She snorts. “Funny. People pay you to come to life, and people paid my dad to die, but you’re both professional victims. You take money and let other people decide what happens to you. I guess maybe that’s most work: being a victim for hire.”

“Most work is about being of service.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

“Some work is about lying down for others, I suppose,” he says, and she realizes he is leaping up the last flight of stairs to a wide black glass landing and another set of bronze doors. “And some work is about lifting people up.”

He opens the doors.

A dying sun spears them in a shaft of light, seals them in dusky amber.

7.

At first it doesn’t seem there are any walls. The Sun Parlor at the top of the Spoke is a small circular room beneath a lid of BluDiamond, as transparent as breath. The sun rests in a bed of bloodstained sheets. A bar of black glass, curved like the blade of a sickle, occupies the center of the room. A Clockwork gentleman stands behind it. He wears a bowler on the copper vase of his head, and his torso rides atop six copper legs, giving him the look of a jeweled, metal cricket in a hat.

“Are you here for the Danforth party?” the Clockwork attendant asks in a plummy voice. He presses fingertips of copper pipe together. “Ms. Paget, I presume? Mr. Danforth has checked in below with the others but indicated you would not be joining them this evening.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Iris tells him . . . a lie so smooth that Chip can detect no trace of physiological change, no quickening of breath or alteration in skin temperature.

“Very good. The rest of your party is approaching in the elevator. If you would like to toast the maiden, you will be joined by the birthday girl in twenty seconds.” The Clockwork gestures at a collection of champagne flutes filled with Sparklefroth.

Chip picks up a flute and hands it to Iris just as a hatch slides open in the floor. The elevator rises into the room, a bronze cage containing a flock of twelve-year-old girls in party dresses and new faces, accompanied by a weary man in a nice sweater—the birthday girl’s father, no doubt. The grate opens. Chattering, laughing girls spill out.

“Are you sure you can’t kill people?” Iris asks. “Because they’re wearing about five thousand credits of Hideware on their faces, and I’m feeling murdery.”

“Nothing ruins a birthday party like a multiple homicide.”

“I should probably drink my Sparklefroth before the robowaiter introduces me as Ms. Paget, and they realize I’m crashing their party, and I get charged for a drink I can’t afford.”

“They’re not going to hear him,” Chip promises. “Get ready to shout happy birthday.”