The Incident at Vaa Surame

The face in her mirror was getting more familiar every day.

Minutes ticked by slowly as Mu studied it: the circle shape; the dark, cool-toned skin and plump cheeks; the large, heavy-lidded eyes with their brown-black centers and glowing blue sclera; the deep, dark circles shadowing those eyes; the full lips; the short-buzzed, tightly curled white hair. Mu looked deep into her own eyes, breathed slowly in and out, tilted her head this way and that, until she'd looked at herself from every angle she could.

It was no good. No matter how long she stared, Mu didn’t feel even the faintest stirring of memory.

With a quiet sigh, Mu picked up her head and set it atop her neck. Glass clicked against glass, the twin panes that protected the bottom of her severed head and the top of her severed neck from the elements. With one hand, Mu held her head in place; with the other, she reached for what she preferred to think of as her necklace. In truth, it was a wide leather choker that Mu wrapped around her throat each day to keep her head in place.

Theoretically, she could have held her own head in place with telekinesis. In practice, using her powers drained her supply of vaara so quickly that it wasn’t worth the fatigue it caused. And there was this much to be said in favor of her necklace: it didn’t need her to concentrate on it in order to work. What if she finally left her house, then lost her focus, and her head fell off right there in front of everyone else on the street? Mu couldn't imagine what would happen, save for the insistent suspicion that it would involve House Tauhrelil and their obsidian scalpels. Just the idea was enough to make her shudder.

On her necklace went, and then Mu stepped back and looked her whole self up and down in her mirror, a small, round face now properly secured to its small, round body. She had dressed, as she did every day, in loose, shapeless black clothes; it was hard to feel much attachment to a body that held no memories, and most days Mu could barely muster enough care to keep that body clean and fed, let alone dress it prettily. Strange vessel, Mu thought absently as she drifted from the bathroom to the kitchen. The floors of all her rooms were ashwood, pale grey patterned with grainy ripples of darker grey and black. Mu walked over them silently in bare feet and imagined herself floating through a bank of fog in an empty world.

Through the window above the kitchen sink, Mu saw that the world outside her house matched the one in her head; the day was grey, quiet, shrouded in mist. She thought briefly of opening the window to check the temperature, but decided against it. She preferred to keep all the house’s openings locked, always – and besides, she lived in the Opaline City. If the air of the City ever ran cold, it would have been a sign that something had gone deeply wrong.

Mu turned from the window to the fridge, opened it, selected a can of Blue Lightning energy drink and a packaged meal of black rice and spicy-sweet inkfish. Then she went to her sitting room and deposited herself on the painted bent-wood hanging chair that, like most of the furniture, had been part of this house before she’d ever lived there.

A woman can lose herself in the Opaline City.

Mu blinked hard and made herself refocus on what was present before her. You’re here, she told herself. You’re breathing. Your past is a shadow. The chair under you and the food in your hands are real. Now you’re going to eat breakfast, watch some news, and then go to work.

Her first day. She was trying not to think of that, either. Mu switched on the vision panel, then swiped through one channel after another. Kukkyu announced that the second ingredient was unicorn marrow. A news anchor spoke with a financier about next year’s economic forecast. An arachnoculturist led a camera through a silk farm, passing tier after tier of massive, jewel-colored spiders. The actrin Yara Teiyu divulged which theaters he'd be performing at first in his comeback tour. The Ilisaf venarch kissed another noblewoman before an applauding crowd. Two men discussed this season's upcoming venarchic marriages, mixing playful jabs with sharp insight.

Mu swiped back to the women kissing.

Luckily for her, the channel was replaying the kiss several times from different angles. Mu popped open her meal’s waxboard packaging, took a bite of cold rice and inkfish, and watched the elegant way Venarch Orisai’s head dipped in to kiss the woman that the captions identified as Lady Tsieru I Terremaut; the way her hand rested on Lady Tsieru’s waist; the way her gold-laced finery and deep magenta hair shimmered and gleamed with her every move.

"I wouldn’t mind being Lady Tsieru, would you?" one of the program hosts said. Not in the slightest, Mu thought as she sipped her energy drink. By the time her meal was gone, she’d learned that House Ilisaf had reaffirmed its diplomatic ties to House Tauhrelil in the wake of Vene Ilisaf ni Tauhrelil’s arrest, that Vene’s execution date was set for ten days from now, and that his funeral would be conducted by House Tauhrelil rather than House Ilisaf. That last one made Mu pause, vaguely alarmed, until the hosts went on to explain that House Tauhrelil was shouldering the burden of Vene's funeral in place of House Ilisaf as a form of penance.

Just then, her cellband gave off a high-pitched chiming, telling her that it was time to leave for work. Mu shut off the vision panel, tossed her drink can into the metal cycler, and slipped into her rain shoes – warm as it was outside, wearing sandals on a misty day during rain season was a fool’s gamble. Then she undid all seven locks on her front door, stepped outside, and did them all up again. It was an irritatingly time-consuming process, but something had compelled Mu to add the locks as soon as she'd moved into this house, and leaving even one undone was enough to send her into a panic. Mu didn't know why she apparently needed those locks so badly – but then, she remembered nothing of her life prior to the day she'd woken from a coma in a private hospital room, her head newly severed from her body. Her old life had deserted her entirely, leaving behind nothing but a host of fears and pains that her current self didn't even understand. Mu thought, as she often did, that it didn't seem fair she had to exist this way.

A small blue-tiled fountain separated her door from her neighbor’s. Mu dipped a finger into the water and touched it to her forehead for luck. As soon as her surface brain thought that, her underbrain started whirring: How do I know that’s good luck? Who told me that? A father? A mother? A book, a stranger, a dream?

Mu gathered the soft flesh of one forearm between her nails and pinched it hard. She had a new job to get to. She had a train to catch. She had better things to do than scrabble through the dust of her own nonexistent memory.

Even though she’d studied the transit route over and over before her first day of work and was almost certain she had it memorized, Mu pulled up a captive light panel from her cellband and opened WayTrace anyway. The nearest railstop was only a five-minute walk from where she lived. After that, it was four stops on the green line, switch trains, two more stops on the violet, take a wallcrawler down to the ground, walk straight down Vaa Surame for five more minutes, pass through the Corona…I really do have it memorized, thought Mu. But she still felt safer having WayTrace to guide her.

As she headed for the railstop, Mu passed a knot of people gathered around an open square. At five spans, two fingers, Mu was too short to see over the crowd, but she knew exactly what it obscured: a brilliant scarlet circle set into the stones of the square, and at the center of that circle, two duelists, face to face…Mu thought about stopping and asking someone what the duel was about, but she still had a train to catch. Maybe it'll be up on Muvi by the time I'm done with work, she thought. Something to watch on her way back. She hurried on, joining the tide of morning commuters in its flow toward the railstop. Slipping into the crowd calmed her, bringing down a heart rate that she hadn't even realized was elevated until it slowed. In public, surrounded by other people, Mu's breath came freer. Why? she couldn't help wondering, and, Is it something to do with how I died?

You didn’t die, she snapped back at herself as the railstop came into view, you were just in a coma. She and the commuter-crowd swept into the railstop. Mu tried to listen to the snatches of conversation around her, to the sound of thousands of footsteps on blue-and-green tiled floors, to the dragonets hissing and chirping as they flitted through the vine-bearded rafters holding up the railstop's glass roof, to anything but her own mind whispering that she had died, that her memories were gone, her history of self evaporated, nothing left but empty flesh…

"Stop it," Mu said out loud, then looked around, but it seemed no one in the crowd had noticed. Or at least they’re all too polite to show if they have. She followed the signage for the green line, passing a bakery, a news kiosk, and a woman playing glass pipes. Mu stopped to watch a moment, letting herself be diverted by the music, the glitter of the pipes, the shapes the woman’s lips made as she played. Beside the piper was a hand-lettered sign displaying her SoniCloud, Muvi, and Picato handles, as well as her payment address for those who wished to repay the beauty of her music with money; before her feet was a big lacquered bowl, where those who wished to repay beauty with beauty could deposit offerings. Mu peeked into the bowl and saw a brick of incense, a steel bracelet, a bead of red amber, a little dragon carved from dark violet glass, and a handful of other small treasures. Do I have anything I can put in there? I don't, do I? The thought made her a little sad.

Instead of leaving a treasure, Mu sent the piper ten ru over her cellband. The piper acknowledged her gift with a wink and a quick rill on her pipes, which made Mu’s smile broaden from its usual small, polite curve into something dimpled and genuine. She stood and listened just a little longer, until the WayTrace panel tethered to her cellband chimed a warning that the green line train would be arriving in five minutes.

Mu inclined her head towards the piper and then hurried off, her head still filled with glass notes.

"The green line from Vaa Omuri to Vaa Velella," said a cool, clear male voice over the intercom, "is now incoming. Incoming. Please step back from the edge. Vaa Omuri to Vaa Velella, incoming. Please step back…"

As the voice spoke, the thick, glowing lines marking the edge of the rail platform shifted from white to vivid green. A moment later, the train itself pulled into the station. When it slowed down enough for the cars to stop blurring together, Mu saw that each was decorated differently. One car showed green waves, white-capped and storm-lashed under green-black clouds; the windows of another peeked out between a painted forest of leaves and fronds; a third was painted in coiling, green-scaled snakes, and a fourth in tessellating green-winged beetles. The car that finally rolled to a stop in front of Mu bore a green-on-green pattern of stylized male figures bearing flowers. When its doors hissed open, Mu saw that the walls, floors, ceiling, and seats were all green as well. She found a window seat; from inside the train, the world took on a faint emerald tint. Mu wasn't sure if the window glass was colored, or if her eyes were just biased from being surrounded by so much green.

As she counted down the four green line stops, Mu watched light and shadow play over her hands and the faces of the other commuters. The longer the train ride went on, the more she realized that a strange restlessness was beginning to build up inside her. Mu picked at a seam on her pants and tried to focus on things outside of herself. She spotted a small silver plaque over the train doors, which announced that the outside of this car had been decorated by the artist Retsayu Mau. Mu looked them up on her cellband, found them – her – on Picato, and tried to make herself look at Retsayu Mau's art, but found that ignoring her surroundings only made the restless feeling worse. She kept snapping her head up, eyes darting about in case she'd missed…

Missed what? Mu asked herself. Her fingers tightened against her thighs, gripping folds of fabric. Missed what? she demanded of herself again, but found only that silent, nameless unease. Her thoughts began to run along a bitterly familiar path. Watch out, watch out, watch out, but how can I know what to watch out for if you won’t tell me? It made her want to scream. Perhaps she would have, if only she'd been alone.

Instead of screaming, Mu switched train lines, trading her green car for one painted with violet unicorns. You could still go back, an unwelcome but deeply persuasive voice whispered as the violet line pulled out of the station. It’s not too late. Tell them you’re not well. Tell them you still need more time. The letter said you have a year to take the job, and you haven’t even been out of the hospital for two weeks. They wouldn't blame you…

And what would she do back at the house? Stay inside with the doors locked, watching the vision panel to drown out her thoughts, the way she had for the past eleven days? Mu pictured her own corpse sitting before the panel, light playing over rotting flesh, and shuddered.

The two stops on the violet line passed in a fog of anxiety. Mu only knew when to get off the train because WayTrace chimed to tell her so. Ground floor next, she thought. Ground, ground, ground. Just have to get to the ground. Find a ground-bound crawler. A ground-bound wallcrawler… Something about the phrase worked its way into her brain, until she was thinking it over and over. Ground-bound wallcrawler, ground-bound wallcrawler, ground-bound wallcrawler, Mu half-thought, half-sung, to the tune of the music she'd heard earlier from the glass-piper. She found that walking in time with the repetition made it easier to move forward.

Commuters queued up before the wallcrawlers, those great hollow-bodied insect-machines that crawled like glittering glass beetles up and down the towers of the Opaline City. Mu joined the queue, barely seeing any of her fellow commuters, looking only at the glowing sign that indicated the line for express crawlers bound straight for the ground level. Her turn to board came before she’d even gotten used to being in line. Mu let the crowd sweep her along into the crawler; small as she was, she soon found herself against the far wall, pushed there by the people boarding after her. Or was it a window? When does a window become a glass wall? Mu wondered, and suppressed a giggle. It sounded like a children's riddle. She pondered her own question while gazing ahead through the window-wall, at the mist-shrouded midheights of the Opaline City. Then she looked down, and down, into the cauldron of mist that hid the ground level from her view. Descending into a sea of ghosts, Mu thought, and then, as she looked down into the fog, another thought rose unbidden: In the Opaline City, a woman may go all her life without setting foot on the ground. It echoed like a memory, but just like the water she'd touched to her forehead for luck, she had no idea where it had come from. How did she know this sentence? Who had first planted it in her mind? Mu's heartbeat began to rise; her skin prickled as if threatening to sweat.

Oh, you are unraveling, another part of her – a part that seemed to have taken a few steps back from the rest – thought. Maybe you really should go back –

The wallcrawler doors hissed shut. The crawler began to descend.

As her body registered the sensation of descent, Mu’s heart plunged into a lake of cold black water. A matching icy shock filled her lungs. That’s not good, thought the part of her which had stepped outside herself, and which now seemed to be the only part still capable of thinking in words. Mu knew she was still in her own body – had to be, since she could still feel her own blood and breath – yet it felt as if she were somehow looking down at that body from a few spans overhead. She was suddenly…calm wasn't the word, not quite; frozen might have been closer. Whatever she felt now seemed all at once locked away behind a layer of ice.

It took forever to reach the ground. It took no time at all. Mu looked at her cellband. It had taken four minutes. As soon as the downward motion stopped, fear loosened its grip on Mu just a little bit; her breath came a little easier, and she seemed to be piloting her body from behind the eyes again instead of hovering just over it. When she stepped from the crawler car onto solid ground, she let out a long, quiet sigh.

Ahead of her stretched Vaa Surame, the Street of Stars, one of seven main arteries running through the Opaline City. Beyond and over the crowd of morning commuters streaming around her, Mu could see the great banner-strung archway that marked where Vaa Surame opened up onto the Corona: square of all squares, plaza of all plazas, the thrumming heart of the City. And at the center of the Corona, the heart of the heart, lay the alabaster sprawl of the Heavenfacing Court.

It was there that Mu would report in for her first day of work. She drew in another long breath and heard it shake.

"First descent?"

Mu started so sharply that for half a heartbeat she feared her head would topple right off her body, even with her necklace. She spun about, heart still racing, and saw a tall, broad man with light brown skin, pale blue star marks, and a great cloud of gray-streaked black hair loosely bound with a beaded red cord.

"Oh my," said the man. "Are you alright?"

"F-fine," Mu lied, poorly.

The man looked at her a moment longer. "Stranger," he said, the corners of his brown eyes crinkling with concern, "you do not look fine."

"I don’t," Mu said – unsure whether she was agreeing with him, or just too out of it to inflect a question mark at the end of her sentence.

He took it the second way. "You look like you would scream if someone touched you," he said. "Really, I wanted to say something while we were both on the crawler, but you already looked cornered enough in there. I didn’t want to make it any worse. Here, let’s move off to the side."

Mu followed him, if only to get out of the way of the commuters streaming to and from the railstop. The man led them to an unoccupied streetside bench under a twisting, flowering snakewood tree, seated himself, and then patted the bench beside him with an expectant look.

"I think I’d rather stand," Mu said. Actually, that bench looked like the most inviting thing in the world just now, but she was hesitant to sit so close to someone she didn’t know.

"That’s alright," the man said. "Anyway, I’m Tsemma. What’s your name?"

"Hello, Tsemma," she answered automatically, "I’m Mu. You’re being, um – kind, but I really do need to get to work – "

"Of course you do," Tsemma agreed. "But maybe you should take a moment first."

"A moment," Mu repeated, feeling rather stupid. "A moment for what?"

"Oh, to breathe, mostly," said Tsemma. "You looked like you were about to start hyperventilating. Still do, really."

"Thanks," said Mu flatly. Then swayed in place. Now that she’d stopped forcing herself forward, a heavy wave of exhaustion descended on her, as if it had simply been waiting for her to stand still long enough. Thanks again, Tsemma Whatever-Your-Family-Name-Is, Mu thought, then immediately felt badly for it. Tsemma wasn’t the reason she’d begun panicking. Tsemma was only trying to help.

"Look," said Tsemma, frowning slightly, "I’ll stand up if I have to, but won’t you please sit down? Before I have to catch you?"

So you noticed too, huh. Mu sighed. "It’s alright," she said, and sat down next to Tsemma. "You probably won’t murder me in the street or anything." Tsemma pressed his palms together and bowed his head in mock-solemn agreement, which made Mu exhale a single breath of laughter through her nose. She was glad, now, that first-day nerves had compelled her to leave the house earlier than she needed to; otherwise she might not have had the time to sit. Instead I would have walked into my first day of work at the Heavenfacing Court in the same state I was in on the crawler. Yeah, that would have gone so well.

"Let me know if you’d rather sit in silence," Tsemma spoke up. "Because otherwise I’ll just keep talking. My husband says I could talk through a whole lunar cycle without getting tired, but I think – " Suddenly Tsemma put a hand to his own mouth. His eyes crinkled again, this time in a smile. "See? I’m doing it already."

"I don’t mind if you talk," Mu said. In spite of herself, in spite of everything, she felt a hint of a smile. "But I probably won’t say much back."

And talk Tsemma did – about his husband, his daughter and son, his work as a candlemaker, what he’d had for breakfast, what did and didn’t count as a proper breakfast (by his standards, Mu noted, hers didn’t), and more. Mu let his words wash over her, content to half-listen and recollect herself as she watched people pass by in front of their shared bench. She noted with cool amusement the woman who raced by, skirts in a whirl, a picture of frantic hurry.

When a second person ran by a moment later, it didn’t seem as funny. When a third ran by, she felt a ripple of fear.

" – one of them got caught in his scarf, you know those little prickly claws they have on their wings, and you should have heard the yell he gave. Anyway, that’s why you should never feed dragonets in public – "

"Tsemma," said Mu, through lips that felt suddenly numb and clumsy. "Look." She pointed to her right.

Tsemma stopped talking and looked where she was pointing. A gathering crowd was making its way toward them. More people joined it by the second, and all of them were running. Tsemma’s voice had left Mu’s ears, but a handful of new voices had replaced it, and all of them were raised in thin, distant screams. She peered forward, pulse rising as she tried to catch a glimpse of what drove them.

Like amethysts, thought Mu.

For she could see now, whipping over the heads of the crowd, a handful of long, barb-ended tendrils, made of something that looked violet and crystalline but moved smoothly as flesh. As she watched, one of the tendrils rose, nosed blindly through empty air, and then arrowed down into the crowd. When it rose again, a fresh corpse hung from the tendril, pierced through the chest. Blood welled from the wound, ran down the corpse, and dripped from its dangling toes. More blood ran down the length of the spearing tendril, crystal-violet washed over in red. The screams of the crowd had grown closer, louder, but now a new noise cut through them: an eerie, glassy ringing that Mu felt in her very teeth.

By the time the noise died down, the crowd was on them, streaming past Mu and Tsemma’s bench. Snatches of voices flew past Mu’s ears: " – is that thing?", "Maiya, the children – !", "Bride of night, draw your veil, hide me now – ", and, repeated more than any of the rest: "Where’s the Aberrant Guard?"

"Idiots," Tsemma was saying. Mu jerked her gaze over to him and saw that he was looking at the railstop. Hundreds flocked to it, desperate to escape. "If that thing makes it over there, they’ll have nowhere to run." His eyes met hers. "This is a serious question. Do you want me to carry you?"

No, thought Mu, no, I absolutely do not. But she was short enough to be trampled, exhausted from her earlier panic, and afraid that someone in this dense, jostling crowd might hit her hard enough to knock her head from her shoulders. "Please," she said.

Tsemma scooped her up immediately, effortlessly, and began to run, alternately weaving and forcing his way through the people around them as he moved at an angle to the flow of the crowd. Mu wanted to close her eyes, or at least make herself stop seeing, but her body refused to obey her. She was surrounded by a sea of faces that reflected her own fear back upon her sevenhundredfold, and she could not look away. Her throat narrowed. Her heartbeat pounded all the way to her fingertips. "Alleyways," Tsemma was saying as he ran. Mu could only make out his words because her ear was so close to his chest. "It's going for the crowd, I think it's going for the crowd, I hope, hope, hope it's going for the crowd – " Mu wanted to ask him to stop talking, it was just too much on top of everything else, but her mouth wouldn't move. Faces, trees, streetsigns, storefronts, everything ran together into a mindless blur. Her world had broken down to stimulus and fear.

And then suddenly, above her, she saw a thread of shining gold.

It snaked through the air, bright and beautiful against the heavy gray clouds, and vanished behind Tsemma’s head in the direction of the monster. Mu realized that Tsemma had stopped running. All at once her panic-blindness lifted; the world came crashing back in like a wave. Some of the crowd were still trying to flee, but a good many had stopped where they were. Tsemma was one of them. Mu was about to ask him what in the world had possessed him to stop running, but her question was answered before she could even ask.

"Make way!" A squad of peace officers had cut like a white knife through the crowd, opening up a long gash of empty space. "Make way for the Fourth Spear!" They pressed the crowd back with thick, clear shields. "Make way, make way!" And through the corridor, running, came Iheila fifth of Irimias, the Sunspinner, Fourth Spear of the Heavenfacing Court.

Mu saw little beyond a blur of brown skin, black hair, and golden light. The Fourth Spear sped past them, flanked by ten metal-tipped threads of superheated captive light that followed him through the air. Screams turned to cheers and sighs in his wake. Mu had no gift for sensing the thoughts of others, but in that moment, she could read everyone’s minds all the same: A Spear has come! We are saved! And though the monster was still alive, part of Mu couldn't help feeling the same way.

A cheer rippled back from the front ranks of the crowd, closest to the monster. "Can you see what’s happening?" Mu asked Tsemma.

"I’m tall, but not that tall," he replied. Mu watched a thought strike him in real time. "But if I gave you a lift…"

The prospect embarrassed her. But looking around, Mu saw that many others had already had the same idea. That, and the fact that she did badly want to see what was happening, were enough to make her swallow her pride and give Tsemma a nod. Tsemma lifted Mu up onto one broad shoulder.

There, above the heads of the crowd, Mu finally saw the full form of the monster. Four, she thought; for in addition to the person she’d just watched it kill, the monster bore three more corpses on its back, rooted there as each body had slid down to the base of a tendril after being speared. Now she saw that those tendrils emerged from a double row of spiracles running down a body that resembled nothing so much as a horrifically overgrown centipede, though its legs were all wrong; they were too long, delicate and deer-slender. It had a centipede's mandibles, though, sharp and black and wickedly curved. Between the mandibles lay a pale, featureless face, a porcelain mask with only two black holes for eyes. When the creature gave another one of its strange, glassy wails, the mask remained utterly motionless. Though Mu could see the people in the front ranks of the crowd shudder, none of them moved, either.

Of course they didn’t. Who would miss the chance to see a Spear so close?

From atop Tsemma’s shoulders, Mu watched the Fourth Spear dance with the monster: thread against thread, amethyst against gold, the monster’s tendrils against the Fourth Spear’s burning wires. They arced and twisted through the air like warring snakes. Mu stared, her fear almost forgotten, entranced by the way the Fourth Spear controlled his wires with delicate finger movements and turns of his wrists, all while fluidly weaving and dodging around the monster's darting, barb-ended tendrils. People at the front of the crowd shouted suggestions and warnings – "Over there!" "Roll! Dodge it!" – but the Fourth Spear seemed to exist in his own sphere of unearthly calm. His face remained composed and beautiful, even as he angled it aside from whistling barbs that missed by hairspans. Mu was not attracted to men, but in that moment, she understood the allure of the Spears all too well.

One moment, the air was full of writhing violet. The next – so fast that Mu had trouble understanding what had just happened before her eyes – it was all bound up in gold. As the Sunspinner’s metal-tipped wires lashed the monster’s tendrils together and bound them tight against its back, Mu smelled burning flesh. The corpses, she thought sickly, yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away, no more than anyone else watching could. The monster gave another of its awful glassy sounds, this one more like a keening. Something about the noise sent a spasm of pain through Mu's head. For one involuntary moment, she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, the monster was rooted in place by the Fourth Spear’s wires, their ends now driven into the ground. He drew forth a fresh set of threads from matching holsters on his thighs and then, with a flick of two fingers, wrapped a thread around each of the monster’s mandibles. He stabbed the two fingers down sharply, and the metal ends of the wires spiked themselves into the ground like tent pegs. The monster thrashed and screamed glass into the minds of everyone watching, but the Sunspinner's wires held fast.

Despite the glass in their minds and the smell of burning flesh hanging in the air, the spirit of the crowd had shifted from terror to suspense to – as the Fourth Spear walked up to the bound monster for the killing blow – adoration. None of the voices that now called out to the Sunspinner were raised in alarm; instead they shouted "Irimias! Irimias!", "We love you!", "Burn it!", and a hundred other cries of love and hunger. When the Fourth Spear drew his blade, a fresh cheer rose from their throats.

It was a strange weapon that Fourth Spear Irimias wielded; somewhere between knife and sword, but with most of the blade itself cut away, leaving a sharp-edged spine and a gleaming, wicked tip. The Fourth Spear hefted it in one hand, tilted his head first one way, then another, and then took a swift, sure step forward and drove his blade’s spike-end under the monster’s death mask face, into the place where white met violet. Instinctively, Mu braced herself, felt Tsemma tense underneath her, saw others in the crowd do the same. But the wail that she so expected to strike her mind didn't. Instead she heard a strange, low crunching, like someone in a heavy boot stepping in a tray of glass shards and water. Its mask, she realized. The Fourth Spear was prying up the monster's face like a fingernail from its bed. When he ripped it free, all the fight went from the monster's body. As it collapsed to the ground, the Fourth Spear turned and held the mask aloft to the cheering crowd.

Behind him, blood poured forth. A silent, almost black fall of it spilled from the hole where Fourth Spear Irimias had ripped away the monster’s face. Mu realized she ought to have been looking at the Fourth Spear – it was a rare chance to see any of the Seven so close – but she couldn’t take her eyes away from the blood. She watched as it flowed slower, and slower, and finally stopped.

"I am so sorry," said Tsemma from below her, sounding slightly strained, "but I have really got to put you down now."

"Oh!" Tsemma’s words pulled her away from the tableau of Spear and monster, back into the crowd. "Oh, my gods, yes – go ahead and put me down – "

"Do you want to stay or go?" Tsemma asked when Mu was back on the ground.

"Stay…?" Mu repeated. Now that the fight was over and the monster slain, she felt a little dizzy.

"The Fourth Spear?" Tsemma was, Mu noticed, looking at her with a touch of concern again. "You were watching so intently. Did you want to try and get a closer look at him? I’m sure I can push us both through the crowd."

"Oh, no, no," Mu said. "No. Thank you. I was just – thinking of how I’m going to get to work, that’s all." For the Fourth Spear, the crowd, and the slain monster all lay directly in her path. She didn’t even want to think about navigating a detour, even with WayTrace to guide her.

"Work?" Tsemma said, eyes wide, brows rising. "Mu, we just saw someone killed. Call off! Go home and tell your family you’re alright, before they can see what happened on the news and start worrying."

Mu’s tongue went still and dead in her mouth. Help me respond, you traitor muscle, she thought as the silence after Tsemma’s words stretched out into something noticeable. She would very much have liked to lie or deflect somehow, in the same way she imagined an animal might want to hide a wound. She’d met Tsemma less than an hour ago; he didn’t need to know that she had no family, not even memories of one. And yet part of her wanted to admit it. Part of her wanted Tsemma's eyes to crinkle up with concern again at the idea of poor Mu, alone in the world with no chain of family to anchor her. And maybe then whisk her off to his house and pour her tea. He seemed like the sort of man who would not just offer, but insist.

"I think I should get home first," Mu said. Calling it home felt like a lie, but she did need to go there, that much was becoming clear. If I can get back on my own. Exhaustion dragged at her. The thought of walking even as far as back to the railstop made her want to sink to the ground and rest her head on her knees. Mu found herself wishing that she owned a wheelchair.

Tears threatened. Maybe I had this problem before I died, Mu tried to tell herself. This could have nothing to do with whatever happened to me. Nothing at all.

But it was useless. The tears spilled.

"I’m – s-sorry," she said, wiping at her eyes with one hand.

"Oh, no, don’t be!" said Tsemma. He led her back to one of the benches that lined Vaa Surame; Mu tried not to make it too obvious that she was leaning on him some, but had the feeling he noticed anyway. The two of them sank down onto the bench side by side. Then Tsemma pulled something from the folds of his clothing and held it out to her. Mu blinked until her vision cleared enough to see what she was being offered: a small black drinking gourd, painted all over with tiny red and blue flowers.

"Well, I was going to ask you if you wanted a hug, but you don’t seem like the hugging type," Tsemma said in response to her questioning look. "You look like you need a drink even more than I do, though."

Despite the tears still leaking from her eyes, Mu felt the corners of her mouth quirk up into a watery little smile. "What’s inside?" she asked, taking the gourd. It felt completely or almost completely full.

"Laatu," Tsemma said, answering her weak smile with a much fuller, brighter one. Laatu was a fortified rice wine sold in every bar and liquor shop in the Opaline City, and a bit of a gamble, as far as Mu was concerned. Every brewing-house infused its laatu with their own blend of botanicals, resulting in tastes that ranged from syrupy-sweet to harsh and bitter. I could be about to drink something that'll make me gag.

Mu looked at the gourd in her hand a moment longer.

Oh, fuck it, she thought, and drank.

Fortune’s current must have decided to run her way for once. Tsemma’s laatu was light and florally sweet, but with an underlying, almost mossy flavor that Mu couldn’t identify. She thought of lotuses scudding across a still green pond, and decided she liked it enough to swallow. As she swallowed, she tried not to feel for the hitch.

Of course, she felt it anyway.

When Mu had first woken from her coma and found her head newly severed, her first thought had been: how am I still breathing? The doctors had been quick to explain: though physically severed, her head and body functioned as if they were still one. Air moved from the section of trachea in her head to the section in her body as if teleported. Later, as Mu had begun to take in first fluids, then real food, she and the doctors discovered together that any liquids or solids she swallowed did the same. The doctors had been unable to understand how it had happened at all, let alone how it worked, so Mu had given up on understanding, too. All she knew was that she could eat and drink almost as if her head had never been severed at all…except for the hitch.

She noticed it most with hot and cold things, and with alcohol. The heat or cold or liquor-warmth would pour down the section of esophagus in her head and upper neck, then continue down the esophagus in her lower neck and chest before blooming into her stomach. But there was a gap in sensation when what she’d swallowed crossed from head to body, a blink of feeling-nothing so brief that Mu sometimes wondered if it was psychosomatic. What should have been an uninterrupted sense of heat, or cold, or liquor-warmth, had developed a hitch.

If only we knew what had happened to you. A nurse had let that slip out around her once while taking her vitals. Mu still remembered the look in his eyes: a mix of sympathy and a curiosity that bordered on yearning. It had made her shudder then. It made her shudder now.

"Are you alright?" asked Tsemma, for the second time that day. Once again, Mu started at the sound of his voice. The drinking gourd full of laatu sloshed in her hand.

Are you alright? Oh, yeah, perfectly fine – aside from how I died and came back and don’t know how and can’t even swallow without being reminded of it. Perfectly fine, except for how my head is severed from my body now and I just have to live with that like it’s normal. Perfectly fine, except for how I have all these memories and rituals and no idea where they came from – I don’t know who taught me about the venarchy, or how to use the rail system, or that it's good luck to touch water to my forehead, but other than that I'm thriving –

A short, high giggle escaped her. She quickly took another swallow of laatu and tried to ignore the hitch.

"I suppose that’s a bit of a stupid question," Tsemma said.

Cold terror shot through her. How does he know? Mu’s hand tightened around the drinking gourd. Her breathing began to shorten. No one should know – only the people who treated me, and they were sworn to secrecy –

Then she realized. The monster. Immediately Mu felt tired with herself, and very stupid.

"I’m probably as alright as you are," she said. "Just…" That brought her to a halt again. How could she explain her current state to Tsemma without telling him the truth?

Mu settled for as small a portion of it as she could manage.

"I got out of the hospital recently," she said. "I was there for – a while…" Already she could see Tsemma’s eyes crinkling with concern, or maybe this time it was sympathy. Something about that look made it easier to keep pulling the words out. "I probably should have stayed – home, for longer, after getting out," she went on. "Taken more time to recover. But I just couldn’t stand to." Mu rubbed at her eyes with her free hand. Another short laugh escaped her, but quieter, nowhere near as close to hysterical as the last. "Maybe that monster was some kind of fate-sign, huh? Telling me it was too soon to go back to work. Well, message fucking received. You hear that, you dead gods?" She raised Tsemma's drinking gourd skyward in a mock toast. "So don't go killing anyone more on my account." She took a final drink, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and then passed the gourd back to Tsemma.

Tsemma took back the gourd and sipped at the laatu. He seemed to be looking half at Mu, half somewhere else.

"It’s strange, isn’t it?" he said at last. "Monsters are only supposed to appear at the perimeter."

Another thing that rang half-familiar to Mu – though, as always, she couldn’t say how she’d come to know it. She closed her eyes and held the idea in her mind, turned it, trying to see if she could glean any more facets of memory. Where did monsters come from? Her mind presented a hazy idea-image: a city glowing softly against the night, and a sea of darkness lying beyond. Alright. Sure. Good enough. It gave her the gist, anyway.

"Well," said Mu, opening her eyes, "I guess now we know why the Aberrant Guard wasn’t there to stop it, at least." The Aberrant Guard patrolled city perimeters – everyone knew that. Mu had either retained the memory, or else picked it up with all the news she’d watched in the hospital, in her house. "They’re there to keep the monsters out, not hunt down ones that spring up right in the middle of the Opaline City – gods." A sudden thought chilled her. "Do you think it was trying to get to the Corona? All those people…"

"Does it matter anymore?” Tsemma asked. “The Fourth Spear made sure it never happened."

"That’s true." Mu pushed her lips out in thought. "But I’d still feel better if I knew how it happened. The monster appearing, I mean. What if it happens again?"

"Oh, don’t say that," Tsemma said, and gave a pretend shudder. "Just because the gods are dead doesn’t mean they aren’t listening."

"At least I didn’t say it on the Heavenfacing Court," Mu replied. She found herself wanting another drink of laatu, but decided against asking Tsemma for the gourd back. Any more, and the drink might start going to her head. "I was supposed to go there today, you know."

The sentence fell out of her mouth before she could stop it. Tsemma turned his head to look at her, eyes slightly widened.

"That’s right," Mu said, "I was scheduled for execution. But that monster attacked at just the right time, and now I’m free to return to my spree of grisly murders. They call me the Night Stalker of the Opaline City – " Tsemma laughed; Mu let herself laugh with him. That made her feel a little better, even if it didn’t erase her exhaustion. "No," she went on, "I was supposed to start working there today, that's all. Nowhere near the Spears, so don't get your hopes up," she added in response to Tsemma's look of burgeoning excitement. "As a wetware computer tech."

"Well, no matter where you were supposed to work today," said Tsemma, "I still think you should call out."

"Yeah?" said Mu with a crooked smile. "I still look that bad?"

"Yes," said Tsemma. Something about how immediately and plainly he said it made Mu laugh again.

"Alright," she said, "I’ll do it now. Watch me." She slid her cellband from her wrist and unfolded it into keypad mode, then prepared to send a message to the person whose name and face she still didn’t know, but of whom she’d come to think as her handler.

Good afternoon. It’s me.

Behind her, Mu heard Tsemma start a call: "It’s me, love. Thank the gods you picked up!" She heard faint, muffled strains of his husband’s reply; she couldn’t make out any words, but she heard his voice rising in delight and relief.

I apologize for not reporting in today, especially on what was supposed to be my very first day. I had every intention of coming – in fact I was nearly at the Court – but I was caught up in the monster attack on Vaa Surame.

She pressed her lips together and tried not to listen to Tsemma reassuring his husband: "Yes, yes, I’m perfectly fine, I promise, it was nowhere near close enough to touch me…" Hearing the warmth and affection in his voice was strangely painful. It occurred to Mu that she had no idea whether or not she’d been married before she died.

I am even sorrier to say that it may still be some time before I am able to start working. I thought I was ready, but

Mu paused, then deleted a few words.

I am even sorrier to say that it may still be some time before I am able to start working. During the attack, I saw – in addition to the monster itself – someone killed before my eyes, three fresh corpses, and four bodies burned by Fourth Spear Irimias’s wires. The experience has left me quite shaken. I ask for your continued patience and understanding as I recover psychologically.

"Well, yes, dear, I do agree with you, but it really could have been so much worse." Tsemma’s husband said something into the call that made him laugh aloud. "Yes, exactly! But – " Listening to Tsemma and his husband talk over each other made Mu wonder what kind of home they had together. She pictured a warm place full of chatter and laughter. "Anyway," Tsemma went on, with a smile in his voice that Mu could hear, "I made a new friend, so at least something good came out of this whole mess…"

Mu paused in her typing. Friend? She felt a cautious little glow in her chest. Mu realized that, till now, she’d been assuming that Tsemma had only swept her up out of a sense of obligation. The idea that he actually enjoyed her company hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Please inform me if there is any information I must provide in order to corroborate my claim of being present at the attack on Vaa Surame. Again, I offer my sincerest apologies for not reporting in today as planned.

Yours respectfully,
Mu

"I’ll be home soon, I promise," said Tsemma. Then he laughed again. "Well, I can’t promise that! Only if she wants to." His husband said something else. "Soon, yes, soon soon soon. Alright. I love you! I’ll see you later." Tsemma closed his phone, an old palmtop model, and turned to Mu. "My husband wants to invite you back to ours for afternoon tea," he said. "I’d have done that whether he suggested it or not, of course, but it's nice to have him on board, don't you think?"

Something like dismay welled up in Mu. She did want to go, that was the thing. Part of her would have loved to see what kind of home Tsemma had, to meet his husband, to accept his hospitality, to eat and drink with someone who had called her a friend. But she was also afraid. What if he’s not what he seems? What if he doesn’t take you to his house? Or what if he does, but then he doesn’t let you leave? It was stupid. She knew it was stupid. She was almost completely, totally, seven hundred percent positive that it was utterly fucking stupid.

But there was a chance – an infinitesimally small chance – that it wasn’t stupid. That her fears were correct. Tsemma was a stranger to her; a kind stranger, but a stranger all the same. There was no way Mu could be certain of his intent. There was no way for her to know what went on behind the closed doors of a stranger’s home. You could slip something into tea. What if it happened? What if –

"Mu?"

Mu sucked in a short, startled breath, and was painfully aware of how much it sounded like a quiet little scream. She turned and looked at Tsemma, but couldn’t quite manage to raise her eyes to his face.

"I don’t think I should," she mumbled. "I’m sorry. I want to, but…"

Think he still wants you for a friend? a cold little voice whispered in her mind. Now that he has a better idea of how unwell you really are? Now Mu was certain that she was being doubly stupid. Maybe Tsemma had the gift of sensing others’ thoughts, maybe not – but even if he did have that gift, and was using it now, a Tehariel wave monitor would have come snaking down and started orbiting his head. There was none, so he couldn't be. But I bet you still look miserable and scared enough for him to tell –

"I really need to go home," she said in a near-whisper.

"Do you need help getting there?"

Mu risked another look Tsemma’s way. There was nothing on his face but simple concern.

Nothing that you can see, anyway, the cold little voice whispered. She did her best to swat the thought aside. Mu bit the inside of her bottom lip. She wanted to insist that she could get home on her own…but she knew it wasn’t true.

"You’re going to an awful lot of trouble for me," she said.

"We went through some much worse trouble together just a little while ago," said Tsemma. "What’s a little more on top of that? Besides, I’m worried about you."

"Could you stop being so nice to me?" Mu gave a small, wobbly smile even as she swiped her hand across her eyes. "It’s getting kind of hard to take."

"Absolutely not!" said Tsemma, cheerfully. Mu suspected him of being in his element. Like a jungle quail with a chick to raise. "Now tell me where you need to go. The railstop, isn’t it?"

"The railstop," Mu echoed. "Yeah. I don’t think I can get there on my own." Her body still felt achy and leaden, and she sensed that it was only going to get worse.

"Well, then I’ll just have to be your ambulator," Tsemma said. He stood and offered Mu his elbow.

"Heavens," Mu said dryly as she took it and stood, then rested some of her weight against Tsemma’s frame. She still would have preferred a wheelchair, but she had to admit that it was worlds better than trying to get back to the railstop alone. "People are going to think we’re a couple."

Their eyes met for half a heartbeat before the two of them laughed as one.

She ended up lying to Tsemma about where she lived.

It wasn’t that Mu wanted to lie to him; but the closer she and Tsemma drew to the stop that let her off at her house, the more afraid she got to tell him that that was the stop to which her house was closest. She didn’t know why, that was the maddening thing. All she knew was that as the six stops on the route from Vaa Surame back to Vaa Omuri ticked by, she felt like a slug being slowly lowered further and further towards a tray of salt. He could figure out where you live! her brain insisted. He could follow you home! By the third stop, Mu realized that she was feeling the same kind of prelude to panic that she'd felt on her first train ride earlier that morning.

And so rather than submit herself to it again, she’d lied, and told Tsemma that the fifth stop was where she needed to step off the line.

Tsemma had wanted to walk her up to her own doorstep. Mu told him that they were a two-minute walk from her house (a lie), that she wanted to sit and watch the fountain outside the station for a while (not exactly true, but it was nice to look at), and that she’d message him the moment she was safe at home (that, at least, she could make true later). Tsemma, mollified by having gotten Mu’s contact information out of her, departed, but not before making her promise him that they'd meet again for tea as soon as she was feeling up to it.

By the time Mu reached her own house again, she was almost too tired to do up the seven locks on her front door. Her fingers fumbled through the combination of chains, bolts, and print locks; only when she’d done up the last of them did Mu finally let out a long, long breath that felt as if it had been festering inside her chest for hours. She looked at the bent-wood hanging chair with every intention of dragging herself towards it and sitting down, before realizing the chair was no good. It swung. She had to lift herself into it, sit down carefully. It was more than she could manage right now. I should get cushions, Mu thought as she slid down the wall to sit on the bare floor.

Then she undid her necklace.

When Mu unbuckled the wide leather choker, she experienced a brief moment of vertigo as her head tumbled into the softness of her own lap. It felt, as it often did, like a smaller-scale version of throwing her whole body into bed. Microdosing, Mu thought with a tired little glimmer of amusement. She turned her head around in her lap so that it was facing the vision panel, pillowing herself against her thighs and belly.

She should eat something. Probably bathe, too. Probably eat, bathe, and then go to bed, even though it was only early afternoon.

"Panel on," Mu said instead. "Low volume." The vision panel blinked to life and started playing the channel Mu had been watching that morning. The same commentators who had discussed Venarch Orisai’s kissing of Lady Tsieru were now gleefully picking apart Fourth Spear Irimias’s fight against the monster on Vaa Surame.

"Panel off," Mu said dully, and closed her eyes. The voices of the commentators disappeared.

When she opened her eyes again, the light in the room had shifted several feet and grown dimmer. Mu groaned and stole a glance at her cellband. She’d been sitting there for three, maybe four hours. Her body had begun aching in earnest, as if she’d run a full obstacle course instead of taken two train rides and a few short walks.

Tsemma, Mu thought, and might have cursed aloud if her tongue hadn’t felt like a wad of dry cotton. She opened her messages, expecting to see something from him asking if she was alright. To her surprise – and, if Mu was being honest with herself, relief – he hadn’t. Home safe, she messaged him, wishing she had it in her to send more words. Fell asleep when I got there. Sorry for wait. Then she let her cellband slide to the floor. As soon as she did, it vibrated with a message from her handler at the Heavenfacing Court.

Though her body remained leaden, her heart went terribly light and hot in her chest. Mu watched her own hand slowly reach for the cellband as if from behind a pane of glass.

Then her stomach growled.

With her head still pillowed against her lap and belly, it was impossible for Mu not to hear. She was also becoming aware of a filmy saltgrime sensation coating all the skin of her body. Sweat, she realized. Now that she’d noticed it, the smell hit her all at once. She wondered if it was fear sweat from her encounter with the monster, or exhaustion sweat from dragging herself home afterwards. Probably both. And no matter what kind of sweat it is, I shouldn't go to bed covered in it.

The message from her handler and the competing needs of her own body all bore down on her at once. She felt her heartbeat starting to rise. But it was easier, in the locked confines of her own house, to force slow breaths through her body and make herself think.

She wanted to read the message first. That was instinct, though, an urge to zero in on the thing that scared her most. What if you read something that upsets you? When you’re already this exhausted? If that happened, Mu suspected she might end up not eating or bathing at all, and with how low she already felt, she didn’t want to make herself feel even worse. Eating and bathing were – today, at least – non-negotiable. A hot bath would ease the aches in her body and make getting food easier. But Mu was rapidly realizing that she was hungry enough to feel a little light-headed. What if a hot bath made her dizzier, or even pass out?

Food, then. Alone and exhausted, Mu gave up all pretenses of dignity and crawled from her spot on the floor to the refrigerator, pushing her own head before her as she went. She had to pause twice before she got there. Please, please let there be something good in the bottom shelf, Mu thought as she opened the refrigerator door.

The first thing her eyes fell on was a bottle of citrus jelly-seed drink. Mu broke the seal on the bottle and drank half of it in one long swallow, not even pausing to crunch the little jelly globes with their tiny seed centers between her teeth. The drink felt so good going down her parched mouth and throat that she barely even noticed the hitch. Mu took another look inside the refrigerator for something to actually eat; her head already felt a little clearer. She found a half-eaten container of rootmash and another of grub salad, both of which still smelled edible. No silverware, Mu realized, and she didn't have the energy to get up and look for any. Fuck it, she thought, I'm taking a bath after this anyway, and started eating with her hands.

After she’d eaten, and then rested a few more moments, and then licked her hands clean enough not to track (noticeable) food on her floors, Mu crawled her way over to the bathroom. She’d never minded that the house was small – after all, she was the only one living there – but just now, she was actively grateful for it.

She entered the green-and-blue tiled bathroom on her hands and knees, pulled herself up by the rim of the tub, and started it filling. Warm water began to pour out from a series of jets just under the inner lip of the tub. Am I going to want a bath every time I get home from work? I should get…fuck. Bubbles, or something. As the tub filled, Mu busied herself with rinsing off under the shower head, thanking the gods that she already owned a shower stool. While she washed her body, she tried to count back to figure out when she'd last washed her hair. Her last wash day had definitely been more than two weeks ago, but she was so tired…

Whatever, she finally decided, you’ll have all day to wash it tomorrow. Gods know you won’t be going in to work.

By the time Mu had finished washing her body, cleaning her face with a soft cloth, and picking something to watch in the bath, the tub was full. Mu pulled up a captive light panel from her cellband and started her deep-sea ocean life documentary, set her head and cellband on the broad rim of the tub, and finally watched her own body seat itself on the rim before carefully rolling itself into the hot water.

Her hands reached up from the tub and turned her head so that Mu could see the documentary better, then slipped back under. Together, the hot bath and the narrator’s lilting voice didn’t erase Mu’s exhaustion, but they did gentle it. By the time the documentary was over, she actually felt well enough to walk to her bedroom instead of crawl.

Mu’s bedroom was a dark, drawn-curtain cave littered with more empty water glasses and cups than was strictly acceptable. Mu knew she ought to clean those up sooner or later, but just now, all she had eyes for was her bed: unmade, black-sheeted, and the most beautiful thing she’d seen all day. She collapsed into it with a deep sigh. The smell of sleep-soaked linens filled her nose, sweeter than any perfume. But before she could go to sleep, there was the message from her handler to read. Mu took in a breath to prepare herself, pressed her lips together, and popped the message out into reading mode.

Miss Mu,

Thank you for explaining your absence. Rest assured that we do not blame you for it. We are glad to hear that you were not harmed in the incident at Vaa Surame.

Per the terms of our agreement, you have up to one year to assume the role currently being held for you at the Court. To put it another way: you have up to forty-nine weeks (or fifty-six, if one counts the storm season, which we have been instructed to do), and gave yourself less than two. Please do not force yourself to accept the role before you are ready.

We are sorry to learn that the incident caused you psychological distress. Please look after yourself, and do contact us if you need or would like assistance accessing medication, a confessor, or any other psychohealth resources. The Neuroprogramming department anticipates your recovery and looks forward to meeting you in the flesh.

Until we meet,
TU

It was what Mu had expected, rather than what she’d feared (your failure to show is unacceptable, the offer is rescinded, apply for allotment at once). A low breath of relief escaped her, and not only because her fears had been eased. With the message from her handler read and filed away, there was nothing left to stay awake for. She could finally, finally go to sleep.

Then she glanced at her cellband and at last noticed the time. It was barely evenfive. Far too early for bed.

Then again, Mu thought, you already gutted your sleep schedule for today with that nap. And she was so very tired. Even as she debated going to sleep versus staying awake, her eyelids were already lowering.

It always took Mu’s mind longer to shut down than her body. As she waited for sleep to take her, fragments of her handler’s message swirled through her thoughts like bits of windcaught paper. Eventually – as they so often did – those fragments repeated and distorted until they became the words of another letter entirely. A letter that Mu had found waiting for her in the living room of this house that she had not chosen, that someone who wasn't her had decorated and furnished, that she'd never even seen until they day they'd taken her there from the hospital. That letter now lay in Mu's nightstand, but she didn't need to take it out to remember the exact weight and lavender shade of its paper, or its elegantly hand-inked letters, or its lack of signature, or every last word it contained.

Let me start by saying that I am so very sorry for what happened to you.

The doctors say you have no memory of it. This is for the best. Please believe me, for I was there: it is better for you not to know. The one who did it to you is dead. They will never harm anyone again.

I cannot give you back your memories. Even your name was lost. I am sorry. I am so sorry. The only things recoverable from your file were your birthdate and one syllable.

You were born on 49 Nimurei 257.47. You are twenty-four years old. The syllable is Mu, if you want it.

A woman can lose herself in the Opaline City. This house is yours. A job has been found for you, should you want one. Take this opportunity to forge a clean start for yourself, instead of going the rest of your life stained with old blood.

Please live.

Please find a way to be happy.

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