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"I have a room," he says. "Upstairs."

I put the rag down.

"Is there flying involved?"

"No."

"What's involved?"

He looks at me, calm as anything, with those pale silver eyes.

"Rope," he says.

I think about the roof. I think about the way he said Usually, I tie them up, and then didn't laugh.

"Okay," I say. "Let me get my bag."

William’s room is on the third floor too, at the other end of the hall from Lenart’s suite. I’ve walked past his door twice without noticing it. It’s plain wood with no number on it, next to a narrow set of stairs that goes up to the roof. His room is right under it. You can hear the wind on the tar and gravel overhead.

It's bigger than I expected, and almost empty. The ceiling is high with old exposed beams, and there's a long skylight in it showing a strip of dark sky. The walls are bare brick. There's a bed against one wall, wide and low and made up tight with dark gray sheets, and an armchair big enough for him with a folded blanket over the arm. A shelf of books. A shelf of rope.

That's what I look at. Coils of it, neat and soft-looking, in natural tan and black and a deep red, each coil tied off the same way, each one on its own peg. Under them, a small table with a water bottle, a folded towel, and a pair of blunt-tipped safety shears on a hook.

In the ceiling beam above the bed there's one steel ring, bolted through. There's a tag hanging from it on a wire. I go and read it, standing on my toes.

Inspected. Load-tested. W.

"You tag your own bedroom," I say.

"I tag everything." He closes the door behind us. "Sit down, Tara Iverson."

I sit on the edge of the bed. He doesn't sit beside me. He crouches in front of me, so his face is level with mine, his wings folded tight behind him and his claws loose on his knees.

"Tell me what you want to try," he says.

I open my mouth and close it. "I don't know. I've never done this. Lenart tied my wrists with his tie once."

"That's a start." He doesn't look jealous. He looks interested. "Did you like it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then we'll start with your wrists. Maybe your arms. Nothing that lifts you off the bed tonight." He nods up at the ring. "That's for later. If you want it."

"What's the ring for tonight?"

"So I don't have to tie you to the furniture," he says, perfectly serious. "The furniture isn't load-tested."

I laugh. He doesn't.

"Red stops everything," he says. "Yellow means slow down. If your hands go cold or tingly, or anything starts to hurt in a way you don't like, you say so the second it happens. You don't wait to be polite." He holds up one stone-gray hand. "I'll check. A lot. You'll get sick of it."

"What if I can't talk?"

"You'll be able to talk. I want you talking." He tips his head. "If you can't for some reason, you shake this." He takes a little brass hand bell off the table, the size of a shot glass, with a worn wooden handle, and puts it in my hand. "If I hear that, everything stops."

I look at the bell. Then at him.

"You have a bell?"