‘As you wish.’

‘You’re not going to go running to father? That’s refreshing.’

‘They aren’t ringleaders, and frankly there are too many for us to process properly. However, there can be no public knowledge of the outcome. Everyone is focused on Haranne right now. I don’t want that attention diverted.’

‘A good point.’ He stroked Oeleen’s cheek tenderly. ‘Not that I would ever send anyone as special as this to the Pidrui mines. I’ll ’path the professor when I’ve finished with them.’

*

Slvasta took a cab to the Hewlitt Hospital at midday the next day to visit Arnice. He knew something was wrong as soon as the driver turned on to Lichester Street. Several people were standing together outside the entrance, their minds flashing with shock and distress. In growing alarm, he realized two of them were Jaix and Lanicia. Jaix was sobbing uncontrollably, her shell gone, her thoughts incoherent with grief. He climbed out of the cab.

‘What’s happened?’

The look Lanicia gave him was brutal; without any ’path it told him what a useless, worthless piece of human-shaped shit he was. And not just because he’d turned her down. ‘It’s Arnice,’ she said.

Slvasta just stared at the wailing Jaix. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to be told the horrible truth. ‘What?’

‘I’m afraid Major Arnice has passed away,’ the man in the doctor’s coat said gently.

‘Oh, no. Jaix, I’m so sorry,’ Slvasta said. He stepped over to hug her, to offer his meagre comfort.

‘You were good to him,’ Jaix said through her tears. ‘He really liked you. He said you were real, not like the rest of them.’

‘He was a wonderful man. Truly.’

‘We were engaged,’ Jaix said. ‘He proposed to me two days ago. I said yes.’

Slvasta closed his eyes in grief. ‘The news. He said he had news for me. He was going to tell me today.’

‘Arnice wanted you to be his best man.’

Slvasta turned to the doctor. ‘What happened?’

It was the wrong thing to say, he knew it at once. Jaix immediately stiffened inside his embrace.

The highly agitated doctor said: ‘I’m afraid the major committed suicide.’

‘What? No!’

‘He didn’t,’ Jaix snarled, she turned and pointed at the other man standing with them. ‘You murdered him!’

‘Jaix—’ Lanicia began.

‘No! I will not calm down, and I will not recant the truth. Slvasta, this man murdered Arnice.’

‘Who are you?’ Slvasta asked.

‘Davalta. I’m an assistant attorney for the city prosecutor’s office. And I do understand, and sympathize with, Ms Jaix’s grief. However, I must insist that this calumny is not to be perpetuated.’

‘I’ll perpetuate as much as I like, you boywhore scum,’ Jaix spat. ‘You think working for the prosecutor is going to save you? When my family’s lawyers are through with you, you’ll wish you’d plea bargained for the Pidrui mines and a nightly gang rape! It’ll be a trip to Giu compared to what I’ll have done to you.’

‘Ms Jaix—’

‘All right,’ Slvasta held his hand up. He gave the assistant attorney in his smart expensive suit a suspicious gaze. ‘What are you doing here? Why is Jaix blaming you for my friend’s death?’

Davalta took a breath. ‘I was serving papers on Major Arnice. Soon afterwards, he jumped from the fourth-floor window.’

‘Papers? What sort of papers?’

‘The prosecutor decided he should be charged with Haranne’s shooting.’

‘You’ve got to be out of your Uracus fucking mind!’ Even as he said it, Slvasta could put together the tricky political reasoning behind it. Someone had to be the scapegoat for the girl’s ordeal, someone in authority. You couldn’t blame the mob in this case, that would only aggravate the resentment – and enough people were being carted off to serve in the Pidrui mines to keep that cranked up high right now. The other side had to take a hit, too; there was always a penance to be served in order to restore equilibrium. From a strategic point of view, Arnice was a perfect candidate. The Meor officer in charge of the troops when the shot was fired – even though he’d been knocked unconscious and was having his face burnt off at the time.

‘I assure you, captain—’ Davalta began.

‘You served papers on a man who’d just had his face firebombed? What did you think that would do to his state of mind?’

‘There was no legal reason to delay the court summons.’

‘Legal . . .’ Slvasta shaped his formidable teekay into a giant fist.

Davalta sensed it and took a frightened step back. ‘I assure you, sir, assaulting an officer of the court is a serious offence and will be pursued vigorously.’

Slvasta gave him an icy smile, then turned to Jaix. ‘Make sure your lawyer collects my statement on Arnice’s mental state, and how he should not have been persecuted by a malicious lawsuit. I’ll also be giving testimony that he was unconscious when Haranne was shot, and that I personally witnessed his last order, which was to aim above the heads of the crowd.’

‘Thank you,’ Jaix whispered.

Slvasta gave Davalta a final contemptuous glance. ‘You are not fulfilled, and your profession will prevent you from ever becoming so. Your soul will spend eternity lost amid the nebulas, diminishing with every passing year.’ With that he climbed back into the cab. As his teekay shut the door, he caught Lanicia’s approving gaze. It didn’t make him feel any better.

*

Slvasta walked down the east side of Tarleton Gardens, a terraced square on the edge of the Nalani borough, with a small iron-fenced park in the middle where ancient malbue trees dangled long skirt branches of their dark grey-red leaves from crowns twenty metres above the cracked pavements. The brick house he stopped at was no different from the others which made up the terrace walls of the square. Five storeys high, with bay windows up the front and a wide wooden door painted a cheerful blue. Like most around the square, each floor had been divided up into separate apartments. The structure had a simple psychic fuzz, no different from any other home in the city, preventing anyone from casual prying with their ex-sight. He felt a faint perception wash across him as he went up the three steps to the door.

‘Come on up,’ Bethaneve ’pathed.

The inside was more timeworn than the outside, with a stone stairwell that echoed to the sound of his feet. With whitewashed walls and a grimy roof lantern high above, the air was noticeably cooler than the square outside. He climbed up to the third floor. Bethaneve opened the door and beckoned him across the small landing, her ex-sight sweeping round.

‘Nobody followed me,’ he said.

‘The Captain’s police use mod-eagles,’ she replied. ‘Mod-dogs and cats, too. There are rumours of other adaptations we’ve not seen before.’

He almost said: So how do you know that, if you don’t know what they look like? But for once he had the smarts to keep his mouth shut.

The flat was as bare as the stairwell outside. Its walls had been painted a pale green decades ago, and had faded further under layers of dust and dirt. Dark floorboards creaked under his feet. There was no furniture. Javier was lying on a mattress in the back room, covered by a thin sheet. Coulan sat on a fold-up chair beside him. The young man looked exhausted, his hair limp, stubble shading his chin and cheeks, shirt criss-crossed with streaks of dried blood.

‘Hey, you,’ Javier ’pathed. There was a strong seepage of distress within the simple thought, despite his tight shell. The amount of tissue bruising was worrying. On his dark skin, the swelling was like a purple and bronze stain, leaving every limb puffy and discoloured. Wounds still leaked pustulant fluid, though they were drying out and scabbing over. Both eyes were completely swollen shut from the bruising, and his cheeks had ballooned out as if his mouth was full of nuts.

Slvasta smiled and held up the satchel he’d taken from the office’s deployment bunker. ‘Brought you something.’