But ve didn’t look at Pip while ve said it. No one—Fift could see over the house feed, even with zir eyes squeezed shut—no one was looking at Pip. Pip was colder than a glacier now; ze was like one of the lost vessels from the Ages Before the Ages, of which Omolo speaks in the fifth work of the third cycle: abandoned so deep in emptiness that worlds were only a rumor; burst open, void-scoured, the breath of life become a crust of frost clinging to their pitted spars.

“Who’s that outside? The Peaceables are coming already?” Smistria said, blinking.

“It’s Ellix,” Nupolo whispered. “Ze rushed over.”

“For the love of Kumru, Squell,” Frill said in the breakfast room, holding vir head, “would you stop screaming?”

Fifteen million viewers. Fift tried sending. Still nothing. Zir agents wouldn’t answer. It was absurd to imagine that ze could make it to the docks, never mind to Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions. Something was wrong with zir feed-navigation agent, too. Ze looked for Shria, for Dobroc, but the feed was a vast jumble, impossible to sort through.

It was like ze was hidden away in a silent bubble of time. Drenched with steam and sweat in the wintergreen light of second morning; throat dry, feet sore from pounding on rushfelt, zir shift sticking to zir legs, the docks ahead.

Twenty million viewers, and ze could feel zir incoming queue swelling with invisible messages, an opaque mass veiled by zir agents’ stubborn will. Fift came to the stairs above the docks and paused.

“They’ve published it,” Nupolo said, sagging. Vir military posture dissolved like sugar in the rain; ve hunched, like an old Vail without prospects. “It’s official. Fift is theirs.”

There was something different about the docks. The people there—the orphans, the bankrupt and cohort-sundered, would-be travelers hoping for some ratings fluctuation or act of pity to grant them passage—they weren’t just milling. There was a febrile activity on the docks, like a disrupted anthill: intense clusters of people shoving their way from one group to another through a buzz of raised voices. One group was opening a giant banner, four bodylengths high, currently blank, into the air.

On the steps just below Fift, two Staids and a Vail turned and saw zir, and one of the Staids gasped.

Frill’s head shot up from Smistria’s shoulder. “All-sucking void!”

Smistria gaped. “Fift—what are you doing out there?”

“Will this never end?” Nupolo said in the meeting room.

“It’s like a joke,” Smistria said. “A joke without a punchline.”

“Fift Brulio,” Arevio said, face bright with tears, “just wait there at the top of the stairs. I understand how you must feel, but don’t make it worse by running.”

“Tell my agents to let me send,” Fift said. “I just have to send.”