Plans crowd into Silhouine’s head. A ship wants a crew, and the crew will want a destination. Where will they go?

What, Silhouine asks herself, does she want?

Yael, more than anything, wants the ship to go in a straight line long enough for her to safely vomit.

Why all this trouble, why drugged darts and ventilation and tricky little games of punctuality? If this place is a tomb, why not fill it with stones and bomb the mouth shut?

Because someone wanted it to be solved.

Four more downward twists of the path: she catches up to Silhouine in a vast space occupied by a suspended ship of impossible beauty.

“The Loveblind Bird,” whispers Silhouine, then vomits and collapses in siezure.

Things keep bubbling into Silhouine’s head. The ratios of the mortarless stones in the corridor speak to her; sounds have fluid tastes and something keeps trying to tell her about numbers. She’s almost certain she can see in the dark.

She’s aware of a distant nausea. Her heartbeat tastes like blood. There’s got to be something at the bottom of all this, she thinks, feeling more than a little guilty for running ahead of Yael. But she’s got so little time.

Silhouine is up, scrambling toward one of the corridors. “Five o’clock tastes like burning dust,” she pants.

“How do you even know which one is twelve?” says Yael, following. “Also, what?”

“The candle told me,” says Silhouine, and hurries into darkness.

Yael blinks down at the little stub and sees that its flame is, in fact, streaming steadily toward a different portal in some invisible breeze. She hurries after her friend, thinking, they always hurry. Can’t they take their time getting to the next disaster?

“It could be tipped with something,” says Yael, the quickness of her speech letting fear in around the edges. “I have to take it out, all right?”

Silhouine blinks and pats at her head.

“All right,” says Yael, and yanks. Only a little blood comes out.

“THAT IS REALLY A LOT WORSE,” says Silhouine. “What time is it.”

“What?” says Yael.

“The stupid room is a stupid clock,” says Silhouine, who is beginning to realize that smells have colors.