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return from Hell. He dreamed of becoming the environment around him, whether it was a room in Sandport or a petrified glade or a sandy hollow in the Deadsands. And in each case the same shape-shifting figure waited nearby, disguised as a part of the wider surroundings. Dill had started calling him the Mesmerist, though he could not say why.
    “You need to eat something.” She handed him the bowl, noticing now that it contained little more than milk. “And we should consider leaving here soon. I don’t know how much longer we can trust Meer.”
    Dill looked exhausted. “Where will we go?”
    “As far away from the Spine as possible. The missionary ship
Herald’s Voice
left Clune two weeks ago and should arrive in port any day now. With Spine martial law now in place, it may well be the last temple ship to sail out into the Yellow Sea. The missionaries have a settlement in a village called Baske, one hundred and twenty leagues east of the Pocked Delta. If we can get the
Herald
to take us there, we’ll be safe.”
    “Would the priests shield us from the Spine?”
    “They might shield
you,
” she said. “You’re a fugitive, but you’re still an angel, and I can’t imagine many of Deepgate’s priests support the Spine’s recent rise to power.” She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure they’d protect you.”
    “But what about you?”
    An airship droned somewhere overhead. Rachel listened to it for a moment, but was distracted by another, closer sound: a ruckus in the street outside. She went back to the window.
    A gaily painted box-wagon, pulled by an ox, was rumbling along the wharf in front of the tavern. It had a red roof and yellow slatted sides, and boasted wheels with garish green and gold spokes. Emblazoned across the nearest side were the words
Greene’s Magical Circus: Witness all the fearsome horrors of Iril!
A crowd of people jostled around it, following its progress towards the center of town. Rachel realized that it must have disembarked from one of the barges at the deepwater dock that lay out of sight around the harbor peninsula. Curious. Normally that dock was used exclusively by Deepgate’s Military to bring troops downriver from its outlying airship ports. Had the wagon originally arrived by airship? Or had it merely stopped to pick up cargo from one of the airship ports? Then she spotted a scrawled notice pinned to the rear of the wagon, and her breath caught.

    See the slavering shape-shifting Maze demon here tonight!

    The crowd of followers chattered with excitement. Groups of barefooted children ran ahead of the wagon, shrieking and clapping and chasing one another. Rachel sat on the windowsill and watched as the wooden vehicle wound its way up the hill behind the tavern wharves and disappeared in the knot of lanes around Market Square.
    Traveling magicians and freak shows were not unheard of in Sandport. So-called shamans and thaumaturges sometimes arrived from Clune and Dalamoor with a veritable cornucopia of disturbing objects preserved in pickle jars. Yet Rachel had never heard of anyone claiming to have possession of an actual demon before. A shape-shifter? The timely relevance to Dill’s recurring dreams seemed too unlikely to be merely a coincidence.
    “I’m going out,” she said to Dill.
    But the angel had fallen asleep again.
    By the time Rachel reached Market Square, the sun had fallen behind the low houses and the sky gleamed like gold fish scales. The wagon driver had almost finished setting up her sideshow in the center of the square, where a rude stage of crimson boards had been erected beside the wagon. A small crowd had gathered on the brown flagstones around it, while others stood further back in the shadows of the surrounding houses. Flies buzzed around the fringes of the quadrangle, where fruit from the weekly market festered in the gutters and Sandporters sat on their own doorsteps and sipped fig wine. The wagon driver had evidently conscripted two burly men