My mentor sits lotus-style on the biggest chair I’ve ever seen. It’s beet-red velvet, flushed absolutely crimson, and is dangled all over with golden silk tassels. The room is otherwise green, full of leafy plants that hang densely from the high glass ceiling or stand in terracotta pots on the floor. There’s a wet warm smell, somewhere between a greenhouse and a summer afternoon, deep in a mossy forest, after a hard rain.

My mentor is ancient and wrinkled like a root-cellar apple in April. Under his coarse gray hood his blocky head is stubbly with close-cropped hair, and his full beard is smooth and white. He looks a bit like a wizard.

But wizards don’t use guns, and my mentor has a revolver resting in his lap, both his hands laid across it like it’s a sacred text he’s praying on.