The ferryman guides the gently bobbing dinghy across the narrow strait, and dismally, Octavius stares at the grimy oilslick that mars the surface of the water. He's contemplating some poetic metaphors about himself as a fish suffering in equally murky waters of his own when Byerly asks that question, and Octavius' head snaps up so sharply that there is no possible way he could talk himself out of knowing exactly who that is.

He sits forward in his seat immediately. "Benedict's alive?" he asks, all wide-eyed shock and, somewhere beneath the day old city grime that has left him looking more dirty than artfully scruffy, hopeful, too.