“I didn’t do what they say I did. Not the way they say I did it. I never got anyone killed. I never…”

His father had never told James how they’d come to be betrayed. Which of the many people who had come to the house in the valley over the years. And James didn’t have a clue, because his father kept pushing him further and further away from that part of his life.

James reached down, opened the suitcase. Felt the click of the clasps against his fingers. “It’s all here. Every last document. Every last photograph.” From the old house in the valley. James had gone there earlier that night, snuck in. Returned to the clinic in an army truck, along with a few other civilians with ties to Hoegbotton’s trading arm. Wyte had stood watch for him, then gone out the back way and melted into the night. Wyte knew every street in the city. He’d have been back home with his wife before midnight.

Two in the morning now.

“What are you waiting for? Start shoveling this stuff into the fire,” his father said.

Still, he hesitated. Watched the smoky flames rising into the darkness, the sparks mimicking the flares in the distance.

“If we burn all of the photographs, I’ll forget what you look like.”

His father didn’t miss a beat. “But not who I am. And if you don’t do it, there’s no clean break, son.”

His father reached down, picked up a handful of documents and IDs. Shoved them into the fire. Which flared up for a moment.

“This is the best way.” John Crossley had said it a dozen times that day.

Anything else of value that couldn’t tie the son to the father had been put in a storeroom on the edge of the merchant district. A neutral area. James could retrieve it at any time. The whiskey. The cigars. The books. The map. The ceremonial scimitar his father had gotten while fighting against the Kalif. “Keep it hidden, son, but use it when you have to.”

After a moment, James joined him. Started tossing handfuls into the flames. Photographs from the offensive into Kalif territory. John Crossley on a tank. In a window. Walking through the desert. Old journal entries. Even the little tobacco pipe he’d shown James as a youth.

“They’ll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son. Better just to start a new life. Be someone else.”

They’d never talked about his betrayal. The son had felt that asking would have meant admitting that the father had done something horribly wrong. He didn’t want to let that into their world.

“Is there anyone you want me to contact,” he’d asked his father. “No, no one,” the old man had insisted.

When the suitcase was empty, James stood back. Beside his father. Watched the flames die down. Then hugged his father close. Sour breath. Shaking arms. The rasp at the back of his throat. Knew he was going to lose him soon.