thorn Lawless had become Prudence Oglethorne again. Her wild hair had been tamed and her shoulders were slumped. Nobody could know that beneath her grey cloak her hands had been bound to a Malwood cane that burned her skin with a shaming coldness, and she wore a necklace of hangman’s rope to tie her tongue. She stood, like a statue that had been torn from a temple, with a face of stone.

The people shuffling into the gallery behind them saw a father smiling at his once-lost child, and marvelled that she had been rescued. They did not see the very real fear in her eyes.

Alongside the general public, Hatmakers, Bootmakers, Glovemakers, Watchmakers, Cloakmakers and the lone Canemaker all anxiously obeyed the soldiers who marched them in. It was a strange way to arrive at a party, being directed by stone-faced soldiers to stand beside a man who openly hated them.

Miss Prim trotted in, leading a straight line of her pupils, recognizable as prisoners by their frightened eyes. The Sensible Party stalked behind them, stern-faced.

King George, Princess Georgina and her betrothed, young Prince Hector, proceeded into the gallery, followed by courtiers and nobles. Surprisingly (as the Sensible Party hated all forms of creative expression), artists, musicians and actors had been invited to the opening too. They arrived eager to see the strange creatures that had been whispered about in London since the Invincible had docked. Prince Hector grinned with ghoulish appreciation at the snarling Sea Dragon’s head on its plinth, while Princess Georgina gazed around forlornly.

The admiral himself, the source of many of the rumours swirling through the streets, strode in last. He looked satisfied with Smirke’s work: after all, he too preferred everything dangerous around him to be dead and stuffed.

‘Do not fear!’ he announced, planting himself in front of the plinth on which the head of the Sea Dragon rested. ‘This beast’s egg requires powerful magic to hatch! But it will never hatch, because, as you can see, its mother is extinct!’

The admiral gazed around as a few people applauded the demise of the Sea Dragon.

‘I saved the girl and killed the monster!’ he roared, yanking Prudence Oglethorne to his side. ‘And I rid us of the scourge of the Troublemakers! They’re extinct now too!’

The crowd suddenly understood they were expected to cheer, and mustered some noise. A particularly sharp-eyed observer of the scene, watching through a small gap between flowers and branches, noticed that many among the crowd did not cheer.

‘Every Maker in London’s here,’ the observer whispered.

Sir Piers Oglethorne – the new prime minister – stepped to the front of the crowd. He signalled to the soldiers to lock the doors.

‘Tonight is an historic night!’ he announced in his high voice. ‘Tonight, Britain puts magic in the past and moves into a Sensible future! I have the key to finally make Britain Sensible again. And the Makers have a front-row seat to be part of this important change.’

Sir Piers turned a hostile smile on the Makers as he dragged the velvet curtain off the cabinet in the middle of the room. The Makers quailed as the frightening gnarl of Witloof’s soul was unveiled.

The sharp-eyed observer, hidden amid flowers and branches, eased open a small box and released a flock of moths.

‘Here is the key,’ Sir Piers was saying, taking a small key from his pocket, ‘to a Sensible Britain!’

The moths flitted like shadows across the gallery, drawn to the glowing lanterns. They feasted on the candle flames and one by one the lanterns winked out, until the only light came from the faint glow of the Sea Dragon’s egg.

Sir Piers, trying to fit the small key into the cabinet lock, faltered as the Ransom Wing was plunged into darkness.

‘What is going on?’ his voice snapped through the gloom.

Cordelia heard the soft pit-pit-pit of thousands of tiny seeds falling.

‘DOUBLE, DOUBLE!’ she yelled.

In an instant, the whole room filled with light as Sam broke open a box of sunshine.

Scattered across the wide floor of the gallery, thousands of seeds wriggled in the sudden sunlight, bursting open and growing faster than a mind could think.

The entire gallery was transformed into a blooming meadow of poppies, flowering brightly all around the amazed crowd.

Even seeds that had fallen into the king’s crown burst into bloom, and ones caught in wigs scrambled up to flower. People who had been wearing dark grey sensible clothes became moving meadows clad in tapestries of colour.

Cordelia saw all this as she parted a curtain of snapping flowers to clamber out along a high branch of the Soulhope Tree, overlooking the room.

‘WELCOME TO THE PALACE OF STOLEN TREASURES!’ she roared.