Marek came on the third night, which meant the woman had decided it was time.
Caleb was on the roof again when the silver woke, but this time it did not lean east. It turned toward the alley below the safe house, slow, the turn it made for kin, and when Caleb looked down a thin figure stood at the mouth of the alley with its hands in its coat pockets, out of the wind.
He knew the shape before he could see the face. He had carried that shape in his head for three years, from a kill floor where an old man taught a washout to breathe inside dead things.
Caleb came down the fire stair fast.
Marek waited for him in the alley, and up close he was worse than the yard had shown. The skin hung off him, his coat on his shoulders like it was on a hook.
He had looked ninety the last time. Now the ninety was something he was wearing over a thing that no longer counted its age in years.
"There he is," Marek said. "The kid from the yard."
