Mariit was even larger than Eti had realized. Parts of the capital she knew as well as the inside of the palace: the goldsmiths’ guildhall, where Eti would sometimes study the young, deft-fingered apprentices for inspiration; the towering stone town houses of the central district, where noble Maynaran families held tiny courts of their own; and the ring of spirit houses encircling the giant balete tree at the heart of the city. Still, Mariit sprawled across dozens of neighborhoods where the royal family never deigned to venture. The boardinghouse where Eti and Ariel sought refuge was in one of the dockside districts on the outer fringes of Mariit. General Ojas’s men would never have allowed Eti to go there, but Ariel reasoned it was their safest bet. The Royal Maynaran Guard started patrolling the palace and the busy center of Mariit⁠—the deepest pockets of unrest. They would be too thinly spread to keep a watchful eye all the way out there.

From what little of the dockside neighborhood Eti had seen, it wasn’t dangerous. No one bothered them the few times she and Ariel dared go outside in their new unsuspicious clothes. During normal circumstances, the people there mainly kept to themselves, toiling for hours on the docks beneath the hot Maynaran sun before trudging home to their families at dusk. But the Kulaws’ coup had shaken the outlying districts. Fear hung heavy in the air, pungent as the scent of sea salt and fresh-caught fish. Eti saw it stark on each face she passed. Since the coup, the bustling docks had ground to a halt. For two days, ships had waited in the harbor to be unloaded. No one was working; they were waiting for the fate of Maynara to be decided.

The brothel owner next door, a well-coiffed woman with a daggerlike gaze and painted lips, came over during breakfast to trade gossip with the boardinghouse keeper. In the middle of the night, a client had shown up to the brothel with a bloodied nose and news that a riot had broken out in front of the palace gates. Scores of the Gatdulas’ loyal subjects tried to overtake the guards. They might have succeeded had Imeria Kulaw not felled them with her abilities. According to the brothel’s client, Imeria merely raised her hand, and the rioters froze, black-eyed, where they stood. The guardsmen rounded them up and threw them in the prison hold. The riot died in minutes.

The news made Eti’s stomach churn in apprehension. “Imeria Kulaw could reach into the minds of that many people?” she asked in quiet terror.

Ariel gave a glum nod, but he said something that made a small bubble of hope rise in Eti’s gut. “Perhaps she can. But how many people can she stuff inside your family’s prison cells?”