He was wiry, tough-looking but ungainly, with oversized joints and a neat cap of brown hair. Grey spots of sharkskin marred one side of his neck, and yet his pale blue eyes were as clear and hard as glass. His raggedy appearance seemed so much at odds with his apparent rank that for a moment Ida wondered if he’d mugged one of Emperor Hu’s finest and stolen the fellow’s getup.

‘She’s Unmer,’ he said. ‘She’ll kill you without meaning to.’

‘She can’t be Unmer,’ Ida retorted. ‘The Haurstaf would have sensed her.’

The colonel looked at her without the faintest glimmer of emotion. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Debating the situation further serves no purpose, ma’am. Please move aside, or we will remove you by force.’

Ida did as she was told, stepping through the piles of glittering junk. Now that she thought about it, the girl’s frock did look old enough to be an antique. An original Unmer garment, intact and undamaged by the sea? The sheer value of it astonished her. And wasn’t there an odd graveyard smell in the air?

‘But how did she get out?’ she said.

‘Crawled straight through a wall, I imagine.’

‘But the Haurstaf would have sensed that!’

The colonel puffed on his cigar. ‘The Haurstaf always seem a trifle lax when the emperor neglects to pay his dues on time. If you would be so kind as to make your way towards the nearest exit, we will handle the crisis from here.’

The soldier beside him grunted. ‘Fucking extortion is what it is.’ A great dark brute of a man, he crouched on his high perch like some enormous ape, with the butt of his firearm pressed firmly into his massive shoulder and the barrel aimed at the child. On the back of his hand he bore a small black tattoo. It looked like a shovel.

‘Language, Sergeant Creedy.’

‘Well, it is,’ the other man persisted. ‘They let this one escape to teach Hu a lesson.’