Dirva’s papers were not what I had expected. He had always struck me as a thoroughly honest man, but his papers were full of peculiar lies. I had, by then, suspicions about the verity of his name, which would be borne out later. His address and his occupation were accurate, but very little else was. He had listed himself as half-Semadran and half-Qin and claimed he’d grown up in Mahlez, a small city in the Empire’s northwest territory. He had listed no siblings and claimed his Qin father was dead. His travel history suggested he’d served as a translator for a Qin caravan, and thus had spent some time in Vilahna and the City for professional reasons. The strangest thing, though, was that he lied about his gifts. He had listed auditory mimicry as his primary ability and listed no secondary abilities at all. His gift for shaping was conspicuously absent.

I gingerly urged my camel to speed up. When I caught up to him, I handed back the papers. He caught the look on my face when I did it and let out a short, sharp sigh. “Yes, the things in my papers are not accurate,” he said.

“May I ask why?”

“May I ask you why yours are so truthful?”

I blinked at him. “I…false papers are a criminal offense. I could be jailed.”

“You could be jailed for anything. There are things in your papers, Ariah, which are not criminal, but could lead to detainment. You will remember what’s in my papers?”

“Yes.”

“Then we should make it through the border without difficulty.” He gave his camel a sharp swat and sped up to his sister.

I realized what he meant when we reached the border guards. We followed the wall north until we hit a gate out of the Empire. The border guards had a different character than the Qin policemen in the cities: they were rough-hewn men, dusty and unkempt. There was a rawness, a frankness, to them which made me uneasy. I couldn’t help but wonder what drew them all the way out to the edge and what about the edge kept them there. We were the only travelers there that day: it was just the three of us elves and the fifteen Qin border guards. That alone was enough to set me on edge. They separated us, five guards to one elf, and took us into separate rooms while our camels were fed and watered.