“I did. Reverend Verje spent a long time convincing the driver to take her away.”

“Yeah, Verje told me to go back inside.” Millie grimaced. “I didn’t think twice about it. Presumably a compulse?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I was worried about that.”

“No harm done.” She squeezed my hand. The streetlights passed, turning her face light, then dark, light, then dark. “I should have been more vigilant. Next time.”

“Next time?” said Osan.

“I made a few friends,” she said. “So I can do a little independent digging.”

Osan and I both groaned.

“What?”

“Who did you talk to?” I asked.

“Ilva, for a start. She’s clearly vulnerable, and involved in something.” Millie ran her fingertip along the ridge of the window. “She’s lonely and scared. I can work with that.”

“Millie, I don’t know.”

“I do,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

“She’s unstable.”

“But not dangerous. Really. I can handle this.”

Osan drew to a halt at the end of Millie’s street. The horses stamped their feet and snorted.

“Don’t get reckless,” I said.

Millie leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Same to you.”

Osan watched her until she reached the door of her building. Then he turned the carriage around and we headed toward Pearl Boulevard. I slouched back on the bench, quiet for a while.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

“A lot of things.” We passed another cab heading the opposite way. The air drifting through the open window cooled my skin. “I’m thinking that if I’d stayed with my supervisor that night, she might still be alive. Or if I hadn’t told you to stop following me. Things like that. Why is Millie afraid of you?”

“I think you can probably guess.”

I fell silent. We rattled up the boulevard, the wheels loud in the quiet residential area. The night folded around us.

“You used to be in the Resistance,” I said. “And Millie’s scared that you’ll tell me about her involvement in the organisation.”

Osan gently guided the horses across the intersection. The Gardens grew larger on the left, and a layer of dry leaves carpeted the road.

“How long have you known she’s part of it?” he asked.

I laughed softly. Osan glanced around and, with irony, I performed an old gesture; a swivel of my left wrist to touch my right fist. The same gesture Daje and Finn had exchanged outside the Candle. It dated back to the Ash Disciples. It meant “we shall reclaim.”

“I can’t remember not knowing,” I said.

“I see.” He turned back around. “And what makes you think I quit?”

“You work for Rhyanon.”

“Could be two-timing her.”

“But you aren’t. For starters, she’s too smart for that. And you care about her.”

“And Millie cares about you. That doesn’t mean…”

“Why did you quit?”

He sighed. I waited.

“Let’s see,” he said. “There was a man. Renson. He made some mistakes, ended up in the Renewal Wards. As he was an upstanding member of the Resistance, I expected that his friends would attempt to save him. But they didn’t. When it mattered, the Resistance proved toothless.”