“I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more, Xiu. Can you shake hands?” She held out her hand, tiny and calloused with an age her face didn’t show. Paladin extended his arm, allowing the scuffed metal of his fingers to curl around the pale pink of hers. She pressed her fingertips into his alloy, which yielded slightly and recorded the whorls embedded in each. They matched nothing in the databases he had access to. Either Bluebeard had a completely unregistered identity, or age had degraded her prints so much that she was effectively untraceable. When their hands broke apart, she looked at the
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