Jack washed up on the shores of consciousness very slowly. He could feel the waves of sleep lapping at him for a long time after he came round.

But, because it had been so nice, being the plaything of the waves, and because he didn't expect to see any friendly faces, he kept his eyes closed for as long as he could, hoping he might drift off to sleep again – or even drift all the way to death, and do everyone a favour.

He was sitting up, against some uncomfortable arrangement of metal that pressed into his back – his bare back, as it turned out, because there was no fabric between his skin and the metal. The draught was playing idly with his chest hairs. His arms were splayed out like those of Christ mid-crucifixion. His wrists must have been tied to the metal bars at his back – not that he tried to struggle much. Sam was a competent gaoler, and wouldn't have taken any chances.

It was slightly disconcerting to find himself shirtless, but then, after what he'd done to Sam, he supposed he was in no position to expect ordinary treatment. He might have driven him mad. There might be thumb-screws and hot pokers in store – although it would take a very persistent torturer to put him to any inconvenience now.

A little, fluttering memory emerged from all the muzzy pain.

No, not a persistent torturer. Just the right torturer.

His eyes shot open, and there was Manda, sitting on a stool beside him. He himself was sitting up in bed, on top of the sheets, with his wrists tied to the headboard. He looked up and saw two pairs of handcuffs, one for each hand, securing him to the wrought-iron frame. He wondered if she had smuggled them out of Sam's office when he wasn't paying attention. And it seemed this was not the only thing she had smuggled out of the station, because there was a truncheon standing upright on the bedside table.

The sight of it, standing proud and erect at the bedside of a woman who was, to all intents and purposes, a nun, made him uneasy. He had literally no idea what to expect.

It looked as though Manda had been planning a speech, so he let her get on with it, while his eyes wandered about the room, searching for clues.

"Well," she said, in her school-mistressy voice. "Last night was very stupid of you."

"Mmm-hmm," said Jack.

"You're lucky nobody was killed. It could have been a thousand times worse than it was."

"From your perspective, I suppose."

She ignored him. "You're also lucky that no-one seems particularly interested in arresting you at the moment. I can't guarantee how long this state of affairs is going to last, but it gives us an opportunity to do something useful with you."

Jack's insides squirmed with alarm – and it wasn't just the thought of Manda doing something 'useful' with him.

"What do you mean, no-one's interested in arresting me? Where's Sam?" And then, because his mind always leapt to the worst possible scenario these days: "Is he dead?"

"No!" said Manda, clearly annoyed with him for making such a horrible suggestion. "He's just – he's resigned from the police force."

Jack shut his eyes. "Oh, that is so much worse."

"It is not worse!" Manda shouted. "How dare you say that? We'll find him a new job – as a clerk, or a-"

"Cry-baby, he's a policeman. It's not his job, it's what he is. He shouts at people and takes care of them. It's the only way he can live with himself."

Manda hesitated. She got up off her stool and tucked it away under the window, chewing her lip the whole time. "Mrs Hope said he looked fine when he came into the station – I mean, not very happy, obviously, but-"

"Did she say if he was holding an unopened letter?"

Manda released her under-lip long enough to gape at him.

"Yeah," said Jack, with a grimace. "I'd check on him again if I were you."

"What is it?"

"Something I thought I could use to get out of killing him," said Jack, grinding the words out through gritted teeth. "It didn't work. I kill everyone. Henry and Baby Jane, Joel and Alim, Ellini and Sam. They always go in pairs. I've killed him, and that bitch didn't even get a broken nose for it."

"She got a black eye," Manda volunteered.

"That's what always happens with people like her," said Jack, ignoring this attempt at consolation. "You have to step on scores of innocents to get to them, and in the end, they escape with barely more than a scratch. And they don't learn. You've learned, but you weren't the one so badly in need of an education."

"You're being gloomy," said Manda, her voice hardening. "I'm telling you, it's going to be fine. If he's got to be a policeman, he can go and be a policeman in London. I'll go with him-"

"You're not his wife."

Manda's eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't understand. We both lost someone we loved. We both mourned together. That's as good as marriage."

"For him, maybe, but not for you. He gets a nice girl to worry about him, knit him scarves, and point out when he's not eating. What do you get?"

"What's a woman supposed to get?"

Jack tilted his head. "Well, you've got me there."

But Manda didn't seem very interested in pursuing this topic of conversation. "He'll be fine," she said – and she was pacing up and down now, trying to pretend her nervous energy was exasperation. "Everything's going to be fine."

"No it isn't, Manda. That ship has sailed."

They were silent for a moment, while Manda's feet pawed the carpet.

Jack looked up at the handcuffs again. The iron headboard was twisted into a series of loops and swirls, some of which terminated in loose ends. If he was careful – and if he didn't let Manda see what he was doing – he could slide the cuffs through the maze of iron until they came off the ends.

It wasn't long before she started talking again. Her practical nature always re-asserted itself, even if it was now a bit shaky.

"I want you to meet a friend of mine," she said at last. "Then we can have a little talk about why attacking Mrs Darwin and Dr Petrescu is not the best way to proceed in this business."

"What business?"

"Her business," said Manda, folding her bare, freckly arms. "I'm assuming you loved her – I'm assuming that's what all this insanity has been about. Well, if you loved her, you can help me carry on her work." She paused a moment, the haughtiness fading. She even reached out a hand, as though half-tempted to pat him on the head. "You know, I understand-"

"You understand nothing," said Jack.

Manda pulled her hand back as though she'd been bitten, and then drew herself up, the proud, practical school-mistress once more. "Very well. Let's talk to my friend, shall we?"

She bustled over to the door, but Jack called out before she could reach it. "Cry-baby? Why did you take my shirt off?"

She looked confused for a second. Then she raised her chin and heaved her shoulders into a defiant shrug. "I'd never seen a man without his shirt on. I was curious."

"Is it everything you hoped it would be?"

Manda sighed. "Just be quiet and listen to my friend, Jack." She opened the door. In a considerably softened voice, she said, "Emma, would you come in here, please?"

A young woman stepped into the bedroom. She was fashionably dressed, in a high-necked grey gown with a collar of white lace. She was wearing a hat and gloves, as if she'd just come in from the street, with the breath of evening still clinging to her.

But then he saw the white-blonde hair, and suddenly the gloves made sense.

Oh, damn. She was one of them. And he was chained to the headboard, and therefore unable to hide his face or stick his fingers in his ears. This was going to be worse than thumbscrews.

And yet, for all the terror she struck into him, she was a little, polite, tremulous thing. Very English, like a feminine version of Danvers.

She gave him a wavering, anxious smile which seemed to say, 'You're half-naked and chained to the headboard, but I'm not going to say anything about it, because I was well brought-up.'

"Mr Cade? My name's Emma." Her eyes wandered down to his naked torso, and then snapped back up again. "Emma Hope. I was a friend of Ellini's."

She perched herself on the side of the bed – as close to the edge as she could get without falling off.

"We were together in the fire-mines. I don't know if she told you..." She looked at Manda, who made an urgent gesture with her hands, as though she didn't think the fire-mines were a suitable topic of conversation.

"Anyway," said Emma Hope. "She – she wrote me a letter, two days before she-" another urgent gesture from Manda "-before she left us. She was anxious that we'd have someone to turn to. You see, she didn't know whether she'd survive to look after us. She said she hoped to. But just in case anything should happen, she gave us a list of people we could approach for help. People who might be sympathetic to our cause. She said it took a very specialized sort of person: strong enough to keep us in check, but sentimental enough to baulk at the idea of locking us up again."

Jack stared at her, a wary kind of horror dawning. "I'm on the list?"

She was taking out a folded sheet of paper – fumbling it slightly because of the gloves. Jack tried to shrink as far back as the headboard would allow him.

"You practically are the list," said Emma. "She could only think of two people. She said she knew plenty who were strong but not sentimental, and plenty more who were sentimental but not strong-"

"She changed her mind about me," said Jack, trying to drown out any further words.

Emma Hope gave him a puzzled look, seeming to forget – for the first time since she'd come in – that he was half-naked and chained to the headboard.

"These are my orders. She was my commander. You can understand that, can't you?"

And then the Englishness kicked in again – the brittle, bustling cheer. "We're at sixes and sevens, I'm afraid. New girls are arriving every day, and I've been trying to keep them at my mother's house, but there isn't enough room, and, unsurprisingly, they don't much care for being cooped up indoors. We hoped you might-"

"You know I killed her, yes?" Jack interrupted, maddened that nobody seemed to be acknowledging this.

The girl looked at Manda again, her smile faltering. "Miss Manda says...you weren't yourself..."

"Is that what Miss Manda says?"

"In any case," said Emma, folding the letter on her knee. "I knew Ellini. She was determined to die, and – if you'll forgive my saying so – she was much more intelligent than you. I don't think you could have killed her unless she'd wanted you to."

Jack stared at her for a moment, and then burst out laughing – another one of those bitter, caustic laughs that seized him up and dissolved his insides.

"I never looked at it that way before," he said, when he could breathe again. "Perhaps that'll help."

When he'd started laughing, Emma Hope had inched ever-so-subtly away. Now she glanced at Manda and said, "It's not just that we need a place to stay. The, um – the master and his gargoyles are trying to recapture us."

The laughter stopped, as though he'd been slapped in the face.

"I think she knew that might happen," Miss Hope went on. "I think that's why she advised us to go to you. We're not safe. He thinks we're his property."

Jack looked at Manda, his mouth twisted with an emotion he couldn't place. Oh god, what was it? He felt sick – he always felt sick – but also...happy? No, not happy. Charged with purpose.

She had given him a job to do. Of course, she hadn't known, then, that he would prove to be her killer, or that she would end up condemning him to an agonizing, deathless existence after she'd gone. But she had trusted him. She had thought him good enough to protect her slave-girls – and, even if she'd subsequently been proved wrong, the job still needed doing, didn't it? He couldn't make her change her mind now–

She came back to you

–But this would keep him busy. It would make him feel useful.

"Untie me," he said.

Manda held his gaze for a second, and then gave Miss Hope a warm, harried smile. "Would you excuse us for a moment, Emma?"

Emma looked only too glad to do so. She sprang up as if the bed was white-hot, gave Jack a polite nod which again refrained from mentioning his half-nakedness, and headed for the door.

"There was a French girl," he said abruptly, before she got there. "Mathilde?"

Emma looked puzzled for a second, and then gave an involuntary giggle. "Oh, Matthi's not French. That is, her mother was, but she was deported to the prison-colonies a few days after Matthi was born. She only had time to name her."

Jack tried – with his hands still bound – to wave this information aside. "Where is she?"

Miss Hope hesitated. "I don't know," she said, as though realizing this for the first time.

"Did she get out?"

"I don't know!"

Jack gritted his teeth. "You don't know who got out and who didn't?"

"I mean-" Miss Hope waved a gloved hand. "I know who's at my home. But we escaped one by one, and Matthi was supposed to have been the last one out."

"All right," he said, closing his eyes. "I'll need a list of everyone who was in the fire-mines before the escape. Go back and talk to the other girls. Write down everyone they can remember. Doesn't matter if you only know first names. First names are a start. Check off everyone who's come to you in Oxford, and tell me who's left. I want every girl accounted for."

Miss Hope seemed to be panicking now. "But – what if some of them are still in there?"

"Then I'll go back for them."

"You can't!" she protested. "Only females can get into the fire-mines – even the master had to wait outside. You'd need a woman to go back in, and it would have to be a woman who could really defend herself-"

Jack smiled grimly. "I know who I'll send. By the way," he added, as Emma hopped from foot to foot in agitation. "Who was the other person on the list? You said there were two."

He really didn't want to know the answer. If it was John Danvers – the noble, heroic John Danvers – he was going to have to kill himself. And that was going to present some practical difficulties.

"It was Miss Manda," said Emma, looking at her again, and smiling her first non-desperate smile. Just the act of saying Manda's name seemed to calm her. "You – uh – you probably won't be surprised to learn that I went to the woman first."