"Righto," he says with a shrug. "I'll walk with you, then, since your head is full of rocks." He chuckles. "We Lambdas do love the noose." He tosses me his flask and I fall into tentative step beside him. "I tried to talk your father out of his little protest, you know. Told him words and dance mean as much as dust. Tried squaring up with him. I squabbed that one up. He laid me down cold." He throws a slow right. "Comes a time in life when you know a man has his mind set and it's an insult to gainsay." I drink from his flask and hand it back. The swill tastes strange and thicker than usual. Strange. He makes me finish the flask. "Your's set?" he asks, tapping his head. "Course it is. I forget, I taught you how to dance." "Stubborn as a pitviper, wasn't that how you put it?" I say quietly, allowing a little smile. I walk in silence for a moment with my uncle. He puts a hand on my shoulder. A sob wants to come out of my chest. I swallow it. "She left me," I whisper. "Just left me." "Musta had a reason. Not a dumb girl, that one." The tears come as I enter the Common. My uncle takes me in a one-armed hug and kisses the crown of my head. It's all he can offer. He's not a man made for affection. His face is pale and ghostly. Thirty-five and so old, so tired. A scar twists his upper lip. Gray streaks his thick hair. "Tell them hello for me in the vale," he says into my ear, his beard coarse against my neck. "Give my brothers a toast and my wife a kiss, specially Dancer." "Dancer?" "You'll know him. And if you see your gramp and gran, tell them we still dance for them. They won't be long alone." He walks away, then pauses and without turning says, "Break the chains. Hear?" "Hear." He leaves me there in the Common with my swaying wife. I know the cameras watch me from the can as I walk up the gallows. It is metal, so the stairs don't creak. She hangs like a doll. Her face is pale as chalk and her hair shifts slightly as the ventilators rasp above. When the rope has been cut with the slingBlade I stole from the mines, I grab its frayed end and lower her down gently. I take my wife in my arms and together wend our way from the square to the Webbery. A nightshift is working their final hours. The women watch in silence as I carry Eo to the ventilation duct. There I see Leanna, my sister. Tall and quiet like my mother, she watches me with hard eyes, but she does nothing. None of the women do. They will not gossip about where my wife is buried. They will not speak, not even for the chocolate given to spies. Only five souls have been buried in three generations—someone always hangs for it. This is the ultimate act of love. Eo's silent requiem. Women begin to cry, and as I pass they reach to touch Eo's face, to touch mine and help me open the ventilation duct. I drag my wife through the tight metal space, taking her to where we made love beneath the stars, where she told me her plans and I did not listen. I hold her lifeless body and hope her soul sees me in a place where we were happy.
