“Yes. Well. They knew,” Dirva said quickly. “They knew, but no one else. My parents still don’t know. Falynn doesn’t know. Abira and Amran have suspicions, I think, but they’ve never asked. Cadlah only asked because you mentioned it as a secondary ability to Sorcha. In any case, what I’m trying to say is I was trained purely as a mimic at your age, solely as a mimic. I know I haven’t trained you well with the other gift, but I’ve given you something. I didn’t even have that. I refused it. It got to be too much. I couldn’t…I couldn’t stand to be around my family. You’ve been around them. They were too much. I couldn’t stand to leave the borough. I was a raw nerve around Qin, around Inalans. The musicians’ district was overwhelming, especially if I heard a bard playing. All the bards are is loss. I couldn’t stand to be with Liro anywhere but his place. There were looks, slurs, and I felt it all. I ran from it, Ariah, and it isolated me. I got through the days stoned, but I’ve never liked herb, I don’t like the way it feels. It was…it was an unpleasant time.”

His voice had grown rougher, darker, the longer he spoke. He stood abruptly from the table and put on a second pot of tea. The rest of it he told me with his back to me, pulled inward, walls creeping up. “Da had an interesting life. He’d been many different men before he was my da, and he knew people all over. During the rebellion he’d lived in Susselfen. He had worked with some of the rebels. He knew people who knew people, who knew Vathorem, who he knew to be a shaper outside the City. The queen’s right hand. He pulled strings, he got Vathorem interested, and he arranged travel. All in secret. I was not in a state to handle a confrontation. You may understand. What I’m trying to say is that training has no window. Vathorem was older than me when he was trained. I was as old as you are now. As you know, I have mastery of it. If you would like mastery of yours, I would suggest you see Vathorem. It is a way to get the training without the label.”

“But he’s in Vilahna,” I said. I think what I meant was, he wasn’t Dirva. That I didn’t know how to have a second mentor, that I didn’t know how to break off from the one I had.