I look around at the passing crowd, careful to mutter, “It’s hardly a trifling weapon when it can stop Heartless.”

“Many things can already stop Heartless, you pathetic dullard,” Gavik insists. “Fire. Killing their witch. Pure white mercury pumped into their veins acts nearly as well as any white mercury sword, or so I’ve heard the polymaths in the streets say. No—I didn’t try to kill her for the sword. I’m certain of that.”

Confusion roots me in place. “Then what—”

“The Bone Tree,” Gavik interrupts, his eyes snapping to mine. “Do you understand? It must’ve been for the Bone Tree. It must be important, if I can remember it even now.”

“Because you wanted it, too,” I snap. “You wanted its power—”

“No.” He shakes his head, his gaze now glazed and focused in the distance. “No, it’s not that.” He struggles, his face twisting with his efforts. “I can’t remember. Godsdamn it all, I can’t remember!”

His growl reverberates, and a passing mother pulls her child closer to her side. Gavik sneers at the child and looks back down at me.

“I can’t remember. But there’s some terrible feeling deep inside me. As if I’m missing something crucial. Something vital.”

I scoff. “Are you sure it’s not just indigestion, Your Grace?”

He spits then. Right in my face.

I wipe the wetness off with the collar of my tunic, and the look I throw him burns hotter than the sun and dirtier than a pile of refuse under said sun.

“Laugh all you want,” he says. “Laugh for what I’ve done, mock me as much as your unheart desires. But when Varia betrays you, you will come groveling to me. And I will give you nothing.”

Before I can retort, he turns and skulks away into a dark alley, his basket clutched in his white-knuckled hands.

I don’t let Gavik’s words haunt me any more than is necessary. The man can’t be trusted. Malachite’s name for him rings in my head—he’s a “genocidal old coot.” He hates Varia, and me, and every witch in Arathess. Anything he says is out of spite, not truth. Still, it is strange that he can remember the Bone Tree from his old life. Not only is it strange, but it’s impossible. Heartless don’t remember much, if anything at all. It’s usually just fuzzy scraps of memory—nothing solid. It’s far more likely Varia let something about the Bone Tree slip after he was changed.

There’s no banquet tonight at the palace, so the halls are not nearly as bustling. I make it one step into the front hall when Ulla the Headkeeper approaches me, her bun tight and her eyes downcast as she bows, her gold mantle around her shoulders that denotes her position glinting in the sunset.