There were lots of different languages and dialects around because of all the refugees from other planets, and because of all the resettlements—Nona knew about resettlements because it was all anyone talked about in a queue—and if you spoke someone else’s language they were nicer to you, and assumed you had come from the same place they had come from and lived through what they’d lived through, which was helpful. Many people were suspicious of other people because they wanted a good resettlement and were afraid that other people would somehow get them a bad resettlement. Many people had lived through at least one bad resettlement already. Everyone was crammed on one of three planets now, and they all agreed that this planet was easily the worst, though this always made Nona feel a little bit offended on the planet’s part.

And so Nona lived with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, on the thirtieth floor of a building where nearly everyone was unhappy, in a city where nearly everyone was unhappy, on a world where everyone said that you could outrun the zombies, but not forever.

You were not allowed to say the words zombies, necromancers, or necromancy outside her house, or really inside it either. Nona said they talked about everything else, so why not those words, but Palamedes said superstition for the latter and indignation for the former, which Nona did not understand. This had been the case for Nona’s entire life, which would be six months next week, and Pyrrha had said as a treat she would take everyone for a birthday trip to the beach (if nobody was setting up a mortar on it).

Nona was so grateful to have had a whole six months of this. It was greedy to expect much longer.

3

HARDLY ANYONE WAS SUSPICIOUS OF NONA, even in the early days. They assumed she was the way she was because she had been through something terrible. They had all known at least one person who had not been through something terrible. When she asked Camilla how she came across to other people, Camilla said unworldly. Pyrrha said she acted like she had given away one of her two brain cells already. Pyrrha said to keep going, that people loved it if you were good-looking and dumb.

Nona didn’t want to be just good-looking and dumb; she wanted to be useful. She was dimly aware that she was not what anyone had wanted. This was why she had gone out and got herself a job, even though it wasn’t a paying one.

About four months in, when Nona had learnt enough to be allowed outside and to talk to strangers and to do up her own shirts, she was permitted to visit not merely the garage beneath the Building but the surrounding three buildings too. There was a school behind her building that used the first two floors of an old beat-up office block for classrooms, and Nona liked to hang around near the fence and watch the children play during break time. This caught the attention of a nice lady teacher who asked Nona why she wasn’t in school herself. She said truthfully enough that she did lessons at home, and the nice lady had made a face and asked Nona where she lived. When she heard that Nona lived in the Building, she didn’t quail, but wrote down the floor and apartment number on a piece of paper.