“What of it?”

The woman cocked her head, and in her eyes Kira saw unexpected depth, as if she’d arrived at the crest of a hill to discover a yawning chasm beyond. “Only this, and this alone: circumstances press hard upon us. Soon all that will be left to you, or to any of us, is bare necessity. Before that happens, you must decide.”

Kira frowned, almost angry. “And what exactly am I supposed to decide?”

Inarë smiled and shocked Kira by patting her on the cheek. “Who you want to be, of course. Isn’t that what all of our decisions come down to? Now I really must be off. People to annoy, places to escape. Choose well, Traveler. Think long. Think fast. Eat the path.”

Then the woman pushed herself away from the wall and floated out of the cargo hold into the Malpert spaceport. On her back, the large, maned cat continued to stare at Kira, and it uttered a mournful yowl.

4.

Eat the path. The phrase wouldn’t leave Kira’s mind. She kept turning it over, gnawing on it as she tried to understand.

Across the hold, Hwa-jung shepherded a pair of loader bots that were pushing and pulling the four cryo pods from the Valkyrie. Through the frost-encrusted windows, Kira glimpsed Orso’s face, blue and deathly pale.

At least she hadn’t needed to eat him to survive. He and the other three were going to be in for a hell of a shock once the UMC thawed them out and told them what had been happening while they slept.…

“You’re a walking disaster, Navárez,” said Falconi, coming up. “That’s what you are.”

She shrugged. “Guess so.”

“Here.” He dug a handkerchief out of a pocket, spit on it, and without waiting for permission, started to wipe her face. Kira flinched. “Hold still. You’ve got blood everywhere.”

She tried not to move, feeling like a kid with a dirty face.

“There,” said Falconi, stepping back. “Better. That nose needs fixing, though. You want me to do it? I’ve had some experience with broken noses.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll ask a doctor,” she said. “The Soft Blade already healed me, so…”

Falconi winced. “Gotcha. Okay.”

Outside the ship, a series of exclamations went up from the refugees arrayed before the duty officers, and Kira saw people pointing at displays along the spaceport walls. “Now what?” she said. How much more bad news could there be?

“Let’s see,” said Falconi.

Kira brought up her overlays and checked the local news. The malignant newcomers were continuing their rampage across the system. They’d already destroyed most of the Jellies—and been destroyed in turn themselves—but the biggest headlines concerned Ruslan. Six of the newcomers had blasted past Vyyborg Station and the rest of the planet’s defenses and landed in the capital city of Mirnsk.

All but one.

That one ship had aimed itself at Ruslan’s space elevator, the Petrovich Express. Despite the planet’s orbital batteries. Despite the UMC battleship, the Surfeit of Gravitas, stationed around Vyyborg. Despite the numerous lasers and missile batteries mounted around the crown and base of the mega-structure. And despite the best design-work of countless engineers and physicists … despite all of those things, the alien ship had succeeded in ramming and severing the ribbon-shaped cable of the space elevator, three-quarters of the way to the asteroid that served as a counterweight.