Your mind idiotically focused upon its bizarre shape and style: it was not a Cohort shuttle, nor any kind of shuttle of the Nine Houses, and not only because it had not been adorned with even a single bone. It was made of very shiny silver steel, and its heat treatment made it sizzle, with a sort of wobbling radiance sitting just above the hull. It was also thoroughly battered and singed: you would not have flown it ten feet above the ground, let alone into atmosphere or the black depths of space. It was small, no more than three bodies wide and three bodies tall, and the thought of being forced inside curdled you. But your distaste and paranoia were stopped in midswing by Camilla saying with barely repressed intensity: “So?”

You said, “He’s in there.”

The cavalier of the Sixth House looked at you; then she collapsed back in a long, controlled movement. She lay flat on her back staring sightlessly at the sky, half-shadowed by the sheeting, half-glowing in the light. At last she gave a long, shuddering breath and sat back up with the same abruptness.

“Good,” she said, and she smiled, very briefly. This smile lit the corners of her face like a rising comet. It made her look, in fact, ridiculously like her adept. “What now?”

You held the carefully assembled fragments of skull between your hands, and hoped that he is had not become he was. Then you crushed the bone between your fingers—the cavalier next to you reached out reflexively, then stopped herself—and you kneaded the fragments within your palms until you could winnow out the glue, which, thank God, had been chemical in nature. It might have very easily been derived from keratin, which would have been a momentary confusion and annoyance. The glue was expunged as a knotty collection of gummy nodules, which you discarded, and left you with a thanergy-rich clay. You considered this malleable stuff for a moment before knitting it between your hands.

Phalanges spurted from the mass; then a distal row, then a proximal row of carpal bones and a length of articulated wrist. It was not the sheer animal pleasure of Ianthe’s arm, but it was easy and it was satisfying. You said, “I could simply give you a full skeleton frame.”

“Don’t,” said Camilla quickly, and paused, and said: “That’s going to get me in trouble.”

“The Warden specifically requested movement.”

“I don’t mean him,” said his cavalier.