32
The shaking in the ground isn’t only the train’s countless wheels receding from the switchyard. It’s coming from inside me, a blow to my soul and a matching blow to my mind.
Father’s last words were that he loved me?
And he’d been killed by one of the most maniacal freelancers I’d ever known?
You don’t go into this business if you’re normal. You don’t stay in this business if you’re insane. But Ayaka gleefully dances along the line between crazy and competent. She has decades of experience and completes her contracts with chilling precision, yes, but takes an unholy joy in hurting people on the way.
I could too-easily imagine Father’s death. Hands tied behind his back. Noose snug around his neck. Knot precisely placed behind his ear. Forced to balance his big feet on Skald’s should
