I stroked my alloy hand with the other, struck by the false arm’s supremely elegant design and manufacture, the product of a better, more refined time than our own. It would be strong as well, I decided. Nothing frail could have endured two Occupations, and still be useful.

‘What’s your suggestion?’

‘It would be better to move the bracelet elsewhere than destroy it. I could do so, but I would not be able to move as quickly as a person, and I would also much rather remain at your side. Are you strong enough to walk?’

‘Yes, I’m all right.’

‘Then we will continue.’ Paladin shot out a claw. ‘Give me a low denomination quoin. The least valuable you have.’

‘You should rest,’ the Limb Broker said. ‘Rushing out straight after a procedure like that . . . you’ll do yourself an injury.’

I cradled the quoin bag in my stiff arm and used my good hand to dig out a one-bar quoin, the last I had. I gave it to Paladin, and slipped the bracelet into the robot’s other claw.

In Neural Alley we found a girl who was willing to run with the bracelet in return for the quoin. She was about my height and build, although that was the extent of the similarities.

‘You won’t get in any trouble,’ I told her. ‘The constables will be coming for me, not you, and it’s not the bracelet they’re after. Throw it away if they get close.’

‘Which way would you like me to go?’

‘Back to the Dragon Gate. If you get that far, hop on a tram towards Incer Station. Ride it as far as you can. Watch out for the constables, and a thin man in a tall hat, with a scar down his face.’

‘Doesn’t sound like a constable.’

‘He isn’t. But you’ll be faster, I know.’ I gave her an encouraging pat from my good hand, keeping the alloy one tucked close to me for the moment.

‘You’re a strange one,’ the girl said. ‘Wouldn’t hurt to know your name, either.’

‘Fura Ness,’ I said.

She was smart, that cove, and she didn’t take the easy way back to the Dragon Gate. There were a hundred little side-alleys branching off the main one, and they all led to a tight, festering warren of ginnels and squeezeways, things you could hardly call an alley, let alone a street, but it was all part of Neural Alley and I guessed that she knew it better than most. I watched her vanish out of sight, the bracelet dipped into a pocket.

‘Maybe it stopped working,’ I said.

‘No,’ Paladin said. ‘The homing trace was still active. And you are still very much at risk of recapture. We should make haste for the station, before the constables throw a noose over this whole area. Do you still have funds?’