She nodded, keeping her mouth shut as Ariel led her outside. The sun was too bright. The main street around the corner from the boardinghouse was too chaotic. People were rushing back and forth, toting carts piled high with jugs of oil and sacks of rice⁠—reserves should supplies run low. Fearful chatter from every corner, everyone whispering of the Kulaws, of civil war. Eti tried to stamp out the noise, but the voices echoed louder in her head. No matter how much she blinked, she couldn’t force her vision to focus. Instinctively, she grappled at her wrist for one of her bangles. Then Eti remembered they’d peddled most of them, which had given them more than enough money to survive over the next couple of weeks. The rest of her jewelry they’d stashed beneath the floorboards in the boardinghouse alongside Ariel’s precioso. Her fingers itched for a tiny scrap of gold to wield, but she couldn’t risk it. The city was on high alert. The slightest wielding would reveal Eti for the Gatdula she was.

Without her wielding to center her, panic swelled inside Eti’s chest. Crowds overwhelmed her often⁠—during her mother’s dinner parties and royal ceremonies and, of course, the feasts. In the palace, she knew where to hide. Behind the mahogany bookshelves in her father’s library. Inside the half-forgotten stairwells where not even scullery maids bothered to go. Eti couldn’t escape to her favorite shelters. Not as long as she was stuck here.

She let out a whimper of frustration. A second later, Ariel thrust something soft and toasty into her hands. “Eat,” he said. “It will help you feel better.”

Eti looked down. Sure enough, Ariel had found her a sweet roll. Shakily, she took a bite. The bread was light and airy on her tongue. She discovered with delight that Ariel had found one with sticky coconut filling.

“You were right, Ariel,” she said, licking the coconut flakes off her fingers. Food didn’t quite curb the panic cresting up and up inside her, but it helped.

They were standing next to the long, narrow canal that cut through the outlying districts. Her gaze traced the water down to where the canal began, at the massive stone walls shielding the city. She often looked down at those walls from the palace terraces. How mighty they loomed from afar! But up close, Eti could spy cracks branching up from the walls’ foundations. They cut so deep into the stone in some parts that it wouldn’t take more than one of Laya’s half-hearted gusts to knock them down.