"Lowbeer wants you back at Lev’s," said Ash, coming to a halt in front of their bench. Her skirts and narrow jacket were a baroquely complicated patchwork of raw-edged fragments, some of which, though no doubt flexible, resembled darkened tin. She wore a more ornate reticule than usual, covered in mourning beads and hung with a sterling affair he knew to be a chatelaine, the organizer for a set of Victorian ladies’ household accessories. Or not so Victorian, he saw, as a sterling spider with a faceted jet abdomen, on one of the chatelaine’s fine chain retainers, picked its agile way up from the jacket’s waist, its multiple eyes tiny rhinestones.