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She twisted my wrist. In the blinding moment that followed, she plunged a syringe into my arm.

At any other time, the agony would have floored me, but no pain on Earth could stop me in that moment. Not when I needed to reach Arcturus; when I knew that failing him could be fatal. With my last ounce of strength, I took out the steak knife – the one I had concealed at dinner – and drove it into Cordier.

A scream rang in my ears. I sat up and removed the patch. It had left a round blue stain on my skin, like a bruise.

Arcturus had looked into my past in Oxford, but with such a soft touch that I hadn’t realised it was happening for a long time. There was a reason his gift was called oneiromancy – he could unfold a memory like an amaurotic dream, to be forgotten by morning.

Blue aster was different. It had brought my memory back with a jolt. That confrontation had been locked away, and now it no longer was.

Recent events will come back to you first.

That memory must have been the night before I woke up, alone and disoriented, in Poland.

Cordier had managed to inject me before I stabbed her. The syringe must have contained my dose of white aster, resetting my clock to March. She had left the hotel, presumably to patch herself up. I had driven the blade into her right side, which meant I could have hit her liver, or a kidney – a critical injury, but if anyone could have survived, it was a medical officer.

That was how the deception had ended. I had felt something from Arcturus, strong enough to nearly derange me. I would have fought anyone to leave that room, to get to him.

I gave the cord a tentative pull, trying to understand why it wasn’t moving. And then an older memory stirred.

I was four years old, living on my grandparents’ farm in Ireland. While I was out playing, I had found a mouse at the back of the cowshed, limp and silent. I had picked it up with care and carried it to my grandfather, who seemed to be able to fix anything.

Daideo, look, it’s poorly. I had stood on tiptoe to place it on his workbench.Can you wake it up?

With a kind smile, my grandfather had sat me on his knee and told me no one could. The mouse was dead, but it was at peace, and I wasn’t to worry. Nothing could ever hurt it now.

I had been told my mother was dead, but I had never seen a body. I had no physical evidence of her existence – not one keepsake or photograph – and so I had imagined death as the sudden and total erasure of a person, leaving no trace but a story. But when I saw that mouse, I began to understand that something could be there, but also gone.

That was how the cord felt now.

A distraction came in the form of a knock. I went to the door. Nick stood outside, wearing a fresh shirt.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘How’s the patient?’

‘Sleeping off a cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics. She’ll have a scar, but the knife missed her axillary nerve,’ Nick said. ‘I can’t believe she managed to walk out of the Alps.’

‘You know Maria. Tough as nails.’ I stood aside. ‘Come in.’

He did, closing the door behind him. ‘Verca seems nice,’ he said. ‘She has the same kind of aura as Dani, doesn’t she?’

‘I think so.’ I stepped behind the folding screen and changed into the linen shorts and blouse that had been left for me. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Dani?’

‘Not a word. Verca said you ran into some trouble in the Alps,’ he added. ‘We’ll talk about it, but you need dinner and a few new clothes first. Italy can get hot in September.’

‘I noticed.’ I put my boots on. ‘Shopping and dinner in Venice. You’d think we were ordinary people.’

‘Out here, I think we almost are.’

I went up to the mirror to put on my dissimulator. My features changed as it bonded with my skin, pinching and tucking until a different woman looked back, one who bore only a passing resemblance to me.

‘Unsettling, aren’t they?’ Nick said. ‘I’ve been lax with mine, since I’m not on Incrida.’

‘Just me that got slapped with a red notice, then.’

‘You were always the one Nashira wanted most. There is a reward for my capture, but only in Scion. And not for half as much.’

We went down the staircase and through a side door, back into the alley. Nick led me out to a wide paved street, where people flocked in and out of shops and browsed at stalls. A white sign readstrada nova, while two yellow ones readalla ferroviaandper rialto.

‘This is bizarre,’ I said to Nick. ‘This morning, I was freezing my face off in the Alps. Now I’m sweltering in Venice. At least my life is never dull.’ He chuckled. ‘Nice hair, by the way.’