“Is your name even Zuri?”

“I have had others, but I am Zuri now. I will be Zuri for as long as you need me.”

“You were my friend,” whispered Savine. She thought she might be crying. “My one real friend.”

The slightest frown wrinkled Zuri’s smooth brow as she came closer.

“I still am. And you are mine.”

“You… eat people.”

“And you grind them to dust in your mills, and render them to meat on your battlefields, and let them rot when the sickness sweeps through your slums.”

“I trusted you.”

Zuri looked almost hurt by that. “And I have done my best never to let you down.”

“Because of some deal with my father—”

“At first.” Zuri flitted the last few strides towards her in a flash, a sudden chill breeze making Savine flinch. Zuri already had her hand in hers, so gentle but so strong, the black hair softly settling across her bloody face. “But soon I came to respect you, then to admire you, then… to love you.” She reached up and delicately wiped a tear from Savine’s cheek with her cool thumbtip.

“I am very old,” she said. “I did not think I had anything to learn. But we have learned so much from you. Imagine a South and a Union not opposed but bound together by trade, and industry, and common interest. Not looking always into an ignorant and superstitious past but fixed on progress.” Her black eyes shone at the thought. “A South and a Union where the people are governed not by the selfish whims of priests or wizards, but by the righteous engineering of the watch and the book.”

“What would your scripture teacher think of that?” whispered Savine.

“It has been many years since I cared a shit for his opinions.” And Zuri gave a little smile. Like a lover, venturing a joke so they could see if they were forgiven for some petty misdemeanour. By the Fates, could Savine still hear the faint cracking of bone from the room next door?

Her father, who had burned half the world so he could control the other half, put a hand on her wrist. “You need our advice.”

Her mother, who had helped hatch the colossal scheme, put a hand on her shoulder. “You need our support.”

Zuri smiled wider, her teeth still pink with Sulfur’s blood. “You need our protection.”

They were not wrong. The world might not have been quite what she thought but, above all, Savine had always been a woman of business. And a woman of business must adapt quickly to new circumstances and recognise a bargain when she sees it. She had handled difficult partners before, after all, and come out ahead.

She slid the box from her sleeve and took a healthy pinch of pearl dust up each nostril. Then another. Just to stop her hands from shaking. She wiped her nose carefully, dabbed her eyes on her unburned sleeve, pushed her chin up and her shoulders back, and managed something like a smile.