‘All and none of ’em. Place is like a wound. Keeps growing over itself, getting more scarry all the time, until one day it scabs off and starts all over again. Someone sells you a map you might as well read it through the wrong side of the paper, all the good it’ll do.’

‘I hope you know where to go. And this man you know – what’s he going to tell me?’

‘The same as me, to start with – that’d you’d be better off home. Once Quell’s got it into his noggin that you’re serious, he’ll find you passage to some world that isn’t too many months away. Auzar’s favourable now, so’s Gebuly or Kathromil. Once you’ve landed, you can take stock and see how the advice you got given on Trevenza wasn’t as bad as it looked.’

‘I know my mind,’ I said firmly.

‘Now you do. But once you’ve had time to reflect on how lucky you’ve been, you won’t be in such a hurry to see Bosa again.’

It would have taken us days to fight our way through the maze of streets, but by some consent the city had preserved several wider thoroughfares running parallel to the edges of the windows. These avenues were rambling, dusty, clotted with traffic, overhung by leaning shops and houses, criss-crossed by electricity and telegraph lines, draped with flags and banners, and spanned by ramshackle footbridges connecting the upper levels of one building to another. There were people everywhere, wearing every kind of fashion, and even the lowliest had a proud, hard look to them. A woman was washing clothing on the front step of her house. She eyed me while her jaws chewed on something with a slow, methodical rhythm. There was judgement in her eyes, measuring me up in an instant. Prozor didn’t draw a second glance.

I was glad when we got onto one of the trams that worked their way up and down the thoroughfares, sparking under their cables. Prozor knew the numbers as if she’d been here yesterday.

‘Look at glow girl here,’ I caught a man say, as we stood pressed against the other passengers. ‘Been noshing on the vines, she has. Should’ve come to my place.’ He gave a dirty chuckle. ‘I’d have kept her handsomely fed.’

Prozor twisted her head around. ‘You got somethin’ to say to Fura, you can direct it my way as well. She saved my life.’

‘Didn’t mean nothing by it,’ the man said, rasping a hand across a face full of stubble.

As the tram rumbled on, I leaned in to her and whispered: ‘From what I remember I came pretty close to killing you. If you hadn’t come around by the time I moved you into lock, like I was planning . . .’