My eyes flicked to Naecia, who was pressed to the glass like a parent whose child was on the other side, just out of reach, and for the first time, I heard her voice. She yelled, “You have it!”

“Of course I have it,” said Aptat. “The Knell was listening, but not for as long as me. Your public systems research queries were too specific for a hypothetical machine and so I easily surmised that you’d built a prototype. I simply retrieved it after you had – ahem – moved on from Vask and before Captain Arrohauk had any idea you’d actually constructed the thing. I almost didn’t find it under that blanket.”

Naecia was fixated on the piece of equipment, which to me looked like nothing more than stacks of something arranged in a roughly cubical shape. Sticking out of the top of each stack were some metal prongs wound in multiple layers of wire. Below all that were four squat columns wrapped in brushed steel.

Dekies was struggling to hold her long ears flat.⁵⁵ Eyes flicking between Naecia and Aptat five or six times, it was clear she wanted her. Finally, “Okay. How much?”

“Two-hundred thousand. Registered.”

“Two-hundred. Registered. You’re joking! You could retire on that!” Dekies forced a laugh. She couldn’t hide her interest, though, as the bloodshot yellow eyes again flashed to Naecia.

Aptat was reading the same cues that I was. They shook their head and said, “The number is fair for what is being sold. And I’ll throw in the prototype. You’ve brought enough guush, I presume.”

“Of course we have,” growled Dekies. “I’m one of only sixteen hundred Vortu Princesses.”

That sounded like a lot of princesses to me.

“Yes, I understand,” said Aptat, “but are you a buyer?”

“If what you say is true,” said Dekies, “I agree. She’s worth every last billet. But – I want to... verify.”

Aptat blew a raspberry from inside the helmet. “Thatssss a big ask. Like I said, she was mined on the Knell. I have the logs. That should be good enough. Stringers get fragile, you know.”

“You have the prototype,” said Dekies. “If she was that close to solving it, you’d keep her for yourself. I want to verify that you aren’t selling me a brain case full of Zuthian bowel pudding.”

“Mm, delicious.” Aptat gestured to the prototype. “I’m a stringhunter, not a theoretical engineer; otherwise, maybe I would hold on to her.” They spun back to Dekies, clicking heels. “Must say, I haven’t known Vortu to be so… timid. But if that’s the way you want to do things.”

“It is.”

Aptat motioned toward Naecia’s chamber, and the glass slid wide enough for her to step out of it. “You break, you buy, Dekies.”

Dekies said, “Is your neural dredge calibrated?”

I straightened inside my chamber. Did someone say – *neural dredge*?⁵⁶

Aptat gestured to the black coffin in the corner. “Always.”

Dekies marched over, seizing Naecia powerfully by the arm. “If she’s half what you say she is, I don’t care if she takes a little damage.”