“But you can talk them down.” He glanced at me. “You calmed them after Mycroft’s rampage. You calmed the whole world down after the worst thing that had happened in a hundred years.”

“This is different.”

Achilles sensed, I think, something specific in Kosala’s voice. “Why?”

Holding up a finger, Kosala signaled her tracker with her other hand, and called aloud. “Heloïse, what’s the situation in Odessa?”

“Aunt Kosala!” Kosala set her tracker on speaker, so we could hear Heloïse’s words, as bright as birdsong. “Pray excuse me, Mayor Bagry, gentlemen, I should take this call, it’s Chair Kosala.”

Polite permissions and light footsteps carried Heloïse to sufficient privacy for her to add image to her voice call, which Kosala brought up on the side of a nearby bench. Heloïse stood in a small office, where we could see a crystal chandelier, a Ganymedest painting of Antony and Cleopatra, and two hulking security guards. Heloïse wore what flattery might call a cloak or poncho, but honesty must call a sack: floor-length, gathered at the neck, with slits for her arms and a hood drawn around her hair, though the contour of her nun’s headdress still showed beneath. Never was the letter of the law so meticulously followed and its spirit so ridiculously failed. There was no malice intended, or imagined, on the nun’s part, but the world knew what forbidden habit lay beneath this sack of concealing gray, and the shapeless folds spurred one to imagine the more important shapeless folds beneath. A crusader’s tabard could not have so overwhelmed the mind with thoughts of Church.

“What’s the situation?” Kosala asked again.

“Mixed. A little good news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“I think we’re close to a temporary settlement, and everyone has agreed to keep land sales frozen during negotiations. The violence has almost subsided outside City Hall. There’s still one patch of fighting to the south, but the crowd on Prymors’ka Street has calmed entirely, and the Mitsubishi quarters are clear. Confirmed fatalities have not passed thirty. I can also confirm not a single Servicer injured. We got them all out.”

The Cousin chair let herself smile. “And the bad news?” Her smile died as she saw Heloïse wince. “You’ve found more?”

“Ye-es, Aunt Kosala.” Heloïse’s ‘yes’ was more sob than syllable.

“How many?”

The nun fidgeted with the Minor’s sash that looped about her shapeless sack. “Two since last you called.”

“Show me pictures, the worst you have.”

“You don’t want to see this, Aunt Kosala, honestly—”

“It’s not for me.”