“They’re here,” Commander Ashe says, quite unnecessarily. The Lady Storm has been brightly aware of their approach. She turns to face Misery as the convoy of guards dissolves to take up watchful positions on the periphery. Her face is hollower and colder than Misery last saw, the skin around the eyes faintly bruised. Silence follows as she studies Misery, glancing over the lines of her face and form with the intensity of a scientist examining a specimen. The events of the past day deeply punctured her, draining all the rage from her being. All that’s left is a sad, empty shell.

She says: “I learned what you did on the Capital. All those people you killed. You are a dangerous creature, Misery Nomaki. If I had known, I would have been more cautious.”

Misery tilts her head. It’s not the main point, but: “You’ve been in contact with the Capital?”

“I have. We were never out of contact, so to speak, but I suppose the pretense is over.” A laugh dry as pure acid. “The siege is over. I suppose you did what you came to do after all. In a fashion.”

Not at all. Misery came to Monkglass to annihilate the Heretics. That did not happen. Still she says, “You’ve been in contact with the outside world all this while. The siege was a lie concocted by the Throne.”

An alarmed look. “Of course not. The siege was a real siege, if you must know. Even if we were allowed contact with the Capital, it was very limited. No more than a few minutes a day. No supplies in or out either. But I was in contact with Esse, and she in turn in contact with her superiors. So I knew the tenor of the negotiations that were happening between both our sides. It was a tense period. The negotiations were extremely delicate. The last thing we wanted was for it to end in violence.”

Misery huffs air. “You judge me, when you were consorting with the enemy? You wouldn’t know hypocrisy if it nailed you in the ass.”

The Lady Storm looks at her with both pity and sadness, which Misery didn’t ask for and doesn’t want or need. She came peaceably because of her curiosity, and because she thought she might sugar-talk her way out of this. But now she knows that’s impossible. There is no negotiating with someone so compromised with the nullvoid.