“It suits you,” Liliana said with an amused smile when Farooq-Lane took it out at the latest short-term rental cottage. The blade cast jabbering, checkered patterns of light through the dormant jasmine-covered pergola they stood under. It was a little chilly to sit outside but Liliana did anyway, to be close to Farooq-Lane, tucked into a faded wicker chair, knitting and bobbing one of her feet in a good-humored way. She was in her middle age now, the prime of her life. Her hair shone at this age, the many-sided tone that was red hair, in its own way impossible as a dream thing. As always, she’d tamed it with an ever-present blue fabric band, but the knot at the base of her pale neck was coming loose. The skin there always seemed as if it would be very soft.

Farooq-Lane swung from chaos again, studying it, trying to understand both the sword and her fascination. “A weapon can’t suit someone.”

But it sort of did, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was a dream, and she’d been working very hard to kill those for months.

Farooq-Lane used the sword to write CARMEN in the dark. This really was a very nice cottage they were staying in at the moment, a sweet little bungalow with this pergola and a koi pond and vegetable garden behind it. All of the cottages were nice. They had to be. That was Liliana’s requirement to work for the Moderators. She had to be put up in places that felt like homes and she had to be put up in them with Farooq-Lane. A simple transaction. Stability for her present in exchange for visions of their future.

Farooq-Lane’s relationship with the Moderators was supposed to be as equally simple. In exchange for her services as a Moderator, she received a sense of purpose. And it was simple, she told herself. Once one found out the world was in danger, who could walk away from that?

“They never found any of my brother’s weapons,” Farooq-Lane said. She hadn’t realized she was going to say it out loud until she did, and then she almost immediately wished she hadn’t. She hoped Liliana hadn’t heard.

But Liliana stopped knitting.

“Do you really want to talk about this?” Liliana asked.

“No,” Farooq-Lane said. Then, the sword dipping a little in her hand, “It’s all right.”

“That sword’s deadly and you are afraid of how you like it.”

Liliana knew her well at every age. Farooq-Lane said, “You didn’t see her face. Jordan Hennessy’s. She wasn’t bringing out a weapon on purpose. Whatever that thing was that I cut … this sword seemed made to destroy it. That’s the opposite of intentionally destroying the world.”

Liliana began to knit again, jiggling her foot once more.

“You aren’t going to say anything?” Farooq-Lane asked.