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looks like. A secret tunnel.’ He passed the keys to Meroka. ‘Go ahead. I’ll bring up the rear.’
    ‘You don’t need to come with us, Fray. I can do this on my own.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it, Meroka, but I told Cutter I’d see him to the station. Least I can do.’
    Meroka stooped through the door, then straightened up once she was inside. Quillon followed her into a short, narrow tunnel, bending almost double to squeeze through. Ahead was another door blocking their passage. This one was made of plated metal and looked like it could stop a train, or at the very least a determined safe-cracker. Meroka poked a key into the dark eye of a lock and twisted it with a grunt. There was a thunk as the mechanism worked. She pushed at the door, which must have been very nearly airtight. As it swung wide, warm, humid air gusted against Quillon’s face. The tunnel stretched on much further.
    ‘Where does it lead?’
    ‘Out,’ Meroka said.
    Fray pushed the outer door almost closed, leaving only a pencil-thin shaft of light leaking through from the interior of the Pink Peacock. Fray must have had a spare set of keys, since he was able to lock the secondary door on his own. The bar sounds, which had been muffled but present a moment earlier, were now entirely absent. It was just the three of them and the sound of their own breathing. They advanced into darkness, the gloom relieved only by the wavering light from Meroka’s pen-sized electric torch.
    When Quillon touched the dark, marble-like surface of the wall it gave off an ancient, reptilian cold. He had heard rumours of tunnels such as this, cutting back into Spearpoint’s fabric from within the oldest buildings, but this was the first time he had seen the evidence with his own eyes. He had taken his tinted spectacles off to see better in the darkness. The tunnels had been bored, it could only be presumed, during an earlier phase, centuries or millennia ago, when local conditions allowed the use of high-energy cutting equipment such as plasma lances. Nothing that now worked in Neon Heights could inflict more than a scratch on the dense black fabric. It would have taken lifetimes to manually dig this far.
    ‘You never told me about these tunnels,’ Quillon said to Fray.
    ‘That’s sort of the idea with a secret, Cutter.’
    ‘I didn’t think you and I had any. Now I’m wondering what else I didn’t need to know.’
    ‘Fray’s a businessman,’ Meroka said, butting in on their conversation. ‘He may have made you think you had some special relationship going, but the bottom line is you’re just one of his clients. Ain’t that right, Fray?’
    ‘Cutter’s more than a client,’ Fray said. Despite his size he was keeping up with the pace.
    ‘What’s the deal with the name?’ Meroka asked.
    Quillon took off his hat so he didn’t have to stoop as much, clutching it against the dark prize of his medical bag. ‘Fray’s idea of wit. I’m a pathologist. I cut things open. It means he doesn’t have to use my real name when it might be overheard. But for what it’s worth, I’d much rather you called me Quillon.’
    ‘Good enough for Fray, good enough for me. Cutter it is.’
    ‘Thanks. Is it going to be like this all the way to ... what was the place you mentioned?’
    ‘Fortune’s Landing,’ Fray said.
    ‘I’ve heard of it. That’s about all.’
    ‘You’ll do fine there,’ Fray said. ‘It’s on one of the semaphore lines, so you won’t feel out of touch.’
    ‘I trust Meroka will make introductions for me when we arrive.’
    ‘I don’t go that far,’ she said. ‘I drop you off with some nomads we’ve had dealings with. Bunch of traders who loop between the main towns, selling and bartering what they can, generally trying to stay out of the way of the Skulls and the vorgs.’
    ‘People I can trust?’
    ‘They’ll see you right,’ Fray said. ‘But once you get to Fortune’s Landing you’re on your own. Which is no problem, you being a