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There had been fog like this on the day Scion took him. The day after our overture.

In Paris, I had accepted that I wanted to be with him. I had been ready to become his partner in all senses of the word; to commit to something more concrete than whatever had been flickering between us since Oxford. Paris had been the final step in a long realisation that we should fight to make it work, even if it always had to be a secret.

Arcturus was my counterbalance. We had made a formidable team in Paris. He had proven his loyalty time and again, and now he had been punished for it.The card has weight, Liss had told me, showing me the Lovers.This will be a pillar of your life.

There was no one else who fit the description. It was him.

It had always been him.

Another sprinkle of rain came down, dewing my hair. I headed back to the Palazzo del Domino.

At half past two on the dot, I knocked on a door markedstanza della dogaressa. Ducos let me in. It was smaller than the Blue Room, housing a round table and a few upholstered chairs. Pivot sat in one of them, wearing an elegant navy shirt over matching trousers.

‘Flora. Welcome back,’ she said. ‘I’m told your assignment was a resounding success.’

‘You could say that,’ I said.

Beside her, a third amaurotic, sallow and stocky, scrutinised me from behind a pair of gold wire spectacles with a top bar. His suit was the same greyish brown as his receding hair.

‘This is Spinner, one of my colleagues in Command,’ Pivot said. Spinner gave me a curt nod. ‘He would like to hear exactly what happened on Capri.’

‘Have Nick and Verca already spoken to you?’

‘Not yet.’

Spinner folded his arms, while Ducos stood by the door, her files gathered to her chest. Under their watchful gazes, I recounted almost everything that had happened in Naples and Capri, seeing no reason to spare any details, except for the fact that Arcturus had been dead (for all intents and purposes) when I found him. That would be hard to explain.

‘These creatures you mentioned, the Buzzers,’ Spinner said. ‘What exactly are they?’

‘Buzzers come from the same world asAdvena sapiens,’ I said. ‘They eat flesh and spirits.’

‘Right.’ His mouth tightened. ‘You say they came through a gateway. A cold spot, was it?’

‘Scion can draw Buzzers towards certain places. In this case, they used them as a trap. That’s the reason your investigation teams disappeared. The Buzzers would have overwhelmed and killed them.’

‘So you’re saying Scion planted a biological weapon on the island.’

‘I … suppose.’

‘And now your associate is safely in Venice,’ Pivot said. ‘Was he privy to any useful intelligence?’

‘Yes. He was able to identify the nature and aims of Operation Ventriloquist.’

They all looked at each other.

‘Operation Ventriloquist is a covert attack on the free world,’ I said. ‘The Suzerain is using a dreamwalker – someone like me – to possess, threaten and blackmail politicians, forcing them to let Scion do what it wants. He’s the weapon Wells mentioned. I’m convinced that’s why Rinaldi and Sala allowed Scion to take the islands, and why Sala has vanished.’

Spinner pressed his lips together.

‘I see.’ Pivot drew her data pad towards her. ‘Can you explain in more detail, Flora?’

Over the next hour, I told them as much as I could about Cade and his role in Operation Ventriloquist. I ran them through themechanics of dreamwalking, and how I thought Cade had used his abilities to cow the Norwegian government into submitting to Scion.

‘He might have intimidated an Italian politician before Sala and Rinaldi,’ I said. ‘To demonstrate his powers.’

‘There is a possible Italian counterpart to Helen Githmark,’ Ducos said. ‘Umberto Bianchi, the Mayor of Turin. After the police received an anonymous tip-off, a large quantity of drugs were found in his family home. Bianchi claimed to have no idea how they had got there, but there was footage of him making the deal. He’s awaiting trial as we speak. He was outspoken against Scion, advocating for Italy to help defend the Iberian Peninsula.’

‘He’s your man, then, and he’s innocent. He did technically move the drugs, but he’d have had no memory or control of his actions.’