She felt his decision at the very moment he passed a gate over her body—for it was hers now, as surely as it was Bexoi’s. The gate did not drive her out of the body; nor was Bexoi any longer trying to die.

“It’s the baby that I’m saving, not you,” said Wad. To her? Of course not. To Bexoi.

“I’m Anonoei,” she said.

But no sound came out.

Nothing.

For Bexoi’s ka was fully in this body, and so was Anonoei’s, and Bexoi would not let the body act on Anonoei’s intention to identify herself as present in this flesh.

Bexoi wanted her gone. Sole control of this body, that’s all that she would settle for.

I should have let her die.

But if I had, would I have been able to keep the flesh alive? Do I still need Bexoi to maintain my life? It doesn’t matter whether I do or not. She’s here, and the opportunity to let her die is gone, now that the body is healed. Does she choose to block me from speech? Then I choose to block her.

“A simple thank-you would do,” said Wad. “Or even a curse—I have no fear of your curses. Or are you trying to work up the strength to burn me to death the way you burned Anonoei? She was worth ten of you, you know. A better mother than you—and not just because she never arranged for the murder of her firstborn. Burn me if you can. See what happens.”

And then he wept.

Maybe Anonoei loved this man more than she had supposed.

Anonoei wanted to look at him. To use these eyes to see him, these hands to reach for him. But Bexoi blocked her.

The weeping stopped. Wad spoke again, whispered. “You knew that I couldn’t kill your baby, even though you killed mine. You knew there was a line I wouldn’t cross. But once the baby is born, anyone can nurse it. Do you understand?”

Anonoei understood, and so did Bexoi. If they did not manage to end their struggle and find a way to make this body speak aloud, then after the birth of the baby, she would die. They would die.

But there was still a little while before the baby was due.

Wad rolled the body over so it was lying on its back. He pried open an eyelid. The reflex for the eye to focus was under the control of the ape-brain, not the two kas that warred within it. So Anonoei saw and therefore remembered that Keel still hung, alive, from the rafter overhead.

Look up, she said to Wad. And then she filled him with the kinetic memory of looking up.

And so he looked.

“Keel,” he said.