The balloon bellied up, straining against the ground lines Daphne tied. In the gilded afternoon, its white-and-red curve seemed obscenely medical. Daphne pondered the exact source of her fear of that shape. A memory bubbled from deep nightmare: her hand sawing silverskin from a knob of flesh. But the hand wasn’t hers at all. The flesh, though—and somewhere, in the dark, she heard a man’s laughter. Her knees went slack. She slumped against the balloon, which bobbed and swung.

“Daphne. Come back to me.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I can’t.” The ghosts of laughter wouldn’t fade.

Cool gloved fingers touched Daphne’s temple through the layer of sweat. Daphne felt a small blade enter the side of her neck and twist, and she heard a dubious hum. The seesaw pitching of the world resolved, and colors lost their bite. “There,” Ramp said, and drew the blade away. A drop of blood dried on her gloved fingertip. “I’m sorry if meeting Tara was too much for you.”

Daphne forced her back straight and unclenched her hands from the ropes. Synthetic fibers had left crisscross tracks on her palms. “It’s fine. I feel.” There were words somewhere to match her feeling. She touched her neck. The wound was gone. “I feel bad for her. She’s fallen so far.”

Madeline Ramp examined the blood on her glove as it dried, as if she could read the remnant stain like tea leaves. “Daphne,” she said in the same soft voice, “Ms. Abernathy won’t join our cause just because we ask her to. If her loyalty’s misplaced, we will have to fight her—break her down and bring her into the fold. Do you think you can do that? If not, you can sit this one out. You’ve done so much.”

At those words, the ground under Daphne gaped. She could fall back into purposeless void—into pondering the milk-swirled depths of teacups as women in pale dresses moved around her and whispered: Don’t take the tea, you’ll upset her. A mother wept somewhere, a mother who might have been hers.

All that smeared memory of tea and milk and hospital gowns had ended with five words: I have work for you.

“I can do this,” she said.

“Good.” Ramp vaulted into the basket and extended her hand to Daphne. “Come, then. Let’s dirty our hands.”

She cut the anchor lines, and the balloon rose over Alt Coulumb.

*   *   *

Tara found Gavriel Jones in the plaza before the Crier’s Guild entrance, on the southeast corner of Providence and Flame. Guild spires cut the scudding clouds above the gathered audience: nobles and merchants and bankers mixed with cabdrivers and off-duty construction workers in dusty coveralls. Hot dog and pretzel carts did brisk trade at the square’s edge.

Alt Coulumb’s people had come for the news.