Yellowsnake would not be like that, of course. The Vidora had their pride. Zidarov had ordered him to be taken to an interrogation room – a bare cell, one table, three chairs, stark lighting, two messages from the Ministorum oversight committee painted high up near the ceiling in big letters: No Wretch So Degraded To Be Beyond His Mercy and Better To Confess Guilt Than Lose Your Soul. It was debatable how effective those messages were. Many of the occupants of the cells weren’t much bothered with talk of souls. Plenty of them couldn’t read in the first place.

Zidarov reached the door to the cell, and pressed his finger up against the blood-cycler. The lumen blinked on, and the door slid open. He went in, sat down, took out a dataslate, placed it on the table in front of him. The door closed behind him with a heavy clunk.

Yellowsnake sat facing him, dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing when the raid took place – a loose shirt, tight ­trousers, a fabric band across his forehead. He was wiry, lean, like a stray dog. His face was narrow, his skin a light brown, just like Zidarov’s. His reactive tattoos were visible under the lumens, which had been calibrated to pick them out. His exposed skin – face, neck, forearms – showed heavy bruising. An ugly mottled weal ran down the length of his cheek, the mark of a maul-strike. Some of that might have taken place during the raid. Some of it, probably during custody.

‘So what the fuck is this?’ he asked, his voice both weary and disdainful.

Zidarov looked up from the dataslate. ‘I’ll ask the questions,’ he said, sliding it to one side. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop. Yellowsnake stayed where he was. The adamantium manacles at his wrists and ankles had that effect on a subject. ‘I’ve been looking for a man – Adeard Terashova. Heard of him?’

Yellowsnake’s eyes narrowed. ‘No.’

‘Are you sure? Think about it for a moment. We’ve got plenty of time.’

He thought about it for a moment. ‘No.’

‘He was running the Gargoza Import Station. Part-time, I guess, when he could be bothered. I’m sure you would have met him there, when you did your rounds.’

‘No idea.’

Zidarov sighed. ‘Look, I’m one of the nice ones here. You got lucky. Keep this up, I’ll send you upstairs for a while, and then we’ll start again. And you look quite handy. Which is a problem, because they take that as a professional challenge.’

Yellowsnake didn’t look fazed. ‘I can’t help you.’

‘See, you weren’t picked up because of this. Help me out, and you’ll be back out in a few hours. I just need to talk to you about Adeard Terashova. He’s missing, and I’d like to find him. When did you last see him?’