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Oquayan was pulling. Lungs bursting, Zinina let out her breath in a great bellow, and forced herself upward into the air.
    Still she was pulled. In seconds she was out. Slime caught in her throat forced her to breathe in coughing gasps.
    Unable to see, she felt herself being dragged along the alley. Lack of air made her head spin.
    When they stopped, Zinina fell to one side. Then she felt a thump on her back, and she coughed up green slime, and breathed. There was a hiss, and a pinprick in her right arm.
    Zinina, half-conscious, tried to look into Oquayan’s face. She saw a flash of glass and recognised a syringe, but it was not Oquayan crouching at her side. As her conscious mind failed her, she caught the odour of menthol on the breath of her rescuer.

CHAPTER 2
    And then Zinina awoke.
    She lay on a bed inside a house. Above her, the ceiling was mottled green, plaster hanging in flaps.
    Able to move, to sit up, though she was dizzy and her limbs were weak, she studied the room further. The faint smell of water and rotting flesh meant that she was near the river – she thought she could hear it – while the style of oil paintings on the walls and the heavy, knitted blankets meant that the woman owning this house was an aamlon. Zinina sniffed the air and thought she smelled charnel-tree blossom, which only grew in Eastcity. Could she be in some hovel off Hog Street? Off Pine Street? There was only one way to find out. Zinina tried to get out of bed, but sprawled in a heap on the floor, her legs still shaky.
    The door opened. From her position crouched beside the bed Zinina clutched for a weapon, finding nothing. She wore only an aamlon shift. No poinard. She shrank back.
    In walked a woman. She was perhaps forty, with wrinkled skin though few discernible blemishes, and wore the traditional gohlen smock and the cultural neck-string, made of tiny ebony breasts with ruby nipples, of an aamlon. The woman had the most intense pair of blue eyes that Zinina had ever seen. But she was not armed. Her movements were slow, almost melancholy.
    Zinina stared upward. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Tamina.’
    Zinina knew but a score of aamlon words. ‘Um,’ she began, ‘hilf, hilf. Don’t say auveeders.’
    The aamlon woman sat beside her. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Zinina. Who’re you?’
    ‘Graaff-lin. I found you in a faint on my doorstep. Were you attacked by revellers?’
    ‘Revellers wouldn’t attack me,’ Zinina said. ‘Where am I?’
    ‘In my bedroom. This is my house. It’s near Onion Street.’
    Zinina’s guess had been correct. She was in the Westerly reaches of the Old Quarter. ‘How did I get here?’
    Graaff-lin sat back, as if surprised. ‘I assumed you could tell me that,’ she replied.
    ‘I was shoved in a hole up the Mercantiles,’ Zinina said. ‘So you didn’t rescue me? Hoy, somebody did.’
    ‘Then it is a mystery. Still, once you’re fit, you can go home.’
    Zinina shrugged, glanced away.
    ‘Oh,’ Graaff-lin said. ‘I see.’
    Silence fell between the pair. Graaff-lin stood up and went to close the internal shutters. Outside, evening had brought gloom. Zinina sensed unease in Graaff-lin’s body language. ‘I wonder who brought me here?’ she asked.
    Graaff-lin turned to reply. ‘Nobody I know, that is sure.’
    Zinina frowned. ‘You can’t be certain of that.’
    ‘Good point,’ Graaff-lin admitted, with a frosty smile.
    She sat on the bed, indicating that Zinina should also. ‘I suppose some acquaintance of mine could have carried you here. A clerical friend, perhaps.’
    ‘You a cleric?’
    ‘I am a priestess of the Dodspaat.’
    So, an aamlon priestess. This could presage a stroke of luck, for now that she had the xenos –
    ‘My kit! Where’s my clothes?’
    Graaff-lin moved to calm her, grasping her wrists. ‘Your clothes are quite safe, stewing in my antiseptic bin.’
    ‘Gotta have me kit, Graaff-lin. Where is it?’
    Then she remembered. Oquayan had snatched it from her as she fought