There were more bodies now. Not just Shria and Vvonda and Stogma and Bluey, and Hrotrun and vir cohort; there were others, too. Vails in working clothes, formal clothes, fighting gear—twenty or thirty additional bodies among the frilly brick-red hillocks and gullies of the abandonage by the goopfield. Some struggling, pushing, striking; some standing to the side and yelling; some dumbfounded; one weeping, face upturned to the ceiling.

And, five paces from Shria, there was a Peaceable who had fallen to zir knees, zir bopperstaff lying in a gully at zir side. There was blood in zir hair, dripping down from zir bowed forehead in thin drizzles in front of zir.

“What’s—what’s—”

Fift couldn’t understand what ze was seeing—the press of bodies looked like a dance, a circus trick, some incoherent ritual. A Peaceable was there—and the fighting off the mats continued. The Peaceable was—something was wrong with zir, ze was bloody, ze’d been struck—it was inescapable, obscene.

Fift’s stomach gripped with nausea. Not Shria. Ve wouldn’t—

A Peaceable shrugged aside in fighting, wounded, down—

(Fift sagged back down onto the bed, gathered the silken sleep-wraps in zir hands. Zir scalp crawled with cold. Predoria’s narrow-set orange eyes drilled into zir.)

Something new was broken here.

Ze turned to look at Mother Pip, who was watching Predoria.

Pip chewed zir lip and sent nothing.

Three more cold fists of fear balled in Fift’s stomachs. Why wasn’t Pip responding? Surely it wasn’t possible that—that this marginal, outcast, bizarre, cohortless industrial reactant could supplant—

Fift shifted towards Dobroc, their hands entwined, their forearms touching under white fabric. “What’s going on, Dobroc? Are they all unraveling? Even a person in the middle of a collapse wouldn’t strike a Peaceable, would they? And Predoria . . . why is ve so . . .”

Predoria’s eyes changed, their challenging intensity drifting through amusement to boredom. Ve turned back to vir fabricator.

That flicker of hesitation in Pip’s eyes. Fift wondered, would Pip’s arrogance finally fail? Maybe ze’d feel what Fift had felt . . . humiliated and supplanted . . .

Fift wanted to feel triumph, vindication, at that thought. But ze didn’t: ze felt cold. Ze didn’t want the smothering blanket of zir Mother’s remorseless competence yanked away.

Pip’s eyes hardened again.

The Peaceable heaved zirself to zir feet, and for a moment the combatants faltered; they took a step back.

Then Hrotrun shrieked and charged the Peaceable.

Fift jerked rigid, squeezing Dobroc’s hand. Ze reached out from under the covers and felt the wall of zir room, the rough scar under zir fingers—

{Tell vem}, Pip sent, {to enjoy vir megalomaniac fantasies while ve can. Tell vem ve can continue}

Shria tackled Hrotrun three paces from the Peaceable, bringing vem down.

{to live in a lonely bubble of denial of the truth, a smaller and smaller social world}