‘Welcome to our Palace, Academician, Marshal! I regard myself as something of a scholar though I have no formal qualification, but I could hardly do my job without acquiring a little learning . . . Come, come, follow me.’ Coton, Vala, Sand and a single Coalition guard followed him into the grounds of the ruined complex. The Palace of the Assimilation had been built on a massive tetrahedral frame, as had many of mankind’s greatest buildings. Though the frame survived, much of the facing, a kind of foam-concrete with a golden patina, had crumbled to leave huge gaps open to the sky, and where the weather had got in the internal partition walls and floors had rotted away. The ground floor was littered with chunks of debris and choked with weeds, and Coton could see people inhabiting lean-tos and shacks in the lee of the surviving walls. Some even had fires burning on the remnants of the polished floor. Vala, picking her way through the rubble, looked faintly embarrassed. Croq had his own staff here, younger men and women in purple robes similar to his own, with weapons at their waists and antique-looking data slates under their arms.
