Chapter 13: A Conversation in Rain About What Gods Are For

The rain came in from the west just after nine, the way it always did when it meant business — not the half-hearted London drizzle that couldn't commit to being weather, but something with intention, sweeping in off the river and settling into the streets like it was planning to stay.

Mara was already on the roof.

She had not planned to be on the roof. She had planned to go home, eat something with actual nutritional content, and write down everything she had observed at the CURRENT building before the precision of it faded, because she had learned in the last week that memory was not reliable storage and she was, apparently, in the business of not trading away what she couldn't afford to lose. But she had come out of the stairwell onto the landing and found that the door to her flat required a key, which she had, and that she did not want to go through it, which she hadn't expected, and that the ladder to the roof hatch above was two steps away and the hatch was already unlatched, which she took as the universe making a suggestion.