The Queen showed them into a little antechamber to await the trial – a room carved out of black stone, which seemed to have been designed with no other end in mind than to showcase the large, significant doors at the end of it. The floor sloped down towards them, giving them the feel of some large planetary body that could pull you into its orbit.

There was a crowd outside. Jack could feel the rhythm of their feet overhead, hear their excited buzzing. The doors at the far end of the room must have led out to some kind of auditorium. 

Well, he was used to fighting in front of a crowd. He knew how to tune them out. Harder to tune out, perhaps, would be the Queen, who would be seated somewhere highly visible, leaning down to him in her breathy black dress.

Still, he was cheerful, for a given value of cheerful. Sita was with him. He had his lovely axe. In fact, that was probably more of a reason to be cheerful than he'd realized, because the Queen had tried to get it off him. 

She had summoned a procession of pages, all wearing the same black and white livery as Joel and Alim. They had filed past slowly, each of them carrying a weapon on a velvet cushion – or simply holding the weapons by their hilts in cases where said weapons were too large to render this arrangement practical.

"Will you keep your own weapon, interloper?" the Queen had said. "Or will you exchange it for one of mine?"

Jack had never seen so many beautiful pointy objects gathered together in one place – all so highly polished that he had to shield his eyes from the glare. There were rapiers with tangled, filigree hilts, broadswords and battle-axes, halberds, sabres, curving knives that looked like tiger-claws, daggers with wavy blades, spears and hunting hangers and beautifully-weighted throwing knives.

But still, he had clutched his axe instinctively to his chest, for no other reason than the fact that it was solid, where the others seemed to be beautiful, shimmery dreams. The axe was like Sita or the gryphon: something wholesomely outside of his head. Solid and shiny and uncomplicated. 

But now he was beginning to suspect that he'd avoided some kind of trap – that the procession of gorgeous weaponry had been put in place to tempt him away from one of his two only friends in this place. 

Now he was waiting in the antechamber with his other only friend – his wonderful, semi-transparent Sita. He was practising with the axe – getting used to its weight and its reach. It sliced beautiful, clear circles around him, and cut through the fog teeming about his temples, making his head ache.

He was conflicted. It had all been straightforward when he'd been thinking only of Ellini, but now he was thinking of Sita too, and he wasn't so sure he was doing her a favour by rescuing her. The grief that would be there to meet her when she got out turned him cold.

Should he prepare her for it? Should he tell her beforehand that her parents were dead? But he wasn't the right person, surely? She needed someone who could hug her and cry with her.

He soothed himself by thinking of all the people he would surround Sita with, if he ever got her out. When she toppled through that doorway in the Faculty, he wanted it to be straight into Manda's arms, with Sergei nearby to raise his eyebrows and tend to her injuries, Danvers to fill her head with all his spluttering ideals, and Sam Hastings on the door, glaring at any would-be intruders.

Then Ellini – once she had stopped crying – would open up a book on her lap and start reading. And Sita would interrupt with questions, because she was Sita. And Leeny would answer softly and imaginatively, and make a better story with her intervention than the one she'd started with.

It was such an idyllic picture that, for a moment, Jack didn't notice he wasn't in it. And, when he did, it seemed obvious, though a bit portentous.

He couldn't think of any way in which his presence could improve the situation. He couldn't think of anything he could give to Sita that she'd be better off for. Granted, he was good at fighting, but so was Sam, and he could manage it without killing people.

All this conflict and claustrophobia made him focus on the axe – the reassuringly solid axe – to the exclusion of everything else. He swung it and swished it and tired himself out more than was really wise before a fight.

He could see Sita fidgeting in his peripheral vision. She was nervous. But, because she was cut off from her body, there was nothing for her to fidget with but her own fingers, which she twisted and wrenched in a way that reminded him painfully of Ellini. 

"Jack?" she said, after a while. "Can I call you Jack?"

When he only shrugged and went on swishing, she said, "Let's... stop for a bit-" swish "-think for a bit. I think this gauntlet thing might be-" swish "-complicated."

"What do you want me to think about?"

"Well, everything here is personal, and I'm afraid the battles will be too. That being the case, I might not be able to help you as much as I ought, because I don't know you, not unless you help me to know you."

"I'll do that willingly," he said, with another swish of the axe. "What was it you wanted to know?"

She shoved her hands deep in her pockets and attempted to scuff the ground with her shoes. "Well... What are your weaknesses?"

"Oh, all of them," he said brightly. "Take your pick."

"All right, what's your greatest fear?"

He gave her a dignified look. "Rather a personal question, Sita."

"But I'll know in a few minutes anyway, don't you see? She'll make you face everything that frightens you."

Jack shook his head. "She's already done that. This is what I do instead of facing my worst fear. I already faced my worst fear, and I fell on my face."

"You did?" said Sita, interested despite herself. "What was it? An eight-foot, hairy, poisonous spider?"

"It was a piano."

She giggled appreciatively. "Why are you scared of pianos? Are you afraid of falling in?"

"No, I..." He shrugged and swung the axe again, causing Sita to take a few steps back. "I don't know why. I just am."

"Oh."

He paused in the act of swinging, and looked at her. She was no longer smiling. "What?" he demanded. "Why that portentous 'oh'?"

"Well, it's just... if you don't know why you're scared of something, how do you know that, in running away from it, you're not actually running towards it?"

Jack frowned. "You're going to have to unpack that for me, Sita."

"I mean, if you don't know why you're afraid of it, then it's probably symbolic of something, and if you exchange it for something else – anything else – how do you know you're not just switching the symbol for the thing it symbolizes?"

"Bloody hell," said Jack. "That's deep, for an eight-year-old." 

He put down the axe and knelt beside her, trying to smile in an encouraging and non-condescending way. "Sita, this is what I'm good for." He didn't add – because he so wanted her to like him – 'This is all I'm good for'. But he could feel that thought lying across the thread of his argument, sawing through it bit by bit.

"Let's look at it logically," he said. "What did the king say I'd have to face in the gauntlet? Beasts, riddles, and memories. Now, I'm very good at fighting man or beast, I've got you to help me with the riddles, and I'm not afraid of my memories. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when I lost them."

Sita didn't question him about this. It was not the first time he'd seen her curb her natural curiosity around him. He wondered if she knew there was something horrible he wasn't telling her, and part of her wanted to tiptoe around it and spare herself the pain.

Instead, she said, in an excited whisper, "We should have secret names for each other! Code-names, you know? In case we get separated and they try to fool us. We know they can look like anyone from our memories, so supposing they took on my appearance and made you think I didn't want rescuing anymore?"

Jack wanted to tell her she was overthinking this, but she looked so pleased with herself that he didn't have the heart.

"What shall I call you?" she prompted.

Jack shrugged. "Call me Ishmael." 

He had said it without thinking – just as a joking reference to the opening sentence of Moby Dick. But now they both froze and stared at each other. In his head – from what seemed like centuries ago – he heard her saying, 'I can see you with this kind of axe, calling yourself Ishmael'. 

"Was it... real?" said Jack, his throat oddly constricted. "I really went back in time? And you can really see the future?" 

Sita had raised a hand to her mouth, her eyes as round and shiny as black buttons, but now she frowned. "Of course I can see the future! I told you I could. I mean, it's not normally anything useful," she admitted. "I didn't see Father Maloney pushing me down a sewer shaft, or you coming to rescue me. But I knew that name would be important – Ishmael." 

She leaned closer, her annoyance fading. "By the way, was that a reference to Moby Dick? Did Leeny read it to you? She reads to me too, all the time. My friend Agnes has story-time at her house, where her mother reads to her for half an hour before bed. And when she told me, I thought that was such a funny idea, because it's unusual for us to have half an hour without a story. Leeny says I learned to stand by pulling myself up on the book-case, and I learned to walk by carrying books over to her and dropping them significantly into her lap!" 

She chuckled. It made her eyes wonderfully crinkly. "Leeny was eight when I was born, you see, so she was always nursing me. Mama had to run a whole household, and Papa – well, his head's always in India, I don't think he ever really brought it back. Leeny raised me, and mostly, she raised me on books. She said there wouldn't be many opportunities for us. A lot of schools and universities wouldn't take us – not just because we were half-demon and half-Indian, but because we were women. But books never said you were the wrong shape or the wrong colour for the knowledge they contained. No-one ever stood guard on the fly-leaf of a book and said 'You can't come in'. And, if you smartened yourself up a bit, you could go to the public library and read them for free. Only..."

She hesitated, perhaps to draw breath, because she had delivered this speech in a rush of enthusiasm. Jack's smile had broadened with every word.

It was hope incarnate, the excited chatter of this little girl. It made him less terrified of telling her that her parents were dead, because Ellini was alive, and clearly they had been everything to each other. For the same reason, it made him despair less about saving Ellini from her past, even if he didn't see how he was ever going to find that ring, or face up to that piano.

"Only?" he prompted.

Sita bit her lip. "Well, when Leeny started to see handsome young men, and I started to see pictures of foreign countries, I think we both realized that books would never be quite enough."

Jack laughed. He wanted to question her about the foreign countries – because he desperately didn't want to hear about Ellini's interest in handsome young men – but she seemed to be thinking about something else.

"Did things work out with Leeny and Father Maloney?" she asked. "You know, the man who pushed me into the sewers?"

"They could hardly work out well with a beginning like that. She loved you more than she ever loved him."

Sita gave him a look that was proud and confused at the same time. She didn't seem to know what to say. She swung her arms for a bit, as if to compose herself. "Is she married? In 1882?"

"No."

"Then she's an old maid?"

Jack laughed at this description of her, true in social – but not in physical – particulars. "She's the sweetest old maid in the world," he said.

"But you want to marry her?"

Jack's smile disappeared. "Well, that's never going to happen."

"Why not?"

"She told me it wasn't."

"Oh." Sita's smile faded too. "Can't argue with that, I suppose. What doesn't she like about you?"

"Ah," said Jack, tilting his head philosophically. "You'll have to ask her. But, when she tells you, promise we'll still be friends?"

Sita giggled, which he thought was probably as favourable an opportunity as he was going to get. He braced himself. "The point is, she'll be waiting for you when we get out, and she'll take care of you." He made a stupid, awkward motion with his hands. "Things have changed a bit – since you were pushed into the sewers. She's changed. But she'll be herself again when she sees you, I know it. Trust me."

Sita didn't affirm that she trusted him, but neither did she laugh scornfully at the very idea. "What will you call me?" she said. "What's my code-name?"

"I'm not good with names," said Jack, thinking of the way he'd ruined 'little cricket'. "But..." He shrugged. "Well, you talk a lot. I mean, in the nicest possible way. Something to do with magpies? Chatter-pie? Maggie?"

Sita sniffed. "There's a horrible girl on my street called Maggie – I'm not being named after her!"

"It'll have to be chatter-pie, then. Or 'pie' for short."

She squinted, as she always did when she was thinking. Jack thought there was something magpie-like about that too.

"All right," she said at last. "I'll call you Ishmael, and you call me chatter-pie, and when they try to fool us or separate us – when they try to make you think that I've turned against you, or make me think that you've abandoned me – you talk about Moby Dick, and I'll talk a lot about everything, and we'll know what's real. Won't we?"

The door at the far end of the room opened then, as if it had been waiting for them to come to an understanding. Jack wouldn't have been surprised. 

He slid the axe into the leather straps that crisscrossed his back and walked out.