The room itself was little more than a hole full of rubbish. Chunks of masonry had crushed the bed. The wall between Ben’s bedroom and the hidden printing press was almost completely destroyed. Languorous summer drizzle had been falling through the burst skylight onto the shattered skeleton of the press.

Derkhan’s face had hardened. She had searched with a fervent intensity. She had unearthed small pieces of evidence, small proofs that this was once where a man had lived. She brought them out now, put them on the table before Umma Balsum.

She had found his razor, with a little stubble and bloodrust still staining its blade. The torn remnants of a pair of trousers. A piece of paper discoloured with his blood from where she had rubbed and rubbed it against a red stain on the wall. The last two issues of Runagate Rampant that she had found under the ruins of his bed.

Umma Balsum watched the pathetic collection emerge.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I . . . I think he’s in the Spike,” said Derkhan.

“Well, that’s going to cost you an extra noble straight off,” said Umma Balsum tartly. “Don’t like tangling with the law. Talk me through this stuff.”

Derkhan showed her each of the pieces she had brought. Umma Balsum nodded at each briefly, but seemed particularly interested in the issues of RR.

“He wrote for this, did he?” she asked keenly, fingering the papers.

“Yes.” Derkhan did not volunteer the information that he edited it. She was nervous of breaking the taboo against naming names, even though she had been assured that the communicatrix was trustworthy. Umma Balsum’s livelihood depended for the most part on contacting people in the militia’s possession. Selling out her clients would be a financial miscalculation. “This—” Derkhan turned to the central column, with the headline What We Think “—he wrote this.”

“Ahhh . . .” said Umma Balsum. “Shame you don’t have it in his original scripture. But this ain’t bad. Got anything else peculiar on him?”

“He has a tattoo. Above his left bicep. Like this.” Derkhan brought out the sketch she had made of the ornate anchor decoration.

“Sailor?”

Derkhan smiled mirthlessly.

“Got discharged and banged up without setting foot on a ship. Got drunk when he joined up and insulted his captain before the tattoo was even dry.” She remembered him telling the story.