The gate of the mansion opened with its usual composed movement, a brief metallic creak immediately absorbed by the cool morning air.

  Grem stepped out.

  The street in front of the property was not very busy at that hour. It was a residential street of the Protectorate, wide enough, paved with pale slabs that still held the dampness of the night. The houses along the sides maintained the architectural discipline typical of the Gremian enclave: compact volumes, clean facades, restrained geometries, windows aligned with a precision that never seemed accidental.

  Some people were already on their way to work.

  A man pedaled slowly on a thin-framed bicycle, crossing the street with the air of someone who had been making the same trip every morning for years. A little farther away, a woman walked with two cloth bags tucked under her arm, while a couple of people spoke quietly in front of the entrance of a light ochre building. Footsteps, bicycle wheels over stone, the occasional greeting exchanged in passing: the street moved with the discreet rhythm of a lived-in neighborhood, not with the restless agitation of commercial districts.

  Across from the mansion’s gate, on the other side of the street, a narrow alley opened.

  It was wedged between two squat buildings, solid constructions with little decoration, almost like compressed parallelepipeds forced into the urban fabric. Their side walls faced each other at a short distance, forming a shadowed fissure that cut into the neighborhood like a small incision.

  Grem crossed the street at an unhurried pace and entered it.

  The smell of climbing plants that covered parts of the walls mingled with a more distant scent, barely perceptible, coming from the market stalls beginning to fill a few blocks away. There was also the fresh morning air, still clean, and a mild light filtering down between the roofs above, angled just enough to touch the surfaces without striking them harshly.

  That light seemed almost welcomed by the inorganic, serene nature of the Protectorate. The pale walls, slightly porous, gave off an almost spongy impression to the eye, as if that architecture were capable of absorbing the calm of the morning and returning it amplified.

  Within that urban slit, Grem advanced slowly and quietly.

  The smells, the fresh air, the warmth of the light, and the disciplined silence of the structures gradually twisted together, until they fused with the ruddy serenity that wound its way through the streets of the district.

  The result was a single instant of well-being.

  A small sensory equilibrium.

  For Grem, whose perceptive receptivity often bordered on excess, that combination worked almost like a drug: a moment of harmony so precise that, for a few seconds, it felt perfectly sufficient.

  The alley gradually widened until it spilled into a livelier street.

  The signs of the market arrived even before it became visible: the change in the light, slightly more diffused; the murmur of conversations; the irregular rhythm of footsteps multiplying. The air itself changed texture. More smells, more humidity, more movement.

  Then the market appeared.

  It was not a monumental square, but a sequence of stalls and canopies arranged along a broad street, almost a small commercial artery that had grown organically between residential buildings and low warehouses. The structures were light, often temporary: thin beams, stretched tarps, wooden boards laid across sturdy trestles.

  The goods formed islands of color.

  Baskets full of fruits with waxy or wrinkled skins, violet tubers still stained with dark soil, clusters of small blue berries that caught the light as if they were faintly oily. From a more distant stall came the warm smell of something roasting slowly, while elsewhere someone was slicing large green leaves on a wooden board.

  Grem walked forward unhurriedly.

  Someone recognized him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Grem.”

  A nod.

  “Pleasant morning.”

  A half-smile in response.

  The greetings were brief, almost ritualistic, spoken with the natural ease of habit. Grem was a familiar figure in the district, but he did not cause commotion. Only a composed form of respect.

  He stopped at a fruit stall.

  The vendor was a broad man with sun-darkened skin and large hands stained with juice and pulp.

  Several varieties of local fruit were arranged across the stall: some spherical and matte, others elongated and segmented, others with thin skins crossed by irregular veins. Grem chose a small, slightly oval one with a smooth, dull copper-colored surface.

  The vendor handed it to him without many words. He recognized him too.

  Grem paid, gave a brief nod of thanks, and resumed walking.

  He scored the skin with his fingernail and opened it with a practiced motion. The flesh inside was compact and pale, with a sweet but not cloying aroma. He bit into it as he moved away from the stall.

  For a few minutes his mind remained empty.

  Not in the sense of fatigue or distraction. It was a genuine quiet, a suspended state in which perceptions flowed without needing to be interpreted.

  The taste of the fruit.

  The warmth of the light on his skin.

  The slow movement of the crowd.

  No thoughts.

  But it didn’t last.

  Two figures stepped into his path with almost choreographed precision, interrupting his trajectory.

  Soldiers.

  The uniforms of Anarchy were recognizable even from a distance: dark fabric, rigid lines, equipment worn with almost excessive order. They did not appear aggressive, but their presence alone immediately redefined the space around them.

  The murmur of the market seemed to slide slightly to the margins.

  One of the two stepped forward.

  “Mr. Grem,” he said respectfully, “we were about to come visit you at your house.”

  Shit.

  If I had noticed them earlier, I would have slipped away.

  Grem sighed.

  “What do you want?” he asked, visibly annoyed.

  The two soldiers flinched slightly. His reputation preceded him, and even though the man standing in front of them looked like nothing more than a citizen holding a piece of fruit, there was something about the air around him that made it difficult to forget who he really was.

  One of them cleared his throat.

  “You’ve been summoned to the old administration palace.”

  Grem slowly chewed another piece of fruit, then made a face.

  “That piece of black shit?” he said. “That eyesore?”

  He gestured with his chin beyond the city walls, toward the place where the building stood. From there it could not be seen at all; one had to climb a little higher to catch sight of that dark mass dominating the administrative district.

  The two soldiers exchanged an embarrassed glance.

  “That one, sir,” said the other. “We were told to inform you that it’s urgent.”

  Grem stopped.

  “Wasn’t it stripped of authority by Micheal?” he snapped. “What the hell is going on?”

  His voice rose just enough that a few nearby people turned to look. The two soldiers stiffened, and one of them trembled slightly.

  “Sir, we don’t know anything. This is the order we were given and—”

  Grem raised a hand.

  “Hey, hey. Relax.”

  His tone dropped suddenly.

  “I don’t give a damn what they have to say to me,” he continued, with an almost tired calm. “But I don’t want you getting into trouble because of me. I know how those people are.”

  He paused briefly.

  “Especially if Micheal is involved… I wouldn’t forgive myself.”

  The two soldiers visibly relaxed.

  “That’s why they sent you,” Grem added, taking a few steps as he finished the fruit. “They know me well, those calculators. Those manipulative bastards.”

  He tossed the pit away with a distracted gesture.

  “Anyway. See you around.”

  One of the soldiers took a half step forward.

  “We’ll escort you.”

  Grem looked at him as if he had just heard something absurd.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I want to get rid of this nuisance as quickly as possible.”

  He leapt.

  The movement was so fast that for a moment no one truly understood what had happened. A brief compression of the legs, an almost invisible coiling of the body, and then Grem was no longer there.

  In his place remained a brief turbulence in the air, a cloud of dust rising from the pavement, and a handful of stunned gazes.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Someone turned abruptly. Someone else took half a step back. A woman stopped mid-sentence.

  Grem’s reputation was well known. People knew he was a powerful beast-man, one of those individuals it was better not to provoke. But very few had ever actually seen him move.

  The leap catapulted him into the air above the city.

  The speed was brutal.

  The kind of acceleration that would tear an ordinary person apart in a fraction of a second: muscles ripped loose, joints shattered, consciousness extinguished before the body could even process what was happening.

  Grem passed through it naturally.

  The technique of the leap only appeared simple. It was not brute strength. It was a precise composition of impulses: muscular compression, vector discharge, control of inertia during the first instant of detachment. A kinetic grammar that very few people even knew how to imagine.

  And in any case, no one he knew could reach that kind of velocity with a single jump.

  With that one leap he cleared the palisade.

  The enormous wooden wall slid beneath him like a hastily drawn line. For an instant his body crossed the invisible boundary between the disciplined order of the Protectorate and the broader, more unruly mass of Anarchy.

  The air opened before him.

  Not in a poetic sense.

  Literally.

  The space around him seemed to fray, as though it were tender flesh being parted by an invisible blade. Filaments of air, microcurrents, gradients of pressure: everything warped as his body traced its trajectory.

  Grem perceived it all.

  His internal visuospatial notebook activated almost automatically. It was not a metaphor: in his mind space truly organized itself like a system of simultaneous annotations.

  Surfaces.

  Angles.

  Distances.

  Possible trajectories.

  Every element of the environment was recorded and placed within a dynamic map that updated itself hundreds of times per second.

  Speed did not reduce perception.

  It amplified it.

  The deformation of the air, reflections of light on rooftops, the differences in elevation between buildings, even the nearly imperceptible movement of a flock of birds shifting direction several hundred meters away: everything could be captured if Grem chose to pay attention.

  The phenomenon was deeply synesthetic.

  Sight became space.

  Space became structure.

  Structure became possibility of movement.

  There was no confusion.

  Only a lucid architecture of trajectories.

  Below him Anarchy flowed like a gigantic organism.

  Roofs, streets, and districts passed by at a speed that would have blinded any ordinary observer. But in his mind nothing was truly lost. Everything settled into that instantaneous cartography that allowed him to move through the world as if he were writing it while crossing it.

  And for a moment, suspended within the arc of the leap, Grem felt something as familiar to him as breathing.

  A quiet, arrogant mastery of space.

  He shot into the administration palace like a meteor.

  The window exploded inward in a rain of dark fragments. It was not real glass: something similar to smoked glass, thicker, slightly elastic, with a dull surface that swallowed light instead of reflecting it. Not strong enough, though.

  Grem passed through it without slowing down.

  He landed with a dull thud on the floor of the seventh level. Shards slid away from his boots with a brittle scraping sound, then silence filled the room again.

  There were five more floors above him.

  He knew perfectly well he would have to go all the way to the top. But he wanted to create a little disturbance. It was almost a reflex.

  Those poor bastards working there, after all, weren’t paid at all.

  And yet they still showed up every morning.

  They entered the building, sat at their desks, typed documents, recopied circulars, rearranged registers that no one really checked anymore. The administrative routines of the place simply continued because people kept performing them.

  Somewhere above them there was always someone guaranteeing their safety.

  In a city like Anarchy, security was a more tangible currency than wages.

  At least now they would have something to talk about.

  Grem had just given it to them.

  The room was a typing office.

  Long, orderly, almost austere. Rows of identical desks stretched in parallel under a pale light falling from panels embedded in the ceiling. On every desk sat a black typewriter, polished smooth where fingers had worn the surface.

  But no keys were moving.

  No metallic clatter.

  Everyone’s breath seemed suspended.

  Some of the clerks remained seated with their hands frozen above the keyboards.

  Others had slowly risen from their chairs.

  Someone was still clutching a folder against their chest.

  Many were terrified.

  Grem looked around calmly, as if he had just walked into a library.

  “Relax!” he said, raising a hand. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  He pointed vaguely upward.

  “I’m here to kick a few big shots.”

  He paused.

  Then he performed a slow, theatrical spinning kick in the air.

  “Like this.”

  No one laughed.

  A pencil slipped from a desk and rolled across the floor.

  Grem stood still for a moment, considering.

  “That was supposed to be a small comedic bit,” he said. “But I see you people don’t have much of a sense of humor.”

  He scratched his chin.

  “Or maybe my companions are right and I’m not nearly as funny as I think.”

  He paused.

  “Who knows.”

  Then suddenly he widened his eyes.

  “Does it matter?” he burst out laughing. “I’m crazy, hahaha. I’ll kill you all.”

  A couple of typists stepped backward.

  One of the older clerks slowly removed his glasses, as if hoping the scene might become less real without them.

  Grem watched them with something almost like affection.

  How beautiful the civilians of Anarchy are.

  They’ve heard my name.

  There are even pictures of me around.

  But they are so worn down by the miserable lives they lead that they never really inform themselves.

  The educated people in this city are often the ones who know the least about the city.

  They have no time.

  Their brains are drained by useless activities, sterile routines that slowly atrophy real curiosity.

  Real knowledge.

  The city lives all around them and they never truly see it.

  Grem clapped his hands once.

  “Come on, come on. I was joking.”

  He gave them a small theatrical bow.

  “I’ll leave you alone. They’re waiting for me upstairs.”

  He pointed at the ceiling with his thumb.

  “You know how it is,” he said with a wide grin.

  “I’m a big shot.”

  He left the typists’ room behind without adding anything.

  He crossed the room between the rows of motionless desks. The clerks remained still, as if some silent command had frozen them in place. Some followed him with their eyes. Others stared stubbornly at the papers in front of them, as if continuing to look at their work might convince the world that nothing had happened.

  Grem stepped into the corridor.

  The administration palace had a heavy atmosphere. The walls were covered with dark panels, and the high ceiling held a cold light that fell evenly from above. The surfaces seemed designed to repel any trace of life: smooth, severe, almost hostile.

  The sound of his footsteps echoed along the corridor with a slow cadence.

  He met no one.

  He continued until he reached the staircase.

  It was wide, built with dark stone steps slightly worn at the center. The metal handrail was cold and polished, marked by years of disciplined passage.

  Grem began to climb.

  His pace was calm, unhurried. Despite the speed with which he had catapulted himself into the building, he now seemed almost to be strolling.

  Floor after floor, the atmosphere of the palace grew quieter.

  At the lower levels there was still the distant murmur of offices, the movement of workers trying to keep alive an administrative machine that had long since lost its meaning. But as he climbed higher, that sound thinned out until it disappeared completely.

  When he reached the top floor, the corridor opened into a wider space.

  On the right stood the Council Chamber.

  Just beyond it, to the right of the chamber, was the Superintendent’s office.

  Grem slowed and stopped in front of the large doors of the council chamber.

  They were tall, massive, built from a dark wood almost black. The surface was crossed by severe geometric carvings, meant to suggest an ancient authority that in truth had never been particularly old.

  For years, behind those doors, the various spheres of the city’s power had made the most important decisions.

  Decisions that had affected all of Anarchy.

  He had never entered.

  And yet they had invited him more than once.

  When he was still one of the most respected generals of the army, before the creation of the Protectorate, his name often circulated within those walls. Some wanted to involve him genuinely. Others simply hoped to neutralize him by turning him into a symbolic presence.

  A mannequin.

  The representative of that faction of the army that adored him: for his ideas, for his initiatives, for that almost irritating way he had of dealing with people with the same measure regardless of their status.

  Grem had always despised them.

  With people like that you could talk for hours and obtain nothing. Deep down he knew perfectly well that the only language they would truly listen to was a well-placed kick.

  For a moment he entertained the idea.

  Entering, crossing the chamber, and slapping a few big shots just to restore the proportions of reality.

  But the thought slipped away.

  Despite his brazenness in front of powerful people and his almost absurd combat abilities, Grem hated violence.

  With all his heart.

  He used it when it was necessary. But it did not belong to him.

  Micheal, on the other hand, did.

  Those doors were a disgusting madeleine de Proust. A portal that evoked memories of a time when he had formed a solid friendship with a man who had later revealed himself for what he truly was.

  Ambiguous.

  Immoral.

  Ruthless.

  Cruel.

  Micheal.

  Grem remained still for a few seconds in front of the doors.

  Then he moved.

  He did not enter.

  He entered the Superintendent’s office instead, pushing the door open so hard that it slammed against the wall.

  “Who’s the pathetic son of a bitch who thought it was a good idea to come knocking at my door, knowing that to me all of you, especially now that you’re worth less than zero, are nothing but a pain in the ass?”

  He paused.

  Too long, Grem thought.

  In front of him, behind a large desk, sat a woman.

  She wore thick glasses, with a dark frame that made her gaze seem even sharper. Her lips were thin, almost a line, and her face was narrow and angular, carved by precise lines that suggested discipline more than fatigue. Even seated it was obvious that she was tall and slender, her posture straight and composed. She was not particularly curvy; her figure had something spare about it, almost geometric.

  She had remained perfectly still.

  She had only sighed.

  The office was spacious, much larger than Grem remembered. The high ceiling cast down a uniform light from opaque panels embedded in the structure. The desk stood at the center of the room like a small bastion of dark wood, covered with neatly arranged piles of documents, registers, and administrative objects that seemed to belong to a more stable world than the one outside these walls.

  Shelves lined the walls, filled with files. A large window occupied most of the opposite wall, letting in the gray light of the city.

  Near the desk stood three officials.

  They had flinched when Grem entered.

  Anonymous people.

  Faces without history.

  Grem didn’t give them a single glance.

  His hands settled on his hips as he looked at the woman with a sardonic smile. His gaze shifted between hostility and brazen amusement.

  “I see you haven’t changed a bit since the last time we saw each other,” the woman said, ataraxic.

  Then she turned to the officials.

  “You may leave. Unfortunately I have to have a conversation with this boor.”

  The three of them hurried past Grem as they exited.

  “That’s a compliment coming from you,” Grem said.

  “Regarding boor, or you haven’t changed?”

  “Both.”

  The woman sighed.

  “Will you come sit down?”

  “No. Tell me what you want, take your rejection, and leave me the hell alone. How stupid do you have to be to think I’d be interested in collaborating with you even just to water a few plants with a piss?”

  “Will you stop? Can you behave like an adult for once?”

  Meanwhile Grem approached the desk and sat down.

  “I don’t want to start a philosophical dissertation,” he said. “No, let’s not talk about what it means to be an adult, because I believe our ideas differ quite a lot and you’d end up forgetting what you want from me.”

  The woman looked at him without changing expression.

  “I don’t want anything from you, Grem. I was tasked with informing you of an important event that recently occurred, and with presenting a proposal I completely disagree with.”

  “Interesting.” He paused. “I’m joking, of course. All right, let’s pretend you’ve already told me everything, that I’ve refused the proposal, and we end this useless reunion here. Deal?”

  “Grem…”

  “Or maybe you’d prefer to forget the political matters, which don’t have much relevance anymore anyway, and get down to it? Come on, like the old days. When you didn’t have a broomstick up your ass.”

  Grem shifted in the chair, pushing the backrest and balancing it on its rear legs. Then he raised his feet onto the desk, crossing them.

  The woman grimaced.

  “You disgust me,” she said coldly.

  “You didn’t think that before.”

  “You bastard. You’re married, aren’t you? You have two wives, idiot. How can you say things like that?”

  “I see you’re informed. My wives accept me as I am.”

  “You’re just a smug anarchic man-child who refuses to take any responsibility.”

  “I’m the governor of a city, you know. That’s not—”

  “You’re the governor of a city-enclave you didn’t found, that was already rich before you arrived, where everything is decided by self-organizing assemblies. The only thing you’re capable of doing is defending it. And you’d probably fail even at that if—”

  “If what?” Grem cut in. “If Micheal attacked me? I’ve already kicked his ass once. I’m not afraid of him, unlike the rest of you. Maybe it’s true that I only function as a shield for the Protectorate, but I’m an excellent shield. And besides, you know I have other qualities.”

  He smiled.

  “One of them you liked very much.”

  “Grem…”

  “I didn’t think certain things about myself once. I’ve always found it incredible how someone can radically change their opinion about a person after being dumped. But you know—”

  “Hischach…” she raised her voice.

  “Between the two of us I’m not the one who changed. And—”

  “MICHEAL IS DEAD!”

  She shouted the words, closing her eyes.

  A chill fell over the room.

  Grem slowly lowered his legs from the desk and stared at her, eyes wide.

  “What?”

  Several possible responses whirled through his mind, all incomplete. Sentences began to take shape and immediately dissolved before becoming words. He didn’t know what else to add.

  He hadn’t expected it.

  He knew Micheal had organized a military expedition toward Arcadia, to take revenge on Sidorova, who had defeated him. But he also knew that Micheal, still very young, improved at an absurd speed. He was a prodigy. Grem believed he must have become much stronger since then.

  Sidorova was no longer at his level.

  The opposite outcome would have made more sense.

  The woman let a few seconds pass, giving Grem time to absorb the information.

  “Did Sidorova manage to defeat Micheal?”

  “Does that surprise you? He had already been defeated once, hadn’t he?”

  “You know Micheal as well as I do, Kanmi. It’s absurd. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had killed her at Rahinua, but I would never have expected this after a year.”

  “In fact, it wasn’t Sidorova who made him surrender.”

  Grem looked at her more carefully.

  “It sounds like you actually have quite a few interesting things to tell. Go on.”

  His tone had suddenly turned serious. Inside him a sadness was rising that disgusted him. It was a sign that the friendship they once had still prevailed over the emotions he would have preferred, if he had reflected on it, to associate with that reckless madman.

  Kanmi folded her hands on the desk.

  “As we all expected, Micheal won the fight. The only survivors who managed to return—four of them—told us how the duel unfolded. Unfortunately their account isn’t reliable. They were completely out of their minds. Their report was fragmented, delirious, full of contradictions. They’ve been institutionalized.”

  Grem remained silent.

  “We sent soldiers to the area and found a sort of statue with the features of a woman which, according to the daguerreotypes we possess, was indeed Sidorova. The destruction of Arcadia was geological in nature, so we assume Micheal won in a crushing manner.”

  “What happened next?” Grem asked.

  Kanmi grimaced.

  “I was getting to that. Near the city there was an enormous crater. Absurdly large. That’s where we found pieces of our soldiers’ bodies.”

  “Your soldiers,” Grem corrected.

  Kanmi shot him an irritated look.

  “Yes, fine. Can you stop interrupting me?”

  Grem waved a dismissive hand.

  Kanmi continued.

  “There wasn’t a single intact body. And most of the soldiers—along with most of the bodies to which the scraps of flesh we found once belonged—had been completely vaporized. We didn’t find a single intact head.”

  Grem tilted his head slightly.

  “Then how can you say Micheal is dead?”

  A trace of relief passed through him.

  The feeling irritated him.

  “We can’t say it with certainty. But the type of destruction wasn’t geological. And even Micheal, as powerful as he is, probably wouldn’t be capable of something like that. So we assume it wasn’t him. It must have been someone else. Either Micheal was captured, or he was killed. We lean toward the second.”

  “Why?”

  Kanmi looked him in the eyes.

  “You know why.”

  Grem nodded faintly.

  “The genocide.”

  Kanmi nodded.

  Silence.

  “I don’t believe it…” Grem finally said. “I don’t think Micheal was killed.”

  “We can’t take that for granted either.”

  Grem fell into thought.

  “What if it was Heydrich Kaltenbrunner? Or some other powerful mage from Kublai Khan?”

  Kanmi shook her head.

  “Why would they do that? Kublai Khan has been isolated from the rest of the world for twenty years now.”

  “I don’t think the genocide is unrelated,” Grem said. “In my opinion Micheal is colluding with whoever created that plan. Or maybe he’s the one who devised it.”

  Kanmi sighed.

  “I know that theory. But it’s cheap conspiracy talk.”

  “Mages started dying right when he became relevant on the continental political stage. A coincidence? Absolutely possible. But how can that be cheap conspiracy talk? We both know what Micheal is capable of.”

  “That theory doesn’t stand,” Kanmi replied. “There were very few moments when Micheal wasn’t under observation, while mages began dropping like flies exactly when he was climbing the hierarchical pyramid of the city’s military-political axis. It’s illogical.”

  Grem gave a faint smile.

  “As if it would take him very long to kill most of the mages. Let me remind you that most of the mages who were killed were weak fighters.”

  “Because they weren’t fighters.”

  Kanmi shook her head.

  “Maybe. Tell me instead why you think Heydrich or someone from Kublai Khan might be involved.”

  “It’s simple. They started investigating the genocide and discovered Micheal was implicated. So they killed him. And since they don’t give a damn about the natives, they didn’t tell us anything. You mentioned massive devastation. Besides, it’s true that he isn’t the only one—or that others from that place aren’t capable of wiping out an army or killing Micheal…”

  “Pointless speculation…” Kanmi interrupted.

  Grem smiled.

  “Right. Because you’re very pragmatic, aren’t you? Were you pretending years ago, or are you pretending now?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  “Mmh. So. What do you want from me?”

  Kanmi studied him for a few seconds.

  “Someone who has taken advantage of this power vacuum to become relevant again would like you to become the new governor.”

  She grimaced.

  “Imagine how stupid that is.”

  Grem burst out laughing.

  “Me, governor of Anarchy? Are you kidding me?”

  “Maybe.”

  Grem shook his head.

  “No. I refuse. But why the hell would such a stupid idea even occur to them?”

  Kanmi looked at him.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Grem remained silent for a moment.

  “Actually, it is.”

  Kanmi sighed.

  “You’ve exhausted me. Can you at least promise you’ll think about it?”

  Grem stood up.

  “I don’t like making promises. I only make promises to women who like men who make promises and keep them.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Right,” Kanmi said behind him. “The problem is that you don’t keep them.”

  Grem paused.

  “The problem is that a promise is interpretable. The subjective component makes promises an ineffective way to prove one’s reliability. Especially when you make a promise to a paranoid person.”

  They looked at each other.

  Then Grem walked out.

  In silence.