The name of the Eighth inspired no mirth in him. Next to nothing inspires mirth in Ortus, who approaches the whole subject of levity with the nervous suspicion of one whose experience of humor had been, on the whole, on the bludgeoning end of cruelty.

This seems, at first, to be such a thing again. Another comic blow in the long litany of comic blows that left Ortus the roundly clownish flinch of a human being that he is. The name of a dead god of death, for a tomb planet where dead rivers ran dry, and all the blood of their House was used to flood their banks to whelp one last little, lonely god of death, who called him back across the River with her keys and her terror.

I always thought Pluto got a bad rap, Anna says, in well-meant effort to soften the leaden strike, and he pins his tongue between his teeth as if he is a child.

He does look at the sky. It burns his eyes to do it, brings a welt of saltwater to their corners.

"Only half-apt a name," he says, and he hears himself only distantly, "Such is often the case with allusion."