“Ze likes to consider zirself a person,” Thurm said (vir tone letting everyone know that ve’d had to do with Thavé personally).

“Whatever, that’s not the point,” Frill said, waving a hand airily. “The point is the spike of fame Fift got out of it, and how we’re going to manage that. I mean, that’s an opportunity for zir, isn’t it?”

“An opportunity for what?” Smistria said. “If ze’s going to be a banker-historian, I don’t see why ze needs a following who expects zir to be an exoarchaeologist.”

“A little fame never hurt anyone,” Thurm said with a small ironic smile. Fift couldn’t tell if ve was kidding.

“It certainly did!” Smistria cried.

“Yes! Don’t you see?” Squell said. “That just makes it worse! That means there was an even larger audience for the fiasco on the byway!”

“And more footage with that Kumru-blessed vailchild,” Nupolo said.

Fift swallowed, and there was a flutter of activity across zir all-too-visible brains, magenta flickering to peach and canary yellow in the display.

Ze couldn’t wait to rescind their neural observation privileges. What had ze been thinking, letting zir Fathers paw around in zir brain data, even at a fuzzy macroscopic level? But it had seemed like the only way to persuade Squell to ever let zir out of the house again. And maybe—if ze was honest—maybe ze’d wanted to burrow back into the safety of zir parents viewing zir every emotional spike and trough, like being a toddler again . . .

Squell narrowed vir eyes.

“We all like Shria Qualia Fnax,” Arevio said, “but off-the-mats fighting at sixteen . . .”

“Kumru’s balls,” Frill said, “what did you expect vem to do? What would any of you have done, if your Staid friend was . . .”

“I’m with Frill,” Smistria said.

“That’s not the point,” Nupolo said.

“Ve was apparently gathering a pack of friends to intervene—” Arevio began.

Fift’s hearts were straining inside zir chests. If only they’d stop talking about Shria. Ze could bear anything else. Ze didn’t want to think about vem, about what ze’d said on the byway. And ze was managing not to think about vem, not to feel anything particular about vem, not to wonder what ve was thinking now, so it was terribly unfair of the scanner to show this ridiculous storm of colors in zir brains every time they mentioned vem.

“—and if we do get audited and re-rated?” Nupolo was saying. “You think these void-scoured adjudicators and Midwives can afford to be lenient? Clowns declaring a revolution, the feed brought to its knees, riots on the byways—”

“The Cirque stopped the riots,” Frill said heatedly, vir lounging body sitting up now.

“Ve didn’t say they didn’t!” Smistria snapped. “Is this to become a debate on your naïve worship of all things Cirquist, no matter what chaos—”

“Stop it, all of you!” Squell cried. “Just stop it!”