“Perhaps. But if you had a choice, I imagine you would have warded yourself for this journey. Besides, I hold you a person of grave conscience. Such people commit atrocities, of course, but they suffer for them. Yet your nightmares are old: fears of being trapped, and devoured, and contained. I can taste their age, like that of a fine wine. I do not think you have killed a friend in the last forty-eight hours.”

“Killed?”

“Nothing I have said so far would stand as evidence in any court, but one of the few advantages of private contemplation over the paid variety is that I am not compelled to present my logic in court.” She sipped her tea, again. “I have been honest with you. More honest than with many in similar circumstances. Do you trust me?”

“No.”

She nodded. “I doubted you would. A colleague … a friend once accused me of using people, of manipulating them without their knowledge. She did not understand, I think, how difficult it is to convince others you have their best interests at heart.”

Kai could not break the web. But she refused to hang here any longer, listening.

The silk was her dream. It bound her, but bonds were clothing of a kind. Perhaps the silk that caught her body was in fact a dress, the silk around her hands spun to gloves. The spider gown cascaded, shimmering. She stood; her feet touched a floor of no texture.

Ms. Kevarian saluted her with raised teacup. “Well done.”

“I don’t know what Mara wanted to tell you, but Seven Alpha’s death was completely aboveboard. Mistakes happen.”

Ms. Kevarian’s teacup disappeared. She brushed off the front of her suit, though as far as Kai could see the fabric was black and unstained as the space between high stars at midnight. “Two points worth considering, Ms. Pohala. First. I do not believe your idol’s death was a mistake. You would not have jumped into the water beneath the world to save a flawed product. You jumped because you thought there was someone in the water who should not die. And second. The nightmare in which I found you was not your own.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. This dream is yours: the spider, and the silk. The one from which you entered this place was not.”

“Why would I have someone else’s nightmares?”