“And since this note,” Dobroc said, “you won’t even watch vem? Like the visualization designer in the blue robe.” It was a passage every ten-year-old staidchild knew by heart, and Fift was shaken by its aptness (for the visualization designer in the blue robe isolates zirself for fear of being seen watching) and by its implied prediction of tragedy.

Dobroc shook zir head.

“Your, your position here in the reactants’ hall,” Fift said, not turning away from Predoria’s eyes. “Your ability to exchange minimal politenesses with strangers. Your ability to travel around Fullbelly . . .”

Audience in the reactants’ hall kept surging. It should have slowed down by now, as the first flush of viewers wandered away—who wanted to hear Fift’s dull threats against this absurdly cocky peripheral Vail? Three hundred thousand active viewers did, apparently. Three hundred thousand! And growing.

{All that can be taken away.} Pip sent patiently. {You gloat publicly about striking defenseless Staid children; do you expect strangers on the byways to smile at you? Do you expect sluice operators to welcome you?}

Fift wished all zir bodies were under privacy cones, or in the apartment—thank holy Kumru’s ovaries and testicles no one was watching zir with Dobroc.

“All that . . . can be taken away,” Fift said.

“It can?” Predoria said. Ve looked amused, and hungry. “Are you sure?”

Vir fabricator was humming again.

“Fift, listen,” Dobroc said. “Shria didn’t banish you from vir life forever. And ve didn’t expect . . . this.”

To be fighting in public again, exposed to the eyes of the world, losing everything.

Fift took a deep breath. Chalky, industrial dust; the acrid, almost-human smell of the muscle-engines; freshly laundered cloth . . . and, faintly, Dobroc: a little like fresh-cut wood, a little like the spice-gnats in the supper garden, the sap in the vines.

“You gloat publicly about, about striking defenseless Staid children. Do you—” Fift cleared zir throat, staring into Predoria’s striking orange eyes. “Do you expect . . . strangers . . . on the byways . . . to smile at you?”

Fift glanced up at Dobroc and found no reproach in zir soft brown-on-brown eyes; no pity; only earnest intensity. It was still almost too much to take. “Is it . . . over?” ze said, looking away. “The fighting? Is Shria . . . did the Peaceables arrive? They must have arrived by now—”

“No,” Dobroc said. “Or, yes. Well—sort of.” Zir face was grim.

“Sort of?”

“Must they?” Predoria said, and—seeing Fift start, confused—smirked. “Smile at me?”

“Just look at vem, Fift,” Dobroc said. Ze squeezed Fift’s hand. “Ve would want that. I know you feel helpless. But ‘amid a myriad, one true witness nudges the shape of things . . .’”

{Sluice operators.} Pip sent.

{What? Oh . . .} Fift looked back at Predoria. “Do you expect . . . sluice operators . . . to welcome you?” ze managed.

“I suppose it depends on the sluice operator,” Predoria said musingly.

Fift found Shria on the feed.