Fift kept zir eyes on the tables in front of zir, but over the house feed, ze searched the Midwives’ faces. Were they here to take zir away?

Ze wasn’t supposed to be following the odds that bookies were placing on the cohort’s survival; zir parents had blanked out zir feed access to the reports. But they couldn’t object to zir watching Miskisk, and Miskisk, in a pavilion in Ebberen, was loudly telling vir friends that the odds were against them now, and how it was all Pip’s fault.

“We are here,” Miolasia said, “to ask for your assistance.”

“You can be certain,” Pip said, “Revered Eminences, of any assistance we can render you.”

In the breakfast room, Frill slid vir ceremonial dagger out of, into, out of its sheath. “Where is this going?”

“Certain irresponsible elements,” Umlum said, “are making use of your child as a symbol.”

“Oh, irresponsible elements,” Frill said in the breakfast room. “I see. Because weaponizing the polysomatic network was terribly responsible.”

“Frill,” Smistria growled, “this is the last moment I want to hear your chaotist nonsense.”

Squell was hunched over, in the breakfast room and the meeting room: precisely the same posture, hands clutching the tables.

“The disturbances in Wallacomp are spreading,” Umlum said. “Not only riots, but other demonstrations, designed to mock and . . . denigrate the ordering elements of society.”

“Laxity, and disrespect,” said Miolasia.

“Disrespect . . .” muttered Frill.

Smistria’s fist slammed down on the breakfast room table. “Enough! Enough of your willful ignorance, Frill Evementis Iraxis of name registry Irrevocable Spin 8! You of all people should recognize the . . . the historical moment we are in! Riots in the byways! If the Midwives fail, if the Great Arrangement is dissolved, we return to the Age of War!”

Nupolo looked helplessly across the breakfast room table to Grobbard, who sat still, aware, as if watching unpurposed birds alight on some forest branch.

If they don’t dissolve us, Fift thought—if they don’t take me—the best I can hope for is house arrest, for months. Years, maybe.

Squell clasped vir hands over vir ears, shuddering.

(Trapped here with these Fathers—their rages, their worries, their sniping criticism, their constant watching. Zir bodies caroming around the apartment like the three gas molecules caught in Micrum’s Cube—around and around like leaves in an eddy of a surface river—up and down four sets of stairs, through five hallways, the breakfast room and the supper garden, the sleeping alcoves, the study-pit, the atrium, the meeting rooms, the wombtombatum, the small mat room, the bathing pool . . .)

Ze sat up in bed.

In the meeting room, Father Arevio cleared vir throat. “We are aware—”

“Oh, but are you?” Miolasia said, eyebrows arched.

Arevio paused, cowed, looking to Pip, to Smistria.

“You hear that?” Frill said, in the breakfast room. “They’re practically admitting it.”

“What in Kumru’s name,” Smistria said, “are you on about now? Admitting what?”