“Visit with my father when I strike out. I worry about him being alone.”

I stopped walking. I felt a shift in the terrain of our friendship, a deepening of it. What did it mean? Where had we shifted? Shayat glanced at me over her shoulder. I read her. I didn’t mean to; it just happened. Our relationship shifted again.

She dropped the plum. “Did you just…are you…”

“No! No, it’s not like that!”

“Then what is it like?”

I swallowed nervously. I held my hands out to her. “Please, not out here.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What?”

“I’ll…I’ll tell you, just…please, not out here.”

She frowned at me, steely and wary. Mistrustful. Shayat was nobody’s fool, and she did not like surprises. But I had banked on her curiosity, and her curiosity won out. “All right. Fine. We’ll go back to the shop, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”

“I will. I promise.”

“You remember that you promised,” she said as she brushed past me.

When we reached Parvi’s shop, she led me up the stairs to her room. She closed the curtains and shut the door behind us. She leaned against the wall with her arms crossed against her chest. “You’re a shaper?”

She asked it without any hint of embarrassment or hesitation. I knew it was coming, but I was shocked at the breach. “No! Yes? It’s complicated.”

“You read me on the street.”

“I…yes. I did. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” I regained my footing just the slightest bit. I stood up the slightest bit taller. “Shayat, that was rude, but I have no obligation to tell you my gifts.”

“You do if you can’t control them.”

It hit me like a slap. “Look, I…I have it. The gift. But I wasn’t trained for it. I hid it? Sort of. I’m trained as a mimic, and this, it just slips out sometimes.”

Her eyes widened. She crossed halfway to me. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Ariah, shapers need training more than anyone else. You know that.”

“But a shaper’s life? The cost is so high!”

“What? Don’t be stupid! So you can’t get married. So people know your gift. If you don’t get training, you’ll drive everyone away.”

“But if I get the training, I’m isolated anyway.”

She stood there silent, chewing her lip. She glanced down at her feet. “I never thought of it that way.”

And a decision was made. Just like that, that fast. “I am going to get training. I am. Outside the Empire. I am going to get training, and then I’ll just live my life, and things like this won’t happen anymore.”

Shayat looked up at me. “You’re going to come back a trained shaper and keep it secret? That doesn’t seem right.”