Chapter 18: The Mechanism of Entry — Celestine Reconstructs the Chorus

The notebook was open to a page that had three words on it, written at an hour she could no longer precisely identify: *Twelve wounds. Twelve hands?*

She crossed out the question mark with a single line. Left the question intact.

The observatory was different in the early morning than it had been in the dark. Light came through the domed panel in a particular shade of grey that was less colour than absence — the diffused, directionless illumination of a sky pressed flat against snow. Voss's body had been moved to his berth at Marek's insistence, covered with a sheet, a decision that Blackwell had registered as contamination risk and Solano had registered as concession to grief and Celestine had registered as correct. The room was easier to be in without him. Which was not, she reminded herself, the same as being easy.