“When I killed him—Rolandrian. It wasn’t planned or anything. I was just in the right place at the right time. I wasn’t even supposed to be in that part of the castle that night. I was taking over a shift for a laundress with a fever. I’d never even been in those chambers before.

“He didn’t even notice when I came in. The guards outside, they didn’t hear anything. Didn’t ask what I was doing there. I was just a servant to them, another girl from below the castle. That’s the trouble with servants.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re invisible,” Anji said. “There’s always lowborn work in high places. ‘The grease to the gears,’ Matron said to me once. The grease made everything so quiet I wasn’t noticed.

“He didn’t notice when I grabbed the letter opener, either. He was just—staring out the window. I grabbed the blade off his desk, walked into the room, and I shoved it into his neck. And he just died.”

She’d thought her parents, in whatever eternity they were in—if indeed there was one—would have reveled in that moment and felt a beaming affection for the girl she’d grown into. But that moment had never come. It was only fleeting excitement and tremendous anticipation followed by more fear than she’d ever known.

Anji brought her knees to her chest. “My mother was a Maxia.” There. The words were said. She glanced at the Hawk, their eyes meeting for a heartbeat before she swallowed and went on, “She worked for The Tide. It was an underground newspaper, named after a rebel group my parents helped form. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it…”

“I have,” said Kit.

“That scrying sheet,” Anji said, pointing outside to where the Goat’s horse grazed. “She was trying to figure out how the charm worked. My coin … one of two. It was her first experiment, her first attempt to understand how maxia could be used to communicate messages. She charmed her coin to match her own heartbeat—called it a “recording.” The closer she was to me, the stronger the pulse in my coin. She carried the other with her always, but I never found it on her body … that day. I imagine it was destroyed along with all her other work, but I can still feel mine pulsing. Her dying breath must have kept the charm working forever. I slept with it every night, right up until you took it.”

Anji paused, unsure what she hoped the Hawk would say, but she said nothing.

I’ve already said everything else, Anji thought, and with a heavy sigh, she went on.

“It had just rained. I’d been building mud castles in the street. So stupid.” She sniffed, one of her nostrils clogged from crying. “I came home and the door, our only door, was busted in.”