Despite Robin's mood swings—despite fearing that at any moment the knife would be back against his throat—Jack loved his combat training with Robin.

He had been awful to begin with, always losing concentration and letting Robin trip him up whenever he saw Ellini watching them. But now, he liked nothing better than showing off in front of her.

He knew he was doing well because he'd overheard Robin and Ellini talking in the kitchens while he'd been in the scullery, trying to clean mud off his boots.

He hadn't meant to leave the door ajar on purpose. He just liked to keep an eye on Ellini and Robin when they were together, in case they argued or—or something. Anyway, it was nice to catch a glimpse of Ellini when he was engaged in unpleasant tasks. She could make dried mud sparkle like gold leaf.

His ears pricked up when he heard his name, and he edged closer to the door, still scrubbing ineffectually at his boots.

"He's good," Robin was saying. "Very good, actually. Might even be great, if he stops pining after you and applies himself."

"He's not pining after me," Ellini replied. "I told you, he's immune. It's something to do with his short attention span."

Ellini talked to Robin in a strange, factual, emotionless way. With him, she didn't seem nervous or apprehensive—perhaps because she knew exactly what he was going to do, and it couldn't be any worse than what he'd done already.

"He doesn't look immune, Ellini."

"I'm telling you—"

"And you've got no reason to lie?"

Jack pressed his eye closer to the gap in the door, trying to keep both of them in his sights.

Ellini had turned away from Robin and stomped over to the dresser. She wrenched open one of its drawers and took out a flat, silvery object, which she balanced on her palm and held out for his inspection.

"It's a compass," said Robin flatly.

"It isn't pointing north, is it?"

Robin frowned at it, and then leaned from side to side experimentally. "It's pointing at me."

"That's right. It's a magic detector. I got it from the Shetland traders on the Royal Mile. It shows where my magic is, and who it's working on. You take this out when Jack's in the room and, I guarantee, it will not point at him. I can tell who's affected by me."

Robin took the little compass, clutched it in his fist, and paced around the kitchens. After a while, he said, "I'm sending him to Gargotha."

Ellini stared. "The man with four arms? The one who said he'd kill you if you sent him another sub-standard student?"

"I said he was good, didn't I? Don't make a fuss about it."

For a second, Ellini seemed to forget her determined calm, and smiled at him triumphantly. "I said he'd be good, didn't I?"

Robin gave a short, bleak laugh. "You? You just wanted him because he played piano. And, if he doesn't keep those dexterous fingers to himself, I will kill him, Ellini."

Ellini was completely unfazed. "Experiment with the compass. You'll see that it works. You'll see that I'm right."

***

The next morning, Jack sought out Myrrha, who was a reliable informant, even if she tended to tell him much more than he'd ever wanted to know.

He didn't ask her about the compass, or the mysterious fact that it didn't point to him. Maybe it was because Ellini was supposed to awaken a man's earliest experience of love. After all, she had been his earliest experience of love—the first tender touch he'd ever known. If her magic only harked back to herself, did that cancel it out? Did it mean it wasn't magic at all?

He was sure Myrrha would have her own theories, but he didn't trust her enough to confide in her. Still, she was a mine of information when it came to Gargotha.

"He's a master of infernal combat," she said, shuffling through her deck as though looking for a card to represent him. In the end, she seemed to give up, and put down the four of clubs. It stirred something in Jack's memory.

"Does he really have four arms?"

"Oh yes," said Myrrha, smiling. "A proper demonic symptom, not like some of the watered-down gifts you see these days." She laid down the King of Spades, which Jack was starting to recognize as Robin's card. "Gargotha taught my husband, in his youth. He runs a training school at the Halfway House under Mount Etna."

"The Halfway House?"

Myrrha snatched up her cards and shuffled them again. "It's a sort of underground hall," she explained. "They were originally built as hostels for travellers taking the long road from the fires of hell to the gardens of earth. Or vice versa. Nowadays, there's no getting from earth to hell—except by the conventional method of dying—so the Halfway Houses are just settlements underground, where new-breeds gather to feel like they're living the life of their ancestors." Her lip curled with contempt. "Even though they have no idea what kind of life that might be."

She bent her head over her cards and went on, in a suspiciously casual voice, "Being chosen to train with Gargotha is the greatest honour a new-breed warrior can receive."

"Then I want it," said Jack.

Myrrha didn't raise her head, but he saw her steal a sly, sideways glance at him. "Are you sure you won't be—ah—homesick?"

She meant Ellini-sick, of course, but Jack shook his head with an expression of such wide-eyed innocence that she didn't press him.

He didn't really know how it would feel, being away from Ellini. He was expecting withdrawal symptoms. He probably wouldn't be able to eat or sleep, but he could barely eat or sleep anyway, just knowing she was a few bedrooms away from him, and possibly not wearing any clothes.

Besides, he would only be with Gargotha for a few months, and Robin would look after Ellini. He always had—even if he'd maybe been a bit extreme with the kind of things he'd considered to be a threat to her. It would be all right.

As for her despair, Jack was so far from being able to understand it that it seemed quite romantic to him. He felt like Orpheus. His love had been carried off by the darkness, and the only way to get her back was to go there himself, and charm whatever monsters lay beyond.

Still, there was some doubt lurking at the back of his mind. Pandemonium was the only place where he'd ever been happy, and he wanted to come back to find it exactly as he'd left it. Robin's insane-but-brilliant violence was fairly easy to plan for, but Ellini's depression was an enemy that he had no idea how to grapple with.

So, he'd come up with a plan. It wasn't much of one, really. He had no idea what despair felt like, so he didn't know how you'd go about fighting it off. But Ellini liked scampering around outdoors, and she liked creatures that weren't human, because they didn't gawp at her and profess their undying love only to be skewed on a spear wielded by Robin Crake.

So, he decided to find her a pet—not human, but definitely capable of defending her, if Robin was busy.

And then, as if by magic, two creatures fitting that description had turned up on the Edinburgh hills. They hadn't hatched yet, but that was no obstacle. It was much easier to gain a creature's loyalty if you caught them while they were young.

***

The night before he left was Midsummer's Eve, but he waited—with difficulty—until it was getting dark, before dragging Ellini up the grassy hills outside the walled city. In the undergrowth, crickets buzzed, and birds chirruped. The entire scene, from horizon to horizon, seemed to be heaving and prickling with life.

She was full of energy tonight, nudging him in the ribs, racing him to this tree or that stone, giggling nervously when he picked her up, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her up the hillside.

He loved that too. He loved how she tensed and giggled to overcome the fear that she associated with being touched by a man. If he ever—by some miracle—managed to get her into bed, she would probably laugh hysterically the whole time.

He put her down in the heather outside the mouth of a cave and tried to be serious. "Now, listen, little cricket," he said, sitting down beside her. "I'm going away tomorrow, and—"

"I know," said Ellini, rolling over and propping herself up on her elbows. "I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do without you."

"Why don't you come with me?"

She raised her eyebrows, the cheer darkening slightly. "Oh? You're going to fight Robin before Gargotha trains you? Sounds like a bad idea to me."

"You really think I'd have to fight him?"

"I think you'd have to kill him."

"Just for taking you on holiday?" Jack persisted. "I thought the whole idea of him training me was so I could look after you?"

"Yes," said Ellini patiently. "But here in Pandemonium, where he can keep an eye on you. Not in the outside world, where you could be doing anything to me."

"Could I?"

Ellini gave him a playful shove in the chest, which almost caused him to topple backwards into the heather.

"I can't believe I'd really have to kill him," Jack went on, more for his benefit than for hers. "I mean, we're all friends, aren't we?"

Ellini laughed, but not harshly. She seemed delighted that the idea had crossed his mind. "No. We're not all friends. That's why you mustn't come back."

"Mustn't come back," he repeated, as if the words didn't make sense.

"You mustn't come back from Sicily," said Ellini, speaking in the hard, factual voice that she almost always reserved for Robin. She was even making herself look directly into his eyes to try and convince him she was serious.

But he knew her too well now. If she'd meant what she was saying, she would have been staring determinedly at the heather, or shoving him in the chest, or devising some complicated metaphor to ensure there was only a fifty-fifty chance he'd even understand her.

"He'll never stop being suspicious of you," she went on. "Get out while you can. See the world. Write me letters about the extraordinary things you're doing, and then it'll feel as though I'm free too."

Jack winced. She had meant that last bit. She had turned her gaze—soft as ink—down to the heather and almost smiled.

"But... I like it here," he protested.

Ellini frowned, still making that creditable attempt to be firm and business-like. "All right. Then I'll go. That's trickier, but I can manage it. You and Robin will never get along if I'm around to cause trouble between you. I'll be gone when you get back."

Jack gave a short, self-conscious laugh and looked down at his hands. "Um, no... That's not going to work for me either."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me." He sat back in the heather, sighed, and stretched out his legs. "Anyway, the point I was trying to make, before we got sidetracked with prophecies of doom, is that I have a going-away present for you."

"I thought going-away presents were supposed to be for the person who's going away?"

"Well, from my perspective, that's you. I'm still going to be with me the whole time, and that's present enough, believe me."

She giggled, a little apprehensively. "What is it?"

"It's a surprise."

Her smile faltered a bit. She probably hadn't had many good surprises.

Jack got up out of the heather and offered her his hand. "It's in that cave," he said, nodding towards the cave mouth, which was almost hidden now in the gloom.

"Oh," he added, as though it was a trifling afterthought. "And you've got to wear this."

Ellini stared in quiet horror at the blindfold he was holding out to her. It was probably the biggest compliment he had ever received that she didn't run away right there and then.

"But it's... it's pitch-black in those caves anyway..."

"Then the blindfold can't matter that much, can it?"

Reluctantly, Ellini stood up and let him tie the blindfold around her head.

He led her by the hand to the cave mouth, trying not to notice the rapid rising and falling of her chest. Quite apart from the fact that he needed to be watching her feet—because the cave floor was uneven, and the walls were quite capable of cracking your skull if you fell against them—it was painful to see how scared she was, even with him. Her nerves had been trained to expect attack when she was in somebody else's power, and she couldn't mentally overrule them.

He led her through the cave, lifting her over the potholes, shivering with hunger whenever she gasped or reached out for him.

At the back of the cave, there was a clear pool, illuminated—all the way to the pebbles at the bottom—by a shaft of moonlight which had broken through the cave ceiling. At the bottom of this pool, looking just like larger and more silvery versions of the pebbles, were two dragon eggs. The moonlight appeared to be nourishing them. Jack wondered if their scales would be moon-silver when they finally hatched.

When he took off Ellini's blindfold, he remembered why he'd insisted on it in the first place. He wanted to see one unguarded, happy moment. She smiled occasionally, but always in a sort of sad, knowing way which seemed to say, 'These moments before you turn on me are lovely. What a pity they won't last.'

But now, as she opened her eyes, the apprehension on her face melted into pure pleasure. Here was something fascinating and beautiful, and, if it hurt her, it would only be in a straightforward scorching or talon-ripping way.

She forgot she was with a man and knelt by the edge of the pool in breathless delight. She plunged her hand into the water and let it hover a few millimetres above the shells of the dragon eggs. "They're warm," she whispered.

Jack sank down beside her, drinking up her excitement like a parched desert plant. He was aware that he was grinning like an idiot, but the logistics of amending the situation were, quite frankly, beyond his grasp.

"Jack," she breathed. "They're beautiful."

He gave her a laugh that was half-nervous and half-euphoric. But it could have been worse. He could have simpered and sighed and said, 'You're beautiful.' Incoherence was embarrassing, but articulacy at this moment would have been far, far worse.

She didn't look at him for a while. Her eyes—shining with reflected moonlight and crinkled at the corners from smiling—were busy with the dragon eggs. But now she glanced up, and very suddenly, as though she wanted to outrun her second thoughts, she leaned forward and kissed him.

Jack stayed absolutely still. He felt as though he would crush her bones, or dash her brains out against the cave walls, if he tried to put his arms around her. But he wouldn't have had time, even if he'd let himself let go, because she pulled away very quickly, still out of breath, and lowered her eyes nervously to the cave floor.

"We'd better not stay too long. In case the mother comes back."

And then she was up again, darting out of the cave before Jack had even had time to breathe out. He rocked back on his heels for a second, trying to decide whether that had really just happened. He was usually a very optimistic man, but the idea that Ellini Syal had just kissed him seemed colossally farfetched.

In the end, when he could neither stop smiling nor get his heart to slow down, he decided that, whether it had been real or not, he should definitely follow her.

***

Eleven years later, in the city of Oxford, he met her again for the first time.