“What were you – what are you trying to hide, though?”

“Who knows? Maybe I’m better without the memories. So: we’re heading for Xown?”

“Yes,” Cossont said quietly to the cube. “We’re going to see Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to try and get your eyes, your memories back.”

“Interesting that I didn’t want the memories destroyed, just … parked.”

“Whatever they may be.”

“Whatever they may be … Of course, just because the eyes are there doesn’t mean the memories are too. I could have had those wiped … It’s gone very quiet out there. Hello?”

“That would be a joke too far, Ngaroe.”

“All the same. I wouldn’t put it past me.”

“This. I love this, when you are over me, when I can barely see you or touch you but I know that you are there and just a breath away and I feel each exhaling is like a warm breeze across the land, when I can hear each beat of your heart over mine, when you are close enough that I can feel the heat of you on my skin. Then you are my presence, over and above me, like a promise. I live for these moments. I die at the thought they might stop in the Sublime.”

“You say the sweetest things to me. I wish I could say such things to you, so beautifully.”

“You draw them from me, you are their muse, their true creator; we make them between us. I am a hopeless stumbler and stutterer, always have been, with anybody else. So you must take half the credit. At least.”

“If you say I must, I must, but I feel embarrassed that you say, that you give so much and I can’t give you the same.”

“Words are just one language, Virisse. Just one way of expression. You speak with your eyes, you speak with your sweet tongue and gentle fingers, with your whole body. Like this, and this. What?”

“No, I just, no; here, come here, hold me, hold me like this. Here, I’ll … Be my presence, hang over me, embrace me. I need you. Do anything for you. I give myself. I need to give myself. Oh, you don’t hate me for being so needed, do you? I am. I know I am. My own needing, it betrays me.”

“Oh, my darling. I love that you need me as much as I, desperately, need you. But don’t distress. What is it? What can …?”

“You don’t think they’re lying to us, the Sublimed, the Presence; you don’t think they’re lying to us, deceiving us, do you?”