“I wonder what you know about the Philosopher Stone,” I said to Lantern-Eyes in Ameng.

When I said the words Philosopher Stone her attention snapped from the others to me. Her lips parted, like she was on the verge of speaking.

“Shit,” said Benny, and the tension in his tone snapped my attention away from Lantern-Eyes. “The Viper is picking up a Minister ship headed this way.”

A Minister ship.

That was how it had begun, on Kystrom; a few ships detected in the distance. Bombs to take out what few spaceships Kystrom had in orbit, explosions flashing like supernovae, rumbling through the atmosphere like far-off thunder. Then the Ministers had landed. Blank-faced and eerily beautiful, lights glowing around their necks, striding through city streets like the angels of the old religion, as absolute and destructive as a solar flare—

Nails dug into my forearm, jolting me back to the present. I found myself nauseous and shaking, like I’d been dunked unexpectedly into a pool of ice-water. Lantern-Eyes watched me closely. She did not look afraid, probably because she couldn’t understand a word we were saying.

“This place was supposed to be a secret,” Leah said. “Now there’s a representative from every major government in the Sister Systems. This mission’s fucked, Quint.”

Quint said, “How close are they?”

“They’re moving fast,” Benny said. “Too fast. I’ve never seen a ship that can move that fast—that is cutting-edge Minister technology. We have to get out of here, now. We’ll tell the boss—”

“Tell him what?” Leah said. “He’ll blow up—”

Something hissed, then cracked. There was a shadow on the glass. And beneath that shadow a blade had stuck through the glass from the outside, gleaming white-hot and dripping melted plastic off its edge.

“Go!” Benny bellowed, just as a circle dropped out from the glass.

The whole room gasped, the atmosphere rushing for escape, and then a film pressed over the hole in the hull, thin and iridescent like an oil slick. A figure pushed through the oil-slick and it closed up behind them, keeping the room airtight. The Minister entered the room in a rush of red light and dropped lightly to the floor, landing to the echo of Leah’s gun.

The Minister raised one hand and the bullet struck some sort of gauntlet at their wrist. They rose to their feet like a fluid and lashed their arm out at Benny, running for the Viper; Benny fell across the ground, his body skidding with momentum.

The Minister moved like a candle-flicker towards Quint, who was trying to pull something out of her bag. Something shot out from under the Minister’s wrist. Quint stumbled and dropped to the floor.

They turned to me next. I had a moment to doubt whether they were male or female—the Ministers were androgynous as a rule, strange and sexless—but the glowing light they wore around their neck illuminated enough of their features for me to guess he was male. The flickering collar-lights of the Ministers: they had their own silent language. Their army had advanced through Itaka silently, flashing like lightning.