I glanced up. High above, on the massive support beams right under the newly installed skylight, a man sat, his right leg bent, his left dangling down, a book in his hand. He had no wings, but his hair was a familiar white. For months Barabas took care of Christopher. Now Christopher guarded Barabas.

“How’s our honored guest doing?” Curran called, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Doing great,” Keana, a thin, dark-skinned merc in her thirties, called out. “We got his money in an hour ago.”

“How much did we net?” Curran asked.

“The Guild took in two million, nine hundred fifty-eight thousand, six hundred thirty-three dollars and sixty cents,” Barabas called from his office.

“Yeah!” Curran pumped his fist.

The Guild erupted in cheers. I cheered, too. He was making them feel like all of them had won, forging them into a unified force, and they had no idea he was doing it.

“Why is the number so weird?” I murmured.

“We charged him his weight in gold,” Curran said. “Would’ve gotten more, but Roland bled him out and starved him, and he needs a lot of food or his body starts to cannibalize itself.”

“Where do you have him stashed?” I asked.

“Third floor, the old archive room,” Curran said. “I talked to Barabas this morning. Saiman isn’t eating or drinking. They had to put him on an IV.”

Saiman burned through nutrients the way fire burned through dry hay.

I nodded at Julie. “Come with me.”

As we climbed the staircase, I asked quietly, “Feel up to it?”

She looked at me. If she’d given me that look and I didn’t know her, I’d consider backing off.

“If it helps kill Roland, yes.”

“Good. When I talk to him, remind me to ask him for his help, but don’t tell him what I want exactly.”

•   •   •

PRE-GIANT, THE OLD archive room had no windows. Post-giant, it had acquired a large window shielded by thick bars in case another monster came rampaging. Saiman lay next to that window, on a bed, bathed in the sunshine streaming through the clear glass. He was pale and bone-thin, a skeleton wrapped in loose skin and hooked up to an IV bag. Normally he maintained a neutral shape, that of a man of undeterminable age, bald, with unremarkable features, neither handsome nor ugly. The creature that lay on the bed now was a foot and a half taller than any human had a right to be. Light blue-green hair framed his face. His eyes were the pale blue of thick ice dusted with new snow. Whatever my father had done to him was so traumatic that Saiman had collapsed into his natural shape.