“I thought we’d put you in the library,” said Lillian. “On the sofa. It’s just we don’t have … there are only two bedrooms furnished, at present. They took most of the furniture, or sold it. And there are some broken windows in the back we’ve just patched up with wood. The library will be warm, at least.”

It was that. And also empty of literature. He ran a hand over the tufted leather of the sofa, scarred in places, set on the parquet amidst deep scratch marks.

Too heavy to move, then, and too difficult to get through the door. Unlike books and art, silver and linens.

“They gave it to the Ospies,” said Stephen from the doorway. Cyril controlled his flinch, barely; it passed through his body like a sudden chill, leaving him shaky, but it didn’t show.

“The house,” Stephen went on. “Some Ospie family lived here, and another one at Carmody.”

“They stole the books?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Sold a lot of the furniture I think, or just junked it. Maybe ran with it at the end. And what they didn’t grab or get rid of I guess went in the riots.” He kicked at the wainscoting, not quite hiding his expression. Cyril was certain that he could have, if he wanted to. But he was leaving an opening, a hint: a light shining under an unlocked door. He was begging to be asked a question.

Some of Cyril’s best and bravest informants had been Stephen’s age: arrogant boys and girls who were not quite, anymore. Children who stood teetering on the cusp of fully grown. Some of his most dangerous enemies had been the same. He had learned to get the information he needed from them, which required a different set of tactics than he used on people his own age and older.

They craved respect and responsibility. They despised dissembling above all things. Adults preferred comfortable lies and illusions; Cyril had been rudely disabused of this preference some eight years back, and so often found it easier to interact with his younger informants and interrogatees. Being frank with thirteen-year-olds got you the answer you wanted. Try it on their elders and you’d be rebuffed before you could get your breath back. Adults required wooing. People who had not quite become adults? They were desperate to woo.

“Lillian said you were in trouble at school.” He ran a hand along the marble mantelpiece. “What for?”

“Lillian,” said Stephen, with the relish of an angry child using a parent’s given name, “has some rotten gall, telling you that right out of the gate.”

“She’s always been like that,” said Cyril, settling easily into Stephen’s side of things. “A busybody. She knows what’s best for everyone.”

Stephen’s suspicion morphed from purely hostile to partly surprised. “I blew up a pencil sharpener.”

Cyril did not laugh, or scold. Just raised an eyebrow and asked “How?”