The Angel urged tersely, “Did you get this from a picture?”
Nona looked down at the animal she had drawn, and thought perhaps she understood. She said, “No, I made it up. It does work, I promise. See these things? They’re its ears,” she said, in much the same tones as she would have explained to Kevin. “This thing is its nose, and you can’t see it because I didn’t draw it, but the mouth is under here. When first it was born it used to live in a river, but then it got cold so it had to get large. I know the legs can’t rotate, but you don’t think that’s stupid, do you?” She looked up at Camilla and the Angel, then said, “Am I in trouble?”
The Angel looked at Camilla, not Nona.
“I’ve seen pictures of this animal before,” said the Angel, slowly and carefully. “I only saw it because I did a special unit when I went to university. I went to the special zoology school on Miró and attended a heap of underground archaeology talks. I was a youthful firebrand. Political, you know. And that’s where I saw the picture.”
“Okay,” said Nona.
Camilla said, looking at the picture, “I don’t think I’ve seen this before.”
“You wouldn’t have,” said the Angel. “It’s a cradle creature.”
“I’ve heard that phrase,” said Camilla. “Somewhere.”
“Have you?” said the Angel.
Nona didn’t know what to say. The Angel and Camilla didn’t seem to know what to say either, and they all stood around for a moment, with Nona racking her brains. Camilla took her dark glasses off and folded them up neatly, to put in her breast pocket. Then she said quietly— “May I ask a question?”
Nona glanced up at Camilla’s face, just to confirm it.
“Go ahead,” said the Angel, smiling without her eyes having anything to say about it.
“Back on Lemuria, or anywhere else,” said Palamedes, “did you ever have an operation, or receive medical care, from the Nine Houses? Even if you don’t remember it. Did you ever get some kind of implant? You said you met archaeologists. Were they House? Did you specifically meet any necromancers who gave you any kind of treatment?”
Nona was so shocked that she forgot to breathe. Palamedes had not simply broken one rule, he had broken about fifty. The expression on the Angel’s face brought her back to real life: it was so terrible that it hurt Nona to look. The crinkles on the sides of her eyes and mouth froze. She suddenly seemed older and more shrunken—rather than tiny and buoyant, tiny and withered.
Palamedes was moved to say gently, “I don’t mean you any harm,” but a weird, high-pitched whirring had started at the vicinity of his ankles. Noodle had gotten up from the basket and the hair right at his flanks was standing up as though it had been electrocuted, and he was growling. Nona had never heard Noodle growl before. He broke into a volley of barks, with his lips pulling back from his sharp yellow teeth.
This roused the Angel. She said, “Bloody dog. Let me put him in the kitchen with a toy,” and she dragged Noodle to the kitchen by his collar. She picked up her big black bag and she closed the door behind her, and then a few seconds later she emerged, still looking grey and haggard but more resolute and settled somehow. She was ashy underneath the freckles and her mouth was set in a tight, cool line, but she had drawn herself up to her not-very-impressive height and stood in front of Palamedes as though she weren’t scared. Nona could still see terror on her lips and in her hands and in her feet.
At this point the lights finally sizzled to a close: Hot Sauce was done with the generator, Nona thought. The room plunged into hot black darkness. The Angel went round to the windows and pulled open the blackout curtains and the blinds, recklessly, so that electric blue light puddled on the floor, and then she circled back to the teacher’s desk and threw herself into the seat.
She said, “Nona, do you want to go and sit with Noodle?” He was making little whimpering noises, even through the door. “He calms down with you.”
Nona hesitated, but she had been kept out of one too many conversations by being sent away to do something ostensibly good. Nona could tell the Angel’s plan from the quick movements of the Angel’s eyeballs, the swallowing. She said apologetically, “Normally I would say yes, but I think I’d like to stay, please.”
“Are you sure? You can listen from the door, you know,” said the Angel baldly.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
The Angel passed her fingers over her face, briefly touching her eyelids with thumb and forefinger, one on each. She relaxed backward into the chair. Palamedes didn’t sit, but Nona sat herself down in one of the big puddles of blue light, enjoying the sensation of it and absolutely nothing else that was going on.