Even without lookup, Fift would have recognized them. Ze’d watched the footage of zir gendering often enough.

“Revered Stalwart Umlum. Revered Expressive Miolasia,” Frill said, leaning forward over the meeting room table, steepling vir fingers so that vir bells tinkled and jingled as fetchingly as possible. “We just want you to know how sorry we are”—vir eyes darted between them—“for any distractions due to Fift’s well-intentioned but, ah, misguided—”

“It’s not zir fault,” Squell murmured in the breakfast room.

Fift felt zirself stiffen.

Frill put a hand on Squell’s shoulder. “We know that, Squelly; now please, don’t say anything in there, all right? Let us handle this.”

“Of course,” Nupolo said in the meeting room, vir posture erect, “we take full responsibility, as a cohort.”

“It’s such a difficult time right now,” Frill said. “And so we fully understand that minor lapses at the moment may have unfortunate impacts.”

The bedroom. The breakfast room. The meeting room. Fift didn’t look beyond them; didn’t watch Shria, still imprisoned in orange stoppergoo; didn’t look for Dobroc or riots. Zir parents were watching; they would be watching what ze watched.

Smistria chewed the end of vir beards.

“Take your beards out of your mouths, Smi,” Frill said in the breakfast room. “Kumru’s sake.”

“Which is why,” Pip said, “we have of course prepared a plan. Grobbard, my dear, would you elaborate?”

Miolasia sighed, a small, slightly irritated exhalation.

Grobbard looked to Umlum, who leaned back a little in zir chair.

“We believe,” Grobbard began, “that we erred in allowing Fift too much range, too much freedom. We placed too much responsibility on zir shoulders. First Childhood is a time—”

“Do you imagine,” Miolasia said, “that we have come here to critique your parenting?”

Glances around the breakfast room. Arevio swallowed. Squell stared at the table as if it were on fire.

In the meeting room, frozen expressions, and the tiny rustling music of Frill’s minutely shivering bells.

“Revered—revered guests,” Nupolo said, “we assure you, we can—”

“To be sure, there are questions,” Miolasia said in the meeting room, arching an eyebrow, half-smiling, “about your competence.”

In the breakfast room, Frill leapt up from vir seating harness. “Kumru! How I hate them! They’re going to take zir, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Oh, sit down!” Father Smistria said.

Frill fingered vir ceremonial dagger. “That void-splattered, smug Miolasia . . . what I wouldn’t give to be able to meet vem on the mats—”

“But that,” Umlum said, “is not why we are here.”

Fift swallowed.

“It’s . . . not?” Arevio said.

In the breakfast room, Smistria’s eyes darted to Fift, then back to Frill. “Frill, have some faith in the ordering parents of the world! We have done nothing wrong—”

Frill snorted. “Ordering parents. Blessed womb!”