Three weeks after the collapse, Marius was summoned to a glass conference room downtown.

He came in looking like the ghost of the man on the magazine covers — thinner, unkempt, the expensive aura entirely gone.

“Sit down, Mr.

Kestrel,” Sinclaire said, and slid a binder onto the table.

He sat.

He looked at me with a desperate, pleading hope that he still, even now, did not understand the new arrangement of the world.