Dyeawan reaches inside her tunic and removes the stone she picked up beside the God Rung. She lies back down on the model street and holds it in front of her face, turning the stone over and over with both hands and examining its smooth, flat surface.

Eventually her hands stop, and her eyes begin to glaze, no longer seeing the stone.

“What is it, Slider?” Riko asks her.

Dyeawan should feel elated, especially after everything she’s put herself through to reach this moment, but she can’t stop thinking about all the years those ship hulls took up space, untouched and forgotten, until suddenly, immediately after she spoke to Edger about them, they were neither.

She learned the word “coincidence” several weeks ago, and she knows this isn’t one.

Dyeawan looks up at Riko, still holding the stone in her small hands.

“I think it’s the riddle and the answer,” she says.

THE CALLING HOUR

LEXI REALIZES, SETTING TWO CUPS in front of herself and Taru, that this is as close to being truly happy as she’s felt since Brio’s disappearance.

She pours Taru and herself rice wine from a jug and spikes each with just a few drops of Voxic’s sting from a separate, smaller bottle.

Taru raises a single brow with the oddest of half smiles. “Te-Gen?”

“Small victories, small celebrations,” Lexi insists. “They are even more important in times like these.”

They’re sitting in her father’s old study at the bottom of the Xia tower. Since the old man passed, not long after Lexi’s mother did from the same illness, it’s been left largely untouched. That includes the collection of spirits long cultivated there, from the finest fermented wine to the rare nectar contained in a bottle shaped like the meat-eating Voxic plant from which it’s extracted.

Lexi takes up her cup and raises it in a toast, smiling at her retainer triumphantly.

Taru shakes their head, but reaches for the other cup and holds it against Lexi’s just the same.

“Small victories,” Lexi repeats.

Taru nods, adding, “May enough of them win the war.”

Lexi’s eyes come alight and her smile only widens. “Well said, my friend.”

They touch cups and drink, Lexi more deeply than is at all customary for a Gen hostess, while Taru sips. The spike of Voxic’s sting sets its hooks in their tongues at the same time, and judging from their expressions they both might have just had swords lanced through their bellies.

“Why do people enjoy this?” Taru asks with equal parts confusion and contempt.

Lexi is shaking her head as if to expel the burning sensation in her skull. “I thought all warriors were drinkers.”

Taru coughs. “I remain the exception in all things, it seems.”

“It is the first quality required in being exceptional, I’m afraid.”

“Thank you, Te-Gen.”