That was how the Imperium worked, though. So long as the numbers balanced, no questions were asked. There was no surer way to draw attention than to unbalance an equation, even an equation as apparently minor as the passenger tally on a transport ship. So Radimir Niklau left the ship in the same manner in which he’d boarded it, past mirror-visaged proctors with their riot-guns and cyber-mastiffs, alert for threats but completely blind to the one he posed, and disappeared into the teeming medley of humanity and near-humanity that made up the Mids of Ascension City.

Twenty-three minutes later, he was in a booth in a spider market, sipping a hot, spiced beverage with a higher-than-average caffeine content. The market was so named because it had been built onto the outer skin of one of the towering, mile-high buildings, and patrons had to negotiate it by clambering up and down levels like the giant arachnids that apparently lived in the choking smog lower down. It was a precarious existence, both fiscally and gravitationally, and Radimir was here quite deliberately.

His contact was late, but not immensely so. They arrived five minutes past the agreed time, feet first down the ladder. Radimir took note of that; they’d come from an upper level, suggesting that they were of higher social status. Unless, of course, they were late because they’d taken the time to climb higher and then descend to the meeting, in order to mislead him.

‘You are Niklau?’ the new arrival asked. They had a hood drawn over their face, which wasn’t uncommon here, since the air held a biting chill even at this altitude. However, shadows held no mystery for Radimir. He could make out skin so pale it nearly gleamed like marble, and a pair of dark brown eyes.

‘I am.’ He took a sip of his caffeine. ‘You are Kell?’

‘It’s as good a name as any.’ Kell cast a nervous glance at the window, which was little more than a square of transparent sheeting, and then down at the floor of hardened, reconstituted organic waste pulp. Somewhere underneath, presumably, were the struts that anchored it to the building. ‘What possessed you to meet here?’

‘The possibilities for eavesdropping are extremely limited,’ Radimir pointed out. It was true enough; the booth was big enough for two people, plus a light-limbed juve to clamber in and serve drinks, then clamber out again. One side was the three-foot-thick rockcrete wall of the building, and on the other three was the open air.