Which was, Anonoei understood, the fundamental principle that guided Bexoi’s life. She was going to rule everything within her reach. Anyone who blocked her from ruling had to be destroyed. Anyone who could help her rule had to be exploited. No partial success was enough to settle for, and if thwarted, she would refuse to stay in the game.

So now, Danny North, with all your wisdom, will you see what’s going on?

“Yes,” said Danny.

But no, no, he did not say it, and Anonoei did not hear it, not through Bexoi’s ears. Nor was it even a word. Anonoei had framed a question in her mind—if it was her own mind—and Danny had answered without language, in a place so deeply inside Anonoei that no part of it touched Bexoi.

“That’s the problem,” said Danny. “You have to reach deeper. This body might accept you, if it knows that you will never use it to kill innocents, as Bexoi did. Or it might not. But it can’t accept you if you don’t reach deep and offer yourself as an alternative to Bexoi.”

Again, it was not a matter of words. In fact, the idea that Anonoei understood as “reach deep” was a concept that she could not have understood if Danny had not pushed something into Bexoi’s body. His outself? His own inself? Danny North was a gatemage, not a manmage. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be able to do … anything.

Yet his urgency could not be evaded. Behold this, he was pressing her. Pay attention to what I do.

But how could she pay attention? She had no bodily senses to pay attention with.

Gently he drew her. Come look at this. Come see. Come feel this.

If she were a poetic person, she thought, she might be able to find words for what Danny North was doing. It was as if his inself took my inself by the hand—no, by the very heart; no, he took the entire inself, enveloped it, guided it.

Yet at no point was Anonoei being compelled. Enticed, perhaps. Come, try this. Feel this. Watch this.

She began to understand what was happening when Danny North insinuated himself into Bexoi’s body. Not the whole of him, the way Anonoei was entirely present inside the confines of Bexoi’s body of flesh and bone. Something like a dagger, though, would lick out, darting like a snake’s tongue, and penetrate Bexoi’s body, probing into places that Anonoei had not understood before. When Bexoi had tried to die, she drew herself out of these places.

This is how you own a body.

Not quite, said Danny North in his silent, wordless way. You can’t take it. But you can ask it to give itself to you.