“You brought it back,” the man said without turning.

“You’re not for paying,” she said. “You’re for looking.”

Kishi saw then: that on the night he had been left at Saint Avan’s gate, there had been not abandonment but protection. The woman in the photograph had closed a door to keep something away, and written his name like a promise that someone would remember him. The keeper watched him with a softness that smelled faintly of pipe smoke.

“You Kishi?” the boy asked. His voice had the flattened note of someone who’d swallowed a long road.