"You changed?" Sariel blew a hot tongue of smoke into my face and I glared at him. "Same nasty look, same vicious glare. You don't seem changed."

"I don't.. .Look at me, Sariel." I thrust my upturned arms out at him. "Open your eyes and actually look at me."

Sariel stared into my eyes for several moments. Slowly, his gaze moved over my dirty face. He glanced to my bare chest and at the white scars there. He followed the white letters over my shoulders and then down my arms. His expression was gentle until the moment he caught sight of the bruised, deep furrows that years of needles had left on both my arms. He looked away, but not before I saw an expression of revulsion flicker across his handsome face.

I folded my arms back in across my chest. I had invited his gaze to force him to admit that I was a wreck of what I had been. Still, the moment he glanced away from me, rejection knifed through me like a deep wound. It was what I had expected-demanded, even—but still it hurt me.

"You just need a bath and some rest," Sariel said, but he couldn't bring himself to look into my face.

"I know what I need, Sariel. In fact, I need it more than I need you." My bitterness at him made my words come out more harshly than I had wanted. "Don't patronize me with that 'all the boy needs is a bath, a bed, and a hot meal.' Save it for your Good Commons gatherings. I know perfectly well what kind of man I am."

"It isn't who you are; it's only what the Inquisition did to you." He was sitting up now, his red eyes glowing almost as brightly as the cherry of his cigarette.

"They took you in three times before they came after me, and you're the same as ever," I responded as coldly as I could manage.

"That's because I just confessed. I told them what they wanted to know, and I paid my fines." Sariel glared at me. "What were you thinking, trying to hold out?"

"I promised you I wouldn't betray you."

"It was only a fucking fine, Belimai!" Sariel was shouting now. "Fifty coins! Didn't you think I would have paid fifty coins just to not have you hurt? Did you think I was that cheap?"

"I didn't know what the charges were," I snapped. "I didn't know, and I didn't want you to end up roasting at the stake because I—" I cut myself short, realizing that this whole thing was going wrong. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All of this was over. It had come and gone. Screaming at Sariel now wouldn't alter even a moment of the past. Not even his one glance of repulsion could be taken back, now.

"I'm too tired to fight with you, Sariel. And I don't want to, in any case," I said.

"Neither do I." Sariel leaned back again. "Fighting is about the last thing I want, honestly."

He took a drag off his cigarette, and I looked up at the sky. The stars were still shining brightly, though a pale blue light crept up from the horizon.

"It's a nice night, isn't it?" Sariel asked at last.

"Yes," I agreed.

"Can we start over?" Sariel asked, and I knew he meant more than the conversation.

I wanted to tell him that we could. But the past could no more be forgotten than it could be undone. It would always be between us. When I looked at him, I could not help but remember who I had been and how low I had sunk since then. No matter how many years passed, I knew that I would never be able to think of him without recalling my time under the prayer engines. He would think of the same things when he saw me.

"No," I said. "Let's just go on."

A few more moments of silence passed. Sariel blew smoke rings, and then as a thick plume of smoke floated up from between his lips, he whispered the word, "Moth." The smoke curled into the form of a gypsy moth. Its wings beat against the breezes, dissipating as it rose up.

I smiled. Creating smoky moths had been the first magic Sariel had accomplished. He had shown them to me on a night much like this one, when the two of us had snuck up to the roof of the school. I remembered how his young face had been flushed with exertion and pride. He had singed his hair and burnt one of his fingers, but that had hardly mattered to him. Now he made it look as effortless as breathing.

Sariel leaned languidly on one elbow, as if he were on the edge of sleep. He watched me, but from the shadows of his lowered eyes. I didn't catch the word that he whispered, but the smoke that rose from his mouth whirled up into two slender forms. They circled each other, the thin trails of their bodies winding together. At last they drew into an embrace that swallowed them both.

Sariel looked directly at me then. As much as he wanted to return to the past, I needed to leave it behind. The man I was could never reclaim that time of trust and pride. I no longer fit into it. I looked past Sariel to where black walls of smoke still hung over Edward Talbott's house.

"Did you know Joan Talbott very well?" I asked.

"I knew her," Sariel said, "but we weren't associates outside of Good Commons. She was never willing to get her silk gloves that dirty."

"Tell me about her."

"What do you want to know?" Sariel looked slightly unsure of the turn of the conversation.

"What connection she had to Peter Roffcale and to a woman named Lily and another named Rose."

"So, Captain Harper really has hired you for his investigation." Sariel frowned. "I thought he might have just brought you along with him to protect himself."

"He hired me," I said. Whether to investigate, to provide a buffer from others of my own kind, or just to waste his money, I didn't know.

"Mica might have killed him if you hadn't been there." Sariel moved a little closer to me. "She raised Peter from the time he was nine. When we heard that he had been murdered, she.. .Well, you saw how she was. She's almost wasted away to nothing."

"Did Mica know Joan also?"

"Oh yes, they were fond of each other. I think Mica believed that eventually Joan would come back to Peter. She used to say that the girl was just scared. She needed time." Sariel shook his head. "Joan wrote a lot of our speeches, some of the best ones. But she never had the courage to deliver any of them or to attend any of the demonstrations. Peter and Lily read most of what she wrote. Rose took the vitriolic ones.

"Rose had a sweet look about her that let her say vicious things without losing the crowd. Peter did six months of labor for one of Joan's speeches. Lily spent ten months in a reformatory for Prodigal women. Rose was charged, but I think the judge couldn't bring himself to give her more than a fine. Even I've given speeches that Joan wrote. I was charged for public indecency for one." Sariel smiled briefly at this. "Joan, on the other hand, never even stepped into an Inquisition House unless it was to take a lunch to her half-brother—"

"Half-brother?" I asked.

"Captain William Harper," Sariel said, as if I should have already known that. "His father was some Inquisition abbot who got his head ripped off during the mine riots. Joan was the child from the mother's second marriage."

"I see."

"They're a rich family. Though you wouldn't know it from the captain. They own a huge estate house out past St. Bennet's. Before she married, Joan had a house up near the banks all to herself. She hired Peter on as an under-gardener. He carried her speeches down to us in Hells Below. I suppose he provided other services as well. It must have been quite nice for her. She could express her displeasure with the society around her while still enjoying its amenities."