Abira pulled her arm out of his grasp with a sharp, sure jerk. The violence of her movement surprised me. She was quiet for a long second. “Yeah. All right. I’m bringing everyone by tomorrow. We’re a family, right, you can’t be here for Da without being here for the rest of us, too.”

Dirva was, to my practiced eye, visibly relieved. He turned to me. “Abira will get you settled. I will come by tomorrow morning and make sure you are all right.” I nodded. “Ariah, thank you for coming here.”

I smiled and looked away to hide it. I may have blushed. “We are cut from the same cloth.”

“Still,” he said, “thank you for coming with me. I will see you tomorrow morning.”

Abira and I watched him walk the Square. He disappeared into the crowds on one of the eastern streets. “He likes you,” Abira said. There was a roughness in her voice, which made me wary.

“He’s my mentor. We’re cut from the same cloth.”

“Yeah, that must be a tink thing. I don’t know why you keep saying it,” she said, shouldering her pack. “At least he likes somebody. C’mon. It’s a long walk from here to my place and I’d like to crash before dawn breaks. Let’s get you settled, kid.”

I had hoped in vain that wherever I was to be settled for the night was a safe distance away from the decrepit monstrosity in the Square. I was wrong. As we walked steadily towards it, on a course of inevitable collision, dread sat heavier and heavier in the pit of my stomach. I began to suspect—for the first time since I’d agreed to travel with Dirva—that perhaps I should have stayed put in the Empire, training be damned.

A bright burst of laughter rang through the air when Abira and I drew close. One of the people perched on the balcony swung himself down to the ground, agile as a monkey. He was fast, and he ran to Abira and hugged her before I had a clear sense of what was going on or who he was. He was a blur of dark skin and red hair.

“Oh, Abbie, you’re back!” he said. By virtue of the gift of mimicry, I suppose, I pay a lot of attention to people’s voices. His voice was an odd blend of quiet and forceful, deep and soft. His was a baritone voice that was surprising given that he was not a large man. He pulled back away from her just enough to see her face. They held each other close and spoke like no one else was around. “He stayed behind, didn’t he?”