The boxes in which, abandoned, support systems failing slowly, eight costly, empty shells had been left to decay. Nine. But one of them had risen like a horror-movie menace to walk a changed earth, where even the living tried to avoid the sunlight. “They customized them, too,” Frances continued. “After all, a brain is a terrible thing to waste, when you can store useful skills and information in it. Languages, codes, computer programming, volleyball rules, flirting with a fan — whatever the brass considered useful. Who knows. God and you, I suppose.”

“Electronics,” I said thickly. “Why am I neuter?”

“I’m not sure. I think the chevaux could be modified by the rider.”

“They could what?”

“I told you, I’m not sure. I never met one before you. Christ, I don’t think any of them were ever deployed.”

“Deployed. Amazing. Feels just like being alive.”

“Life can be defined as that which admits of no comfortable acquaintance with the cemetery. By that definition, you’re more alive than I am.” The resonant voice was smooth and bitter as unsweetened chocolate.

“I don’t know,” I said, examining my filthy shirt. “I look as if I might have just dug myself out with my fingernails.”

That seemed to amuse her. “You could go change, you know.”

“I would have. But… ” My voice slipped away from me.

“But it would have meant leaving Mick and me alone in here. And,” she said slowly, “it would have meant undressing with strangers in the place. In the whole secretive fabric of your life, your body is the most private thread. Because it’s the outward sign of all your secrets.”

I wondered if I was pale. “Gee. Do you read minds?”

Frances snorted. “No, I attack them, stun them, and bolt them whole, like a constrictor. And I’m sluggish while digesting.”

“I think you need sleep,” I told her, shaking my head. “And food.”

“I always talk like this. Almost always. It whiles away the tedium of the decades. But speaking of food, where the hell is Mick?”

A good question. He wasn’t as familiar with the Night Fair as I was, but the place was full of things to eat. If he wasn’t picky, he could have been back in twenty minutes. Unless — well, why not? Why shouldn’t he have taken the opportunity to bolt before Frances came to and started waving her rifle around again? Even in the vulnerable and addled state I’d been in when he left, why should I have expected him to do anything else? The way he’d caught Frances as she fell, brushed the hair back from her face, was no evidence to the contrary.

I looked up to find Frances’s eyes on me, her hands curled tight on themselves. “Pack if you’re going to,” she said softly. “We’re on the street in ten minutes.”

“What?”

“Mick is the only person besides you and me who knows where I am. And who I am.”

I gaped. “He wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t he? Maybe not. But even so, could he keep it to himself if someone asked him strenuously enough? Or, perhaps, didn’t bother to ask?”