‘Hang on.’ Glovach cut the link, checking his private veil of contact-and-intelligence scrits. It took a few moments, while Zidarov drummed his fingers impatiently. ‘No good, I’m afraid,’ came Glovach’s voice eventually. ‘I’ve got nothing. But Mordach, the husband – we know he’s due to chair a convention up in the gilt-zone. I can give you a loc-ref, but it’ll mean he’ll be present at his private apartment for a few hours. He always stays there, ahead of one of these.’

‘Thanks a lot. How’s the weather up there?’

‘Still hasn’t rained. Which is lucky – for me. Consider it done.’

A few minutes later, Zidarov felt the coordinates pulse into his receptor. By then he was already on the way to the Luxer, keeping his head down, hoping not to bump into Vasteva or Draj or any of the dozens of sanctioners pulled into the purge against the Vidora. A lot of them blamed him for the disruption, and would have happily seen him and Borodina trade places.

The drive was not a long one. Bastion-U was placed fairly centrally, and the richer commercial districts were sited just to the north of it. These were the gilt-zones, the places where the gilded made their money and struck their deals. The spires – not towers, spires – were taller, more ornate, clad in granite and fine firestone and finished with basalt Imperial aquilas and coiled Varangantua serpents. Covered viaducts connected each individual pinnacle, branching out between the mighty struts like the spokes of a web, making it possible for a servitor inside to trundle between every one of them without ever touching the ground. Brecht had told him once that it reminded him of a heart he’d seen cut open on an autopsy table, with its gaping ventricles and stringy connecting tissue.

Looking at it now, Zidarov couldn’t see the similarity. The gilt-zones had always looked to him like a cemetery, a vast collection of dead stone monuments, each one casting a shadow the length of a habclave, choking the life out of the earth below.