‘And if we can’t?’

Zidarov grimaced. ‘We get out.’

Draj nodded, in a way that suggested he hadn’t really paid attention. ‘I took a look at your exterior picts. There’s an evacuation door set back at ground level along the west wall. If the place has a standard layout, that’ll give access to the service chambers – power supply, sanitation. We can get in there, run a scan, and we might get lucky.’

‘Fine. I’ll take your lead.’

Draj laughed. ‘Yeah, you will.’

Zidarov sat back as Draj drove the groundcar. The same buildings he’d driven past in the daylight slipped past in the gloom, studded with blinking marker-lights for the atmospheric traffic, half-lost in the whirling flurries of rain. The transitways looped around, under and above them, threaded like veins in an old and failing body.

‘Do you like this job, Draj?’ Zidarov asked, idly.

‘I like it fine.’

‘Ever done anything else?’

‘Nothing else really worked for me.’

‘So you don’t worry about it? The danger? I mean, for your family.’

Draj laughed again. ‘What family?’ He reached up and tapped the serpent insignia on his breastplate. ‘This is my family. Keep it simple, probator.’

Zidarov nodded. That made sense. Then again, Draj had other crutches. The smell of alcohol began to vie with body odour for the most objectionable stink inside the groundcar’s cab.

‘This place is a disease,’ Draj said next, unbidden. ‘This city. The filth, the sick, the perverse. I clean it up. I’m a cleaner. I like that. One day, the dirt will get me. Until then, I sweep it away. It’s His work. When you say “His Hand”, I know you don’t mean it. I mean it. I do His work. When the bullet gets me, I’ll be right up there, by His Throne. You’ll be screaming in the void. I’ll be in the light of the Throne.’

‘I mean it,’ said Zidarov, defensively. Some things you had to be careful about.

‘Sure you do.’ Draj drove the little groundcar brutally, ignoring the squeals from the engine. ‘But I mean it. It makes me happy. I’ll be there. In the light of the Throne. You’ll be screaming in the void.’

So Draj and Naxi had that in common, at least – they’d both figured him for a slack believer, someone who said the words but didn’t take them to heart. There was an irony in that, of course, but not one he could ever have protested about.

‘It’s coming up,’ Draj said then, losing the edge of humour. His voice reverted to how it usually sounded – a kind of bestial snarl, the effect augmented by the vox-filters over his mouth and jaw.