“Ratio Tile never told you,” pants Reaching the West Reaches, “what happened to your father.”

“He told me enough!” Her voice is like skin tearing over wounds never permitted to bleed: the old man’s clever kindness and children’s stories, the way he found her drydocked ship on that filthy desert island and prodded her into sailing again. The way he fell in that bloody mess of robes, and the way she scraped their little fellowship together around herself. The way she never got to tell him that she knew.

“You killed him!” screams Dog Shouting.

“No,” says Reaching the West Reaches.