‘Ahri,’ Zoric says softly. Not lord, or sire, but my given name. I don’t pull him up on it. Not this time.

‘So I must do this,’ I tell him. ‘I have to find the Conduit, and make this right. I can still make it right.’ I look up at him. ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

His pale eyes go flat like glass. ‘You know that I do,’ he says. ‘I’ve made promises, too. I’ve lost everything trying to keep them.’

Zoric looks down at his own hands, and the burn scars criss-crossing them.

‘Have I ever told you what happened to them?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I reply, knowing he’s having to ask because he can’t be sure. Because it might be a memory I’ve taken from him, like Hellebore and so many others.

He takes a slow breath and nods. ‘I told Idoney and Tian that one day we’d make it out of the sinks and the spires. That we’d go off-world. Leave Vyze behind for somewhere better.’

He rolls the sleeve of his jacket back to the elbow, where the burn scarring gives way to another mark. An older one. A brand, in the shape of two crossed daggers surrounded by fire.

‘Everyone on Vyze is sworn to one House or another,’ he says. ‘You make product for them, or you run guns. You intimidate or you kill for them. Whatever you’re good at, you do it for the Houses.’ A half-hearted smile flickers on his face. ‘It’s how I met Idoney in the first place.’

‘She was a mercenary?’

‘Gunsmith,’ he says. ‘A good one, too. Idoney knew how things worked. How to take something that was damaged or dangerous or badly made and make it better. Get twice the worth out of it.’

‘It sounds like you’re talking about more than guns.’

He smiles again in that same way. In a way that doesn’t last.

‘I’d never known anything but the Houses and the work,’ he says. ‘Killing, and coin. But when I was with Idoney and Tian, I felt like I could be more than that.’

I think about the viewport glass. A sky full of stars.

‘As if you could be good, too,’ I say. ‘Not just what you’d been made into.’

He nods. ‘So we started talking about leaving Vyze. About what it would take. I kept back a little from every job, and so did she. I took more jobs, too. Worse jobs. All of the bloodiest ones. Idoney made timepieces and clockwork toys. Anything she could make with spares and sell without consequences. But it wasn’t just coin we needed. It was a moment, too. The moment. Nobody walks away from the Houses on Vyze. If we chose badly, they’d kill us. All of us.’

‘So you waited.’