Chapter 10 · Chapter 10

"Alone," I said. "Write it plainly. The file is in my name, and my hand is the only hand on it."

The clerk's smile did not move, but his eyes did — once, briefly, toward the empty chair at my right. Then he typed. He was young enough that the screen still made him careful, and he read my name off the header twice before he trusted himself to copy it into the field.

The office sat on the twenty-second floor of a tower in the financial district, glass on three sides, the city pressed flat and pale beneath it. Nothing in that room belonged to anyone. That was why I had chosen it.

"And how shall I describe the applicant, Sayyidati?"

"As the owner of what is written there."

He printed the acknowledgment. I signed it in my own hand, the way I had signed the deed, the way I had signed the share transfer the night before with the notary's pen still warm from another man's fingers. My signature is not beautiful. It is fast, and it closes at the end like a door.

He stamped it.