Fift swallowed. “I . . . I mean, what? I mean, I like vem too!”

“Then how could you do that to vem? How could you try to . . . to, what, protect vem? What do you think that’s like for a Vail? Ve’s out of vir mind, overwhelmed, and ve’s fighting! Off the mats, unlicensed, totally outnumbered! And you’re in vir way? It’s way more than ve can handle. Ve shouldn’t be there, and you really should not be there!”

“But I’m trying to get vem to leave!” Fift cried.

“You think ve can just turn and run? Fift, the feed may be mostly down, but do you think people wouldn’t know? And ve’d know, don’t you get that?”

“But ve could get hurt in there! Ve could lose a body, even—”

Vvonda’s face flushed a brighter purple, and vir hands jerked involuntarily. Fift briefly wondered whether, if ze’d been a Vail, Vvonda would have shoved zir. “Ve’s already hurt,” Vvonda hissed. “But ve isn’t at risk of losing a body in this kind of fight. Ve’s at risk of losing something else, but I don’t expect you to understand that!”

“So what are you doing, then?” Fift said. “You’re a Vail, you’re vir friend, why aren’t you going to help vem?”

“I am, you stupid . . . slug!” Vvonda said, vir face magenta. “Bluey and I and Stogma and the rest of Shria, eight bodies, total—we’re trying to get there! We forced our way onto the first sluice, but we have to go around the second. We’re going to use the slide-grove off Bittersting. When we get there, those sisterless rent-a-body-wearing siblingfuckers are going to be sorry. Plus, my mom and I came to this party to try to get a bat, and now you’re interrupting. Look, no one is going to hit a Staid. Just get yourself the fuck out of that crowd and go home!”

“We were trying to get home before—”

Vvonda made a noise of disgust in vir throat. “You can’t even handle that yourself? Then just get to the end of the byway and wait for us.”

I’m scared, though, Fift wanted to say, but couldn’t. It occurred to zir belatedly that ze was doing this all wrong, contesting the wrong transaction. Ze sounded angry, worried, demanding—like a four-year-old who’d never learned enough self-control to sit through zir first Long Conversation. Like a baby. It just confirmed Vvonda’s opinion of zir as a useless, helpless burden.

Of course ve could curse and complain and demand—that was different. In a Vail, it was passion. In Fift, it was just weakness.