“It’s no great risk for me to make the offer. If you persist in being trouble, or making trouble, then I daresay the slate won’t stay clean for long. But should you feel inclined to turn over a new leaf, then there’s no time like the present. Tell me, Rector. Are you interested in a new leaf?”

“Yes sir. Very much, sir.” He’d never called a Chinaman “sir” before, but, like this whole leaf-turning thing, there was no time like the present to start.

He nodded slowly. “Well, that’s something. You still have the self-preservation to lie on the fly, so you’re not as far gone as I’d feared.”

“You … you’d feared?”

“I’d heard stories. About you.”

“From who?”

“Customers. Suppliers. For such a young man, Rector, you’ve developed quite a reputation. And lest you take that as a compliment, let me assure you it isn’t—it’s only an observation, and one that leaves me compelled to observe you further, in case your clean slate gets too dirty, too quickly. Let me put it this way: You appear inconvenient to me, Rector. And I am giving you the opportunity to prove otherwise. Now, under different circumstances, this would be the part where we talk about job prospects.”

“Different circumstances?”

“Different from these, yes.”

Rector swallowed again, anxiety welling up in his throat and making his mouth feel unaccountably wet. “And what are these circumstances?”

“Finally, an actual question. It bothers me when you repeat what I’ve said and make it sound like a query. Stop doing that. It’s the kind of thing people do when they’re only pretending to pay attention.”

“Yes sir. I’ll stop it, sir.”

“Let me ask you something, Rector. When you decided to enter this city, how did you choose your method? After all, there’s more than one way inside.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. Caught off guard, he tried to answer. “I … I don’t know. I heard the water runoff tunnels caved in during that quake last year. And I didn’t know any of the airmen well enough to hitch a ride—”

Yaozu interrupted. “You know several well enough to ask, but you owe them money, don’t you?”

“Well, there’s that. Anyway, I heard you were building a doorway in the wall, something so people could come and go easier, but not too easy. So you can keep track of who comes and goes, I mean. Like me,” he added the obvious. And then, still searching for a comparison, he said, “Like a toll bridge. Or a toll door.”