For breakfast, Tasha takes me to a little hole in the wall down some alley in Fremont, which is somehow deserted at midmorning on a Saturday, and we split what I know at some level is a very nice meal, fresh and simple and substantial. I don't really pay attention, though; I haven't cared much about food since the attack. We don't talk much. We're both hungry.

Afterward we walk for a while, taking in the sun and the air. I sigh and she asks why. "Look at this place," I say. "A beautiful Saturday morning and half the great brunch places are locked down, and in the other half people are drinking like it's the end of the world." I point into a heavy glass window where a table of what look like graduate students have four bottles of wine open with their meal. "They say the economy is recovering, but I don't see it."

We pass a little chapel, shuttered and hideous, the sun's white light painting the rough grey stones in filthy shadow; the stained glass looks somehow bleached under the rainspots, fungus-toned rather than jeweled. Tasha crosses the street before I think to. We walk a while in silence—first a grim quiet, as though we don't want to disturb whatever spirits haunt the church, then in a companionable silence.

"You know how they talk about the cycle of violence?" she says at last. "I'm starting to understand that. Like, real, solid, bone-deep understanding."

I think of the pen punching through the skin of my neck, the hands bruising my shoulders, the cleaving pain of my head on the bricks of the alley wall. "I'm not," I say. "Not a comment on you. Just saying how it is with me. Everyone deals in their own way."

She shakes her head. "Your Majesty, that is truer than you know."