For a minute I sat there, looking at the body. Nick bowed his head, pulled a drape over her face. Liss is gone. I made myself think it. Liss is gone, just like Seb. You didn’t save them. They’re gone.

“You should say the threnody,” Nick murmured. “I don’t know her name, sötnos.”

He was right. Liss wouldn’t want to stay here, in her prison.

“Liss Rymore”—I hoped it was her full name—“be gone into the æther. All is settled. All debts are paid. You need not dwell among the living now.”

Her spirit disappeared.

I couldn’t look at the body. Not Liss—the body, the shell, the shadow on the world she’d left behind.

The flare gun lay under the cold hand. It had been her job to fire it. I gently pulled it from her grasp. “She wouldn’t want you to give up.” Nick watched me check the gun for flares. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to die for her.”

“Oh, I think she would.”

I knew that voice. I couldn’t see Gomeisa Sargas, but his voice echoed all through the room. “Did you kill her, Gomeisa?” I stood. “Is she good enough for you, now she’s dead?”

The silence was damning.

A low voice came from behind me. “You should not hide in the shadow, Gomeisa.”

I looked. Warden had entered the hall, and his eyes were fixed on the gallery. “Unless you fear Paige,” he continued. “The city burns outside. Your facade of power is already dissolved.”

Laughter. I tensed.

“I do not fear Scion. They handed their world over on a silver platter, Arcturus. Now we will dine.”

“Go to hell,” I said.

“I do not fear you either, 40. What have we to fear from death, when we are death? Besides, to be displaced from this decaying world—your little world of flower and flesh—well, that would almost be a blessing. If only there was not so much more to be done with it.” Footsteps. “You cannot kill death. What fire can scald the sun? Who can drown the ocean?”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” I said.

My voice was steady, but I was shaking. Whether it was anger or fear, I could no longer tell. Behind Warden, another male Reph had appeared. At his side was Terebell.

“I would like you both to picture something. Especially you, Arcturus. Given what you have to lose.”

Warden said nothing. I tried to pin down where the voice was coming from. Somewhere above me. The gallery.