Supper that evening was conducted with the cheerful warmth of a siege.

There were four of them at the long table, though only three were eating, and the fourth, in the opinion of everyone present, was thinking about it. Elena sat at the head, with her back to the wall and a clear view of the stairs. Lloyd sat at her right, where the lamp was brightest. Across from him, at the far end, in the chair that he had placed there with a certain private care, sat the General.

She had changed. She had taken off the wet coat and put on a plain dark tunic, buttoned to the collar, with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow. Her hair had been dried and re-tied in its tight tail. She looked, in the yellow light, less like a drowned thing and more like herself: straight, severe, composed, with her hands laid neatly on either side of her plate and her eyes fixed on a point exactly six inches above the salt cellar.

Nobody had said a word in four minutes.

Lloyd had made a stew. It was a good stew, thick with barley and carrot and the last of the venison Dorrin had brought on Tuesday, and the room was warm and smelled of thyme. He had set out bread, and butter, and a dish of the pickled beets that Hettie had left. It was, by any objective measure, a pleasant supper.

He could not taste any of it.

He was aware of every sound in the room. He was aware of Elena's spoon, scraping the bottom of her bowl. He was aware of the fire, and the rain, and the soft click of the General's knife as she cut a slice of bread into a perfect square. He was aware of the clock on the shelf, which had never before struck him as loud.

Malina ate the way she did everything. She ate with total concentration, with swift, efficient, economical movements, as if the meal were a position to be taken and held. She did not speak. She did not look up. She finished her stew in four minutes, and laid down her spoon, and wiped her mouth with the corner of her napkin, and sat very straight, with her hands in her lap, looking at the empty bowl.

Then she looked at his.

It was a brief glance, a flicker, no more than a second long. But he saw it. He saw her eyes go to his bowl, and take in the stew, still nearly full, cold at the edges, with the spoon lying beside it, and he saw something in her face go very still.

She did not say anything.

She reached out. She took the dish of bread, with its neat golden slices, and slid it across the table. It stopped, with a small clack, against the rim of his bowl.

"Eat," said Malina.

It was not an order. It was too quiet. It came out in a low, rough, stiff little voice, with her eyes fixed firmly on the salt cellar, as though the word had cost her something to produce and she wished to be seen not to have said it.

Lloyd looked at the bread.

He remembered a line of text. It had sat in the middle of a page, between a threat of military retrieval and a reminder about dental coverage, in ink a shade darker than its neighbors.

Are you eating properly?

"Thank you, General," he said.

"It is a matter of efficiency." She still did not look at him. "A malnourished operator is a liability."

"Of course."

"I merely wish to protect my investment."

"I understand."

"Do not," said Malina, in a faintly strangled voice, "read anything into it."

"I wouldn't dream of it," said Lloyd, and picked up the bread, and ate.

Across the table, Elena had put down her spoon. She was looking at the ceiling with the expression of a woman who is determined to remain a model of discretion, and is finding the effort considerable.

---

It was a quarter past eight when the trunk began to knock.

It was a soft sound, at first. It came from the hall, from the direction of the front door, where he had left the General's luggage on the mat beside the basket: a small, polite, rhythmic tapping, like the knock of a very shy visitor. Tap. Tap tap. Tap.

Everyone at the table stopped.

Malina's spoon, which she had been holding in the air for some seconds, had gone quite still. Her face did not change. But a faint tinge of color had begun to climb her neck, and the muscles of her jaw had set like iron.

"What," said Elena, "is that?"

"A settling of the timbers," said Malina.

Tap. Tap tap. Tap.

"It is coming from the trunk."

"It is a draft."

"It is a very rhythmic draft."

"Do not," said Malina, "concern yourself."

Tap.

Lloyd had risen to his feet. He did not remember doing so. He was standing at the end of the table with his napkin in one hand, and he was looking at the dark doorway to the hall, and a faint cold prickle had begun at the nape of his neck. It was not fear. It was something quite different, something old and strange and half-remembered, like the sensation of passing a familiar house in a dream.

There was a very particular quality to that tapping.

It was patient. It was steady. It had the rhythm of something that was not trying to get out, but only trying to be noticed, and that had been trying to be noticed for a very long time.

"General," he said, slowly. "What is in the trunk?"

"Luggage."

"What else?"

"Operator Vane..."

The latch clicked.

It was a small sound, a neat, mechanical, unhurried click, and it came from the hall. There was a creak. A soft thud. A long, slow, whispering slide, like cloth being drawn over wood. And then, out of the dark of the doorway, at about the height of a man's waist, something began to float into the light.

---

It was small.

That was the first thing. It was about the length of his forearm, slim and compact, and it came drifting into the lamplight at an unhurried pace, a few inches above the floor, like a leaf carried on a very slow current. It was the pale, translucent blue of ice on a winter morning. It had a head, and a body, and two slender arms, and a pair of long trailing ribbons of light that streamed out behind it like a comet's tail, and it was so clear that he could see the grain of the table through its legs.

In the middle of its chest, at the place where a heart might have been, a round sphere of pale gold light was spinning. It pulsed. It brightened, and dimmed, and brightened, in a steady, slow, familiar rhythm.

Lloyd knew that rhythm.

He had known it for six years. He had felt it every day, under his palm, at the center of a vast black chamber, in the heart of a lattice of iron. He knew it the way he knew the beat of his own pulse. It was the soft, warm, rippling pulse of a Core, shrunk down to the size of a walnut, and caught inside a small, perfectly formed, perfectly expressionless face.

The face turned toward him.

It was a smooth face. It had a small, neat nose, and two round eyes the color of lamplight, and a mouth like a line drawn with a ruler. It did not smile. It did not frown. It looked at him with an absolute, unwavering, perfectly flat attention, like a gauge being read.

"Operator detected," said the creature.

Its voice was small and clear and perfectly even, with no more feeling in it than a bell.

"Frequency match: ninety-nine point seven percent."

Nobody spoke.

It floated forward. It crossed the room, past the table, past the fire, past Elena, who had half risen from her chair with her hand on her hilt and her mouth slightly open. It did not hurry. It came straight to Lloyd, and stopped in front of him, level with his chest, and tilted its head very slightly to one side.

"Hello," said Lloyd, faintly.

The creature put out one slender blue arm.

It took hold of his wrist.

It did so without any particular ceremony. It simply wrapped its small cool fingers around the bones, and then its other arm, and then, with a faint sense of settling, its whole body, until it was clinging to his forearm like a very small, very determined barnacle. The golden light in its chest pulsed against his pulse. They beat together. After a moment, they began to beat in step.

"Operator," said the creature, with deep and peaceful satisfaction. "Acquired."

---

Lloyd did not say anything.

He did not know what to say. He stood in the middle of the room with a small blue spirit wrapped around his arm and a napkin in the other hand, and the whole world seemed to have gone very quiet and slow. He could feel the warmth of it through his sleeve. He could feel the pulse. It beat against his skin with a steady, tender, impossible regularity, and he found that his eyes had begun to sting.

"Pico," he said.

It was a guess. It came out of him from a long way down. It was a name that had been in the manual, on a page near the back, in a section he had written in his third year and never expected to use: Core Spirit, Designation Pico. It was supposed to be a theoretical construct. It was supposed to be a bit of institutional folklore, the sort of thing that operators told one another at midnight, that every Core had a heart, and every heart had a name.

"Affirmative," said the creature.

"You're real."

"This unit has been operational for nine hundred and four years."

"I thought you were a myth."

"This unit is aware," said Pico, with great dignity. "It is a common error."

Elena made a small sound, somewhere between a cough and a gasp. She had sat down again, very slowly, with her eyes huge and her sword forgotten in her lap.

"It is a... a small ghost?" she said.

"Negative," said Pico, without turning its head. "This unit is a Core Interface Entity, Class Four. Designation: Pico. Function: dungeon maintenance, mana regulation, structural advisory." It paused. "This unit is currently experiencing a mild elevation in comfort."

"It is very small," said Elena.

"This unit is scaled for portability."

Lloyd had sat down. He did not remember choosing to. He found himself in his chair, with his arm held very carefully out in front of him, and the small cool weight of Pico clinging to it, and he looked up, over the lamp, across the table.

Malina was sitting perfectly still.

She had not moved since the trunk opened. Her hands were folded on the table in front of her, rigid, white at the knuckles. Her face was a mask. But a slow, deep, dark red had spread across her cheekbones, all the way to her ears, and she was looking at the opposite wall as though she wished very much that it would fall down.

"General," said Lloyd.

"It stowed away," said Malina.

"I'm sorry?"

"It was not authorized. It was not my intention. It concealed itself in the luggage without my knowledge, and I discovered it only upon arrival, and in the course of the journey I was unable to..." She stopped. She cleared her throat, with a small, hard, abrupt sound. "It is an irregularity."

"I see," said Lloyd.

"I intend to return it."

"Of course."

"It will be restored to its proper position at the earliest opportunity."

"Naturally."

"It is a clerical matter," said Malina, with her eyes still on the wall. "I do not wish it to be discussed."

---

He did not discuss it.

He did not say a word. But later, when the dishes had been cleared, and Elena had gone out to see to the horse, and Malina had retreated to the far end of the room with a stiff, expressionless air and a cup of tea she was not drinking, he sat at the table with Pico on his arm and went, quietly, through the contents of the trunk.

It was only a glance. He had not meant to pry. But Pico had drifted down to the floor, and was walking in slow, thoughtful circles round the black wooden box, and he had followed it, and bent, and looked in.

The trunk was lined with wool.

It was thick gray wool, folded in layers, packed round the sides and corners with a careful, tight, deliberate neatness, as one might pack a crate of fine glass. There was a hollow in the center, the shape of a small curled body. It had been padded with a folded scarf. The scarf was black silk, and edged in gold thread, and it was the one he had seen at her throat, once, years ago, on the night of the Winter Review.

Tucked into the corner, under the lid, was a slip of paper.

He picked it up.

It was in her hand: sharp, slanting, small, in black ink. It was a list. It was headed FEEDING SCHEDULE, in capitals, with a double underline, and under the heading, in careful numbered lines, was an hour-by-hour record of the care of a small spirit.

0600: ambient mana, 2 units. Do not exceed. 1200: ambient mana, 2 units. Provide in low light. 1800: ambient mana, 1 unit. It prefers it warm. 2100: do not disturb. It dims at night. This is NORMAL. Do not be alarmed.

At the bottom, in smaller letters, written and then very faintly crossed out and written again:

It will not eat if it is lonely. I do not know how to make it not lonely. I am sorry.

He did not breathe for a moment.

He stood in the dim hall, with the paper in his hand, and read the last line again. It was a perfectly practical note. It was written in her ordinary handwriting. It had no flourish and no ornament, and it did not ask for anything. It was simply a fact, set down in a column, by a commanding officer who had prepared for every contingency except one.

I am sorry.

He folded the paper. He put it back in the corner of the trunk, exactly where he had found it, and closed the lid without a sound.

She had not stowed it away.

She had packed it. She had lined a box with wool. She had written out a schedule, in her own hand, at some hour of the night, and she had carried it, with all that care, four hundred miles in the rain, to a door where it would be taken from her.

And she had pretended otherwise.

He stayed there for a while, in the dark, with one hand on the lid, and the small warm weight of Pico clinging to his arm. Then he went back into the lamplit room, where she was standing by the window with her back to the fire and her shoulders squared against the whole world, and he did not say a word.

---

It was Pico who told him.

It did so at half past nine, in the quiet of the empty front room, in a clear small level voice, without being asked. Elena had gone up. The fire had burned low. The General had retired to the third room with a curt good night, and the whole house had settled around them in the dark, with the soft ticking sounds of an old wooden building cooling after a storm.

Pico was sitting on the counter.

It had detached itself, at last, from his arm, and had settled on the polished wood beside the lamp, with its legs dangling, and its ribbons of light curled around it. It looked at him with its round flat eyes. The golden sphere in its chest turned, slowly, in the half dark.

"Status report," said Pico.

"I'm sorry?"

"This unit has a status report. It is overdue. It was due on the nineteenth." The little voice had no inflection whatsoever. "Core frequency has declined by thirty-one percent since the Operator's departure. Harmonic stability is non-existent. Dashboard indicator remains red across all eighty floors. Circulation is currently at ninety-eight point four percent of rated capacity."

Lloyd had gone very still.

"This is an unsafe level," said Pico.

"Yes."

"The recommended ceiling is seventy percent. The hard limit is eighty-two."

"Yes. I know."

"The new Director of Output has disabled the automatic safeties." It said this in precisely the same tone it had used for everything else. "He has also removed this unit's access to the circulation controls. This unit has filed fourteen formal objections. All have been ignored."

"Pico..."

"This unit was told," said Pico, "that it was malfunctioning."

There was a pause.

The fire ticked. A log shifted, and sent up a little shower of sparks. The golden light in the small chest pulsed, steady and quiet, in the dark.

"This unit is not malfunctioning," said Pico. "This unit is distressed."

He felt it go through him like a cold blade.

It was a very quiet voice. It did not rise. It did not tremble. It was the flat, level, unembellished voice of a thing that had been made to speak in numbers, and had no other words. And yet it carried in it, under the surface, so faint that a person who had not spent six years listening to that pulse might have missed it, a thin, high, bright note of fear.

He put out his hand.

He did not know what he meant to do. He laid his fingers, gently, on the top of the small blue head, and it was cool and smooth as glass, and warm underneath, like the surface of a stone that has been in the sun. Pico did not move. The golden sphere in its chest brightened, in a long, slow, rippling swell, and for a moment the whole room was filled with soft light.

"It's all right," said Lloyd.

His voice sounded strange in his own ears.

"It's not all right," said Pico.

"No."

"This unit is aware."

"I know." He swallowed. "I know it's not."

He felt something, in his chest, shift and slip. It was the old cold weight, the stone that had sat there for seven weeks, and he felt the first thin edge of it begin, very slightly, to give. He said nothing else. There was nothing else to say. He sat there in the dark with his hand on a small cool head, and listened to the pulse, and did not let himself think the number.

Behind him, in the shadow of the stair, a floorboard creaked.

He did not turn.

---

In the morning, he found the shelves had been dusted.

He had come down at five, as he always did, in the gray half-light. The fire was out. The room was cold. And everywhere, on every surface, there was a faint clean shine, like the shine on a newly washed window. The tables had been wiped. The chairs had been squared. Every cup on every shelf had been set in a precise row, handles turned, to within a hair's breadth.

On the counter, in the center of a spotless square of polished wood, sat Pico, with a tiny cloth in one hand.

"Good morning, Operator," it said.

"What have you done?"

"This unit has optimized Floor One."

"It's a... Pico, it's a front room."

"It is Floor One of the facility." The small face did not change. "It was found to be non-optimal. Dust accumulation exceeded threshold by eleven percent. Cup spacing was uneven. Shelf angle deviated from level by two degrees. This unit has corrected all deficiencies."

Lloyd looked around.

It was true. The shelf, which had sagged for weeks, was perfectly flat. The loose floorboard by the door had been tapped back into place. The wick of every lamp had been trimmed to the same length. In the grate, the cold ash had been swept into a neat gray heap, and the poker had been polished until it shone.

"This is extraordinary," said Lloyd.

"This unit is operating at forty percent of nominal capacity."

"You did all this by yourself?"

"Affirmative. It required four hours and twelve minutes." It paused. "It was satisfying."

"I'm glad."

"This unit has not previously experienced satisfaction." The golden light in its chest brightened, very slightly. "It is a pleasant sensation. This unit wishes to continue."

He sat down on a stool. He found that he was smiling, helplessly, with his hand over his mouth.

"Thank you," he said. "It's wonderful. Thank you, Pico."

"This unit..." It stopped. It tilted its head, with an air of faint puzzlement. "This unit does not have a response protocol for that phrase."

"You say 'you're welcome.'"

"You're welcome," said Pico, experimentally.

"There."

"It is a strange phrase."

"You'll get used to it."

"Operator," said Pico. The round eyes had turned toward the stairs, and the little voice was lower than before. "This unit observes that the General has been standing at the head of the stair for six minutes."

He turned.

She was standing there, in the gray light, in her shirtsleeves, with one hand on the rail. She did not move. She had come down so quietly that he had not heard her, and she must have been there, motionless, for the whole of the exchange. She was looking at the front room.

At the shining shelves. At the polished poker. At the little blue figure on the counter, with its cloth, and its flat round gold-lit eyes.

She did not look angry. She did not look anything. Her face had gone perfectly smooth, in that way it had, as of a lake with a wind going over it. But her free hand, the one on the banister, had closed so tight that the knuckles stood out like ivory, and her throat moved once, very slightly, as she swallowed.

He understood, quite suddenly.

Nine hundred and four years.

For nine hundred and four years, that small blue thing had been the heart of the Abyss. It had lived in a lattice of iron at the bottom of a mountain. It had been fed, and cared for, and ordered about, and used. It had filed fourteen formal objections to a man who did not listen. And in all that time, in all those long dark years, it had never once, in the whole of its existence, gotten up in the night and cleaned a stranger's shelf, for no reason, because it wished to.

She had commanded its halls for thirty years.

She had never once seen it do anything because it wanted to.

"General," said Lloyd, gently.

"I will make coffee," said Malina.

Her voice was perfectly steady. She came down the last three steps with her chin up and her eyes fixed on the kitchen door. She did not look at Pico. She walked past the counter with her back as straight as a spear.

But at the kitchen door, she paused.

She did not turn her head. She stood there with one hand on the frame, in the cold gray light, and spoke, very low, to the empty air.

"It is good at that," she said. "It was always good at that."

She went in, and the door swung shut behind her.

---

He brought the tea that night, because he could not think what else to do.

It was past eleven. The house was dark. Every other door in the corridor was shut, and the whole upper floor was filled with the soft deep breathing of an old wooden building asleep. He carried the cup in both hands, with a folded blanket under his arm, and stopped at the door of the third room, and stood there for a very long time.

He had meant only to leave it.

He had meant to set it down on the floor, and tap once on the wood, and go. It was simple. It was a courtesy. It was the kind of thing an innkeeper did. A warm drink, a spare blanket, left outside a guest's door at the end of a long day.

He tapped.

The door opened almost at once.

She had not been asleep. She was standing in the doorway in a long white nightshirt, with her hair loose over her shoulders, hanging in a thick dark fall to her waist, and for a moment he forgot what he was going to say. She was holding a candle. In its small gold light, her face looked younger, and softer, and much more tired, and her horns gleamed faintly, like wet obsidian.

"Operator Vane," she said.

"General. I brought... it's chamomile. It's not very good. Elena made the last batch and I'm afraid it set a standard." He held out the cup. "I thought you might want a blanket."

She looked at the cup.

She took it. She held it in both hands, with her fingers closed round the china, and she did not drink. She stood there in the doorway with her eyes lowered, looking down into the pale steaming liquid, and he saw her thumb move once, slowly, along the rim.

"Why are you still awake?" she said.

"It's a habit."

"I see."

"I haven't been sleeping well." It was out before he could stop it. "It's the... I've been up late for years. It's hard to break."

"Yes," said Malina.

She did not look up.

"Mine as well," she said.

It was such a small thing. It was said so quietly that he almost missed it. It was just three words, offered to the surface of a cup of tea, in a voice so low and so rough that it seemed to have been drawn up from a very long way down. But he heard it. He heard it as clearly as if it had been struck on a bell.

Neither of them spoke.

It was two seconds. It might have been three. The candle flame leaned and steadied. A drop of wax ran down the stick and hardened on her knuckle. He was standing a yard from her, in the dark corridor, with a blanket under his arm, and he could see the pulse beating in her throat. He could see each separate eyelash, black against the shadow beneath her eyes. He could smell the faint smoky sweetness of the lavender in her room. And in the whole of the world, there was nothing but the sound of the two of them not breathing.

It was the longest silence of his life.

"Good night, General," said Lloyd.

"Good night."

He put the blanket into her hands. He turned. He went down the corridor, slowly, with his hands at his sides, and behind him he heard the door close, very gently, with a small decisive click.

---

Pico was waiting at the head of the stairs.

It floated in the dark, a small blue glimmer, with its ribbons trailing and its eyes like two round lamps. It had been there, he realized, the whole time. It had followed him up the stairs. It had watched.

"Operator," said Pico.

"Yes?"

"Your heart rate is elevated."

"It's the stairs."

"Negative. You have descended the stairs. You ascended them seven minutes ago." The voice was level, and perfectly polite. "Your pulse is currently one hundred and four beats per minute. The resting rate for a man of your age and fitness is sixty-eight."

"I think I have a fever."

"Negative."

"I may be coming down with something."

"Your temperature is thirty-six point eight degrees," said Pico. "This unit has scanned you. You are in excellent health."

Lloyd opened his mouth.

He closed it.

"Go to bed, Pico," he said.

"This unit does not require sleep."

"Then go and optimize something."

"Affirmative." The little figure drifted upward, glowing, toward the ceiling, and hovered there for a moment, turning slowly. "Operator."

"What?"

"This unit has a hypothesis."

"I don't want to hear it."

"It will be recorded," said Pico, "for future reference," and was gone, in a soft rush of light, down the dark stairs, leaving only the faint warm shimmer of its ribbons in the air, and a very long, very quiet silence, in which Lloyd stood in the dark corridor with his hand pressed flat against his chest, and counted.