The newspapers declaimed. They brought out extra-large fonts for their condemnations of the EyeSky Riots. There were heliotypes of the dead barricaded in shops and smothered by smoke, crushed in falls from windows, shot.

In The Grocer’s Sweetheart on the Chainday after, Ori expected the Runagate Rampant meeting to be overflowing, but no one was there. He came back the next night and the next, looking for a face he remembered. At last on Dustday he saw the knit-worker, gathering money, whispering in the landlord’s ear.

"Jack," said Ori. She turned, untrusting, and her face only opened a very little when she saw it was him.

"Jack," she said.

"It’ll have to be fast," she said. "I have to go. Wine, then, go on.

"Spiralling down, eh?" she said, pointing at the coil-marks on his clothes. "I see them all over now. They’ve gone from walls to clothes. Cactus punks are wearing them, Nuevists, radicals. What do they mean?"

"A link," he said carefully. "To Half-a-Prayer. I know the man who started them."

"I heard of him, I think…"

"He’s a friend of mine. I know him well." There was silence. They drank. "Missed the meeting."

"There ain’t no meetings now. You mad, Ori… Jack?" She was horrified. "I’m sorry, Jack," she said, "really sorry. Curdin told me your name. And where you live. He shouldn’t have done, but he was keen I be able to get Double-R to you, if need be. I told no one."

He contained his shock, shook his head.

"The meetings?" he said, and she forgot her contrition quickly.

"Why would we have meetings?" she said. "When it’s going on?" Ori shook his head, and she gave a sound almost a sob. "Jack, Jack… Jabber’s sake. What are you doing? Weren’t you there?"

"Godsdammit, of course I was. I was in Creekside. I was…" He lowered his voice. "Who are the Militant Sundry, any damn way? I was trying to stand up for the godsdamned khepri your bloody brainless commonalty were busy trying to butcher."

"The Sundry? Well, if you was xenian and all you’d had in your corner were the comprador bastards in the Divers Tendency, wouldn’t you turn somewhere else? And don’t you dare. Don’t you dare scorn people. You know the Quillers take up the human dust. Even your friend Petron knows that-and don’t bloody look at me like that, Jack, everyone knows his name, he was in the Flexibles. And I ain’t sure of all the bloody lunacies the Nuevists do, faddling about dressed as animals, silly bloody games, but I’d trust him. I don’t know as I’d trust you, Jack, and that’s a sad thing, because it ain’t that I think you don’t want what I want. I know you do. But I don’t trust your judgement. I think you’re a fool, Jack."