Anji didn’t know what to say. How could trying be a mistake?

“What’s the use in knowing all this?” Anji finally said after a moment of awkward silence.

“I already told you—”

“You told me it helped,” Anji said, “but I don’t really understand how.”

Kit shifted on the rock and unsheathed her dagger, flipping it in her bony fingers. Her eyes were dull with exhaustion, and Anji nearly said they should just forget it and go to bed before she began.

“Your opponent is rarely in such a state,” Kit said, eyes still fixed on the dagger. “It’s best to have every advantage. These methods, basic as they are, are not widely mastered. I have only met two other people with my aptitude.”

Anji didn’t want to guess who, but she had a feeling. It didn’t feel like an advantage. If anything, she felt more tired.

“We should sleep,” Kit said, scratching at her wrist.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to.” She still had questions, but she didn’t think the Hawk would answer if she just came right out with them. Anji scraped a hand along the floor, feeling the centuries of rot and long-gone memory seeping through the chipped rock, the mortar holding it all together.

“Nothing like this back home,” she said, more to herself than to Kit.

“What do you mean?” Kit said. “Rock all over the place in the city.”

“Not this rock,” said Anji, still feeling the stone. “Not in Mudtown. All the buildings in Mudtown are built of wood or stone quarried from Dorodad. My dad told me they don’t pay Dorodi miners as much as they would have to in Yem. He complained that Linura had forgotten its roots, the hard work of all the ones who’d come before. Old Linura was built by the Order from coastal stone. It’s all but buried now. We’d go on walks and Dad would point out how you could tell it was all new, all stained with foreign, oppressed blood. Like the city was trying to erase its own past. He was attracted to ancient things. My mother said she had to keep an eye on him or he’d run off with an old woman and leave her alone to take care of me.”

“You miss them,” Kit said.

Anji nodded. “Most kids don’t like their parents.” She picked up a pebble and rolled it between her fingers. “The few years Mudtown’s schools were open, I heard others complaining about their lives at home. Even poor kids can be entitled sometimes. They don’t even know what they’ve avoided; what it’s like having them and losing them.”