He had brought the letters. He pulled them from his ledger again, and threw them onto the floor in front of her.

“Those are yours,” he said.

She said nothing, as she had done last time.

“Those are yours!” he said again. “You are the Madame de Fourré. And we have you. So who is leading in your stead? I need names.”

Inaya simply stared at the letters.

“We hoped it would break apart without you,” he said. “And we certainly aren’t going to make a martyr of you. I have every intention of letting you live here the rest of your life.”

“No one likes a martyr,” Inaya said softly.

“Exactly,” he said, and there was excitement in his voice. She realized she had given him what he wanted, again—speaking meant he was getting somewhere.

She sighed. What did it all matter now?

“But without those names, you are useless to us. If you are not the Madame de Fourré, you are nothing. Just another of the misborn. If that’s so, I send you to a work camp and take off your head. And the heads of your children.”

“My children are in Tirhan.”

“That is where you are wrong,” he said. “Your husband and children are still here. And we will take them apart piece by piece until we have those names.”

Inaya laughed. She saw him start at that, and it made her laugh more. “You don’t have my husband,” Inaya said, “but that is a very pretty bluff.”

“Do you have any idea what we can do—”

“You’ve done all you can do to me,” Inaya said. She met his gaze for the first time. She looked at him, really looked, and she realized how young he was, how fearful. Yes, he had power over her, but little else. If they really thought they had the Madame de Fourré, she realized, she would have been moved from here already and given over to some other Angel, someone older, more experienced. He still wasn’t sure. My God, she thought, why didn’t I understand that sooner?

Her silence had made him unsure, and it was his uncertainty that was the only thing keeping her from being cut up and put into jars.

“I assure you we can do much more,” he said. He crossed the room to her.

A part of her—the part that had been here for so many weeks or months—wanted to cringe away from him. But instead, she stood her ground. He was only a head taller than her, and slender. He smelled of cinnamon and perfumed pomade.

“Do you have children?” she asked. “A wife?”

“I need names,” he said.

“What is your wife’s name? Surely they prefer God’s Angels to have wives. I suspect they think it gives you focus.”

He took her by the arm, twisted it behind her.