“Hot Sauce is a girl with a future, so long as she gets a new name.”
“Honesty says there’s a really special and wonderful reason behind her name and I should ask her sometime,” said Nona, trying to select the smallest possible bowl to have mush spooned into. Tiniest one for her, middlest one for Pyrrha, biggest one for Camilla and Palamedes. Then she remembered last night.
“Pyrrha—why does We Suffer hate you?”
“Because I remind her that her God was just a human being who could get tired and fuck up,” said Pyrrha instantly. That was the wonderful thing about Pyrrha: she didn’t waste time saying things like “What made you think of that?” or “Why?” She went ahead and answered. In a way though, it was also a bad thing about Pyrrha, because she lied and told the truth at exactly equal top speeds. “I like to think she doesn’t hate me so much anymore … now that she’s seen my famous charm, that is. Now she probably says to herself, ‘Of course, how could anyone have resisted it?’ Because I’m charming, Nona, that’s what I am.”
“If you’re that charming,” said Nona, “how come you’re single?”
Pyrrha struck an attitude, with a spoon over her forehead, that looked much too melodramatic for her wolfish, ribby body.
“I’ve got a broken heart and I’ll never love again.”
But even though Pyrrha was being ridiculous, Nona thought that she was saying it more truthfully than she wanted to—that if Nona looked at the way the red-brown eyes crinkled at the ends, Pyrrha really was brokenhearted somehow; which made complete sense, if she thought about it. Pyrrha had used to be like Camilla and Palamedes and now her equivalent of Palamedes was gone—really dead—killed by a terrible monster that nobody would describe to her. It seemed impossible to think of Camilla and Palamedes being apart. Of course they were apart, separated forever by a matter of minutes; but Nona knew they talked to each other in pages of letters and letters and letters. Nona had seen the stacks. Camilla didn’t lock them up because Nona couldn’t read and when she said to Pyrrha, Are you going to read my correspondence? Pyrrha said, Not unless I need to induce vomiting.
Nona was pushing mush around with the spoon when Camilla came in, rolling down the rolled-up cuffs of her shirt, and said: “Oh, God, we’re on baby food,” which of course meant it wasn’t Camilla at all.
“Delicious num-nums for baby,” said Pyrrha. “Anyway, it’s this or beans and dried fish flakes.”
“I thought you were bringing home groceries last night.”
“I’m on half pay until they find someone to foot the drill bill,” said Pyrrha.
“Yes, but what happened to that half?”
Pyrrha spooned the softened mush into the big-size bowl and handed it to Palamedes. “You’re going to make someone a really irritating wife one day, Sextus,” she said pleasantly.
“Dve, if I thought you were drinking all of our money away I would sleep a peaceful and easy sleep.” Palamedes brandished the spoon in her direction. “Who, and whyfor, did you bribe?”
“Some guys. Site C,” said Pyrrha succinctly.
“For God’s sake, Pyrrha, if it’s that hard to access I’ll swap you Site B, Cam and I have ways and means of accessing—”
“I would pay any amount of money to stop you taking that risk you take,” said Pyrrha, digging a spoon into her mush and placing it squarely in her mouth. “Mmm, mmm. It’s so swallowable.”
“Pyrrha,” said Palamedes, “we only do it when we have to, and we’d do anything for a clue.”
Pyrrha dropped her voice very low.
“Who gives a shit about clues? It’s a thalergetic fuckfest you’re subjecting that cerebral cortex to, is what it is. Every time you overlap, son, you’re subjecting her thalamus to appalling stress—”
“I greenlight it every time, I thoroughly scan her for—”
“You should be draining and replacing her fucking brain fluid,” said Pyrrha. “When Gideon and I designed that trial, I used to crack his skull and sieve it myself, just as a control variable. It’s aggregative. I doubt you’re testing her white blood cell count either. The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn’t mind being trepanned on the regular. Fucking around with souls is the problem, Sextus … you can’t ever get the full data on souls.”
Palamedes ate a spoonful of mush very deliberately and thoughtfully.