“After that it’s muddy.” She picked up two rocks and juggled them as they walked: a trick, she’d told Tara many times before, of throwing the second when the first began its descent. Tara never mastered the timing of the fall. “I remember working in Professor Denovo’s lab. Really tremendous fascinating stuff, vivisecting gods, experimental faith dynamics.” Tara remembered that tone of voice: the drunkenness of discovery. The rocks Daphne juggled were small; Tara could not hear their impact on her skin. “He liked my work. I remember his smile.” Tara clenched her jaw to keep herself from saying something stupid. “And I remember cutting things open, peeling flesh like a kid opening a birthday present. Working ten hours at a stretch hunting a slice of new knowledge. Draining myself so far I didn’t feel I was moving so much as being moved, like a puppet with a hand inside me. I remember grays. I remember lots of gray, toward the end. Not recognizing my face in the mirror. Waking up in bed in a strange body.” She caught both the rocks and squeezed. Glyphs sparked on her fingers, and a fine dust rained onto the gravel.

“Daphne, I’m sorry.”

She opened her hand. Dust coated her palm, surrounding a small sculpture of a sparrow with wings stretched. Its tiny head revolved. Wings flapped, but the sparrow could not fly.

“It’s the local gods,” Tara said. “They don’t let things fly that they don’t own.”

She held out her palm and Daphne passed her the bird. Tiny talons pricked her skin; it chirped. “I didn’t see what was happening to you until too late,” Tara said. “He was in my head, too. When you collapsed, when they took you home, that shocked me sober. I snapped out of his control. I got revenge, or tried. I burned his lab. They kicked me out. I thought you were gone.”

“I woke up a year ago, in my house, with a headache. I spent weeks in the garden watching flowers. It took a long time to piece myself together. The chance of getting a job was low, but then Ramp came with an offer from Grossman and Mime. They were interested in everyone who worked with Professor Denovo. A lot of our friends ended up there. Ramp is a tough boss, but she has a sense of humor and enjoys her work, which is more than I could say for many Craftswomen.”

“It doesn’t bother you that she used to work with Denovo?”

“He was a good teacher,” she said. “A hard driver, but you’d have to be to get as far as him.”

“He sapped your soul. He bound us to serve him. Our minds pointed where he wanted them to point.”