A ruby nestled in her belly button and her breasts were strung with lines of tiny diamonds. A diamond choker encircled her long, slim neck.

“Young Mr Oh,” she said, patting a plump of pillows beside her. “Do come and sit.”

Two other Council members – like the others, fabulously attired, though in no case as opulently or as revealingly as Madame d’Ortolan – adjusted themselves where they lay to accommodate him. Oh kissed her hand when she offered it. “Madame, I feel underdressed,” he told her.

“To the contrary,” she said. “I am so, and you are positively swaddled in your schoolboy uniform. Ah. I see your feet are naked. That is something.” A tray held outstretched by one of the skeletally dressed servants appeared between them. Madame d’Ortolan waved her hand at it and Oh lifted a globular glass with a double skin and several tiny fish swimming in the watery space surrounding the drink itself, which was warm and highly spiced. “I am some opera costumier’s version of a slave girl,” she told him, looking down at herself and spreading her arms. “What do you think?”

“It’s very spectacular.”

She cupped her diamond-rashed breasts in her hands as though weighing them. “I’m particularly pleased with these.”

“I imagine everybody else is too, ma’am.”

She looked up at him and smiled exasperatedly. “Mr Oh – Temudjin, if I may – you sound like an old man. Listen to yourself!” She nodded at the globular glass. “Drink up. You obviously need it.”

He drank.

Oh wondered at Madame d’Ortolan’s startlingly young and vivacious new body. It was generally held that one had a physique one had grown up with and grown accustomed to and that trying to stray too far from this template when transitioning – or, even more so, when re-embodying, as Madame d’Ortolan had done – was both difficult to accomplish and disagreeable to maintain, especially over extended intervals.

He knew from his own transitions that unless he made a particular effort to avoid doing so he tended to end up in quite plain, rather averagely sized bodies, whereas his own real body, this body, the one that stayed in Calbefraques in the house on the ridge overlooking the town of Flesse, was taller, more pleasingly proportioned and altogether better-looking than those he naturally gravitated towards in the course of his missions for the Concern.

Of course, expressing oneself into quite plain, unremarkable forms was a positive benefit in his line of work as it made it easier to slip in and out of situations and worlds without attracting undue attention, but he had always wondered why his transitionary selves always seemed to be so short and bland without him intending them to be so. Maybe deep down that was just his physiology of choice, though he could not see why.

They did say that for those with transgender issues, transitioning into bodies quite different from that one had grown up within was a positive boon, almost a treatment and solution in itself.

Madame d’Ortolan had always been a slightly dumpy if still elegantly turned-out lady, according to both gossip and the photographic records of the Concern; to have chosen the body she was displaying so luxuriantly before him now must indicate she was prepared to make a considerable sacrifice of her own future comfort – taking on that very feeling of not being happy in one’s own skin that sufferers found so objectionable – for the sake of looking like she had obviously convinced herself she ought to look. It indicated a single-mindedness and determination that many people would find admirable, Oh supposed, but also a sort of ruthlessness against the self that did not speak of a wholly healthy and untroubled personality.

She made an all-embracing gesture with one arm. “What do you think of the party?”

He made a show of looking all around. “I have never seen anything quite like it,” he told her truthfully. “I can’t imagine what it must have cost. Or how long it must have taken to arrange.”

“A fortune,” she told him, smiling broadly. “And for ever!” She produced a corded mouthpiece joined to a giant water pipe situated some metres away and carefully tended by another of the skeletally dressed servants. She took a little sip of the smoke, passed the mouthpiece to him. “Do, do be careful,” she told him archly, putting one ring-heavy hand on his knee and leaving it there. “It’s frightfully strong.”

Oh put his lips to the mouthpiece. She had left it a little moist. He drew in a mouthful of the grey-pink smoke, which smelled and tasted like a cocktail of different drugs. He let the fumes touch just the top of his lungs and then blew them decorously out again rather than hold them in and get too stoned. He got the impression that Madame d’Ortolan had already smoked quite a lot. She was still smiling fixedly at him. One of her hands played with one of the strings of diamonds curved over her breasts.

“I do hope you’re here quite determined to enjoy yourself, Tem,” she told him. “It would be such a terrible waste of time and resources otherwise.”

“Madame, I feel entirely obliged to.”

“Please, call me Theodora.”

“Thank you, Theodora. Yes, I intend to enjoy myself.” He held up the half-drained glass of warm liquor and presented the hookah mouthpiece back to her. He did his best to smile with all the warmth he could command. “Indeed, I have already begun to.”

She tapped his knee. “So,” she said, for a moment slightly more businesslike. “How did the Questionary Office treat you after your meeting with Mrs M?”

Oh had told the Concern about his encounter with Mrs Mulverhill at the casino in Flesse, their subsequent flit and something of their conversation.

“Quite humanely, Theodora.” There had been a lot of questions and they had – hilariously, he thought – tried to hypnotise him, plus he was sure they had people listening and watching him while he answered their questions who would be attuned to any degree of falsity or evasion. But there had been no threat of unpleasantness and he had been as open as he felt he could.

“And Mrs M herself,” Madame d’Ortolan purred. “Did she treat you humanely?”

“She certainly treated me like a human.”

Madame d’Ortolan tapped his knee with one ringed finger. “I heard,” she said, seemingly addressing his knee or her finger, “that she took you to another world while you were inside her.” She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Is that true?”

“It is, Theodora.”

“Ah,” she said, with what sounded like wistfulness. “The transport of delight.”

“Just after, actually.”

“I hope it was worth it.”

“That would be impossible to judge,” he said, aware he was being gnomic. Still, it seemed to satisfy her.

She stroked his knee. “Tell me, Tem, what did she say about me?”

“Well, Theodora, I can’t entirely remember.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Are you sure you’re not just trying to be gallant?”

“Fairly sure.”

“I think you are. You are trying to be gallant.” She brought herself confidentially closer to him, leaning so close that one of her nipples pressed gently against his jacket, level with his heart. “You are trying to be gallant!”

“Well, it’s just that, having talked about it all at such length with the Questionary people, the recollection feels worn. Stripped out, if you like. As though I have the memory of a memory, not the memory itself.”

She looked at him unsteadily, as though dazzled. “I do hope you’re not trying to be too gallant, Tem,” she said, her voice quite firm. “There’s nothing you need spare me.”

He was sure that Madame d’Ortolan had either read the transcript of what he’d told the Questionary Office or seen a recording of his interview. At the very least she would have had full access to any records so could have learned all she needed to know from those.

“Mrs Mulverhill,” he began, and instantly sensed the three faces nearest to them flick their attention in his direction. He brought his mouth closer to Madame d’Ortolan’s ear and lowered his voice accordingly, “said that you would lead the Concern to disaster and ruin,” he told her. “And that you – or some part or faction of the Central Council – might have a hidden agenda. Though she was not sure what that might be.”