He ought to have been at the Covered Market, asking questions about the dead woman, finding relations, interviewing witnesses—not that he had much hope of finding any. But instead, he trudged back to Eve's grave and examined the messages on the cardboard leaves. It made quite depressing reading.

Little Mother, please help me to control myself.

Little Mother, please kill Amanda Whale for what she's done to me.

Little Mother, please let John agree to have a baby with me. It probably won't have fangs—and, even if it does, I know he'll still love it.

He hadn't looked over Miss Syal's shoulder while she'd been writing her message, of course. Quite apart from the moral implications, it would have involved the kind of proximity that would have made her uncomfortable. She was so exquisitely nervy that she probably felt movement in the air around her, the way a spider feels vibrations in the fibres of its web.

However, he had been careful to note the colour of her leaf, and remember which branch she'd tied it to, because he wasn't stupid. In very neat, very careful handwriting, she had written:

Only 31 days to go, Little Mother.

Sam read the message twice, and then retreated to the turnstile at the edge of the field, waiting in the dark to see if anyone else came looking for the message.

Why hadn't he thought of stationing someone here before? She had known she was going to be escorted to the Faculty and wouldn't be allowed to leave once she was there. This would have been her only chance to communicate with someone outside without Sam knowing.

On the other hand, the new-breeds didn't seem to take Eve's grave lightly. Using it as a means of relaying secret messages would have had a... sacrilegious feel. Maybe she really was just confiding in the Little Mother.

But he called up one of his sergeants to stand guard over the grave for the night, just to be on the safe side. It would have been safer if he'd done it himself, but what was the point of being an Inspector if you couldn't call in your subordinates to do the really thankless jobs for you on a rainy night?

He didn't go home, though. There was nothing but worry there. Instead, he went back to his office, leaned back in the chair behind his desk, and spotted a thin package wrapped in brown paper that must have been delivered in his absence.

He turned it over in his hands several times before opening it, trying to get an idea of what was inside. It felt like a riding crop or a violin bow, wrapped up with the kind of care that seemed disproportionate to its value.

The writing on the address label was Jack's. Sam knew it from years of standing patiently behind the man while he filled out forms about breakages, parole violations, and countless other misdemeanours.

Why was Jack sending him things? And, more importantly, why hadn't he mentioned it when he'd last seen him? Whether this was a gift or a practical joke, Jack was not the type to keep quiet about it.

He unwrapped the package to find one rusty arrow and one note.

Sam stared at the arrow for a while, defying it to yield up some meaning. Its point was rusty but sharp, and it was feathered at the base with... crow's feathers, maybe. They were jet black, in any case. Sam was no ornithologist, but he was an expert in spotting vanity and affectations—and this arrow was clearly the property of someone who wanted to look dangerous.

The note—written in Jack's reckless, unstudied handwriting, which couldn't have been more different from Ellini Syal's—read:

Sam,

It's possible that you might have to kill me in the next few weeks. And I hope you won't think I'm being arrogant when I say that this might be difficult for you to do. After all, the Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow couldn't manage it with an army, when I was unarmed and actively trying to get in the way of his bullets. So I'm sending you this arrow. It might not look like much, but I have it on good authority that this arrow will kill me someday, so please watch me carefully over the next few weeks and use it if you have to. You're the only one Alice can't get to, and the only one who knows how rotten this city really is. I think you know—from the fact that I'm writing to you at all—that THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Happy hunting,

Jack.

Sam had to read it over twice before he could make any sense of it, and another two times before he was ready to start guessing at the situation behind the words.

Jack hadn't wanted to forget Miss Syal, then. That would account for the broken glass and the feeling of festering wrongness at the Faculty.

But why would he assume Sam would have to kill him? Was he afraid of what he might do without his memories? Or was it something more certain? Perhaps Jack knew that somebody was planning to use him, and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Well, it would do no good asking him now. And Dr Petrescu and Mrs Darwin had already told him as much as they knew—or as much as they were going to say. Perhaps it was Miss Syal he would have to question next.

He had a gloomy presentiment that it wouldn't do any good, but then he had that about lots of things, and occasionally—one time in every thousand—he was mistaken.

He put the note down gently and picked up the arrow again. When he looked at it, there were so many questions in his mind that only the really stupid ones made it to the surface. Was he going to have to find some kind of bow to go with this? And get good at archery? Because that—on top of all the other bloody riddles he had to solve—was going to be time-consuming.