“If you wanted to fight clever you’d focus on search-and-recovery and not on the barracks. It’s not helping Cam. She’s mad as hell—even madder than you—and it’s getting you nowhere.”

“Thank you for your insight regarding my cavalier,” said Palamedes politely. “It’s appreciated.”

A snort of laughter. “He ices over … I’m too old to know not to be offensive, Palamedes, so forgive me quickly for telling you your business and let’s move on. I’ll say it outright. Forget the barracks and stop trying to be the people’s hero. We’ve lost that fight.”

“Lost? There could still be two hundred people holed up in th—”

“—optimistic—”

“If there were two I’d do it. It’s a rotten way to die, House or not. What’s more, once it’s over—the deluge.”

“Hey, we might get some breathing space. It might drain the boil.”

“You can’t truly believe that.”

“No, I don’t. It’ll be first blood,” said Pyrrha, and made another slurp. “I know how it is. You should have heard the demo crew yesterday. These people are beside themselves waiting for kickoff, waiting for the Houses. One guy tells me this’ll all be over once the barracks get cleaned out, another guy tells me he’d welcome the Cohort regiment with open arms if they just brought supplies and broke up the gangs. Half my guys would strangle the other half on a pretext. This is what happens when you force refugees from twenty different planets to live cheek by jowl and you keep thinking people unify under a common threat … She always made that mistake. I told her twenty years ago. Works beautiful in the short-term, but you’ve got to give them a future to really keep ’em glued. Palamedes, we made this mistake ourselves. You can have the barracks or your people—or neither. You can’t say ‘I choose both’ like a wet towel and expect the universe to fall into line.”

“Pyrrha, this is sounding perilously like giving up.”

“Does it? You know I’m ready to give up. This is a shitshow. You know I’m ready to get Nona safely off-world the moment you accept the way things are.”

“There’s no way off-world—”

“It’s called a ship—”

“If you’re hiding a ship in your dungarees, please share it with the rest of the class.” His voice now raised a little. “Bypassing the question of how, where would we go, Pyrrha? What would we do?”

“Anywhere,” she said. “Anything. I’ve been out of commission for ten thousand years … I’m ready for pretty much anything else.”

There was a brief silence, then a slurp. When Palamedes picked up again, his voice was earnest. “It’s a false dichotomy, you know. We’re all of us in one layered hostage situation. Three million people squatting on a thanergy planetoid millions of kilometres away from us. Nine million people in this city alone…”

“Who aren’t yours by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Nine million, Pyrrha, that’s equivalent to the whole of the Seventh and the Eighth put together. Three million people, plus nine million people, plus sixteen. We refuse to leave any of them behind.”