Nona lifted her voice, and wailed aloud.
The new figure broke past We Suffer and the hawk-faced woman, and rustled through the pockets of the inert dead body of Ianthe Naberius, alone and still on the road—loped over to Nona in a way that neither Camilla nor Palamedes had ever moved but was filled with both of them, long in the leg, easy in the stride, spare and efficient. They held out a lavender silk handkerchief.
Nona sniffled thickly, and recoiled. “I want a tissue—that’s too fancy,” she mumbled.
“That’s the point,” the figure said, and looked at her with a grave smile. “We know there’s not going to be a big birthday party anymore, but: happy birthday, Nona.”
Nona mopped her eyes dolefully with the handkerchief. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s a relief you didn’t get hair ties.”
The new person suddenly whirled around in one movement. They dashed toward the abandoned body of Ianthe Naberius—an abandoned body that was now propped up on its elbows, staring out with pale, distrustful eyes, an expression on its face of commingled hate and despair.
“So there was another way, Sextus, after all,” the body murmured.
The figure crouched down and extended their arm.
“I know how hard it is for you to kick against the goad,” said the new person. “But there are more worlds than this. Come with us. We are the love that is perfected by death—but even death will be no more; death can also die. There’s still time, Ianthe. Time for you, and for Naberius Tern.”
The abandoned body stared at what had once been Camilla’s hand, at what once had been Camilla’s face, then at the hand again. After which it said brightly—
“I bet you say that to all the boys.”
The body collapsed and was empty; staring up at the top of the tunnel, its eyes strangely white and silent.
29
THEY LOADED EVERYONE BACK into a single truck. Nobody seemed annoyed about this, even though Nona knew they had been on the trucks for months. Maybe once you were on a truck long enough, you forgot that there was anything but the truck. To Nona, it did not seem like a nice kind of home. She kept thinking in a welter of heartbreak about her bedroom, her mattress, her blankets. She had started thinking of bed in a kind of longing, desperate, hungry way.
Pyrrha had taken the wheeled chair that Camilla had used and sat Nona inside it. Camilla—Palamedes—the new person—did not need any kind of wheeled chair anymore, or pain medication, despite having been nearly dead. With enormous energy, few words, and a clipboard clutched in their hands, Palamedes-and-Camilla herded all those bent-down, exhausted people. They stopped every single one briefly, and patted them over, and said things like, “Rehydrated,” or, “Try walking on that,” or, “Fixed the kidneys. Take better care of them.” Somehow simultaneously they took measurements, all while moving like someone Nona had never met. She fell back entirely on Pyrrha, who seemed as absolutely out of her element as Nona was.
“How much to ride the merry-go-round?” said someone familiar.
It was the Angel. The Angel and Pash appeared in front of Nona’s chair, before the truck, and with them—most wonderfully—Noodle; Noodle, sitting on the ground, opening his mouth and panting, closing his mouth and rolling his eyes with displeasure, obviously as past the events of the day as Nona herself. Pyrrha said with a flicker of old humour—“How much to get off?”
“More than we can afford, I guess,” said the Angel. She was looking composed in a long canvas coat like the one We Suffer had given up, with a long bag slung over her shoulder. Pash wore two of the same, one over each shoulder, with a third in her hand. “Sometimes I feel as though I were born on the merry-go-round—I worry I won’t know what to do with myself when it stops. If it ever stops.”
Nona, having seen the bags, and Noodle, and the leashes, found eagerness enough within her to say— “Are you coming with us?”
“Probably not, kiddie,” said Pyrrha, but Pash said unexpectedly: “This is the fucking stupidest idea in the world, but yeah, we are. I go where this goes”—a violent jerk of the head in the Angel’s direction—“and I guess this one is getting on the bus.”
“To the Nine Houses,” said Pyrrha slowly.
“Yes,” said the Angel.
“The very centre of the Emperor Divine’s power,” said Pyrrha.
Pash said, “Don’t even start. You’ll set me off again. We go where we’re sent … and this city’s a death trap. I don’t know, I would have moved out into the tunnels and tried to get clear of the city that way, but…”