Body to body on the anteroom floor, it was hard for Fift to hear zir own voice coming out of one throat with zir other ears. Zir breathing was not quite in sync. Ze’d never liked having zir bodies this close together. “I don’t know where it went wrong.”

There were more freshly tagged recruits joining [Embracing Fift and Shria]; now they numbered twenty-five. They weren’t moving anymore; there was nowhere to go. Bojum grabbed, pointed, and shoved until there was a ring of fifteen Vails facing out towards the Peaceables, holding hands to form a circle of protection around ten Staids in the middle.

“How about,” Ellix said, “when you were sixteen years old, and swept up in a fame-storm, and you told the Midwives and your parents, right to their faces, that you were tossing their advice in the compost-sluice?”

Fift flinched, but when ze looked back at Ellix, ze didn’t find the contempt ze thought ze would. Ellix’s eyes were clear, curious. It was like ze really was asking, and waiting for an answer.

Emim took Fift’s hand.

“There are no stoppergoo fabs under the docks,” Morinti said. “So they’ll come for us with bopperstaves.”

“Don’t fight the Peaceables!” Bojum said to the other Vails. “Those of you who are new—we’re not chaotists! ‘Fighting is stupid,’ said Fift. And Shria agreed!”

Six billion viewers.

Across the scattering crowd, the giant banner flickered to life, and the group holding it—they were tagged [Fift’s Voyage, Shria’s Hand]—steered into the path of the Peaceables. The banner read, “If you can’t handle responsibility without control, parenting was the wrong occupation to choose.”

Ellix was still waiting for an answer.

“How could it be right to blame Shria?” Fift asked. If they’d been alone, if Squell hadn’t been there, ze would have added: Did Minth abandon Abador?

The Peaceables set upon the group with the banner, bludgeoning them in clean, precise strokes. Those who were touched by the bopperstaves fell like limp sacks.

The banner sagged, collapsed, poles hitting the pavement, cloth draped over silent bodies.

Ellix shrugged. “There aren’t always right options,” ze said.

Fathers were coming back into the anteroom: Frill, Smistria, Arevio, Nupolo, carrying small bundles and bags, all agitated, their faces wet with tears. They embraced Fift one by one.

“Come on,” Ellix said. “I’m sorry to rush this, but you need to get out of here. Come on, let’s move . . .”

They mumbled things, said things. Fift couldn’t hear them, ze couldn’t bear it, couldn’t be here. Grobbard’s embrace was the longest and gentlest.

Pip went by without a word to anyone.