Cat closed the conference chamber door, guillotining Cardinal Bede’s rambling many-subclaused question before His Eminence reached a verb. The door she’d chosen led to a stone landing and a stair winding down and up. The hem of a rust-red robe disappeared around the stair’s descending turn. “Abelard,” she called, but he didn’t stop, and she found herself alone on the landing. Or so she thought.

A stone rumble from the shadows brought her hand halfway to her badge before she recognized the voice. “I do not think he wishes company,” Aev said.

“Do you guys have lurking contests or something?”

Aev stepped forward. Light chiseled her planes and angles from the black. “Why?”

“If so, you’d take the ribbon.”

Aev gestured to her bare stone torso. “Where would I pin a ribbon?”

Cat looked away. “I haven’t seen Abelard in a while, is all. Guess he has better things to do than talk. Tend the boilers, power the city, keep us from freezing in our beds or roasting in our towers. At least it’s a distraction.”

“Ms. Abernathy’s claims concern you.”

“It’s all so far above my pay grade.” Cat pointed down through the floor. “Thought we could work it out together, Abelard and me, but he hasn’t been himself these last few months. Then again, I don’t suppose any of us has been herself.” She frowned. “Themselves? Themself?”

“It’s easier to say in Stone.”

Of course. What else would be easier in Stone? Poetry? Wrath? Prayer? “Why do you have your own language anyway?” Cat asked instead. “There’s only like thirty of you, and you were built—made—”

“Shaped, we say, or carved. And we were not always so few. We were made of Alt Coulumb, not born of it, so the Lady gave us our own tongue. You could speak it too, if you opened your heart to Her.”

“Not likely,” she said, but Aev didn’t rise to the bait. “How many of you were there?”

“Two hundred fifty-six, as of the eighth carving. Some fell in the Wars, and after. Some perished in exile. There is a grove in the Geistwood where many stand who gave up hope of seeing home again. They set aside the quickness of their body and sank their roots into living stone. They will not move for a turning of the world.”

“Gods.”

“We who hoped endured, and returned to aid a city that fears us. But now our very existence has placed our charge at risk.”

“Your charge. You mean, us.”

“Yes.”