Marathe and Steeply: choose your temple — "But sure. The fanatically patriotic Wheelchair…"

Marathe's stumps become his body language: twice in three pages the book marks his most passionate rhetorical surges by his rising and leaning on what's left of his legs — the theme's central speech about love and dying delivered literally from the stumps, which aren't pathos here but the podium. Between the two risings, Steeply's needle gives the cell its English name: "the fanatically patriotic Wheelchair Assassins," the organization the book will treat as its most frightening force, introduced as mockery.