Violet heard the sash-window slide upwards, but didn't immediately open her eyes.

On any other night, she would be sitting bolt upright in bed and staring around the room, convinced somebody was here to kill her. But, recently, she'd been dreaming a lot about that sash window sliding upwards – ever since she had told Jack she slept with the window open, and described exactly where it was. 

In both sleeping and waking hours, she would picture it, and tell herself it wasn't so improbable. Especially now that Ellini was dead. What was he going to do with his evenings? Who was going to keep him entertained? And they were saying in the servant's hall that Jack had been the one who killed her.

She felt a grim flicker of triumph as she thought of this. All Ellini's mind-games hadn't kept him from murdering her. She might have had power over him for a time, but it was gone now, and he was anybody's.

Violet closed her eyes and listened, wondering if she had dreamed the sound of the opening window. Certainly, there had been no sound since. Sometimes cats got in – and she would hiss and kick at them until they got the message – but even a cat would have made more sound than this.

She was just about to roll over and sink back into an uneasy sleep when she heard a scraping against the tiles, and sat up in time to see a figure dragging a chair across the floor to her bedside.

Violet cried out automatically, and then pressed a shaking hand over her mouth. It was him. It had to be. It was too dark to make out much, but the figure was exactly his height, and moved with the same boyish energy.

Still, his actions were slower than usual – as though, for the first time in his life, he was having to think about them.

There was a brief, blinding flare when he seized the matches by her bed and lit the candle, but then he was there – entirely there and entirely Jack, with his quick blue eyes and messy blonde hair.

There was something... concentrated about him. For the first time since she had seen him again in Oxford, he didn't look as though he was dividing his attention between twelve desperately boring things at once, but as though he had roped and wrenched every thought to the matter at hand.

Still, there was no discernible expression. He gave off an air of concentrated energy, but whether that energy was angry, hopeful, or – as she sincerely hoped – lustful, she couldn't tell.

He straddled the chair and propped his chin up on the back, regarding her with his full, undivided attention. Violet felt a glow of triumph, thinking that perhaps he had never even subjected Ellini to a gaze like this.

"I'm so glad you came, Sahib," she said, making a half-hearted attempt to tidy her hair. "I – I don't know if you're still upset about your fiancée, but, believe me, if you knew her like I did, you'd agree that it was for the best."

"Violet," he said, in a strange, flat voice, "tell me about the night we took Lucknow. Our first night in the Lieutenant-governor's suite at the Chattar Manzil. Did you see anything strange?"

Violet stared at him. "You remember-?"

He waved a dismissive hand – but, again, quite slowly, as though it was moving through water. "Some of it. And some of it, I had to work out. I still can't understand why I got so worked up over such an unremarkable girl, but I'd like to understand everything else, if I can. There was a man, yes?" he said, leaning forward, with that strange air of suppressed energy. "And one of those gargoyle-demons? Did you see them?"

Violet hesitated. She knew it was possible, with this spell, to recover your memories but not your feelings. Was that what had happened? Maybe that was even why he'd killed Ellini – because he'd remembered her leaving him for Robin. But now, it would seem, he knew even more...

"It's all right," he said, watching her unblinkingly. "She's dead, she can't hurt you."

"Hah," said Violet, incensed despite herself. "If you think that would stop her! She's poison, Sahib, poison. She ruined my life!"

"Tell me how," said Jack, in that same flat, strangled tone. "Starting with our first night at Lucknow."

Violet paused again, but her urge to complain about Ellini was overwhelming, and she had never had Jack's undivided attention before. 

"It wasn't my fault," she said at last. "I don't know how he got in. I didn't know anything about it till we came in from the dressing-room and found that gargoyle with its hand in your chest. If you think that was a nice thing to see-"

But she broke off, because Jack gave a little exhalation, which might have been a sigh of impatience.

"Well, anyway," she said, trying to smooth down her hair again, "it was all that reading she did. I told her the assassins were getting closer – I told her she had no business reading anyway, when you needed her, but she never listened to me. The old man said she'd read enough to resurrect Eve, even if she didn't know she knew it. He said she had to get away from you and come to England, because he couldn't have knowledge like that walking around. He said anyone who followed her would be killed, so she'd better ensure you didn't follow." 

Violet spread her hands. "I didn't know she was mad enough to call in Robin Crake. Who could have expected that? I told her it would make you angry, I told her there'd be hell to pay, but she wouldn't listen – she never listened, Sahib! She said she'd do anything to keep you safe, but she didn't care what it would mean! She didn't think about me, having to stay afterwards, and clean up the mess she'd made! And then she has to go and ruin my life too! Those stupid gargoyles came back for me, even though I wasn't the one who'd been reading dangerous books! They dragged me down to the same god-forsaken place they'd taken her – just because I knew her! I wasn't joking when I told you she was poison, Sahib. She ruins everything she touches."

"Tell me about the place," said Jack quietly.

Violet almost stumbled over her words in her haste to describe her sufferings. She realized she had been wanting to tell someone all this for months.

"They call it the fire-mines," she said, in a low, dramatic voice. "Oh, it was awful, Sahib! They drag you through a long gallery, where the other slave-girls just watch, knowing full well what's going to happen to you. And then they chain you up in a smaller room and they tear out your fingernails to mark you as their own – as though they're branding cattle! And then, to break your spirit, they have their way with you-"

Jack gave a little, hissing intake of breath. He was breathing very heavily now, but his face was still expressionless. "Go on."

"And then they put you to work. The whole place is governed by some kind of feminine principle, so only women can quarry the gems from the stone. They gave us pick-axes, and hardly anything to eat, and they whipped us if we didn't work fast enough, and still – even if you did everything they said – they still put their hands on you-"

Jack stood up very suddenly and walked over to the window, turning his back on her. She saw that he was holding both hands clasped behind his back, but one fist was clutching something with an intensity that had made the knuckles turn white. Violet tried in vain to discern what it was. He was holding it too tightly.

She was pleased to be having this effect, but it – it wasn't like him. Nothing had ever shocked him before. He had walked through the fetid streets of the prison colonies with barely more than a shrug. Violet found her urge to describe her sufferings fading.

"How did you get out?" he asked, in a sort of level whisper.

"Well, it was him," said Violet. "The owner. The gargoyles work for him, but he never comes down into the mines."

"What is he?"

Violet wrinkled her nose. "Just a normal man, 'sfar as I could see. I don't know whether he's human or new-breed. The main thing was that he had eyes. You see, because the gargoyles never gave us enough to eat, and because there was no kind of medicine down there, we had to steal to stay alive. There was a tunnel leading out of the mines, only big enough for one girl at a time to squeeze through. Some of the slave-girls used it to get up to Cherry Hinton and steal food and medicine for the wounded."

"Why didn't they use it as an escape route?"

Violet placed her hand on her hips, outrage overcoming caution. "Only the senior girls knew where it was. And this will give you an idea of the kind of brain-washing that went on down there, Saahib – from the slaves as well as the masters. The senior girls said that, if everyone couldn't escape, no-one could escape. They said because the tunnel was only big enough for one girl at a time, the gargoyles would notice something before even five of us could get out. Then they'd seal up the tunnel, and we wouldn't be able to get out for food or medicine anymore. They didn't tell me where the tunnel was. I'd suffered just as much as them, but apparently I wasn't senior enough-"

"Ellini was one of the senior girls?"

"Of course! Practically the leader by the end! And she never stopped trying to win me over, that was what made me really sick. She knew I was the only one who knew the truth about her, so she never stopped trying to get me back on her side. But she needn't have worried," Violet sneered. "The other girls were so taken in by her that they never stopped for a moment to listen to me. It was all because her hair never turned white – as though that's a good indicator-"

"Why should her hair turn white?" said Jack, still not turning to look at her.

"It's the fire. It bleaches your hair white if you stay down there longer than a few weeks. But Ellini's never did, so the girls started to think she was special. They had all these stupid stories – like that her hair drank up the fire or something. And of course, she was always so bloody eager to be Charlotte Grey."

"Yes. Tell me about Charlotte Grey."

"She's a scapegoat," said Violet, with a contemptuous shrug. "Like I said, we had to steal to stay alive, but the gargoyles always knew something was going on. They could smell the outdoors on us, or else they noticed that not enough work was getting done when the senior girls were off stealing food. They'd want to punish someone – and you can't just walk it off when one of those things punishes you. So, to ensure that no one girl got punished too much, we took it in turns. The gargoyles didn't know one girl from the other, except by smell, so we stole sandalwood oil from their shrines and used it as the signature scent of Charlotte Grey. When the gargoyles wanted someone to punish, we'd tell them it was Charlotte Grey who'd been out stealing. And then the girl who's turn it was – or the girl who was feeling strongest – put on the sandalwood oil and took the punishment."

"And that's where Ellini started to win everyone over," said Violet waspishly. "Because she was always so willing to be Charlotte Grey and let the gargoyles whip her. Nobody cared that she was just a lousy masochist – they all thought she was being so noble. It made me sick. That's how the owner came to see her. She volunteered to be Charlotte Grey when it wasn't her turn, because Katherine was faking a fever or something. But this time, instead of taking her to be whipped, they took her to the owner. He wanted to see this notorious Charlotte Grey who'd been causing so much trouble in his mines. And, because he could see her, she was stuck being Charlotte Grey forever."

She stopped, but Jack didn't speak. He went on staring out of the window with his back to her, and Violet was too excited to leave off. She had never encountered so much concentrated silence from him before. It was as though he was hanging on her every word.

"Anyway," she went on, "he did what every man does when they meet Ellini – he got obsessed with her. He seemed to think she was at the head of some giant conspiracy, because he tortured her for information. And she must have ranted and raved like a lunatic, because by the time he came out of that cell, he was convinced she was the devil incarnate, the greatest threat to world-peace since – well, since you."

"I think I'm beginning to get the picture," said Jack.

"Well, anyway, he summoned me to him. Men can't set foot in the fire-mines, you see, so I had to go up into the caves to talk to him. And he said he'd set me free if I told him everything I knew about her. I mean, what was I supposed to do?"

There was no answer from Jack. At no point during this conversation had he ever been animated, but now he was disconcertingly still.

"He'd already made up his mind," Violet insisted. "There was only one thing he was going to believe. I could tell him there was no conspiracy till I was blue in the face, but it wouldn't help her or me. And, in the end, all he asked me was whether she was dangerous. Can you believe that? And she is dangerous, conspiracy or no conspiracy. I earned my freedom without telling him a word of a lie."

"So he let you go?"

"Yes."

"And then Ellini escaped?"

Violet gave a surly shrug. "I suppose so."

"And she knew he'd empty the fire-mines to get her back, leaving the other girls free to sneak out at their leisure."

Violet felt a chill trickle down her back. "What? The other girls are out? But they're so – they'll think I'm a traitor! They're so obsessed with Ellini-"

A strange, harsh chuckle came from Jack's direction. "I wouldn't worry about it, Violet."

He turned round, showing her a face that was pale but still expressionless. He was breathing hard through his nose, and his smile was oddly twisted, as though it had been yanked out of its natural curve by some strong emotion. But there was no hint as to what that emotion might be. It could have been anger, amusement or exhilaration. Perhaps it was all three.

"They'll never have a chance to hurt you."

Violet wanted to interpret that as reassurance, but there was something very odd about the way it was phrased.

"Sahib," she breathed, torn between worry and the pleasurable agitation of being pinned under his gaze. "Won't you show me what you've got in your hand?"

He walked up to her quite stiffly, as though he was having to think hard about every movement. When he opened his hand, there was a flash of rubies. But it was the hand itself, rather than the object in it, which puzzled her.

He was holding some kind of comb. It was a bleached white – twiggy and segmented, as though it had been made out of bone. But there should have been blood. The prongs were sharp, and he'd been clutching the thing tightly enough to turn his knuckles white. There were livid red indentations where the points had been poking into his skin, but not the tiniest pinprick of blood from any of them.

And, all at once, she knew that this wasn't Jack – or it was Jack, but it was also a monster. She wanted to scream or run or at least protest her innocence. But Jack's concentrated eyes, and the rubies in the comb, were holding her spellbound. The only words she could get out were, "What is it?"

"That's a contentious issue. But it once belonged to the demon queen Jalfrezi. Ever heard of her?"

Violet shook her head wordlessly.

"You know what happens when you betray a demon queen?" said Jack, beckoning her closer. "Your crimes always catch up with you, no matter how long it takes."

He shifted the comb in his hand, slipping his fingers between the prongs, until they were poking up like spikes out of his clenched fist. They were slightly curved, as though they, too, were beckoning her forward.

"But, if it helps," he said, "and even though you certainly don't deserve it, you can take comfort in the fact that you're just the first of many. You won't be lonely for long."