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son.”
    “I’m still sorry. If I can figure out a way to get Maeve off my back, I will. I hope she pays for all the damage she’s created,” I said.
    My father finished off his drink. “There are no angels wearing crowns, son. Donor’s hands are no cleaner.”
    “Were,” I said.
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “Then the rumor is true? The Elven King is dead?”
    I nodded. “I tried to stop him from destroying the Guildhouse. It would be nice to say I didn’t mean to kill him, but I kinda threw a spear at him.”
    I tried to make light of it, but my father didn’t laugh. “I don’t know what you faced that day. There is a difference between murder and causing death, and the line between them can be difficult. All deaths have ramifications. All births do, too. It makes me sad that you have to live with that.”
    My father had killed people. He didn’t talk about it often, but he had been a Guild agent himself once upon a time. Pressure bore down on my chest. I had caused the death of another living thing. I had also murdered in my life. Those things could not be waved away as learning experiences, despite what I had learned. The best thing I could do—had been trying to do for years now—was make amends for it. Some people believed that there was no way to atone for the taking of a life. I didn’t know if that was true, but I also didn’t know it wasn’t. Until I did know either way, I was going to do the best I could to achieve forgiveness, if only from myself.
    “I hope I stopped him from doing worse than he did,” I said.
    “We all do,” he said.
    A crow wheeled against the sallow light of the city night sky. It landed on the weather vane of Faneuil, a giant gold-leafed grasshopper. The bird hunched forward and made a jerking motion with its beak. The thick glass made it impossible to tell if it had called to its fellows for the night, but no others joined it. Instead, the elf’s falcon swept up and knocked the crow from its perch. My father gestured with his glass. “Did you see that?”
    The falcon settled on the vane while the crow wheeled around it. Below, the elf raised his glove, but the falcon remained perched, indifferent to the call of its falconer. The crow dove, and the falcon leaped to meet it. They rose higher in the sky, diving and dodging until we couldn’t see them.
    A laugh from the other room drew my attention away.

5
     
    On my way back to the Tangle later in the afternoon, Murdock’s reminder about the elf murder prompted me to stop at the Rowes Wharf Hotel. The place had seen better days. Once one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, in a few short months, it had become a battered shadow of its former glory. Eorla Elvendottir had taken over the building as the headquarters for her renegade court. Some people called her the Queen of the Unseelie Court because she opposed both High Queen Maeve and Donor Elfenkonig. I liked to call her friend.
    I picked my way through the mess in front of the building. Sandbags and sawhorses lined the sidewalk and blocked the street. Every floor had chunks of masonry missing. The fallen brick and cement was piled into hills around the front entrance.
    The day the Guildhouse fell, Donor had staged an attack against Eorla. He had wanted to make it seem like she was attacking the Guild, and he had been helping defend it. The ruse worked for the most part. The human government had sentin the National Guard. Together with the Consortium, they had pounded the hotel with elf-shot and mortar fire. Eorla held them off, but the building looked like it belonged in the Weird now instead of the financial district.
    Consortium agents across the street took occasional shots at the building. They were careful not to hit anyone but tried to provoke an armed response. Eorla’s people restrained themselves. They knew the Consortium was looking for a legitimate excuse to move on them in force. Guards surrounded me as soon as I neared the entrance. My presence