Toro was Remade, of course. She turned her head. She was turned to wire by her middle years and by whatever traumas had made her Toro. Her face was set and animal hungry. She did not look at Ori. She sat, on a footstool, in front of the magister, laid her bull helmet to one side.

A child’s arms emerged from her. One from each side of her face. One over each brow. A baby’s arms that moved listlessly, tangling and untangling in her lank hair. They had been stretched out, one inside each horn, in the helmet. They waved next to her face like spiders’ pedipalps.

She sat and closed her eyes, stretched out her arms and the baby’s arms. She was quiet some moments.

"Legus," she said. "I know you’re grieving now, but I need you to listen to me." Without the distortion, Ori could hear her accent from the southwest of the city was strong. She pointed at the magister’s eyes and then at her own: Look at me. She held her gun gently at his belly.

"I’ll tell you my story. I want you to understand why I’m here." A little sucking sound came out of the Mayor as gas or blood moved. She stared at the ceiling with the concentration of the dead. "I’ll tell you. Maybe you know already. But listen.

"It’s hard to find out your true name, like it’s supposed to be, but it can be done. There’s a black market in onomastics. But if it’s consolation, yours stayed hidden well. Magister Legus. I been trying to find out a long time.

"I came out of jail more than a decade ago. Graduated, we called it. The rumours, what we learn inside. We had something on every magister there is. You hear things. Drugs, boys, girls, blackmail. Nonsense, some of it. Legus, they said to me, Legus is a wily sod. You know he fucks the home secretary? As she was then." She nodded at the cooling Stem-Fulcher. "That was information that never went away. Heard it often enough from those I trusted, inside and outside.

"Know how hard I been working on this, Legus?" She would not use his real name. "Getting myself ready. Had to fight to get my helmet made." The child-arms patted her forehead. "I made myself; I been readying for years. To be exact, Legus," she said, "you made me. Do you remember?"

"More than two decades gone. You remember those big old towers in Ketch Heath? Yes, you remember. That’s where I lived. I killed my darling. You remember, Magister? My girl Cecile.