Shria heaved up, straddling Hrotrun, punched vem full in the face, before two other Vails—in three bodies—hauled vem off.

{until there is nothing left, not even the honor of a sanctioned suicide. If that’s what ve wants, ve is beneath both our pity and our scorn.}

The Peaceable, ignoring the Vails, took an unsteady step towards zir bopperstaff.

“What’s—going on?” Fift asked Dobroc.

“Um,” Fift told Predoria, “enjoy . . . your megalomaniac fantasies . . . while you can.”

Predoria looked up sharply.

“With Shria?” Dobroc frowned. Now Vvonda and Stogma were struggling with the Vails who held Shria. A tangle of hands, legs—and Hrotrun slithered out between them, rolled to vir feet. “Ve’s trying to stop Hrotrun. Before Hrotrun gets them in even more trouble.”

The fabricators had fallen almost silent in the reactants’ hall. A few desultory pings echoed from far away.

“You can continue to live”—Fift said, zir eyes shifting away from Predoria’s—”in a lonely bubble of”—ze felt the sweat springing from zir flushed scalp—“denial of the truth”—zir throat was dry, clutched; this wasn’t going well—“a smaller and smaller social world . . .”

Hrotrun danced away from Stogma as the Peaceable wiped blood from zir forehead (red smears garish on zir white sleeve) and staggered towards zir bopperstaff . . .

“Fift,” Dobroc said, “about Predoria . . .”

“What?”

“Well, forty percent of the reactants in that hall,” Dobroc said, “had their cohorts forcibly broken up; many of those had children confiscated by Midwives. Most of the rest never qualified for cohorts. Seventy percent tried some other profession but lacked sufficient supporting votes. Five percent are known to be indefinitely postponed regendering applicants . . .”

Predoria leaned forward. “You don’t seem—” ve said.

Hrotrun broke into a sprint.

“—to be paying—”

In the tangle of bodies, Shria took a fist in the stomach. Vir other face—lips curled, eyes bulging—showed an ecstasy of rage.

“—attention.”

“. . . it’s a dumping ground,” Dobroc said.

“Okay, but . . .” Fift said. “How does that . . . if they all have so little emotional capital, doesn’t it make this . . . defiance . . . even more odd?”

“It would have, I think,” Dobroc said. “But things are . . . changing.”

Fift cleared zir throat. Ze felt Mother Pip standing rigid behind zir. “Until there is nothing left,” Fift said, “not even the honor of—”

The Peaceable reached for zir bopperstaff, but Hrotrun reached it first and kicked it aside.

“—of, of a sanctioned—”

Five hundred thousand viewers in the reactants’ hall.

There was a thunderous wave of pings: every fabricator in the hall, finishing at more or less the same moment.

Dobroc’s body leaned into Fift’s, shoulder against shoulder, hip against hip, and yes, that new-wood, spice-sap smell was zirs, and the calligraphic badlands of zir engraved palm pressed into Fift’s as if revealing something written in a secret language, and if Fift were to turn, ze could hold Dobroc entirely, encircle zir in zir arms, press zir face into Dobroc’s neck—