‘If you join up with Giacomo,’ she said, ‘you have to keep a power of veto for yourselves, right to the end. A day before the disruption – a bell before, a chime before – if I can find a better way, you need to be able to cancel the bombing, or it will all have been for nothing.’

Ramiro didn’t ask her why the ancestors would have gone to so much trouble to motivate her if her struggle would be in vain. ‘We’ll try,’ he said. It was impossible to promise her more than that.

‘Thank you.’ Agata tipped her head in farewell and started towards the door.

‘So what will you do now?’ Tarquinia asked her.

‘Sit in my room and think,’ Agata replied. ‘With the messaging system switched off.’

Giacomo had told Agata that he’d find Ramiro himself for the next stage of the negotiations – but having chosen to know the outcome in advance, their partners seemed to be in no hurry to go through the motions of resolving the matter. Ramiro looked for ways to pass the time without making his restlessness apparent. When he visited Rosita he could usually empty his mind and play games with the children for a while, but then she’d put them to bed and she and Vincenzo would start arguing about the disruption.

‘The Council will do it.’ Vincenzo was confident; he’d worked it all out. ‘The evacuation is a sham; they know they’re not in any danger. In the end, they’ll use those craft for the obvious purpose: sending the malcontents off to Esilio.’

Ramiro said, ‘So after the disruption, there’ll still be malcontents? The Council will switch the system back on?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then why are they switching it off in the first place?’

‘To force the saboteurs to show their hands,’ Vincenzo explained. ‘They’ll think they’re responsible for the disruption, so they’ll trip over themselves trying to make it happen. What better way to lure them out?’

Except for the part about restarting the system, Ramiro wanted to believe this story. If it were true, he and Tarquinia could simply refuse Giacomo’s request – proving that the occulters had never really been part of the saboteurs’ plans – and then wait for the Council’s game to play itself out.

Rosita wanted to believe it too, but she couldn’t. ‘It’s a collision,’ she insisted glumly. ‘The only question is the size of it.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ Ramiro asked her.

‘It’s not saboteurs; saboteurs would get caught. No one could pull this off with all their movements known three years in advance.’

Vincenzo interjected, ‘I never said they’d succeed. But that doesn’t mean they’re not stupid enough to try.’