“I don’t mean it badly! I’m just trying to say that this chap’s got a lot going on inside that’s a challenge for him, therefore it’s liable to be a challenge for someone who loves him. I’m not saying he’s not worth it, not that at all. I think...I think, if you could...” He looked back at the paper. “Actually, I think it would be absolutely worth it. There’s so much pent up, so much feeling. God. If someone could just cut those laces for him, I bet he’d—”

He clamped his mouth shut on that, the copper eyebrows shooting up. Aaron said, “He’d what?”

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing: he looked decidedly self-conscious. “You were saying something.”

“Rambling,” Wildsmith said, not entirely convincingly. “Thinking aloud. My point is, this is a man with a lot to him but a lot to sort out too, and that might be hard to live with. Or it might not, if he keeps it all in, but that’s not much of a life if you ask me.”

Aaron’s hand, concealed in his pocket, was clenched into a fist so tight his knuckles strained against the cloth, the skin. “Rather less favourable than your first assessment, then,” he said as easily as he could.

“Depends what you want him for. Honestly, you might well be able to work with him and not notice a thing: people can be remarkable at hiding themselves. More tea?”

Aaron did not want more tea. “Yes, please.”

He tried to breathe out, watching Wildsmith as he moved around the kitchenette. Relax. Relax.

There was no way on earth that Aaron’s handwriting proclaimed his interior life to anybody with the eyes to read it. Fortune-tellers made sweeping statements that everyone could nod along with; probably lots of people spent their lives trying to reconcile contradictions and needs, attempting to keep their unruly thoughts and wants in check. Well, Aaron knew they did, because his job dealt with the ones who didn’t bother.

Wildsmith did not know him, or anything about him, and if it felt like he’d slit Aaron’s chest, peeled open his ribs, and taken a clinical look at the insides, that was part of the well-oiled deception. Persuasive statements that half the population might apply to themselves. A lucky guess.

He took the second mug of tea with a murmur of thanks, and, as Wildsmith sat, said, “What about you?”

“Had plenty, thanks.”

“Not tea. What about your handwriting?”

“You mean, what does it say about me? I’ve no idea. I couldn’t tell before I lost my hand—it was like trying to listen to your own voice—and now I don’t suppose it says anything much except This man hates his prosthetic. Are you all right, Mr. Thurloe? You looked a bit shocked.”