Laython talks patiently down to her. “If they can get up, they’re wounded. If they can’t, they stay here. Is that simple enough for you? And d’you think you can manage it without puking your guts out?”

He rides off without waiting for an answer, although Evie had only a scowl to offer him, anyway.

When she looks back at Lariat, he’s in the middle of drawing a small cut in his forearm with the edge of a katar.

It’s one of many small cuts, the rest fully healed.

“Sixty-eight more to go, then,” he mutters beneath his mustache.

Evie can’t be sure whether the old man truly believes it, but lie or not, the cuts are very real.

ON AND OFF

THE OCEAN SINGS TO HER every night, and it’s become one of Dyeawan’s favorite things about life in the Planning Cadre.

It’s after dinner, and she’s retired to her room for the evening. She’s folded her legs beneath her on the floor beside the reading chair in the corner, and though there are books piled beneath her bed, it’s not reading with which she’s occupied tonight.

There’s a knock at the door, stronger than Quan’s and less timid than Tahei’s when he dares to visit. Dyeawan guesses it must be Edger.

“Come in,” she calls.

It’s him, that cordial smile frozen in oil and silk held over his face.

“Good evening, Slider. May I come in?”

“Of course.”

Edger steps inside and quickly stops short. The mask lowers from his face, and Dyeawan knows he’s taken aback. It’s not difficult to understand why. Tools and tubing and spools of twine have overtaken Dyeawan’s small room. There are raw building materials of wood and steel and iron, and she’s even procured a hand torch, the flame of which is lit and wafting in the ocean breeze from the window.

“What’s happened in here?” Edger asks.

“Oh. I’ve been… it’s just… a project. I’ve been working on something. An invention. On my own. In my own time, I mean. It hasn’t interfered with my duties.”

He sees that she’s constructed some type of apparatus by joining two lamps together, removing the glass panes from one side of each and melting their metal frames together with hot flame. There are luminescent insects coupling inside one of the lamps, lighting it brightly. The other lamp appears empty. A blacksmith’s bellow is held between the grips of a vise beside the lamp housing the insects. The bellow’s mouth is protruding through a delicate hole cut into the glass.

Several thick cables running to an iron box tether the entire contraption. There are two short levers attached to the box itself, which rests on the floor beside Dyeawan.

“Where did you obtain the materials and tools?” Edger asks.