go away. All of you. Or I'll kill you."

We left him crying in his cardboard box.

I looked around for Madman. It was time we were moving on. "Where to next?" I said. "I'm open to suggestions."

"How about the Lord of Thorns?" suggested Sinner.

I winced, and so, I noticed, did Pretty Poison. I looked severely at Sinner. "Only when we've tried absolutely everyone else in the Nightside, and I mean everybody. That guy even scares Walker, and with good reason. Why bring him up?"

"Because Herne mentioned him."

"So he did. Next?"

"All right," said Sinner. "How about the Lamentation?"

I actually shuddered that time. "Why on earth would we want to go and see that crazy piece of shit?"

"Because Herne said we needed to talk to the Old Ones," Sinner said calmly. "And the Lamentation is the oldest Being I know of."

"There is that," I said, reluctantly. "There's no doubt it knows all kinds of things; if you can persuade it to talk. But you don't get to be an old Power in the Nightside by being friendly and approachable. No-one's even sure what the Lamentation is any more; except it's supersaturated with death magic and crazy with it. I don't even like saying the name aloud, in case it's listening. It could be a demon or a Transient Being or even a human who took a really wrong turn. No-one knows. They say it eats souls..."

"But it's definitely older than Herne," Sinner said stubbornly. "If anyone knows how far back the Nightside goes, I'd put good money on the Lamentation."

"So you think we should just barge in and ask it questions?" I said.

"You can hide behind me if you like," said Sinner. "It's up to you, John. How badly do you want to get to the bottom of this case? Bad enough to beard a Power and a Domination in its lair?"

"Oh hell," I said. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Boys ..." said Pretty Poison. "I think we have a problem with Madman."

I looked round quickly. And there was Madman, dancing and pirouetting through the boxes and tents of Rats' Alley while flowers blossomed brightly in his wake, springing right out of the cobbled ground and through cracks in the grimy brickwork. He ended his dance with a flourish, and a spring bubbled up at his feet. One of the homeless dipped his metal cup in the stream, tried it, and cried out excitedly that it was pure whiskey. The homeless looked on Madman with new eyes.

They surged forward to crowd around him, demanding he conjure up for them food and drink, heat and light and palaces to live in. They pawed and clawed at him, their voices growing loud and insistent and threatening. Madman tried to back away, but there was nowhere for him to go. I tried to get to him, but there were too many people in the way. I yelled at the street people, using the authority of my name, but they were beyond listening. And then my skin prickled and my heart missed a beat, and I stopped trying to press forward. Something bad was coming. I could feel it.

The brickwork nearest to Madman began to bubble and melt and run away. The ground shook, as though something was heaving up beneath it, trying to break through.

The light in Rats' Alley kept changing colour, and there were too many shadows in the square with nothing to cast them. All around there was a growing feeling of... uncertainty. That nothing could be relied on any more. That the curtains of the world might part at any moment to reveal what was really going on behind the scenes. Madman was losing his self-control.

The street people fell back from him, crying out in shock and alarm and growing horror. The world was coming undone all around Madman. I grabbed Sinner by the arm. I couldn't get my breath, and it seemed to me that at any moment I might fall upwards, sailing off into the night sky forever. Everywhere I looked, the details on everything were changing, in utterly arbitrary ways. One of the homeless grabbed at Madman, to make him stop the changes, only to shriek in terror as Madman looked at him, and changed him, till he looked like a modern art painting, all angles and dimensions and clashing perspectives. Parts of him were missing. Horribly, he was still alive. Madman looked upon his work, and his face showed nothing, nothing at all.

Sister Morphine pulled the changed man away