"Precisely my assessment," she says, without turning a hair.

"I know the odds of the path I walk. I am a genius." She says this as she always does; without pride or preening, a simple statement of fact. "But so was Abigail Pent. Gideon is brave, but so was Jeannemary Chattur."

"I don't need you to know that a shadow follows me. I continue forward because death is the only acceptable alternative to success in my endeavours. And I walk without fear because I have Gideon the Ninth beside me."

In a quiet voice, she says what lies at the core of all of this: "And you have frightened her terribly."