He caught me by the wrist when I tried to escape. “We don’t have to talk if you would rather not, but you do not need to hide it for my sake.”

I laughed. It was a pitiful thing, weak and helpless. I sat down in the chair next to him. “I am happy for you.”

“I know.”

I stared at him for a long time. I looked down at my hands and swallowed. “I am terrified.”

“I was, too.”

“What do I tell my parents?”

“I will write them.”

“I should see them before I go.”

Very gently, Dirva rested a hand on my shoulder. “There isn’t time. You won’t get detained again.”

“I might.” My voice was a harsh croak. My eyes screwed tight of their own accord.

He went into the next room and rifled through a cabinet. He returned a second later and handed me a leather-wrapped sheaf of documents. “These will make that less likely.”

The forgeries were more or less identical to my real papers with two exceptions: I was no longer a shaper, and I had never been detained at the western border. “Where did you get these?”

“Cadlah knows a man.”

“You got these from Cadlah?”

His walls were already up. “She did it for you, Ariah, not for me. Da trained this forger. This is quality work.”

“Thank you.” I tried to say more, but more would not come. “Thank you.”

He smiled. “It’s not just the border.”

“No.” I sighed. “No, it’s everything. All of it. I don’t know him. I don’t know Vilahna. I don’t know…I don’t know what it means to get this training. Or what to do after. Or what it will take. I don’t…Dirva, I don’t know who I’ll be when I come back. I barely fit now. Vilahna? I won’t fit after.”

Dirva laughed. It was a gentle, deeply kind laugh. “Ariah, for some of us, the places we come from are not the places we belong, and never were, and never will be.”

* * *

Three hours before curfew there was a knock at the door of Dirva’s apartment. He answered it, but I had a clear view of the door. It was a Qin agent, dressed in dark blue robes with brocade panels. I panicked. I was certain he was there for me, possibly about the books I’d stolen, or maybe about the forgeries. As silently and unobtrusively as I could, I slipped out of my chair and snuck into Dirva’s bedroom. I leaned against the door as if to keep the agent out.

A few seconds later, Dirva whispered my name through the door. “Ariah. It’s all right. We are needed at the train station.”

“For what?”

“For Vathorem.”

I stuck my head through the door. “Why is an agent here?”