‘And servitors,’ Chetta pointed out, leaning on her cane. ‘My guards have to stay outside, but servitors can come in.’ They’d come down from the prefect’s palace above in an elevator, a clanking, grumbling thing with a brass grille across the door and a machine-spirit that had struck her as recalcitrant at best, but she was really starting to regret making this journey on foot. If she had to call for a sedan chair and bearers to be sent down into the bowels of the Administratum, just so she could make it back to her flyer to get home…

‘Why would servitors be a problem?’ Tekoa asked, puzzled. ‘Their programming is clear.’

‘I’ll take it from that statement that you’ve never had one try to kill you,’ Chetta grunted. She’d never discovered whether the servitor had experienced a spectacular malfunction or had been tampered with: Krane had blown its head off with his bolt pistol, which had stopped it very effectively, but had left little for the tech-adepts to work with in terms of finding out what had gone wrong. She rubbed her throat absent-mindedly at the memory. The thing’s metal fingers would have only needed a second or so more to break her neck quite thoroughly.

Tekoa was staring at her, wide-eyed. Chetta snorted a humourless laugh and waved her free hand at him. ‘Carry on, young man. Don’t mind me. Suffice to say that being the spouse of a Novator isn’t all unusual alcohols and fine delicacies at decadent parties.’ Although I preferred nearly being killed by a servitor to some of the parties I’ve had to attend.

‘I see,’ Tekoa replied, in a tone of voice that made it clear he really didn’t, and was quite happy with that. He consulted the data-slate in his hand, trying to get back to business. ‘The cogitator we need is the one linked to the immigration records, and is…’ He squinted up through the gloom at the numerals on the shelves they were currently between, which declared the aisle to be ‘X/CLIII’. ‘It should be just at the end of this row.’

‘Wonderful,’ Chetta said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. Tekoa’s help was better than Gurrit’s flat refusal, and it wasn’t the boy’s fault that the record-keeping was so infuriating, or that her hip hurt. She plodded after him, imagining that every stab of pain was somehow being psychically redirected onto Sen Uru Dukarr.

The cogitator was an old-fashioned affair, but Tekoa’s invocation of the Litany of Activation, his burning of the sacred incense, and his administration of the ritual blow to its side, appeared to appease the machine-spirit, and it flickered into life readily enough. He flexed his fingers and typed in a few commands, then looked around at Chetta expectantly.

‘What precisely are you looking for, high lady?’