Then much later on, when Nona was having her bath and Pyrrha was watching out for her, because back then there was still the danger that she’d have a funny turn and drown in six inches of water, Pyrrha said casually to Nona: “You’re allowed to go to school for half days, on trial, and only as long as you practise answering questions with us first.”

Nona was ecstatic.

“Why? How? Truly?”

“Palamedes talked to me—then he convinced Hect.”

“Oh, I love Palamedes,” said Nona, and thus fortified dunked her head under the water, which she didn’t like normally because she was mortally afraid of getting soap in her eyes. When she emerged, spluttering, she had presence of mind to ask: “Why did you flirt with the teacher, even though you didn’t like her?”

Pyrrha’s hands stilled from folding laundry, sitting next to the tub.

“How’d you know I didn’t like her?” she asked.

Nona still didn’t have the words to explain. “Just where you put your body—you only looked at her sometimes, that’s all.”

“Wish I’d had you in the Bureau,” said Pyrrha, but she didn’t answer the question.

That was why Nona was allowed to go to school, on the understanding that she would say she was living with her sister and a friend of her father’s and that everyone else was dead. This was an answer so ordinary and boring that she soon wished she had been given a more interesting one, for cultural cachet.

Although Nona was officially a Teacher’s Aide, she quickly learnt that she was really only interested in three parts of school. The first was games; the second was the Hour of Science; the third was the coloured markers that you could write on the squeaky whiteboards with and then rub off with a cloth so that you could mark again, which she was allowed to do to her heart’s content. In fact, she only loved the Hour of Science because that was when she was allowed to look after Noodle, the science teacher’s dog, who was a dirty white creature with six legs and a gentle disposition. She looked after Noodle while everyone else had to wrap ice cubes in socks and the normal nice lady teacher, Joli, marked books or drank big cups of hot tea; then during games she watched to make sure nobody hit balls through any of the windows in the abandoned building next door. If they did, the ball was lost, because there were still mines and burnables all over. Neither of these duties was particularly hard, and she considered her lot a happy one. It was all unpaid, of course, but when she was at the dairy or talking to the people who weeded plants in the park, it was such fun to say, “I work at the school” when they asked her what she did. Everyone always said she was doing good work and they couldn’t ever even think of doing it themselves but well done her.