away from each other like they had been caught doing something embarrassing.
“Sorry, I can come back,” Sloane said. She felt like she had interrupted something.
“No, stay,” Ziva said. “I was just telling him about a conversation you and I had.”
Over time, Sloane was sure, she would be able to tease out each thread of the knot of the past few days, but it was too soon for that. After taking the benzo, she had fallen into a heavy sleep on Ines’s couch, then woken up, borrowed clean clothes, and, with Ines’s help, hot-wired a car to drive across the city, but that was all she had managed so far.
What she had gathered, however, from conversations in front of the bodega down the street from Ines’s place, was that no one had internet, cell service, or electricity. People in the Earth sections of the city had begun to poke their heads into the Genetrix parts out of curiosity and desperation, since the Genetrixae people had fared better in the wake of the disaster because their siphons were still functioning. But then the shopkeeper started ranting about sorcery, so that was the most she had learned about the state of the world around her.
“A conversation we had,” Sloane repeated.
“About whether I was glad to be alive again,” Ziva said. She worked her jaw up and down for a few seconds until it clicked. Sloane watched her tongue move behind her exposed teeth and wondered how, in just a few days, her disgust for Ziva’s rotting body had all but disappeared.
“Ah,” Sloane said.
“Z and I decided it’s time for her to go,” Mox said. He was staring at the table.
“Oh?” Sloane said. She didn’t seem to be capable of speaking more than one syllable at a time.
Ziva nodded. “Nero is dead, which means the consul is out of danger and no longer needs us. I’ve spoken to the others, and they agree.”
“I’ll always need you,” Mox said fiercely. “All of you.”
“Mox,” Ziva said, with as much gentleness as Sloane had ever heard in her rough, dry voice. She had also never heard Ziva use Mox’s name. He was always “Consul” or “Sir.”
Mox looked up at Ziva. She covered his hand with hers again. “You’ll miss us,” Ziva said. “Want us. But that’s something else entirely.”
Mox didn’t respond, which was as good as agreement.
“Let’s do this now, while Sloane is here,” Ziva said, getting to her feet. “That way, I won’t worry about you as much.”
“Now?” Mox choked a little on the word.
“There is never a good time,” Ziva said. “To let go, or to rest.”
Ziva gave Sloane a crooked smile. Sloane returned it.
Together, they went to the main room where the rest of the army waited. When Mox entered, they all started clambering to their feet, some with more ease than others. The ones that were able-bodied helped the others up or held detached limbs the way a husband might hold his wife’s purse.
Sloane would have had a hard time imagining Mox making a speech, and he didn’t surprise her. He wandered through the ranks of the soldiers, greeting them by name, speaking quietly into their ears, putting his arms around them. As he made his way through the crowd, Sloane wondered if he would be able to do it, if the depth of his desire for friends would guide his magic away from it.
Sloane sat against the door frame and watched. The soldiers who had already said goodbye to Mox began saying goodbye to each other. Two of the women closest to Sloane laughed about an old joke, raspy, choking laughs that sounded like dying. One of the men sat down with his back against the wall and his severed foot in his lap, his hand tenderly wrapped around the ankle.
At last, Mox came to Ziva, who stood with her head high so her braid brushed the middle of her hunched spine. The sun was pale against her face, and bright, so it temporarily bleached away the green tint to her skin. Sloane tried to imagine what Ziva had looked like when she was alive, her cheeks full and pink, her shoulders broad, her eyes gleaming.
Mox held Ziva tightly, almost lifting her off the ground. Ziva’s skeletal hand cradled the back of Mox’s head as he spoke softly to her, too quietly for Sloane to hear, not that she was trying. All around them, the soldiers had gone quiet, sitting on the floor again in their small groups, around their decks of