I shook my head. “I’m tired of fighting other people’s battles for them. Brasil and friends got themselves into this, they can get themselves out. And Segesvar will keep. I’ll get to him later.”

“And Vidaura?”

“What about her?”

“She trained us, Tak.”

“Yeah, us. Get on and save her yourself.”

If you weren’t an Envoy, you would have missed it. It was less than a flicker, some millimetric shift in stance, maybe not even that. But Murakami slumped.

“I can’t do it on my own,” he said quietly. “I don’t know the inside of Segesvar’s place, and without that I’d need an Envoy platoon to take it.”

“Then call in the Corps.”

“You know what that would do to—”

“Then tell me who your flicking source is.”

“Yeah,” said Jad sardonically, in the quiet that followed. “Or just ask him to come in from next door.”

She caught my eye and nodded at a closed drop-hatch in the back of the tower room. I took a step towards it and Murakami could barely hold himself back from the blocking move he wanted to make. He glared at Jad.

“Sorry,” she said, and tapped her head with a forefinger. “Dataflow alert. Pretty standard wincefish hardware. Your friend in there is using a phone, and he’s moving about a lot. Pacing nervously would be my guess.”

I grinned at Murakami. “Well, Tod. Your call.”

The tension lasted a couple of seconds more, then he sighed and gestured me forward.

“Go ahead. You would have worked it out sooner or later anyway.”

I went to the drop-hatch, found the panel and thumbed it. The machinery grumbled to itself somewhere deep in the building. The hatch cranked upward in juddery, hesitant increments. I leaned into the space it left.

“Good evening. So which one of you’s the snitch?”

Four faces turned towards me, and as soon as I saw them, four severely dressed figures in black, the pieces thumped into place in my head like the sound of the drop-hatch reaching the end of its recess. Three were muscle, two men and and a woman and the skin on their faces all had a shiny plastic elasticity where their facial tattooing had been sprayed over. It was a short-term, daily option that wouldn’t stand much professional scrutiny.

But deep as they were into haiduci turf, it probably would save them from having to fight pitched battles on every Newpest street corner.

The fourth, the one holding the phone, was older but unmistakable by demeanour alone. I nodded my understanding.

“Tanaseda, I presume. Well, well.”