‘Believe me, Harlon,’ I said, ‘in the length and breadth of this great Imperium of Man, there is no such thing as coincidence. Not where psyk is involved.’

‘Duly noted,’ he replied, not caring or believing.

‘Where did this Patience go, Carl?’ I asked.

‘She was sold for ten thousand to a narcobaron cartel that purchased her for use in a game they like to play.’

‘A game?’ I asked.

‘The record implies this is not the first subject the scholam has sold to the cartel for this purpose. I say game, it’s more sport. They release the purchased child into the slum-tracts and then… then they gamble on how long he or she will survive. Once they send their hunters out.’

‘So what?’ asked Nayl. ‘They’ll clean up our little psyk-witch loose end without us having to break a sweat.’

‘If the records are true,’ I warned. ‘Consider this. There might be a game. There might be a narcobaron with a taste for barbaric gladiatorial sport. On the other hand, all those things might be a substitution code to conceal an act of purchase to a Cognitae procurer.’

‘I actually don’t know which would be worse,’ Kara said.

I turned back to Cyrus. He whined as my mind re-entered his. He was still weak and reeling from our initial session, and by rights I should have left him a while to be sure of getting accurate responses. But there was no time. An unsanctioned menace was loose somewhere, or already leaving the planet under close watch.

I tried a few key phrases – ‘the psyker’, ‘the telekine’, ‘Patience’ – pushing them at his mind in the way a child rams shaped blocks at a box, hoping to find the right hole to fit. He responded with various recurring words: Loketter, the game, trophy worth…

I wasn’t sure how hard to push. I wasn’t sure if I was slamming him back against the limits of truth, where there is nowhere left for sanity to go, or simply meeting some form of substitution. Substitution was another standard Cognitae mind ploy. Anticipating psychic interrogation, the brotherhood mnemonically learned to replace the details of true memories with engrammatic euphemisms. Narcobaron, for example, could stand for procurer. Game might stand for purpose. It was a simple but almost unbreakable deceit. Well schooled, a Cognitae brother could mask memories with metaphors. He could not be caught in a lie, because he wasn’t lying. The truth had been erased and replaced with other facts. Using such techniques, a member of the brotherhood might withstand the most serious psyk-scrutiny, because the truth was no longer there to uncover.

‘He’s giving me nothing,’ I cursed, turning away. ‘Unless it is the truth. Do you have an active lead, Carl?’

Thonius nodded.

Kara got to her feet.

‘Let’s go and find her,’ she said. ‘If the story’s real, I mean if there is this frigging barbaric game actually going on, there’s a girl out there who really, really needs help right now.’