“I think you’ve done about as much as you can. The smart thing would be to cut me loose like a dragging anchor.”

But anchors couldn’t drown. People could. “I’m already a traitor in my own right. By some folk’s definitions, anyway. Cutting you loose won’t change the choices I made.”

“You had Stephen,” he said. “You couldn’t have made a different choice. I could have.”

There had come a point in her life—some time during university, or perhaps just after graduation—when Cyril began to try her patience, as he had her parents’. His irrational passions, his self-obsession, his obstinance. Every conversation she had with him inevitably reached a point of exasperation. Neither time nor distance nor death nor resurrection made a difference.

Maybe she didn’t understand what he had been through. Maybe she never would. But neither would he understand what she had done or what it had cost her. “Why are the rest of us held to such a lower standard?” she demanded. “Why are you special?”

“What did I have to lose? Who would have suffered if I had said no? You all thought I was dead; I just would have gone sooner, and ruined less.”

“You aren’t Caleb Acherby,” she said, and saw the guard in the corner come to attention: either at the name, or at her tone of voice, which had gone acidic with vexation. “You did something reprehensible, yes, but Cyril … who didn’t?”

A beat, a heavy pause. Lillian knew what he was going to say half a breath before he said it.

“Cordelia.”

“A political martyr?” she asked. “The woman who toppled the Ospies? That’s a high bar to set for yourself.”

When he looked up from the ash on the tabletop, his eyes were bleak. “Is it? She was a stripper, Lillian. I don’t know if she ever finished school. As far as I know she didn’t own stockings. And she wore this awful rosewater perfume…” His voice wobbled, precarious. “But she didn’t fall in line, which is more than either of us can say.”

“I hardly think you can judge someone’s character by their stockings,” said Lillian. “Or lack thereof.”

“No,” said Cyril. “I guess you can’t.” He took a long drag on his straight, staring at the far wall as he inhaled.

The resultant cloud of smoke he sent over his shoulder, toward the guard, who cleared his throat and gestured at the clock with his truncheon. “Time’s nearly gone.”

“I’ll try to come again this week.” Lillian stood from the table.

Cyril gave no indication of having heard her. Smoke curled from his crooked nose. “How did she die?” he asked, still watching the green-painted brick.