“I was dealing with a child before, and today you’re a man. So from here on out, you pay your own debts. I won’t protect you if you don’t.”

“Never asked you to,” Rector snapped before he could stop himself. That small, embarrassed corner of his soul grew a size or two. He felt himself blushing, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. “But thanks for the birthday present. I’ll use it wisely.”

“Nobody uses sap wisely.”

Rector turned on his heels and grabbed the door, pushing it open and launching himself out into the night, where the trees were too thick and the sky too dark to show him anything but a bright stain in his vision from the brilliant lights of the chemist’s shack.

When he could see again, he looked toward the wall.

“Wait for me,” he told it. “I’ll deal with you soon enough.” And he headed off toward the water instead.

Chapter 3

Three

The beach was deserted.

It was also shiny with a glaze of moonlight and the intermittent sweep and flash of a powerful lamp scanning the water a few miles away. The lighthouse wasn’t for boats, not mostly. Not anymore. These days it guided the airships and their crews coming and going from Bainbridge Island, serving as a beacon for the kind of madmen who didn’t mind flying at night—or the kind of ships that had no choice in the matter. The distant beam came and went, blinking in and out, grazing the tops of the subtle waves and glinting off the edge of the Outskirts.

Rector picked a large, flat rock that looked more dry than not and sat on it. For a moment he thought about staying and watching the sun rise, and then he realized what a dumb idea that was, considering he was facing west. But it might be pretty anyway, seeing the sky go from black to smoky foam gray.

The last time he’d sat on this strip of coastline, the sky had gone the other way—from an overcast panorama of sickly white clouds to a deep, rolling, ominous shade of dark. A storm had crashed in from the north, coming over the ocean like it did only once in a great blue moon. One week before, he’d watched the sky change above him without caring. When the rain came down, pelting him so hard the droplets stung, he didn’t care about that, either. But when the thunder had begun, he’d gathered his things and headed inside.