Deirdre’s eyes flicked back to Mistletoe’s face. “Yes. Pyotr was my husband. How did you know?”

“Jiri’s notes.”

“He kept notes? With names?”

“Just the first letters. I blew them up.” She softened the threatening edge in her voice. “Sorry about your husband.”

Deirdre’s eyes drifted to the blank wall once again. “Fifteen years ago, I was such an idealist. We all were. Especially Pyotr—he was a dreamer. Dita used to say that he lived half inside this world and half inside the world he wanted, the one where the canopy had never existed, where Unison was open to everybody. The rest of us were a bit more pragmatic.” She laughed. “But Pyotr…”

Mistletoe watched the tiny muscles in Deirdre’s face twitch, relax, then twitch again as she remembered some specific, long-buried detail. Her mouth curled into the tiniest of smiles.

“He used to say about you, Anna—”

“It’s Mistletoe now.”

“Mistletoe…” Deirdre considered this. “Pretty name. Pyotr used to say we should all be willing to die in order to win your freedom. Then he went and did it.”

“I didn’t ask him to—I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“But here you are.” Now it was Deirdre who hardened her tone. “I couldn’t even bury him, you know. We were all running. Jiri had you in his arms. Pyotr was convinced the other subject, the boy, was somewhere inside. Associates were swarming. We’d lost our only advantage, surprise. Maybe if one of us had gone with him…” She was gripping her knees hard, the blood drained from her long, elegant fingers. “But I ran. I didn’t want to die.”

She flipped her palm. A grainy picture of a man’s face appeared in the air. He had long black hair that fell in wisps in front of his eyes, a sharp nose, and small, serious lips pursed in deep contemplation.

“That’s him,” Deirdre said, shoving the image forward. “My husband.”

Mistletoe imagined this man, along with Jiri, Deirdre, and Aunt Dita, all sitting around a cramped shanty, arguing, laughing, listening to music. It was strange to think of Jiri—especially Jiri—as a young man with friends.

“What were you, some kind of gang?”

Deirdre vapored away the picture. “Bombs were our thing. We were young enough to believe that blowing a hole in the canopy would spark a revolution.” She lifted her arms in mock exultation. “Then Magnus and Ivor came to us with classified information about UniCorp, the great shining beacon of topside power. Two experimental subjects. Of course, they couldn’t tell us what you were for. Only that you were important to Martin Truax. And for us, back then, that was enough.”

“The boy’s free now,” Mistletoe said. “His name is Ambrose.” She thought about adding, So your husband didn’t die for no reason—but recognized that it sounded cheap and shabby and would offer little comfort.