Harrow colors faintly--at the praise, such as it is, and the unspoken complexity between her and Gideon that she knows both the Sixth are aware of and yet have the decency not to point out in so many words. "We are," she says, more quietly than she ought, but it's all she can manage for the moment.

Palamedes fixes her with another piercing look, curious and dissecting all at once. It takes work not to think of it as a threat, and as always Harrow only half succeeds. The question, when it comes, is one she knows she'd been anticipating; one that's been on her own mind, in every excruciating detail, ever since she and Gideon had been jarred awake by the sword and all that had come with it. "I have," she says, and her voice is grim. "Among all else, it means there was always another way."