“Anything!” I rasp. “Am’s Story, Sendhil! The crown has been paying your expenses for over two years. And you’re Hallowed. You see weaknesses in character; you can make people feel things—feel anything. You could have been an orator. Or . . . a priest, a mummer, I don’t know. The point is, all this time, you could have lived for something greater. Could have helped people—”

“Like you.”

“Yes,” I retort. “And instead, you sit around and kill people for a living.”

“Like you.”

I open my mouth, then shut it, air deflating from my lungs. “Imperial Guards don’t kill during peacetime,” I stammer at last.

“But you’re trained to.” Sendhil smirks, then winces, rubbing his temples and nursing the flask again. “Listen, Jeeti, I don’t know why you’re here. If you hoped to rescue me, well . . . I don’t need rescuing. I made friends in my cohort. Just like you did back in Oluwan, with your magical friends in your ivory tower. So don’t worry about me. As long as that pretty money keeps coming from the capital . . .” He raised his flask. “We’re square.”

“Sendhil, those mercenaries are not your friends. They made you do monstrous things. They—they broke you—”

“So what?” Sendhil shoots back, clumsily rising to his feet. “The world is broken! We of all people should know that, Jeeti. Do you know who tried to help people? Do you know who tried to make a difference? Amah.”

It takes everything inside me not to hit him.

But I don’t. Instead we stare at each other, a distorted mirror. It is unclear, at least to me, which of us is the righteous gazer, and which, the tarnished reflection.

Sendhil tosses back the last drops from his flask, his weapon-scarred hands shaking. Then he stumbles toward the brothel door.

Without turning around, he pauses, just for a moment, and says, “Don’t live for something greater, brother. Just protect what you’ve got. And this time”—his jaded brown eyes fall on me for a final time—“don’t let go.”

“I wanted to be angry,” said Sanjeet, once our minds separated and I was myself again.

The sun had vanished, plunging the spring into shadow but for the pulsing light of ombitsu sprites, and the glow of my tustu overhead, forming their purple lattice in the evening sky.

“To hate him,” he continued. “To prove him wrong. But I couldn’t. Sendhil was right: We were the same; both aimless, both lacking in conviction. Equally content with our status quo. The only difference was that my clothes were more expensive, and people genuflected when I passed.” He frowned, watching absently as ombitsu sprites trailed rainbows around the waterfall. “I distracted myself for a while, tracking down the new entrance to the Underworld. I found it. It’s not far from the Oruku Breach, but there wasn’t much I could do—only set guards to watch and warn you that the ojiji were targeting nobles. I could have come home after that. But it felt wrong—returning to wring my hands over you, while you fought for justice. So I decided to fight a noble cause of my own: I tried to catch the Crocodile.”