Two butcher’s boys in bloody aprons with rolled-up sleeves, talking shop in a sawdusted doorway, glanced up as he shot past. He jumped down a brick passageway between two buildings, and came out behind a row of outhouses and a small unhealthy-looking courtyard piled high with rubbish. He streaked past them all, slaloming between their legs. Street, selling newspapers, mittens, roast chestnuts and machine parts. We mustn’t let them get away with what they did. We’ve got the one thing they want – the one thing that’ll draw them to us. “They know everything about us, and we don’t have a clue about them, so how can we ever win? But we have to win, Lil. “There could be dangerous things inside, and clank knows what chaos Roach and Mould could cause with them.” “I realize the odds don’t look good,” Robert added. “If we give in now,” he said, “ then everyone who’s tried to protect it would’ve died in vain, and we’ll never discover its secret – the truth of what it can do.” “ He’s right, Lily.” Malkin narrowed his black eyes. “This whole time I hoped he might be alive, might still come back, but he’s not going to, is he? We should just give them the box – the machine – before they kill us too.” Robert took a deep breath, his mouth dry. They’d kill her and Robert too, if they had the chance, and nothing she could say or do, no help she could call on, would ever stop them.

They’d done so much damage to possess it. And all for this box this perpetual motion machine.

Books by peter bunzl