Tamara had her hands wrapped covetously around a mug full of coffee, looking a lot less spectral now that she’d had a proper shower and was wearing a clean T-shirt, one of Benny’s. “I’m not saying it was a bad plan. Obviously I stand behind it, or I wouldn’t have deserted my country for a Minister and a cheap pirate.”

“Hey,” I said, but without heat; I’d caught Indigo hiding a smile behind his own mug of coffee. He’d showered and changed too, into a robe that had belonged to Quint, and he’d turned his light collar off: no eerie blue illuminated him from beneath, and the collar itself could’ve been just an ordinary piece of jewelry. In human clothes, with his hair still damp and a bruise showing blue on his jaw, he looked nothing like the nightmare personified he’d appeared when he’d first carved his way onto the Nameless.

They both looked relaxed. They were comfortable.

I was comfortable, too. And the shower had been nice.

“The problem is logistics,” Tamara continued, gesturing sharply with the hand not holding the mug. “Everybody’s got a copy, but nobody knows the other people have a copy. And judging from our copy, no one’s copy is entirely complete. We’d need to compare all three copies to get the complete data—but no one knows they can share, or would share if they did know.”

“Cooperation seems unlikely,” Indigo agreed.

Tamara nodded. “Someone high up would have to be willing to take the first step.”

A crazy idea sidled sideways into my mind, dragged there by a chuckling imp that could not believe its mischievous luck. It was crazy. It wasn’t detailed or clearly worked out, but with Tamara’s logic and Indigo’s insight, it might just be transformed into a crazy idea that could work.

“Guys,” I said, already grinning at the thought, “I might have an idea.”

Parnasse was exactly how I remembered it: sunny, blue skies. Senator Todd Ketel’s office was only a few floors up from the shady little room where I’d met Quint. It was decorated sort of similarly, too. He had the same kind of clock—the man must have a thing for antique clocks.

Todd Ketel. Ketel, Todd. Senator Ketel. Todd. He wasn’t just “the Senator” anymore. I knew his name now, the bastard.

I picked up that clock while I waited and began to dismantle it on his desk.

Ketel burst in after I’d only been in his office for about ten minutes or so, red-faced, looking winded. He looked exactly like he did on the vidscreen, a man who’d aged out of his good looks but kept the lantern jaw. He stared at me for a minute like a frightened deer, breathing hard in the doorway to his own office.

And then, to give Senator Ketel some credit, he took a slightly deeper breath, straightened his spine, and fixed his tie. He shut the door precisely behind him, then walked around to sit on the other side of the desk from me. He said, “Mr. Wren.”