Mako swung, and missed the ball by a foot. He frowned. “Lots of things force folk to think in ways that aren’t human. Try joining an army someday, if there’s ever a war for you to fight. Hells, I bet you thought at least five inhuman thoughts before work this morning.” Another swing, another miss. The club slipped in the old man’s hands, and Kai flinched. Mako reset his grip. Sunset transformed his face, scarred and cragged and wrinkled, into a landscape of flame. Not for the first time, she wanted to ask what he’d done in the war. Not for the first time, she decided against it. “You shouldn’t be here yet,” he said. “What’s brought you?”

“You expected me?”

“Always do.”

“You’re often disappointed, then.”

He swung. The golf ball tipped off the tee, and rolled to rest in sand.

“It’s by your feet.”

“I know where it is.” He knelt again, and patted about his knees until he found the ball.

“I can’t believe Eve lets you keep those clubs.”

“She doesn’t know I have them.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“Doubt what you like.” Back on the tee, and standing. He adjusted his feet.

“A little to the right.”

He grunted, and bent from the waist, wagging the club. “What’s up?”

“I’m in a fix.”

“Must be hard for you.”

“No harder than for a blind man to golf.”

“Great thing about the ocean,” he said, “is that it’s one big hole. Easy to hit.” He draped the club across his shoulders, hooking his wrists over its either end. He twisted his torso sharply left and right, and his back popped like festival fireworks.

“Oh my god.”

“Yes?”

“You should get that checked.”

“Eve sends me to a masseuse every other week. Says it’s the least she can do for all the pain I cause her.”

“I don’t think a massage counts as revenge.”

“You haven’t been with my masseuse.” He laughed, and coughed, and spit. His spit landed with a solid fleshy sound in the sand, startling up a seven-legged sand-colored beetle that reared, bared sickle mandibles in protest, then scurried away. “She’s from those jungles south of the Shining Empire. Girls there are born with chisels for fingers and pistons for arms. Every other Thirdday she avenges each acre of forest I burned in the God Wars.”

“She know you talk about her this way?”

“Hells, I talk about her this way to her face. She only really opens up on the back when she wants to hurt me.”

“You’re a horrible human being.”

“Never have been any good at it.” He thrust his hips forward and bent back. His shirt rode up, revealing stomach roped with scars. “And yet you come to me for advice, so what does that make you?”

“A horrible human being,” Kai said with a sigh.

“What’s the problem?”