“Names root you to an identity, but a title transcends even yourself, for your title is the treasure and product of decades, and sometimes centuries. I have cast aside my person and my very soul to devote the entirety of my being to this position, and I will not let it go so long as I live.”

  —Excerpt from the Surgeon Elder of Kaskit’s inauguration speech. 122 AB.

  June-Leckie listens to the passing alcazar elites, counting their footsteps, inferring from this their level of expertise, prowess in the martial arts, balance, and most importantly, numbers. As the night drags on, their pacing softens until she has to rely on her instincts, her measure of a man’s presence, to detect how many guards wait outside the door to the incubation vats. Her instincts have never failed her. Well, once.

  The passage is underneath the Second Signature’s alcazar, far from the war room, the dining hall, and most areas frequented by the military. The path comes to her straight from memory of nights spent skulking it, moving only meters an hour to avoid detection. Today, she played herself off as some lost incubator most of the way but had to crawl through escape passages built for that little girl—her private tunnels snaking through the alcazar. June memorized those paths, too.

  Standing in front of the double doors that lead to the vat chambers, still in the same place as before, she sighs a breath of relief just to be here again.

  “Would you like to go inside?” The girl had followed June, after all. She closes a passage hatch behind her while the female Entrusted stomps down the hall to meet her. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

  “Nothing about you can surprise me anymore.”

  The girl puffs her bottom lip and nods. “Be my guest then.”

  June tries turning the rotator locks, larger and more nuanced versions you’d find on transit gondola bed cell doors. “Combination?”

  “It hasn’t changed.”

  June frowns, clicks the locks the same way she had two—no, seven—years ago, and pulls the giant door aside.

  Darkness greets her. The space could match the size of the Rumblehood’s troop and cargo hold, a long room three stories tall with railings along the perimeter and platform bridges connecting them. June finds the master switch, the one she always avoided touching out of detection, as she pulled the incubators out before. She flicks it now, igniting every gas lamp in the cavernous space.

  She stares, searching. “Where are they?”

  “They are in their quarters.” The girl strides up next to June, the Entrusted taking the opposite side.

  The room is empty, the rows of incubation vats lining the walls now replaced by holes where they had once been. Severed tubes and rusted panels sit next to each of the holes. June strides up to the closest one, runs her finger along it, and finds dust. “You moved them.”

  The girl sighs. “You know, you left an impression when you took my girls. Not everyone thought the practice was… ethical.”

  Who would ever have agreed with this woman? This concession, the presence of opposing views to the Second Signature’s immoral practices, seems to hint at Tale Jethry. Perhaps the man’s influence has extended deeper into the alcazar than he realizes.

  “‘Vats’ is a colloquial term,” the girl continues, “something not so easy to shake, though I’d love them to. We chain our women to quarters now, though ‘chain’ is also an exaggeration. Grudges persist, I guess.”

  June is an expert at grudges, or so she thought. Seeing the vat chamber empty, devoid of the disgusting slavery this girl put those women through, it’s as if June is staring at the product of a lofty goal she, too, once had. Now, before her, she can hardly speak.

  “You can go to them if you like,” says the Second Signature.

  June isn’t sure who she’s referring to: the incubators or the girls June left at Hyrnlak? Two years at the archipelago she can recall, roughly, and five years just gone. Her entire goal was to give them a life beyond this place, and she left them to die.

  “They’re all coming for you,” June says instead, the words spilling out but not revealing anything.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The girl frowns. “The city? Of course.” She looks up to June. “You want to go, don’t you?”

  The boldness of the question hurls June into a double take. She hoped to save some incubators and may still be able to, but with the women now free to roam their quarters and the grounds, she questions how much help she would be. “I could use a walk around.”

  “Don’t act stupid. You want to leave the alcazar entirely.” The girl steps forward, looking up to one of the higher platforms, her Entrusted, never taking its eyes off the two. “You have contacts in the city? A safe place to be?”

  “Are you my mother?”

  “In a way, I am everyone’s mother. What does that title even mean anymore?” The girl places both hands on her waist and balances on her heels. “There haven’t been mothers in Kaskit for a century, only guardians. Maybe we will return to the family system once we stabilize, but as of now, no, I am not your mother. You don’t have a mother. No one does.”

  June had never met her incubator mother but imagines her now as brave, built like an Ox-infused man without the strand’s help, much like Alcina, only with June’s hair. Never mind that she was floating in a vat all that time, spitting out children. “Is she still here?”

  The girl seems to understand who June is referring to. “Of course. I can take you to her.”

  Hells. Meeting her incubator—her mother? “Do it.”

  “Not yet,” says the girl, folding her arms in an attempt at authority. “Before that, did you notice anything strange about… certain people you’ve encountered in my alcazar?”

  What does this have to do with anything? “Everyone here is a little messed up. Why are you being cryptic?”

  “To test your deduction skills. It must be important for a Thurmgeist. Sharp of mind, sharp of blade, right?”

  “That is a romantic sentiment. A sharp mind is one with honed reflexes and courage, not analytics.”

  “You’re not an idiot, then, are you?” The girl laughs. “Indulge me, please, before I let you meet your incubator. Then, you can go.”

  June wonders if the Second Signature ever roamed Kaskit’s streets unsupervised. She returns to the original question. “Cackles is a little messed up in the head.”

  “That’s a given. He’s the most cunning general I’ve ever employed. He only hides it.”

  “And that Genebrict Stalt fellow, the brother of the Fleet Admiral. He’s bitten off a little more raw ground than anyone should chew.”

  “Of course, but no. Think deeper. What are your instincts telling you? Lean on your training.”

  “Training” is a generous term—June had raised the Thurmgeists in Kaskit’s streets once abducting them, taking them through basic exercises but mostly staying in the shadows, long enough until the next transport gondola pulled in heading for Hyrnlak. She had done that for months before leaving herself.

  June searches her instinctual playground, that world of senses and responses, emotions too, but also reflexes of the mind, certainties and uncertainties, and confidence. She remembers every conversation she had participated in or witnessed in the alcazar. She winds through that place and discovers…nothing save for a little girl who holds too much responsibility. “It is just your paranoia. I don’t envy you.”

  The Second Signature nods slowly, lets loose a frustrated sigh, and searches the room as if the answers are written on the walls. “Many things are hidden from me, June. I don’t like it.”

  Just like you hide things from us.

  “Ever since the first Kaskitian riot,” the girl continues, “things have been off. That was five years ago, give or take. My grasp on this city is faltering.”

  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the riot coincides with the chunk of memories the strand took from her. “Do you ever think you did this to yourself?” June asks. “That you brought on their hate?”

  The girl’s nod is almost imperceptible. “Most certainly, I built this corner myself, but I must hide in it regardless.”

  This is the humiliation you’d never admit in front of a crowd. “Why not do something, then? Fight back?”

  “Against who?”

  Against Tale Jethry and the men you don’t see. Against the dagger that will sink its blade in deep, anyway. The little girl is doomed, and she suspects it. That foresight isn’t going to soften the pain.

  “The Thurmgeist is right,” says Sixt, the Entrusted. “Eventually, we will have to do something.” The beetle folds her mandibles.

  The girl, however, does not seem so sure. She turns up to June. “You really can’t remember anything of those five years?”

  “I would have told you.” In all likelihood, June probably wouldn’t have, but the Second Signature doesn’t need to know that.

  The girl ponders in a way no child should ever. You fear secrets, and yet you roll around in them. Then, she gazes at June, the pleas of a child written deep in her eyes. “If you go, you should find out what happened in that time because it won’t just help you, it will help both of us.”

  Whatever that means, June doesn’t much care for it. “I plan to.”

  “Nothing I can say will deter you.” It’s not a question, just an admission from a small, frail creature. Yet, an instant later, the Second Signature straightens her back, scanning June as if seeing her cells. “She’s here.”

  “Who’s here?” June forgot she had been waiting.

  The three lifeforms in the once-crowded vat chamber turn to find an aged woman striding down the hall. June first notices her gait—or, more accurately, her stride. She carries her age on her shoulders and doesn’t falter. She wears not the loose dress of the incubators at the Debut but a brown robe, without frills or decoration or any designs whatsoever. Her arm muscles are ropy, her jawline broad, and June could be convinced that it reflects herself walking decades in the future.

  “High Matron Cobriline,” the Second Signature introduces them. “Your daughter, June-Leckie.”

  The woman smirks, and she notices June can’t speak. She takes June’s head in her aged hands and looks straight into the Thurmgeist’s eyes. “You can still change things here,” she says to her.

  And that is all June needs to hear.