The smell of the docks flooded into Fift’s mind. Zir vision blurred and stretched as zir brains, zir eyes, found one another. Squell’s face—Squell’s inward, suffering look was gone, vir eyes were clear!; a jumble of bodies on the dockyard floor—

Back, back all together, oh Kumru! Necks, backs, ankles, knees—

Zir memories were a scramble. Being alone on the dockyard floor, abandoned, one-bodied. Screaming two-bodied in the apartment. Emim’s face, contorted in a scream, superimposed on Ellix’s. Searching for missing fingers, to bend missing knuckles. Bojum falling to the dockyard floor, struggling to rise, the Peaceables screaming, heads in hands. The screaming had been like furniture, like some trivial and static fixture crammed within the walls of Iraxis apartment. But no, no that was wrong, it had been so much bigger, so much more terrible, coming from a thousand throats.

The ozone sting of bopperstaves, the enzymatic tang of engines.

Who was Fift? What had ze lost, just now? Had ze lost it forever? Zir bodies felt strange, estranged. Ze’d had no idea what was happening at the dockyards. Ze’d had no idea what was happening in the apartment. As if zir bodies had been borrowed by strangers and returned used, damaged, with pieces missing.

Exhaustion bit into zir muscles with ragged teeth.

But the screaming was over.

“Thank Kumru,” Ellix said. Ze eased Fift’s head to the ground and extricated zirself. Ze stood.

The dockyard floor was strewn with bodies. Episti was crumpled against Fift’s legs, and one of the Vails was pressed up against zir back. A Peaceable was curled into a ball half a bodylength away.

The Staids’ breathing was a heavy, ragged jumble. The Vails were still sobbing. Maybe not just the Vails.

“It’s okay now,” Ellix said. “Just stay down.”

Fift was so tired. Ze sucked in breath in unison across Foo. Each time zir lungs filled, a tightness at the top of them stung zir chests, sent little shockwaves of echoed pain down zir body. One elbow ached—ze must have slammed it into something harder than the dockyard floor, maybe someone’s skull. Ze didn’t remember.

“It’s all right,” Ellix said. Ze hefted zir satchel, smoothed zir robes. “You can rest. It’s over now.”

Over. Next would be the arrest, and then the Pole.

At the docks, no one had risen. Emim, who’d quoted Ranhulo—Emim, who was not a liaison, who only took the meeting minutes—Emim turned onto zir side and looked at Fift. Wincing with effort, ze reached across the robes of a fallen Peaceable and took Fift’s hand.

Shria in Wallacomp: chest-deep in stoppergoo, saying something, vir mouth moving. Not to Stogma—ve was shouting something into the air. At Fift. But Fift couldn’t find the sound. Somehow ze’d managed to twist zir feed access around so that the sounds and images and smells were not aligned.