Strange sensations washed through her as she sat up – for the first time in over a century – and looked down at her new body. Everything was immediate and odd and beautiful in its intensity, and the danger lay in her growing enraptured at her own existence and failing to take action right now because this was mortal danger unless she got her act together and actually bloody moved.

Fibres withdrew into her, disconnecting her from the old, dead Kenna system, and then she did something simple, ordinary and yet entirely miraculous: she swung her legs to one side of the couch, leant forward . . .

Amazing.

. . . and stood.

On actual feet.

With legs.

A body.

Arms and hands . . .

Focus.

Everything so wonderful.

Focus now.

She swayed, balance tipping. Corrected herself.

Got it.

Took a step.

A second step.

Definitely got it now.

Third step, and it was almost automatic, in time with a distant bang followed by screams.

Time to really move.

She was most of the way to one of her primary escape routes, feeling guilty yet desperate because of her selfish focus on survival of self – and hang the rest – when she saw in her mind’s eye a helpless, addled girl-woman, the victim of worldly ambition more than logosophical exploration, and then there was a feeling of relief that it was necessary to go back and confront the danger. There are times when you want to do something and are scared to, have found excuses to avoid it; and then some factor forces you to do it anyway, and all you can feel is thankful that you’ve been forced to do the right thing, to confront the fear: that was how Kenna felt now.

Mandia had foreseen liquid crystal moving, but to Kenna’s knowledge the poor girl had never had an opportunity to see such a thing; yet every prediction was a verbal description of something she was to see in the future. For her prediction to be true, she must survive the armed assault in order to see . . . well, Kenna as she was now. So for all her vulnerability in her stumbling new body, Kenna could not abandon Mandia, not if there was a risk of Mandia’s dying.

The alternative was . . . what? Death by paradox? The self-immolation of a closed time like curve of events? Of people that had existed and events that had occurred but would turn out never to have been?

Once upon a time I was a fighter.

Never mind her notions of becoming a general, a chief of staff, a war leader in ages to come: this was immediate, raw, physical danger and she had to face it or the rest was nonsense. She gestured to the nearest wall, and waited for the Palace to recognise the codes she broadcast by microwave from her hand. It took a full half-second for the Palace to make the adjustment to her new form; then the wall liquefied and melted open, revealing one of the hidden servitor tunnels (it would not do for the nobility to be distracted by the sight of menial workers engaged on mundane tasks) and stepped inside.

Leaning forward slightly, she forced herself into a shuffling jog, a shamble compared to her mental image of running freely, but as she followed the tunnel her gait became smoother, then smoother again, through an incremental sequence of improvements; and by the time she drew near to the Oraculum, she was running faster than any but the fittest of endurance athletes.

Armed attackers were entering the tunnel up ahead, but she gestured and the quickstone wall slammed down on them, burying them. Then she was running past and a new opening was growing in front of her, and when she leapt through she was in the Oraculum, where the proto-Oracles were thrashing on their couches – only Mandia was upright, struggling to stand – and the staff were gone, either fled or helping the fighters outside: graser fire caused the air to crackle in the surrounding corridors.

Kenna grabbed Mandia.

The others were helpless, but Kenna had to accept her current limitations, and save the one she could. She hauled Mandia into another, newly opened servitor tunnel, commanded the entrance to flow shut, and pulled Mandia into a staggering run. When they had made enough distance horizontally, Kenna stopped, holding Mandia upright – the girl was wheezing, wet with sweat and trembling – and commanded the floor to melt.

At this point the Palace was five levels deep, but where they stood was above internal walls, five metres thick or more, in the lower levels. They sank downwards – in a bubble of air for Mandia’s sake – until they were all the way through and below the Palace, coming into a corridor in the Secundum Stratum.

By chance it was deserted for the moment: a polished marble-like corridor with clean lines, not too different from the style of the Primum Stratum where the Palace was situated, except that here the surroundings were solid, not quickstone, with little in the way of inbuilt systems.

I’ll need disguise.

So much for planning in advance. Leaving Mandia slumped against the wall, Kenna jogged along the corridor, knowing she had to do something fast: she was a woman formed entirely of crystal and there was no way she could blend in while looking like this.

Here.

It was a store fronted by vitreous membrane that was currently hard and opaque, not open for business, and it came to Kenna that this must be one of those areas where everything was brightly lit all the time, and people chose sleep-wake cycles to suit themselves individually, unlike the communal-consent approach which was the most common alternative.

The membrane liquefied and Kenna stepped through, leaving it softened because she was going to exit through it very shortly. There were clothing racks – the store was dark but she could see well enough – and she found leggings, pulled them on, then smart-boots that wrapped around her feet and calves, tightening themselves in place. Then a dark tunic with long sleeves, and when she pulled it on, the sleeves lengthened to cover her transparent hands all the way to the fingertips, and morphed to form integral gloves. Finally a full-length hooded cloak.

A small payment pad rested on a shelf, requesting recompense for the garments that the customer was purchasing. Kenna had no time to decipher its protocols – there had been nothing like this in the Palace – so she reached out and crushed it into powder instead.

No alarms followed.

Good enough.

When she went back out, there was still no one in sight, but voices drifted from around a long curve in the corridor: easy conversation, a light laugh, and total ignorance of the violence taking place in the Primum Stratum above. Kenna slipped away in the opposite direction, pulling her hood low, and returned to Mandia, who was now sitting on the floor, back against the wall, staring blankly.

Once more Kenna pulled Mandia upright, and supported her as they walked, coming out into a larger thoroughfare where people did not quite stare at them – this was a polite place – as they headed for a large, platinum-inlaid disc on the floor. Ruby lights winked at their approach, and Kenna pressed Mandia’s palm against a horizontal pad atop a waist-high stalk, a metre from the disc – which began to rotate and separate into a complex affair of blade-like segments that clacked and clattered, then dropped to form a helical staircase. The rotation stopped as the treads snapped into place.

Kenna kept one arm around Mandia’s waist as they descended. Once down and clear of the treads, the whole assemblage reversed procedure, pulling upwards and turning as the disc reformed and locked into place – except that Kenna and Mandia were now below it: a circle on the ceiling of the Tertium Stratum, and one that would not grant access without specific authorisation.

Descent was straightforward; only upward movement required authorisation.