And then the octopus was in front of her. Out of the water, it looked smaller, more delicate. Its skin was still slick with the dirty liquid of the pool. A goat-like eye regarded Ha. An arm swept out, and wrapped around Ha’s wrist, tugging at her hand, coiling around the bare skin of wrist, palm, fingers.

Tasting me.

Ha could hear the sibilance of the Shapesinger’s body on the tile as it moved away from her, rose up, and paled.

It projected a single shape on its mantle. The others could not have seen it from where they were, behind the Shapesinger. Maybe this was intentional—maybe the symbol was only for her.

It took her a moment to make it out. It was stylized, distorted at first—then clearer, its edges resolving, sharpening as the octopus’s chromatophores drew it out on its surface.

Ha’s own face, looking back at her from the mantle of the Shapesinger, sketched as if in charcoal. The eyes questioning, the mouth slightly open.

“You know me,” Ha said.

Then the face was gone.

The Shapesinger darkened again, picking up the brick-red of the tiles. Its skin roughened. An arm extended—pulsed out, unrolled. Something clattered to the tiles. The arm retracted.

The Shapesinger withdrew, flattening to the tile, accelerating away from them, arcing across the terrace in a sideways surge. In a brief moment, it was gone.

All of them were still. It must have been a full minute, or more, until any of them moved.

Ha reached down and picked up the object the Shapesinger had left. The others drew in around her—first Evrim, then Altantsetseg—staring down at the object.

It was jointed, dark, small enough to fit into the palm of Ha’s hand. And all over it were the lines of carving, the same as the human skulls of the altar. They were less visible, here against this dark surface, but just as intricate.

Altantsetseg was the first to speak. “What is it?”

“Their only hard part. All that is left of them within days of their death. The only skeleton they have. Their beak.”

One of the dragonfly drones dipped down, angling its head to view the object as well.

Ha looked up from the gift in her hand to Altantsetseg. Then to Evrim—the three of them circled around this object of wonder.

“It has to be some kind of honor,” Evrim said. “Something as important as this … What did it show you? When it was turned away from us?”

“Myself,” Ha said. “It showed me myself. It knew me. And I knew it. She knew me. And I knew her.”

Ha remembered the night she had arrived at the island.

Something in the pool startled at the sight of the transport and slid into the water.

And the next morning, as she passed by the pool on the way to meet Evrim: