Ryke was quiet for a moment.
"Thank you," he said, "for telling me the real version instead of the tidy one."
"I don't really have tidy versions of things," I said. "I've tried. They don't take."
Something that might have been the almost-smile crossed his face, brief and real.
"Good," he said. "I'd rather have the true ones."
---
We were still in the training yard, the immediate crisis of the phone call momentarily eclipsed by the larger one I'd just delivered, when Mitch found us.
He had his phone out, face-down already, and the specific tightness around his eyes told me whatever he'd come to say had been sitting on him since before he arrived.
"I finished tracing the broker payment," he said. "The third buyer. The unaffiliated one."
I felt my stomach drop in a way that had nothi
