Her nose wrinkled up as they turned onto Onslo Road. It was a commercial street with plenty of shops and businesses. Dead mods were piled in the gutter, although the corpses were hard to see without ex-sight. None of Onslo Road’s streetlights had been lit; the only illumination came from the nebulas and the occasional upper-floor window. Mod-dwarfs made up most of the capital’s lamplighter teams, and they’d proved an easy target. Gossip ’path claimed that less than twenty per cent of the city’s lamps were currently being lit at night.

They hurried along the pavement. The dark mounds in the gutter shifted about as if they were ripples on some murky lake, emitting slithering sounds as they sloshed against the kerb stones. To begin with, Slvasta thought the bodies weren’t quite dead, then a quick sweep with his ex-sight showed him they were all smothered by dozens of bussalores – big brutes, he perceived in dismay; he’d always assumed rodents that size were an urban myth, but then they’d enjoyed plenty to eat this last week.

His arm tightened round Bethaneve’s shoulder, and they all hurried along.

‘We really will have to do something about this,’ Javier said, clamping his hand over his nose to ward off some of the stench.

‘Another unintended consequence,’ Bethaneve ’pathed as she held her breath. ‘It’s too expensive to pay humans to light the streetlamps and refill them again in the morning. Maybe we should start to put in some exemptions in the licensing ban.’

‘It wouldn’t matter any more,’ Javier said. ‘The streetlight companies couldn’t afford new mods right now. Have you seen what a three-month-old mod-dwarf is going for today? That’s if you can import one. The sheriffs are talking about providing armed guards when stables bring them into the city.’

‘It’s starting to hit the economy, too,’ Coulan said. ‘Food prices are going up.’

‘I could have told you that would happen,’ Slvasta said. ‘All the Wellfield stalls have raised their prices. We had no choice; people cost more to employ.’

‘Wages will have to rise to take that into account,’ Bethaneve said. ‘Which, of course, they won’t. Maybe Nalani should introduce a minimum wage level?’

‘No,’ Slvasta said. ‘We have to be realistic. Even if we could enforce it, every shop owner and business would challenge it in the courts, which would just shut down the borough’s commercial affairs. That would cause even more hardship.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That will have to come after, when we can enforce it planet-wide.’

‘Good call,’ Slvasta said. Once again he was impressed and disturbed by her devotion to the cause.

*

A squad of sheriffs were waiting in the Wellfield market when Slvasta and Ervin drove their carts back from Plessey station. Five of them were standing round Javier’s stall, strong shells preventing any emotional leakage.

Slvasta saw Javier standing in front of the main display cabinets, in deep conversation with the squad’s sergeant.

‘Get the carts unloaded, please,’ Slvasta told Ervin and the new workers as he pulled up outside the store rooms. ‘I’ll see what’s going on.’

Javier gave him a tight smile as he went over. ‘This is Sergeant Becker. He needs us to identify someone.’

‘Identify?’ Slvasta said.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, please, councillor?’ Becker said. He was in his late sixties, a rotund man with a big walrus moustache. The polite yet firm attitude told Slvasta he was a career sheriff used to dealing with human extremes.

‘I’ll be happy to help the sheriffs,’ Slvasta said.

All that earned him was a quiet grunt. Three of the squad fell in behind them as they walked out of the Wellfield to a couple of cabs waiting outside.

‘Are we under arrest?’ Slvasta asked.

‘No, sir. My men are here for your protection.’

When Slvasta checked with Javier, all the big man could do was shrug.

Doyce Street was barely ten minutes away. Slvasta had a bad feeling as they pulled up outside an old tenement. He remembered Doyce Street, and couldn’t think why. More worrying, his ex-sight caught a glimpse of mod-bird circling high overhead. It wasn’t just the sheriffs involved in this . . . whatever this was.

Two sheriffs stood guard outside one of the tenements. They opened the door to allow Becker through. He tried not to let any censure show through his shell, but the place was bleak. Bare brick walls whose mortar was eroding to fine sand which drifted down the walls to contaminate the floorboards. Odd stains discoloured bricks at random. Long, poorly lit corridors of doors on every floor looked like the image created by two mirrors reflecting each other, they were so monotonous. Identical doors opened into single-room lodgings; communal bathrooms at the end of each corridor were ornamented by leaking pipes and cracked basins. Cool air was heavy with the smell of sewers that drained badly. It was all a stark reminder of the life he was barely avoiding by living with his friends, of how every farthing from his wage was important.

They followed Becker up to the third floor. Slvasta didn’t need any ex-sight to know there was death in the miserable lodgings Becker finally showed them to. An eerie sensation of gloom pervaded the walls, so much so that Slvasta wondered if there was a tortured soul clinging to the building’s structure. The drab cube of a room had paper on the walls, so ancient and damp it was barely more than a grey skin of mould. There were just two pieces of furniture: an iron-framed bed and a recently repaired bussalore-proof wooden chest full of clothes. Tall piles of extremist political pamphlets cluttered the floor, their curling pages yellow and damp.

A body was sprawled on the bed. A lot of blood had seeped out of the multiple knife wounds to soak into the mattress and drip onto the floorboards. Two bright oil lamps had been set up by a coroner’s assistant who was waiting patiently, reading a copy of Hilltop Eye. He rolled the pamphlet up when Becker showed them in.

Slvasta looked at the body then hurriedly looked away, fighting the urge to throw up.

‘Sorry about that,’ Becker said in a detached voice. ‘The bussalores had chewed quite a lot of his face before we arrived. They’re getting bold right now. I guess that’s what eating well does for them.’

‘Crudding Uracus,’ Javier grunted.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, gentlemen, I would like a formal identification, please. You were his colleagues.’

Slvasta clamped his teeth together and made himself look at the body again. The facial features – even with half of the skin missing – were easy enough to place. And the bussalores hadn’t touched his hair. ‘Sweet Giu. It’s Bryan-Anthony.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’ Becker asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. And you, sir?’

‘It’s the mayor, yes,’ Javier said.

‘Officially confirmed.’ The coroner’s assistant scrawled something on his clipboard. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

‘What happened?’ Javier said.

‘As far as I can make out, it was a teekay violation in his cranium during sleep,’ the coroner’s assistant said. ‘There’s a small but noticeable tear inside the frontal lobe, with no corresponding external trauma.’

‘But the stab wounds . . .’

‘Done immediately following death. Presumably to make a point. Whoever did this didn’t want us to write it off as a misidentified mod killing.’ He pulled back the blanket. The words UNION WAGE had been sliced into Bryan-Anthony’s chest.

‘Crud,’ Slvasta exclaimed.

‘Did anyone sense his soul?’ Javier asked.

‘No, he’s ascended to Giu,’ the coroner’s assistant said. ‘I couldn’t find his soul when I arrived. If they can resist the song of Giu, then the souls of murder victims tend to linger long enough to tell us who killed them. That’s why my profession has to have a very sensitive ex-sight.’

‘My station commander would like to meet you now,’ Becker said. ‘He wants to talk about giving all of you sheriff bodyguards.’