Harrowhark said, “You’ve got to go before the roof comes down on you.”

Abigail gave a weary, rueful half smile. A very Fifth House embarrassment. “Not until you tell me what you’re doing. In loco parentis, you see. I’m afraid I feel responsible for you, and need you to promise me you’ll live.”

“Gideon decided that for me,” said Harrow. She was not really afraid; it was only that her hands were, and were shaking independent of her feelings.

The first falling chunk of ceiling landed with heavy, balletic stillness, causing them all to stumble from the shockwave. Abigail, Dulcie, and Harrow momentarily cowered beneath the automatic and totally useless arm Magnus had thrown over them, a sort of optimistic human umbrella. Harrowhark said briskly, “Pent; Quinn; Septimus. I’m poor with thanks and worse at goodbyes. Therefore, I won’t bother with them.”

Magnus said, “Have you—”

“Someday I’ll die and get buried in the ground and you can take it up with me then,” said Harrow, and found, after all, that she was not really speaking to them. “Until then—I am afraid that I have to live.”

“Then this is not goodbye,” said Abigail, and she reached forward to brush a stray lock of hair behind Harrowhark’s ear, which was an instinct Harrow could not find it within herself to feel humiliated by. “I believe that we will see each other again.”

Magnus said quickly: “Jeanne said to tell Gideon hi. If you see her before we do—”

“Though try not to with any great hurry,” said the Fifth spirit-caller.

And then that same blue shimmer, and they were gone, without fanfare, leaving her alone—with Dulcinea Septimus.

The soft ripples within the bubble had not claimed the Seventh. She stood there amid the falling dust and the noises of shrieking steel, her skin like thin awful gossamer and her short sugar-brown curls stuck to her scalp with the ghost of sweat and blood. Harrowhark, bewildered and stricken, drew closer to her as the world fell all around them.

“Oops! It’s me again, never doing what I’m told,” said Dulcie. “One more moment, please.”

Harrow said, curt with bemusement, “Hurry up and go. If I ever stand before Palamedes Sextus again, I have no desire to explain to him why I put Dulcinea Septimus back in danger.”

“I’m going to risk staying here for a moment and getting squashed into nothingness instead, actually,” she said. “The Seventh says nothingness is the only truly beautiful thing anyway, so nyah.”

“Septimus, if this is about ensuring I get back into my body safely, you can trust me not to change my mind.”