Every day that she saw Mr. Motley, he pulled her—unwilling as she was—into his city. He talked idly of turf wars in Griss Twist and Badside, dropped hints of gangland massacres in the heart of The Crow. Ma Francine was extending her reach. She had taken possession of a huge part of the shazbah market west of The Crow, which Mr. Motley was prepared for. But now she was creeping into the east. Lin chewed and spat and moulded and tried not to hear the details, the nicknames of dead couriers, the safe-house addresses. Mr. Motley was implicating her. It must be deliberate.

The statue grew thighs and another leg, the beginnings of a waist (insofar as Mr. Motley had anything so identifiable). The colours were not naturalistic, but they were evocative and compelling, hypnotic. It was an astonishing piece, as befitted its subject.

Despite her attempts to insulate her mind, Mr. Motley’s blithe chat crept in, past her defences. She found herself musing on it. Horrified, she would pull her mind away, but it was an unsustainable attempt. Eventually she would find herself idly wondering who was more likely to win control of the very-tea clearing house in Chimer’s End. She became numb. It was another defence. She let her mind pick its way dully over the dangerous information. She tried to remain studiously ignorant of its import.

Lin found herself thinking more and more of Ma Francine. Mr. Motley discussed her in carefree tones, but she came up again and again in his monologues, and Lin realized that he was a little concerned.

To her surprise, Lin began to root for Ma Francine.

She was not sure how it started. The first she was aware of it was when Mr. Motley had been talking with mock humour about a disastrous attack on two couriers the previous night, during which a huge quantity of some undisclosed substance, some raw material for the manufacture of something, had been snatched by khepri raiders from Ma Francine’s gang. Lin had realized that she was thinking a little mental cheer. She was astonished, her glandwork stopping for a moment as she thought through her own feelings.

She wanted Ma Francine to win.

There was no logic to it. As soon as she applied any rigorous thought to the situation she had no opinion at all. Intellectually speaking, the triumph of one drug-dealer and hoodlum over another was of no interest to her. But emotionally, she was beginning to see the unseen Ma Francine as her champion. She found herself booing silently when she heard Mr. Motley’s slyly smug assurance that he had a plan that would radically alter the shape of the marketplace.

What’s this? she thought wryly. After all these years, the stirrings of khepri consciousness?