“Pal, if you prefer.” There is something odd about the feel of the man’s hand in his own. It isn’t lifeless, exactly, but it’s missing a certain spark. The word inert floats up through Palamedes mind.

But he can’t make sense of it, and so he lets it go. It may even be his imagination.

With a sly sort of smile, Palamedes takes something out of his pocket that resembles a white oblong pebble. Once it had been a cow’s rib bone, discarded in the desert, but Pal has practiced with it so much that there’s nothing rib-shaped about it anymore.

He places it in John’s palm. “What do you make of this?”