“God, she’d be a terror,” jokes Palamedes, feeling an unexpected pang even as he speaks. The Sixth aren’t family-oriented people, and he tends to think of Zeta as a colleague much more often than he thinks of her as his mother, and yet some part of him he didn’t quite know existed wishes to see her again.

He wonders who told her that he was dead.

It’s a thought he shakes away as quickly as it comes; he can’t do anything about any of that.

The matter of growing collections and limited storage is one Palamedes is very familiar with, and he nods eagerly as Darlington expounds. “Of course. Did you have to build underground?"