The sky over the city used to be a thick yellow butterscotch colour. Now it was only like that at the very edges of the horizon, as the blueness had spread like a stain on carpet, touching even the light. Nona took a moment to surreptitiously twitch the curtains, peeking between the broken antisniper striping to catch a glimpse of the world outside. The blue light got stronger, and Camilla said sharply, “Nona,” and she hurriedly let the curtains fall.
Pyrrha, now masked, paused before the door with her wiry knuckles: “Roll call. What’s this week’s all scatter word?”
“Lowdown,” said Camilla.
“And the all clear?”
“Deadweight,” said Nona.
“Perfect. What are your stations if that thing in the sky even looks like it’s about to stop periscoping?”
“The underground tunnels by the fish market,” said Camilla.
“The big underpass bridge dugout,” said Nona.
“Ten points to you both. And what do you do once you’re there?”
“Hide until you come,” said Nona, and then added, truthfully: “And rescue any nearby animals so long as they don’t exceed the size of the box, and are woolly rather than hairy.”
“Half points. No animals, hairy or woolly, I don’t care. Cam?”
Camilla had finished with her hat, and now she was easing the big dark glasses onto her face—the ones she kept specially, despite the fact that they were a little unbalanced on her nose and her ears. They made both Palamedes and Camilla look chilly and clinical, but as Palamedes said, they solved the problem of the ghost limb. Without them he was everlastingly pushing something up his nose that wasn’t there. And Nona thought Camilla privately rather liked them.
She settled them on, considered the question, and said: “Fight.”
“No points. Camilla, if you engage with a Herald, you’re not coming home.”
“That’s your theory,” said Camilla.
“There’s data behind it. Hect—”
“If Camilla gets to fight, I should get to keep adjacent dogs,” said Nona decidedly. “Even if they’re hairy.”
Pyrrha turned her eyes up to the ceiling in mute appeal. Her exhalation rasped loudly against the vent in her mask. “I used to run the whole Bureau,” she said, and she didn’t sound like she was addressing either of them. “Now I’m up against wannabe heroes and hairy dogs. This is the punishment she would’ve wanted for me. God, she must be pissing herself laughing … Let’s go, kids. Like hell am I walking in this heat.”
2
PYRRHA WORKED FOR NONA, Camilla looked after Nona, and Palamedes taught Nona, all on the understanding that she was not simply a person, but probably one of two people. Nona did not know either of her real possible names. Palamedes said not to lead her unnecessarily. One of the reasons they had called her Nona was that the first thing she had said, when they saved her and brought her here, was No, no. Nono became Nona, and Nona meant Nine, and nine was an important number.
What she definitely knew was that her body belonged to one of two people, and she was interested in her body. When she looked in the mirror she had skin the colour of the egg carton, and eyes the colour of the egg mixture, and hair the colour of the burnt-out bottom of the pan. More to the point, Nona thought she was gorgeous. She had a thin, complicated face, and a mouth too easily unhappy and too easily discontented; but she had nice white teeth in a smile that looked sad no matter how happy she was, and arched black brows like she always wanted to ask someone a question. Nona talked to herself in the mirror even now. When she had been earlier born, and less self-conscious, sometimes she would rest her face against the mirror’s face, and try to reach her reflection. Camilla had caught her kissing it once, and had written about six pages of notes on that, which was humiliating. It was hard enough not to be allowed a single solitary secret, without a book being written about whatever you did.
If Camilla had six pages of notes on her kissing herself she had about twenty regarding eyes. Nona’s egg-yellow eyes belonged to the other person—the other girl; that was how all of their bodies worked, not only hers. All four pairs of their eyes belonged to other people. Pyrrha’s deep brown eyes really came from her dead best friend, and Camilla’s clear grey eyes should have really been Palamedes’s, and vice versa with his wintertime irises. Nona’s eyes were a deep, warm gold, the colour of the sky at midday—or at least the colour the sky had used to be at midday.