For a second, I worry Varia won’t be able to get the raw organs I require, but then I remember she’s a princess. Anything she wants is hers, even with wartime looming. And while fish organs don’t satiate me much, they would do in a pinch. Still, I can’t help but read far ahead and between the lines—if a war does break out, it won’t be long before Vetris’s native supply of fish is used up. And that’s when the real horror begins. War is terrifying. But I know better than anyone that hunger is the true thing to fear.

Despite my dark thoughts, delicate gouts of white summer pollen float heavy on the wind, mixing with the great plumes of white mercury smoke to envelop the city in a murky haze. I had my leg torn off by a valkerax barely a half ago. I’m still alive, despite the fact I deceived the royal court that lords over these people. Nothing feels quite real, as if I’m swimming in a dream.

A familiar face grounds me back down to the earth. There, on a stone wall covered in wanted posters, is a long row of posters lined up beside each other with Y’shennria’s face painted on them. Her strict eyes and puffy hair glare out at me, the scar on her neck so well drawn I feel a twist of nostalgia. It’s like ten of her are here, each staring me down, each disappointed in me for how badly I botched all her desperate efforts to stop the war. Bounty hunters linger in front of her posters, armed to the teeth with swords and knives and crossbows. She’s safe, I hope—from them, and from the war. She has to be.

“If you could see me now,” I mutter to her, and catch a glimpse of my stained self in a passing window. “You’d…well, I’d rather you not see me right now, actually.”

I smooth my hair flat in a pallid attempt to make myself look Y’shennria-presentable. The bounty hunters leave, eventually, heading to taverns and inns for the night. I look over my shoulder this way and that, and when I’m sure there are no lawguards about, I tear at all of Y’shennria’s posters, quick and furious. Parchment fragments rain down like ragged snowflakes. My boots pause before the last poster of her. This one I peel off as carefully as I can. I open Lucien’s kerchief, and fold them both together away in my pocket.

Now hyperaware of the people around me, someone in a simple gray robe catches my eye. They’d been watching me tear the posters, I’m sure of it. I glimpse white hair in the hood, a familiar cruel mouth, but when I turn on them they start off, disappearing around a corner.