moment too soon. In the frosty quiet he heard the sound of an engine too suave to belong 
to a resident and peered over the parapet to see the men getting out the car below. He 
didn't doubt that these were his visitors. The only vehicles he'd seen here so polished 
were hearses. He cursed himself. Fatigue had made him slothful, and now he'd let his 
enemies get dangerously close. He ducked down the back stairs-glad, for once, that there 
were so few lights working along the landings-as his visitors strode towards the front. 
From the flats he passed, the sound of lives: Christmas pops on the radio, argument, a 
baby laughing, which became tears, as though it sensed there was danger near. Chant knew 
none of his neighbors, except as furtive faces glimpsed at windows, and now- though it 
was too late to change that-he regretted it.
  He reached ground level unharmed, and discounting the thought of trying to retrieve his 
car from the courtyard he headed off towards the street most heavily trafficked at this 
time of night, which was Kennington Park Road. If he was lucky he'd find a cab there, 
though at this time of night they weren't frequent. Fares were harder to pick up in this 
area than in Covent Garden or Oxford Street, and more likely to prove unruly. He allowed 
himself one backward glance, then turned his heels to the task of flight.
  Though classically it was the light of day which showed a painter the deepest flaws in 
his handiwork, Gentle worked best at night: the instincts of a lover brought to a simpler 
art. In the week or so since he'd returned to his studio it had once again become a place 
of work: the air pungent with the smell of paint and turpentine, the burned-down butts of 
cigarettes left on every available shelf and plate. Though he'd spoken with Klein daily 
there was no sign of a commission yet, so he had spent the time reeducating himself. As 
Klein had so cruelly observed, he was a technician without a vision, and that made these 
days of meandering difficult. Until he had a style to forge, he felt listless, like some 
latter day Adam, born with the power to impersonate but bereft of subjects. So he set 
himself an exercise. He would paint a canvas in four radically different styles: a cubist 
North, an impressionist South, an East after Van Gogh, a West after Dali. As his subject 
he took Cara-vaggio's Supper at Emmaus. The challenge drove him to a healthy distraction, 
and he was still occupied with it at three-thirty in the morning, when the telephone 
rang. The line was watery, and the voice at the other end pained and raw, but it was 
unmistakably Judith.
  "Is that you, Gentle?"
  "It's me." He was glad the line was so bad. The sound of her voice had shaken him, and 
he didn't want her to know. "Where are you calling from?"
  "New York. I'm just visiting for a few days."
  "It's good to hear from you."
  "I'm not sure why I'm calling. It's just that today's been strange and I thought maybe, 
oh-" She stopped. Laughed at herself, perhaps a little drunkenly. "I don't know what I 
thought," she went on. "It's stupid. I'm sorry."
  "When are you coming back?"
  "I don't know that either."
  "Maybe we could get together?"
  "I don't think so, Gentle."
  "Just to talk."
  "This line's getting worse. I'm sorry I woke you."
  "You didn't-"
  "Keep warm, huh?"
  "Judith-"
  "Sorry, Gentle."
  The line went dead. But the water she'd spoken through gurgled on, like the noise in a 
seashell. Not the ocean at all, of course; just illusion. He put the receiver down and- 
knowing he'd never sleep now-squeezed out some fresh bright worms of paint to work with, 
and set to.
  It was the whistle from the gloom behind him that alerted Chant to the fact that his 
escape had not gone unnoticed. It was not a whistle that could have come from human lips, 
but a chilling scalpel shriek he had heard only once before in the Fifth Dominion, when, 
some two hundred years past, his then possessor, the Maestro Sartori, had conjured from 
the In Ovo a familiar which had made such a whistle. It had brought bloody tears to its 
summoner's eyes, obliging Sartori to relinquish it posthaste. Later Chant and the Maestro 
had spoken of the event, and Chant had identified the creature. It was known in the 
Reconciled Dominions as a voider, one of a brutal species that haunted the wastes north 
of the Lenten Way. Voiders came in many shapes, being made, some said, from collective 
desire, which fact seemed to move Sartori profoundly.
  "I must summon one again," he'd said, "and speak with it," to which Chant had replied 
that if they were to attempt such a summoning they had to be ready next time, for 
void-ers were lethal and could not be tamed except by Maestros of inordinate power.
  The proposed conjuring had never taken place, Sartori had disappeared a short time 
later. In all the intervening years Chant had wondered if he had attempted a second 
summoning alone and been the voiders' victim. Perhaps the creature now coming after Chant 
had been responsible. Though Sartori had disappeared two hundred years ago, the lives of 
voiders, like those of so many species from the other Dominions, were longer than the 
longest human span.
  Chant glanced over his shoulder. The whistler was in sight. It looked perfectly human, 
dressed in a gray, well-cut suit and black tie, its collar turned up against the cold, 
its hands thrust into its pockets. It didn't run but almost idled as it came, the whistle 
confounding Chant's thoughts and making him stumble. As he turned away the second of his 
pursuers appeared on the pavement in front of him, drawing a hand from its pocket. A gun? 
No. A knife? No. Something tiny crawled in the voider's palm, like a flea. Chant had no 
sooner focused upon it than it leapt towards his face. Repulsed, he raised his arm to 
keep it from his eyes or mouth, and the flea landed upon his hand. He slapped at it with 
his other hand, but it was beneath his thumbnail before he could get to it. He raised his 
arm to see its motion in the flesh of his thumb and clamped his other hand around the 
base of the digit, in the hope of stopping its further advance, gasping as though doused 
with icewater. The pain was out of all proportion to the mite's size, but he held both 
thumb and sobs hard, determined not to lose all dignity in front of his executioners. 
Then he staggered off the pavement into the street, throwing a glance down towards the 
brighter lights at the junction. What safety they offered was debatable, but if worst 
came to worst he would throw himself beneath a car and deny the voiders the entertainment 
of his slow demise. He began to run again, still clutching his hand. This time he didn't 
glance back. He didn't need to. The sound of the whistling faded, and the purr of the car 
replaced it. He threw every ounce of his energy into the run, reaching the bright street 
to find it deserted by traffic. He turned north, racing past the underground station 
towards the Elephant and Castle. Now he did glance behind, to see the car following 
steadily. It had three occupants: the voiders and another, sitting in the back seat. 
Sobbing with breathlessness he ran on, and-Lord love it!-a taxi appeared around the next 
corner, its yellow light announcing its availability. Concealing his pain as best he 
could, knowing the driver might pass on by if he thought the hailer was wounded, he 
stepped out into the street and raised his hand to wave the driver down. This meant 
unclasping one hand from the other, and the mite took instant advantage, working its way 
up into his wrist. But the vehicle slowed.