Himil only nodded. He said nothing for the next hour as they walked about the garden and the menagerie full of animals. Though Yuna enjoyed his closeness, there was something about the quiet that disturbed her. She was so used to the quiet. It was her armor. But now it dissatisfied her. Silence and hiding were no longer comforting. It wasn’t a way to live anymore. Or was it?

Himil stopped walking when they reached the aqueduct.

“I have to be at work at dawn, so I must go.” He put one foot into the cool water, then turned to grasp her hand. “If I see you at the market, I promise to say something, you know, if those boys bother you again. I’ll threaten them with the poxplague!”

Yuna didn’t smile. Himil seemed expectant. Why must he say such a thing? That would be a terrible thing to say. And she wouldn’t want the attention. Why couldn’t they simply keep going with their quiet nighttime trysts? Everything here was perfect.

“Yuna?” Himil pressed.

“I don’t want to think of the market.” She let go of his hand and stepped back.

Himil’s eyes dropped to the ground. He massaged his hand where she had let go, as if the scars had suddenly welled with tight discomfort. Without a word, he waded back into the icy-cold aqueduct. He removed his shirt, bundling it in his hands and tossing it over the wall. His fingers were scarred but beautifully long and elegant. His torso, too, was twisted at its core even at rest. It reminded Yuna of a plant trying to reach the sun in a garden full of competition. The asymmetry took her breath away for a second. He turned back and blinked at her with those blue eyes that were as dark as hers in the night light. After a tight-lipped smile, he slipped below the water and was gone.

Himil did not show at the hole in the wall at moonrise the next night. Yuna slumped about her morning chores the following morning. The Bando-style house, with its sloped and tiled roof, seemed to frown at her.

“There’s a hole in the wall I saw this morning,” Father said at breakfast. “You should tend to it.”

“I’m out of mortar” was Yuna’s excuse. Father said no more words until the next morning.

The next night, there was still no Himil.

Of course, Yuna thought. I can’t expect him to get away every night. He’s just a poor servant at the smithy. They probably drove him to exhaustion, shoveling ore or coal or wood. Cooking for all those workers. She left a flower in the hole in the wall. A nonpoisonous one, of course.

Father said at breakfast, “I found a spare sack of mortar in the toolshed.”

“I’m behind on pulling duckweed in the pond” was Yuna’s only reply.