The fourth layer down, as it happened, was Tattletale. Two of her bodyguards seized her before her weight could come to rest on the legs that still had bloody bandages on them. She was moved to a chair, and made a face as she sat down.

The rest of us remained gathered in the lobby.

“Gotta stick your nose in, huh, Vicky?”

“Trying to stay on top of things,” I said. “What did you do?”

“That’s a pretty aggressive way of looking at it, Vicky,” Byron said.

“It wasn’t entirely me,” Tattletale said.

Of course.

I saw Whippersnap again, keeping company with a Case Fifty-Three of the same age, just a bit younger than Sveta. The girl was her overly elaborate lace dress and veil—the lace was her skin and the skin had a million intricate holes in it, with just a hint of red around the largest ones, where they looked deep in enough to see past tissues and look at raw flesh.

“She’s been recruiting,” Tattletale said. “Capricorn, you know Paris. Most of the recruits are singular actors from multiple clusters. Most, it turns out, are being brought in by a promise. She tells them that she knows how to leech power, as Goddess did. If they join her, she will tell them, after they’ve helped her achieve her goals. If they don’t, she tells one of their cluster-mates. With me so far?”

“She made that offer to me,” Rain said. “But I think she ran into trouble. Of the two who are still alive, one won’t work with her, and the other is filled with too much rage to cooperate with anyone. They just want me dead.”

“Precipice, she’s making the offer to Cradle. After Snag? If you don’t reach out and take her offer, she’s going to give Cradle that knowledge. You can see where your hands are tied, don’t you?”

Rain’s mechanical hands strained a bit, metal on metal, as he clenched his four fists.

“Yeah, all four of them, there you go. She used that, gathered some people, and she made it clear she wanted Foil. That’s where I came in.”

“How do we know it’s not a bluff?” Swansong interrupted.

“She has proof, kind of,” Rain said.

“Because, Swansong, she was a member of a cluster of three. Timing, accuracy, and Foil’s trademark weapon enhancement. March found and drained their cluster’s third.”

“She’s very strong compared to Flechette, now, and that’s her proof,” Rain said.

“Goddess dying answered a few lingering questions she had, things which were holding her back,” Tattletale said. She turned around, and flagged down a mercenary. “Painkillers. Something not too addictive, thank you.”

She turned back our way and sighed.

“What did you do?” I asked, again.