‘I’m all right, Doctor,’ I said, slipping from his grasp as if his fingers were coated in slime. ‘You keep a watch on this room. The robot’s trying to find her, but its vision system isn’t very effective.’

‘You’re a good girl, Arafura. At least one of you’s turning out the right way; a fitting memorial to your mother.’

‘Thank you, Doctor Moon . . . Morcenx.’ The insult had slipped out accidentally, almost as if Adrana was inside me, stirring up mischief. I flashed an awkward smile and broke away from him, knowing that with his limp he could never keep up with me. We had our best dresses and boots on, Adrana and I, but we could hitch up our hems and run in them if we needed to.

The Hall was much longer than it was wide. It needed to be, with so much history to cover. To begin with, before I knew what it was all about, I liked the fact that the Hall of History was pretty, with that long black wall running the height and length of the room, and the coloured bars that were lit up along its length, like irregularly spaced fence posts. It was easy to be impressed by the glowing colours and the writing in them. I was fixated on what was known.

It was years later before I stopped to think about the black intervals between the bars, and what they meant.

Soon I was at the south door. It was open and the warm evening was pushing in from outside. Constables were trying to impose order and stopping people from coming back in. A man was insisting that he needed to get back to the cloakroom where his wife was waiting, and an argument was brewing as they told him to go around the front of the building, which he felt was too much trouble.

A hand closed around mine.

I twisted it away, half expecting to see Doctor Morcenx again. But it was Adrana.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now we can have some fun.’

Adrana started dragging me to the door. ‘I’m supposed to take you back to Father,’ I said.

‘Oh, come on, Fura.’ Her eyes were wide with anticipation. I knew she’d had a glass of wine when we came in but there was nothing foggy or reddened about them. ‘We’re a stone’s throw from Neural Alley. I’ve got some quoins. Let’s go and live a little.’

‘I’m not interested in Neural Alley.’

‘How can you know, if you’ve never been there?’

‘And you have?’

But we were through the door now, into the evening, and there was no chance of the constables letting us back in through the south door. I glanced back in time to catch a glimpse of Paladin, still sweeping the room, working its way gradually to the open door.