“We have no desire to break up your cohort,” Umlum said. “That’s the last thing we intend.”

The Pole, but not alone. Fift inhaled, filling zir lungs with steam. Ze’d have zir parents with zir. It was still terrifying, but . . .

“To the Pole in, well, in . . . all of our bodies?” Arevio asked.

Miolasia nodded, smiling. “Of course.”

“It’s quite an honor,” Umlum said. “You would of course have to take a hiatus from your current professions . . .”

“Exile,” Frill said, in the breakfast room.

Smistria glared. “This is our chance, Frill! A chance to save our cohort from destruction.”

“We’re being disappeared, Smi.” Frill paced the breakfast room. “They won’t let us out again until it suits them. They won’t let us communicate except as it suits them.”

Fift lifted zir eyes to the aperture in the ceiling above the center of the pool, where reflected glowtube light, falling twenty bodylengths from the outside, carved a faint bright column in the misty air.

A foam structure butted gently up against the side of the pool, riding the tiny waves.

“Don’t see much alternative, Frill,” Nupolo said. “It’s that or be dissolved.” Vir face was ashen; ve looked down at vir trembling fingers. “Wonder if we’re going to get a chance to say goodbye to little Chalia Rigorosa and vir cohort . . .”

The steam was still coming: small globes of water broke the surface of the pool, struggled upward, and boiled in midair. Ze could turn it off now, but ze didn’t want to. Let the steam thicken until it obliterated zir; let zir disappear.

Frill ran vir hand through vir stiff coppery hair. “Oh, we’ll go, of course. But let’s not fool ourselves: Fift’s escapades have cost us our lives in the world outside the Midwives’ cage!”

The cool of the tiles under Fift’s buttocks. The womb-warm water around zir knees. The thickness of the steam in zir lungs. Over the house feed, zir body disappeared, a gray shadow absorbed by swirling gray.

“Esteemed Expressive. Esteemed Stalwart,” Nupolo said, in the meeting room. “Naturally . . . we’re honored and overjoyed.”

“Indeed we are,” Pip said. Zir face was unreadable. “If I might ask: is there anything specific that we . . . ought to do . . . to merit this honor?”

Squell heaved vemself up from the breakfast room table and tottered over to Frill. Vir voice, usually so soft, was brittle as twigs, as halting as animals caught in traps. “It’s . . . not . . . zir . . .”

Frill swiveled, vir bells sounding brief waves of high, clear music. “Oh, of course it’s zir fault, Squell! I love zir, but there’s no use pretending otherwise—”

“Stop it,” Squell hissed.

“Father Squell,” Fift said, “it’s . . . it’s all right. Don’t . . . Look, it is partly my . . . it is my fault.”