We came into the Bone City with paper instead of a screaming box, and the quay still treated it like contraband.
Sable took the contract stack, the go-between, and the clerk. She read until her mouth went thin, then handed Mei the page that promised two more ears after the twins if the first pair held a note.
"They were not building tools," Sable said. "They were building a litter."
"They are building from nothing now," Feng Lan said. She held her arms like they belonged on a shelf. "That is slower. Slower is not kind. It is only slow."
Rhea's chip was waiting on the table as if it had grown there. The two Phoenix hulls had left the storm edge at last. Not for the archive. Not for the grey belt. A heading toward independent water that could become our belt if they kept their nerve overnight.
Sable turned the chip so the scratches faced me.
"They lost their ears. Now they want the mouth."
Elizabeth did not sit.
