Even in sleep, she started in surprise when she discovered the Piri Reis was there as well, held within the same facility. When she woke the next day, Dakota realized with some considerable shock that she was no longer alone in her cell.

A figure crouched in the corner, near the ambrosia-pipe. She rolled up onto her knees, heart hammering. She couldn't make out the intruder's face at first.

Then the figure stood up and came into the light, moving with an uncertain gait. He stood as if trying to hide his nakedness from her. She studied the square jaw, too-wide nose, and permanently furrowed eyebrows that looked as if their owner had been born worrying.

'Lucas?' Four Several days after his narrow escape from Immortal Light's treacherous security forces – not to mention nearly being eaten by a very angry giant worm – Remembrance of Things Past found himself in the outermost part of the Night's End system, on board a Shoal coreship that had recently arrived there on a scheduled stopover.

As coreships went, it was far from the largest, measuring a mere one hundred and sixty-five kilometres around its equator. It was large enough, however, to produce powerful gravitic ripples that gave away its location to monitoring systems spread throughout the system. The coreship's total population – a mixture of Bandati, humans and a few other species, some of them sequestered according to the Shoal's complex rules regarding inter-species contact – barely numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Remembrance had been lifted, barely conscious, from an Immortal Light war-dirigible by an extraction team put together under the express directions of the Queen of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk. He had subsequently been bundled into a human-owned but unmanned cargo ship that attained orbit less than one-tenth of a solar rev later.

Casualties during the extraction had fortunately been light: one member of the extraction team had been killed, while another had been seriously wounded by incendiaries, losing a wing and thus scheduled to spend considerable time in medical care until it could be regrown.

Remembrance himself had been put into a drug-induced coma before being placed inside a cramped transport pod packed with pale crimson ona leaves officially destined for the atmosphere-gardens and helium-refineries of the outer system. Flexible polyurethane-coated cables held him safe during the high-gee liftoff.

Once safely inside the coreship, he was removed from the pod by the Queen of Darkening Skies' personal team of physicians. They carefully unbound his wings, then cycled chemical neurosuppressors out of his bloodstream while he remained comatose. By this point the injuries he'd sustained in the last hours of his mission were almost entirely healed, with the help of forced-acceleration cell-probes injected into his vascular system.

When Remembrance finally woke, he found himself in shipboard quarters with pale dappled walls, which exuded a constantly cycling series of scents that filled him with a nostalgic longing for home. He soon discovered that he was aboard the royal yacht of the Hive of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk, itself carried deep beneath the coreship's crust.

The yacht – his Queen's flagship – was a three-hundred-metre-long rapid-orbit cruiser equipped with field-based defensive systems that appeared to all but the most aggressive intrusion systems to be only lightly armed, with a pair of external force-cannons mounted fore and aft. The yacht sat in its own cradle beneath the pillar-supported outer crust of the coreship, in a field-walled chamber more than a dozen kilometres wide and whose atmosphere and gravity matched that of the Bandati home-world. Beyond lay more chambers tailored to the specific needs and requirements of others of the Shoal's client-species.

For a few moments, he had thought he might be far away from the Night's End system.

'I'm afraid we're still there, my dear Remembrance,' he was informed by Wind Sighing Through Leaves, the Senior Court Physician and one of the Queen's most trusted advisers. 'We will probably remain here for several revs, local measure.'

Wind Sighing was dressed formally, the tips of his wings decorated with a hair-thin filigree currently fashionable in many Bandati royal courts. Semi-translucent streamers were attached to this filigree, their length an indication of the wearer's real or perceived standing within a court. The physician stared down at him from his ceiling perch, the longest streamers trailing right down to the floor and wafting gently each time his wings flexed.

'I see. Thank you, Physician,' Remembrance replied as medical technicians fussed around him, removing the last of his support straps and medical monitoring devices. 'How much longer do I have to stay here?'

'Not much longer,' Wind Sighing replied, dropping down to the floor. There was a sniffiness to his chittering. 'You're entirely healthy; all systems optimal, as they say. However, the Queen has requested that you attend a… a private audience immediately on recovering consciousness.' The physician produced a tiny bottle, containing the scent Remembrance had requested. 'Here you are.'

Remembrance accepted it, discerning a reason for the Physician's sudden chilliness. Normally the Queen's most trusted advisers – who of course included Wind Sighing – would be present during any debriefing, in order to offer comment and suggestions. But something in the Physician's manner suggested whatever the Queen now had to say to Remembrance required absolute secrecy – without the presence even of her most trusted courtiers.

Remembrance now stood up for the first time in days, while wall-mounted monitors painted images of his internal organs in the form of a multi coloured kaleidoscope that blurred as he moved. A technician entered and unbandaged his wings. He flexed them carefully, feeling a rush of sensation as he spread them, twisting his head round to see the scars where fire and bullets had ripped through fragile, coloured flesh. The iridescent lines patterning his wings were discoloured where the flesh had recently healed.

'A word of caution before your audience, Remembrance,' the Physician asked. 'It has been… some time since you spoke with her.'

'I'm sure things haven't changed so much in the Court since then.'

'No – but you have. I wished to ask a question concerning your current name-scent. I believe you came by it during your ambassadorial duties in the Consortium?'

'Yes.'

'It's certainly exotic, but… I don't quite understand it. How exactly do you represent it in words?'

The description a scent might gain when transcribed into written form could be a matter of some artistic licence; scent-based communication was one of the few racial characteristics that had endured through the turbulent centuries of the Bandati's Grand Reformation, several millennia before.

'My spoken name is "Remembrance of Things Past". Do you find it inappropriate?'

'Not at all,' the Physician replied. 'As I say, it's… well, distinctive.'

'Thank you,' Remembrance replied blandly. 'Is there anything else?'

The Physician stared at him for a moment with obvious chagrin, clearly searching for some strategy that would gain him even a morsel of insight into the reason for Remembrance's private audience with their Queen. Remembrance could have happily told him there was none to give.

'No, Remembrance,' the Physician replied, his tone resigned. 'It is time for your audience. Please accompany me.'

'Of course.' He followed Wind Sighing through the yacht until they came to the Royal Chamber. The decor throughout was typically conservative: curving walls of yellow-gold dotted with artificially grown amethysts and emeralds that winked and glistened under multihued glow-globes floating close to the ceiling.

A security drone slid out of its niche, focusing recording instruments and weaponry on Remembrance while maintaining a discreet distance. He entered an antechamber guarded by a single warrior-class Bandati, wings clipped and pierced with symbols of rank, and his artificially enhanced muscles bulging until they seemed almost grotesque.