My vocabulary in the Light language was limited, my grammar even more so, restricted to the odds and ends I’d picked up while the Ministers’ captive, and the bits and pieces that Indigo had taught me. I could recite a prayer for the dead, but I didn’t know how to tell the other Ministers to please leave, get on the ship and go, don’t wait for me—which was a shame, because the Ministers were so strictly hierarchical that they would probably obey my order, if only I could find the vocabulary to give it. I was half-guessing what Green was saying, but I had to guess quickly; any lack of fluency would cause Green to doubt.

But I was good at languages, and better at improvising.

Shay is dead, I flashed back, in white light, to the whole group.

What about Kora? Green asked.

What about Kora? Kora was lying dead on the floor next to the man who’d killed her, bereft of weapons, armor, and light. Kora had come on her own to find Indigo and bring him home, like Tamara had done for me. The difference was, Tamara had held her fire, and Kora had not restrained her knife.

But she had gone back for him. I’ve known you hundreds of years, she’d said. She’d covered for him with the Ministerial Council. She’d loved him, in her own snowy fashion, and as far as these Ministers knew, she’d killed him. Because of Benny, I knew what that felt like.

Number One had once told me that a traumatized person was trapped in their moment of trauma. That they do not leave, that they cannot leave. As far as these Ministers knew, Kora had just accomplished her mission, and murdered her student.

I used the future intention tense, just like Indigo had taught me, and flashed out my response to Green: Kora will stay.

Or, translated another way: Kora intends to stay. I had barely known One, and I’d recognized the melancholy in her. I trusted that these Ministers, who had known her far better, would understand why she might refuse to leave this place and this moment.

Green was silent, collar-light dark, for a long, long time. Then she flashed, Kora will die.

Yes, I said, and trusted that they would not dare to question One any further.

Again Green was silent, her light dark; Red and Orange flanked her, their lights as dim as distant stars.

Pity struck me like a blow to the chest. I touched the collar-light and dialed out another word Indigo had taught me, a slow brighten and a slow dim: It’s okay.

Green straightened her spine, the movement graceful, half-seen in the darkness. She flashed out a pattern to me that I recognized as the last line of Indigo’s poem: Your life will be remembered.

Then she turned and gestured at the other two, and Red, then Orange, slipped out of the hull through the hole they’d cut into it, vanishing through the oil-slick. Green was the last to go. She paused before slipping out through the portal, looking back, and for a terrible instant I was certain she had seen me, Sean Wren, not the Ultraviolet Minister. But she had only seen the glow of my stolen collar-light: feet-first, she slipped out of the Nameless and into the sunlight beyond.