# Chapter 6: The Right Reverend Carson

Greywell Lane was narrower than the streets I'd been walking — two people abreast would require negotiation, three would require more than friendship. The buildings leaned toward each other at the upper floors, creating a twilight at street level that had nothing to do with the time of day. The smell changed as I walked: less residential cooking, more industrial — hot metal, sawdust, the chemical bite of solder and adhesive.

I noticed the overlap halfway down the lane.

I'd been carrying two maps in my head since the morning — Ledger's zone for Kae, and the broader geography of Carter's supplier problem. The craftsman under the double bind — the one squeezed by fabricated rumours — operated somewhere in the commercial warrens. Carter hadn't given me an exact address, but the description of the business — craftsman, specialty fabrication, enough reputation to matter to the Compact's narrative — matched this area. Working tradespeople, small workshops, businesses that ran on reputation and word-of-mouth.

(*Two threads. Same territory. Kae's protectors cluster here. Carter's supplier works here. Coincidence or convergence — and in the warrens, where everyone knows everyone and every transaction is face-to-face, convergence is more likely than coincidence.*)

I filed the observation and followed the lane to its end.

The workshop was impossible to miss, because everything about it was oversized.

The door was heavy timber — the kind you'd use for a barn, not a shopfront. Iron hinges the thickness of my forearm. A sign above the door read "REPAIRS & FABRICATION" in letters that had been hammered from sheet metal by someone who believed that signage should survive the apocalypse. Below it, smaller but no less permanent: "CHAPEL OF THE AHOLE — SERVICES GODSDAY."

The door was open. From inside came the sound of hammering — not frantic, not hurried, the rhythmic percussion of someone who'd been hitting things with other things for so long that the motion had become indistinguishable from breathing.

I stepped inside.

The space was a chapel the way a barn is a ballroom — you could see the ambition, and you could see the reality, and the gap between them was where the personality lived. Workbenches lined three walls, covered in tools, parts, half-finished projects, and the organised chaos of a mind that knew exactly where everything was despite appearances suggesting otherwise. A small forge in the back corner, currently cold. Shelves of materials — wood, metal stock, glass, ceramics, other things I couldn't identify and suspected the creator couldn't either. The ceiling was high enough to echo, and every surface had something on it, near it, or hanging from it.

In one corner, what appeared to be a shrine. A rough-carved figure on a shelf — vaguely humanoid, deliberately ugly, wearing an expression that could be interpreted as either divine wisdom or digestive discomfort. Around it, a collection of empty bottles, a fishbone, and a small placard that read: "Ahole Provides (Terms and Conditions Apply)."

The man doing the hammering was difficult to describe as anything other than *large.* Not the cultivated bulk of someone who trained for size — the structural inevitability of a frame that had been built for load-bearing and never questioned the design brief. Six-three, at least. Two hundred and eighty pounds of mass that made furniture nervous. His hands were enormous — gorilla-scale, the fingers thick as dowel rods, wrapped around a hammer that looked small only because his grip made everything look small.

He was hammering a joint on what appeared to be a bench. The bench, from what I could see, was already solid enough to seat a regiment. He was adding reinforcement to reinforcement.

"Drannick sent me," I said.

The hammering continued for three more strikes — each one placed with the precision of someone who was not going to stop mid-stroke because a stranger had entered his workshop. On the fourth beat, he set the hammer down — not carelessly, not quickly, with the deliberate placement of a tool returned to its proper position — and turned.

He had a face that matched the body: broad, expressive, built for a wider range of emotion than most people attempted in a week. Currently it was displaying what I could only describe as professional welcome — the openness of someone who liked having people in his space and didn't see any reason to pretend otherwise.

"Drannick." He said the name like it was a pleasant surprise, though his tone suggested most things were pleasant surprises. "What's he want now? His gate hinge break again?"

"He sent me to talk to you. About a man named Kae."

The openness didn't close. That was the first thing I noticed — where the nut seller had shut like a cupboard and the woman had flinched away from the name, Carson's expression stayed exactly where it was. Open. Unhurried. The name registered, clearly — something moved behind the eyes — but the door didn't close.

"Sit down," he said. He gestured toward the bench he'd been reinforcing. "That's built for three men or one horse. You'll survive."

I sat. The bench didn't creak, flex, or acknowledge my weight in any way. It had been built by someone who considered structural failure a personal insult.

"Carson Johnsby," he said, extending one of the enormous hands. I shook it. The grip was controlled, which I appreciated — if he'd squeezed to his actual capacity, I would have needed a healer. "The Right Reverend Carson, if you're being formal, but nobody's formal down here except the taxman, and I handle him by waving the ordination certificate." He smiled — wide, unguarded, the expression of a man who had nothing to hide and no practice at pretending otherwise. "What do you want with Kae?"

"I'm investigating a case. His name came up."

"What kind of case?"

"The kind where people get hurt and someone needs to figure out why."

Carson considered this. The consideration was unhurried — he processed information the way he processed metalwork, thoroughly, without any apparent concern for the clock. He sat on a stool across from me — the stool was built to the same specifications as the bench, which was to say it could have anchored a bridge — and folded his arms across his chest.

"You're not Watch," he said. "Watch doesn't ask politely. You're not Compact — Compact doesn't come to the warrens unless they're looking for someone to blame. And you're not the two fellows who came through this morning asking the same questions without buying anything."

"You know about those two."

"News travels fast when strangers ask questions down here. Faster when they're asking about one of ours." He said *one of ours* without emphasis, as a simple fact of territorial belonging. Kae was warrens. The warrens looked after their own. This was not a policy — it was gravity. "So who are you?"

"The Locksmith. Guild of Necessary Services."

"The Guild of—" Carson's eyebrows went up. Not alarm. Amusement. "The ghost guild. The one with the polite receptionist and the eight-week waiting list that nobody's ever actually been on."

"That's the one."

"Well." He unfolded his arms, refolded them, and grinned again. "At least you're interesting. The Watch, I tell them to piss off. The Compact, I tell them I'm a religious institution and therefore exempt from inquiry. The ghost guild—" He tilted his head. "I've never had one of yours in the workshop before. What are you, exactly? Some kind of investigator?"

"Some kind."

"Some kind of investigator, looking for Kae, sent by Drannick who is a good man but a terrible judge of gate hinges." Carson leaned back on the stool. The stool held. Physics owed this man favours. "What do you want to know?"

"What you know."

He laughed. The laugh was like the hammering — unhurried, thoroughly committed, resonating off the high ceiling. "That's a long conversation. I know everyone. It's a character flaw." He paused. "Or a talent. Depends on who's asking." He gestured toward the ugly shrine in the corner. "Ahole says it's a talent, but Ahole says everything I do is a talent. That's the beauty of a supportive deity."

(*Carson Johnsby. Late thirties, maybe early forties — the kind of face that ages by getting more expressive rather than more lined. Lives in his workshop, knows everyone, collects people the way I—*)

I stopped the thought. Let it form properly.

(*Carson collects people the way I avoid them. Same process, inverted output. He looks at a stranger and sees a potential connection. I look at a stranger and see a potential complication. He builds relationships like he builds benches — overengineered, indestructible, designed to carry more weight than anyone asked them to. I build relationships like I build exploits — minimal contact, maximum efficiency, exit strategy planned before entry. Same intelligence. Same pattern recognition. Opposite architecture.*)

The observation sat in the noise and didn't leave. I found it both admirable and exhausting.

"Kae," I said. "Tell me about Kae."

Carson's expression shifted — not closing, not guarding. Softening. The amusement settled into something quieter, something that looked like concern wearing comfortable clothes.

"Kid's hurting," Carson said. "Has been his whole life, from what he's told me. Pain — real pain, not the kind you can shake off. Born with it. Some days he can barely walk. Other days he's all right — not good, but functional. He comes by the workshop when he can move, sits where you're sitting, talks." A pause. "He doesn't talk to many people. He's got a network down here, people who look out for him, but he doesn't *talk* to most of them. He talks to me." This was said without pride but with the quiet awareness of a man who understood that he'd been given something and felt the weight of it. "He used to have someone. A woman — Elara. She helped him. I never met her, but from what Kae said, she was the only person who ever made the pain manageable. Then she disappeared, and—" He spread his hands. The gesture encompassed more than he said. "And things got worse."

"How much worse?"

"I don't track his movements, Locksmith. He comes, he talks, he goes. But the last few times he's been here—" Carson rubbed his chin with one oversized hand. The pause was real — not for effect, for accuracy. "Worse. Something's wrong beyond the pain. He's got a look in his eyes that wasn't there before — wild, sometimes. Desperate. Like whatever was holding him together lost a few bolts."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Week and a half. Maybe two." Carson frowned. "He's overdue. Usually comes by more often than that."

I filed that. Overdue by a week and a half, during the same period the victim count was accelerating. The timeline fit. If Kae was draining more frequently and more heavily, his cycles between the crystal's high and the withdrawal crash would be tighter, more consuming. Less time for the workshop visits that constituted his version of social contact.

"Does he talk about what he does?" I asked. "When he's not here?"

"Survives," Carson said. "That's what he does. He's got no guild, no trade, no family worth the name. He survives the way everyone down here survives — one day, one problem, one meal at a time. If you're asking whether he's into something criminal—" Carson shrugged. "Everyone down here is into something criminal by somebody's definition. The Compact calls it a violation. The Watch calls it a misdemeanour. I call it a Wednesday."

The easy warmth dimmed — not gone, just underlaid with something that wasn't amusement. Worry. He was worried about Kae, and the worry wasn't for show.

"The two men who came through this morning," I said. "Did they ask about Kae specifically?"

"By name. Same as you. They were polite about it — too polite. Too polite. Trained polite." He leaned forward. "They didn't get anything. Nobody down here talks to people who look like they came from an office. You—" He pointed at me with one massive finger. "You look like you came from an office but you sit like someone who's been on the wrong end of a few situations. That's the only reason I'm still talking."

Fair assessment.

"Carson, I need to find Kae. Not to hurt him. The case I'm investigating — the people getting hurt — I need to understand what's happening before it gets worse. And it's getting worse."

He studied me. The evaluation was different from the others — not suspicious, not protective. Thoughtful. Carson processed people the way he processed problems: with patient thoroughness and the assumption that most situations were simpler than they appeared.

"I believe you," he said. "Or I believe you believe it. Which is good enough for me." He stood, walked to the forge, picked up a jar that had been sitting on the cold hearth, and brought it back. The jar contained something dark and granular — coffee, or a near relative. He poured two measures into cups that were, predictably, overbuilt.

"I can't tell you where Kae is," he said. "I genuinely don't know — the man doesn't keep a schedule, and he moves. But I can tell you that if he's not coming to the workshop, it means either he's worse than I think, or he doesn't want to be seen. Both of those are bad." He handed me a cup. The cup weighed approximately the same as a standard brick. "I'll keep an eye out. If he comes by, I'll—" He stopped. Thought about it. "I won't betray his trust. But I'll talk to him. If he's in trouble, I'll try to help."

I took the coffee. It was strong enough to constitute an assault.

"That's fair," I said.

"Fair is what I do. Ask anyone." He settled back onto his stool. "So what else? You didn't come all the way to the warrens just to ask about one man. Something else is eating you."

(*He reads people. Different method than mine — warmer, less clinical, but the same underlying architecture. He saw the second thread before I mentioned it.*)

"There's a craftsman in this area," I said. "Supplier for a friend of mine. He's been under pressure — someone's been spreading fabricated rumours about his business practices to force him into cutting off a specific client."

Carson's face changed. Not dramatically — the architecture was the same — but something clicked behind the eyes.

"You're talking about Hendrick," he said.

"I'm talking about a supplier. You're telling me his name is Hendrick."

"Hendrick Voss. Two streets north. Metal fittings, specialty fabrication, honest as the day's long and twice as stubborn." Carson was sitting forward now, the laid-back philosopher replaced by something sharper — not urgent, but engaged. "He's been coming to fish fry services for three years. Good man. One of mine." He said *one of mine* the same way he'd said *one of ours* about Kae — a statement of territorial loyalty that was also a statement of personal responsibility. "I've bought his work, I've *used* his work, the man makes fittings that would survive a siege."

"You know about the rumours."

"I know about the rumours." Carson's expression shifted — not to anger, but to frustration. The particular frustration of a man who'd tried to fix something and failed. "Hendrick told me business was bad. Didn't say why at first — he's the type who thinks his work should speak for itself, and talking about problems feels like admitting the work isn't loud enough. By the time he mentioned the rumours, a couple of his buyers had already gone quiet."

"What did you do?"

"What I always do. Talked to people. Told two of his buyers — both regulars at fish fry — that Hendrick Voss makes the best metal fittings in the warrens and anyone saying otherwise is either a liar or an idiot." He shrugged — a motion that involved his entire upper body. "Didn't take. That's the thing — I was fighting smoke. Rumours without a source are just *weather.* I'd tell someone Hendrick's good, they'd nod, and then they'd hear the same lie from two other directions and start wondering if maybe the Reverend's wrong about this one." He rubbed his jaw. "I couldn't point to who was lying because I didn't know. Hendrick didn't know. His wife's terrified — they've got two kids, and if the business folds—"

"The source is the Compact," I said.

Carson went still. Not the laid-back stillness of a man between thoughts — the focused stillness of someone whose entire calculation had just changed.

"Compact," he said. The word came out different from how he'd said anything else — lower, harder, the reflexive contempt of a man who'd made anti-authority a core philosophical position. "The Compact can't build a shelf but they can sure as the hells ruin the man who does."

"Through intermediaries. The same operation that's squeezing my friend's supply chain. They pressured Hendrick to cut off a specific client, and when he didn't fold fast enough, they fabricated the rumours to bury him from the other direction. Double bind — comply or get buried."

"That's—" Carson stopped. Started again, and the grin that came back was the other grin — the one with teeth, the one that meant Carson had identified a problem he could actually solve. "That changes things. 'Someone says Hendrick cuts corners' — that's weather. Nobody knows where it came from, nobody can fight it. But 'the Compact fabricated lies to squeeze a craftsman into compliance' — that's a *story.* And it's a story the warrens already believe, because the Compact's been squeezing people down here since before I had a bench to call my own."

The shift was visible — from a man who'd been fighting blind to a man who'd just been handed a target and a weapon in the same sentence.

"You can counter the rumours now."

"I can do more than counter them. Three of the buyers he's lost are church regulars — they come to fish fry, they drink my beer, they trust my word because my word has been good for twenty years and the Compact has been lying to them for longer. I tell them this is a *shakedown*, not a quality problem? They'll be back at Hendrick's counter before the week is out." He leaned forward. "Face to face. Every one of them."

He said this with the absolute confidence of a man whose personal credibility in these streets was a tangible, load-bearing thing. And down here, in the warrens, he was probably right.

"That handles the buyers in this district," I said. "Some of the damage has reached further out — buyers beyond the warrens."

Carson nodded. The honesty was immediate — no posturing, no overreach. "My word is gold down here. Outside the warrens, I'm just some large man with a strange religion." He shrugged, and the shrug was the gesture of a man who knew exactly where his power ended. "I can stop the bleeding on my streets. Your friend's going to need someone with reach outside the district for the rest."

I filed that. Leon's alternative contacts — already in motion — would cover the gap. Two solutions for two territories: Carson's network reputation for the warrens buyers, Leon's grey-market connections for the supply lines that bypassed the damaged relationships entirely.

"How long?" I asked.

"Couple of weeks. Maybe three. Rumours grow fast but they die slow — you have to replace them with something true, and truth is heavier than fiction." He paused, and something shifted behind the eyes — the philosopher emerging from the problem-solver. "Ahole says that, actually. 'Truth has weight. Lies have legs. But weight wins in the end, because legs get tired.' So said the Right Reverend Carson."

From somewhere in the workshop — I hadn't noticed anyone else, but the warrens had a way of producing people from nowhere — a voice called out: "So said the Right Reverend Carson!"

It was a boy, maybe twelve, sitting on a stool in a back corner with a half-assembled mechanism and a level of focus that suggested he'd been there the entire time. He'd delivered the ritual catchphrase with an expression borrowed directly from Carson's face.

Carson pointed at the boy without looking. "Apprentice," he said. "Learning fabrication and theology simultaneously. Both going well."

"The fabrication is going better," the boy said.

"So said the apprentice who nearly soldered his thumb to a bracket last week."

The exchange had the rhythm of people who did this regularly — call and response, banter and trust, the easy shorthand of a relationship built on competence and affection. I watched it the way I watched most human connection: from the outside, with professional interest and a faint sense of standing on the wrong side of glass.

I finished the coffee. The cup fought back.

"Carson," I said. "I appreciate the help. With Hendrick, and with Kae."

"Help is what I do." He stood, and the workshop felt smaller when he did. "I do it because it makes me feel good, and Ahole says that's the only honest reason to do anything. Narcissistic charity — the purest form." He shook my hand again — controlled, careful, the measured grip of a man who'd learned through probably-painful experience that he couldn't shake hands at full strength without consequences. "Come back if you need anything. Come back for fish fry — Godsday, starting at fourth bell. Bring your friend. Bring anyone. We don't turn people away."

(*He means it. All of it. The help, the invitation, the standing offer. He collects people because collecting people makes him feel good, and he's honest about the selfishness of his generosity, and somehow that honesty makes the generosity land harder rather than softer. I like him. I don't like most people. I like this one.*)

"I might," I said.

"You won't," he said, the warmth undimmed. "But the offer stands."

He was right. I probably wouldn't. But the offer was real, and its reality mattered more than whether I'd take it.

* * *

The walk home through the warrens gave the noise time to work.

(*Kae. Street name, no registered identity. Chronic pain — congenital, born with it. Elara provided partial relief, then disappeared. Carson confirms the deterioration — 'something's wrong beyond the pain.' Oscillation between debilitation and manic energy. Missing from his usual rounds for ten days to two weeks, during the same period the victim count is climbing and the extractions are getting heavier. The picture is forming: not a predator choosing targets, a man in agony reaching for the only thing that makes it stop.*)

The Compact inquiry troubled me. Two men, trained to be polite, asking about Kae by name in the warrens. The Compact knew. Ledger had told me they knew — they'd detected the anomalous residue, filed a report, reassigned the officer who filed it. They were investigating and not investigating simultaneously: one hand filing reports, the other hand asking questions in the warrens while pretending the first hand didn't exist.

(*Or the two inquiries aren't connected. The compliance officer was reassigned for filing the residue report — that's suppression from above. The warrens inquiry might be a different department, a different priority, someone else inside the Compact following a different thread. Institutional organisations aren't monolithic — they're systems of competing interests, and the left hand frequently doesn't know what the right hand is—*)

I pulled the leash. The noise resisted, then gave. The threads would keep.

I was back in the guild quarter by late afternoon. The pewter winter light was fading toward grey. Chandler's Row was two streets ahead when I heard Devod's voice.

"Phelan!"

He was coming from the direction of the canal, coat buttoned up, a sack slung over one shoulder that looked like it contained something organic. Apples, probably. He had a reliable source of apples and an unreliable ability to visit without bringing them.

"Devod."

"I was coming by. Thought about the case — the draining case, the one you told Mere about. I had an idea." He fell into step beside me, matching my pace with the easy stride of someone whose legs were used to covering ground. "What if the crystal doesn't drain on contact? What if it drains on proximity? Because if it's proximity-based, the pattern of where it drains would be a radius from wherever the user keeps it, and you could map the outer edge and work inward to find—"

"Contact-based," I said. "Leon confirmed. The crystal routes through biological channels, not ambient fields. It needs a direct pathway."

"Right. Okay, so that idea's no good." He didn't deflate. The rejected idea went out and another came in with the speed of someone used to operating at a low success rate and comfortable with the statistics. "What about the Compact connection? You said the Compact knew about the pattern and wasn't acting. What if the non-investigation is protective? Not protecting the user — protecting someone connected to the user? A parent, a patron, someone with enough institutional weight to—"

I stopped walking.

"Say that again."

"What, the protective non-investigation?"

"Yes."

"It's just — if the Compact is deliberately not investigating, someone told them not to. And people only tell institutions not to investigate when the investigation would uncover something embarrassing or criminal involving someone who matters. So the user has a connection to someone the Compact wants to protect. Follow the protection and you find the—"

"I know," I said.

Because I did. The idea wasn't new — I'd been circling it since Ledger's first briefing, the compliance officer reassigned to Thorngate, the institutional silence that covered the draining pattern like a lid. But hearing it said aloud, stripped of complexity, with the blunt clarity of someone who hadn't been swimming in the details long enough to lose sight of the shape — it crystallised something.

The Compact wasn't protecting Kae. Kae was a street-level nobody with no registered identity. The Compact was protecting whoever was *connected* to Kae.

(*Follow the protection. The compliance officer was reassigned to Thorngate. Thorngate. That's where — Cass is in Thorngate. Cassius Rykhard, reassigned after the Floundry case, operating from Thorngate. The same Thorngate that keeps appearing in the margins of institutional decisions related to this case. Not proof. Not yet. But the geography of institutional suppression is pointing in a direction that has a name.*)

"That's not bad," I said.

Devod looked at me. He didn't smile, exactly — the expression was more complicated than that. Something between surprise and the cautious hope of a man who'd heard the words *not bad* from someone who didn't use them casually.

"Yeah?" he said.

"Yeah."

We walked the rest of the way to Chandler's Row. Devod dropped off the apples — Henwick's orchard, Thursday route, reliable as weather — and stayed for twenty minutes. He talked about a warehouse contract on the canal that was being more difficult than expected, and about a timber yard on the eastern road that might have materials for the house, and about two other ideas he'd had about the case which were both terrible and which I listened to because the statistical model had just produced a result that justified the sample size.

Mere tolerated his presence the way she tolerated most things — with the focused patience of someone who'd calculated that tolerance was less energy than objection. But somewhere during the twenty minutes, she stopped bristling. It was subtle — the set of her shoulders eased, the angle of her head shifted from *enduring* to *present.* She asked him a question about the apples. It was a practical question — how long they'd keep, whether Henwick sorted for bruising or just collected — but she asked it, which was more than she'd done a month ago.

Devod noticed. He noticed the way a man notices rain after a drought — trying very hard not to look up at the sky in case it stops.

He left with his characteristic too-many-words exit, and the house settled back into the quieter configuration of two.

* * *

Evening. The kitchen table, the case, the map.

I spread Ledger's zone map next to my notes from the day and the picture assembled itself with the slow inevitability of ink spreading on wet paper.

Kae. Not a monster. A wreck. Born with pain that never stopped, raised by no one who cared, found by one person who did — Elara — and then lost her. Whatever had happened to Elara, it had removed the only functional support in his life. And then the crystal — the first thing that ever made the pain stop completely. First complete relief. Immediate, total dependency.

Two vectors confirming the same target. Ledger's intelligence network — old folder, worn edges, the name pulled from institutional sources connected to the dead woman — pointing to a man called Kae. My street investigation — fragments from five conversations, each one a refusal wrapped around a data point — pointing to the same man. Same territory. Same description. Same trajectory from quiet and struggling to desperate and dangerous.

The Compact's two hands were still working different agendas — one suppressing reports, the other sending agents into the warrens to ask by name.

And underneath it all, the simple ugly fact that the victims were getting worse. Ren Dorren, thirty-one and looking fifty, unable to lift his son. The woman in the merchants' quarter, critical, healer giving even odds. The escalation was the addiction — Kae needed more each time, and more meant the people on the other end of the crystal got less of their own lives back.

I thought about Carson's face when he'd talked about Kae. *Man's hurting.* The softness in a man who was built like a forge. The worry that cost him nothing to show because it wasn't a performance. Carson knew a broken person, not a predator. And he was right — from where he was standing, with the information he had, that's exactly what Kae was.

But someone in agony with a weapon they don't understand still hurts other people. The crystal didn't care about Kae's pain or his sympathy network or the fact that every person in the warrens who'd closed a door in my face today had done it out of love. The crystal was a tool built to drain, and it was draining more, faster, with diminishing returns.

Find Kae. Before the next victim doesn't survive.

I put the map away. Mere was reading in the sitting room, Sniff at her feet. The house was quiet. The bracelet was amber.

Tomorrow was Leon's second day on Galden. The broker thread would either produce a name behind the intermediary or it wouldn't. Either way, the warrens investigation was mine now — Carson was a thread, the territory was mapped, and the pieces were assembling into a picture that looked less like a mystery and more like a tragedy.

The street king ruled nothing. His kingdom was defined by the sympathy of others, his crown was chronic pain, and his throne was wherever the crystal let him sit without screaming.

I was going to find him. And when I did, the question wouldn't be who he was — I already knew that, or enough of it. The question would be what to do with a man who was both weapon and victim.

I didn't have an answer yet. I didn't think anyone did.

The quiet at Chandler's Row settled around me, different from the quiet of four days ago. That quiet had been the absence of a case. This quiet was the presence of one — the specific silence of a man who knew the shape of the problem and not yet the shape of the solution, sitting in a house he hadn't built yet with a woman whose words meant exactly what they said, processing fragments of a stranger's pain while his bracelet pulsed warm amber and his dog slept and the noise, for once, was almost still.

Almost.
