“Then they just … sent me away. They had me trained like a dog, then when the Bear came calling, with her grandfather’s connections to the Senate, my Peak couldn’t resist. He offered my skill, my loyalty and devotion, to the Menagerie just as it was being formed. He wanted a spy in the Senate, someone to guide their efforts away from the Spur’s trade. I never wanted to go, but something happened that I didn’t expect: I made friends. I traveled the world with them. I loved them.

“But I didn’t close all contact with my former life, or my old friends. I was still close with Jared, though he’d been sold off to a duke to be his household surgeon. We exchanged letters, and over the years Jared became more sympathetic to a growing reform movement: the Tide. Whispers became rumors, rumors led to my own thoughts on what I’d seen—what I’d done. Then the Bear started attending masses for the One Path, started preaching to us. It took far too many jobs with cruelty at their heart before I began to realize how we had changed, how the Bear had changed. We’d become no better than mercenaries; thugs for the Senate, and eventually for the Sun Wardens themselves. We silenced dissent, strangled calls for change. I had become the tool I was always intended to be, but I kept on. Bear had always been our leader, and I’d been bred to be led.

“Then, one day, I ran into a man I’d known in the Spur. It was like light had been let back into the world. We began seeing more of each other, and before long I fell back in with my contacts,” she said, “others from those days, who had also left the life behind. Most of them had begun working in factories or mills, and there their sympathy to the Tide had grown. They convinced me to accompany them to their secret meetings, and I learned more. I listened more. They gave me banned books they’d hoarded as the Wardens began to squeeze the city of all dissent. Books about change. About how we could effect it if we only had the means, the organization, the numbers.” She glanced at Anji. “The funds.”

“Did you tell them?” said Anji, “who you really were?”

Kit nodded, knuckling black drip from her nose.

“I told them everything. About the Menagerie, every horrid thing I’d done. But still, I couldn’t just … leave. The Menagerie, I mean. Bear had grown more paranoid and—well, you’ve seen her yourself. I was afraid of her. Of what she would do if she found me out.