“Lirk, have you been fiddling with the temperature?” she heard Murdeth say. “It’s gotten wretchedly hot in here.”

“Nay.”

A change in the temperature? It was freezing! The man was totally insensitive. She switched her attention to them. From the sound of their voices, Nieve judged that she was situated in the centre of a large room. It was a relief to discover that they weren’t too near.

“Get these sorted then. Lumber at the far end, we’ll have to stack them, no choice, and changelings by my desk, ready for realignment and shipping. Recognizable troublemakers off to Bone House, as usual. And Lirk, no funny business. I haven’t lost my touch, you know.”

Lirk said nothing, and presumably got straight to work.

What exactly that work was, Nieve couldn’t guess. Nothing she’d heard made sense (outside of Murdeth’s threat, which was clear enough). But . . . lumber? Changelings? Bone House? All she could hear were swishing and rattling noises. If she didn’t look she’d never find out – or find out too late.

Tentatively, she raised the sheet and peeked out. What she saw were bodies, also on gurneys, row after row of them, a staggering number. The room itself was cavernous, but it wasn’t a morgue, not a hospital morgue, because it was too cluttered and dirty . . . and far too weird. Amid drifts of hair on the floor, entangled with butcher’s string and skeins of dust, were stained piles of hospital gowns, balled-up paper bags, toppled rubber boots, drifting feathers, and loose hanks of fur. Inching the sheet up, she took in more of it. Archaic instruments dangled from the ceiling – heavy iron tools, lead bodysuits encrusted with spikes, axes, scythes, shackles, thumbscrews. The shelves on one wall were filled with skulls in a range of sizes, small to extra-large, and on another, as neatly arranged as preserves in a pantry, were jars crammed full of ears and fingers and teeth. Thick rusted chains and fat coils of rope were piled on the floor, and in one corner stood a cluster of wide-mouthed buckets, all filled to the brim with a greasy unidentifiable substance out of which spiraled coils of smoke.

A skinny rat poked its nose out from between one of these buckets, then fled under the nearest gurney in a swift, skittering motion.

The rat was the least alarming thing she’d seen so far. A real morgue would have been far less terrifying.

Murdeth stood beside a massive stone block at the far end of the room, his desk presumably, for on it rested a tall stack of paper, a pile of musty old books, a black rotary-dial telephone, and a stuffed crocodile. Beside the desk, sat the shopping cart full of babies that they had seen earlier. Nieve watched as he reached in and yanked one out roughly, as if he were grabbing a sack of potatoes. Holding the baby in one long-fingered hand, he began poking at it with the other. He twisted its nose, pinched its cheeks, tugged at its ears. He was treating it as if it were a machine that needed adjusting, or a hunk of unmolded plasticine.

Stop it!

Murdeth paused, then dropped the baby, as if it had given him an electric shock. It bounced off the desk and tumbled to the floor, where it landed on a pillowy mound of oily rags. He looked at his hands in surprise, then glared at the baby. Nudging it with the toe of his shoe, he sneered, “A born troublemaker.” He snapped his fingers at Lirk. “Get rid of it.”

As Lirk hurried over, Murdeth turned his back and snatched up the phone. Lirk tucked the baby under his arm and carried it off through an archway to another part of the room obscured to Nieve. When he returned, he resumed his duties, which involved pulling sheets off the bodies, giving them a quick once-over, then hauling them off and dumping them onto piles of other bodies of similar shape and size.

The spectacle was appalling enough without realizing that Lirk was working his way steadily toward them.

“Nieve.”

Lias, behind her, gave her gurney a tug. While she’d been surveying the room, he’d been silently – and invisibly – active.

“I’m using the fern seed again,” he whispered. “When Lirk’s not looking, I’ll move you closer to the door. Tell you when we’re near enough to make a break for it.”

“A word with her, yes, and make it snappy, will you.” Murdeth had the phone’s receiver clamped fast against his ear. “The situation here is intolerable, absolute stacks of them. The sooner they’re fully processed the better. Human resources, I ask you, more trouble than they’re worth! Additionally, I require another order of that serum from Wormius and Ashe, most of the so-called doctors in this institution don’t know what . . . what? What was that you said?”

“Now,” said Lias.

Lirk was struggling with a tubby body four times his size, grunting as he wrestled it onto a pile of equally tubby ones.

Nieve let the sheet fall back over her face and lay rigid while Lias pulled the gurney toward the door, creeping along as he piloted them through the crowded room. She itched to make a run for it, although knew that the longer they remained undiscovered the better.

Murdeth slammed the receiver down and Lias immediately stopped.

“Lirk,” Murdeth growled. “Apparently that filthy little megrim is on the loose. I’d better notify the Impress. I want every new arrival here checked at once. You hear me, right now. ”

Murdeth snatched up the phone again, and Lias whispered, “Lirk’s bolting the door, we’ll have to–”

Then she heard nothing. She had no idea what was going on, until she realized that Lirk was standing beside her gurney, breathing close to her ear, his nose making a funny whistling sound. Slowly, he raised the sheet and stared at her with his cold eyes.

Nieve stared right back. Playing dead wasn’t going to help now. Of course he recognized her.

“Thought something was fishy here,” he said in his harsh scraping voice. “A hag always smells off.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “One way to fix that.” He held up a small vial filled with an acid-green liquid, which, when he gave it a shake, began to bubble and hiss. “This’ll clean you right up.”

Nieve didn’t respond, only continued to stare at him, his wrenched mouth, his squashed nose, his misaligned eyes. She thought of Murdeth tinkering with the baby’s features, and wondered at the destructive sort of “touch” he was capable of. Lirk wasn’t big – together, she and Lias could jump him – but he was tough, and wouldn’t hesitate to douse her with whatever bone-dissolving stuff the vial contained.

“Let me go,” she said quietly. “And you’ll have your revenge on Murdeth. What he’s done to you, it’s vicious, undeserved.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t trust a megrim.”

“I can help. Ask my, um . . . my familiar. Familiar, answer!”

“Mistress?” Lias said, uncertainly.

Lirk eyed the empty space behind her head, unable to hide a glimmer of interest.

“Familiar my fanny,” he said. “That’s nowt but a thieving taran. Got his hands on a tricksy device, eh? Some charm.”

Murdeth was murmuring into the phone, on the defensive this time, his bullying surliness reduced to a sycophant’s cringing whine.

“A charm, yeah. I’ll let you have it,” Nieve said quickly. “Think what you could do.”

Lirk stole a glance at Murdeth. “I’ll have it anyway.” He swished the vial in front of her eyes.

“No you won’t,” Nieve retorted. “You have no idea what I can do.”

Neither did she, but the threat gave Lirk pause. He glanced at Murdeth once again, then gave a curt nod. “Off then!” his words sandpapered to a rough hiss. “And give it.”

“Okay, Lias.” Nieve rolled onto her side and slid off the gurney, then hunkered down, keeping close to the floor.

He sighed in exasperation, but his left hand appeared nonetheless, the silver canister held lightly between thumb and forefinger. Lirk snatched it away greedily.

Crouching low, dodging among the gurneys, Nieve skittered toward the door, as warily and anxiously as that rat she’d seen. Lias arrived at the same time, both hands now visible and easing back the bolt.

But fortunately not visible to Murdeth, who’d become too distracted to notice.

As they snuck out, Nieve heard him shouting, “Lirk, you hideous malformed freak, get over here! We’ve got to find her! D’you hear me? It’s . . . she’s . . . Lirk? Lirk! Where the deuce are you?!”