My eyes widened. “That means you can go home! But what about…” I trailed off, glancing at Ceilos. His fingers were still laced tightly through mine. “What about all the rest of us?”

Isaak smiled tightly. “I have an idea about that.”

Before he could elaborate, Gitrin hurried over to us. “Good, good, you’re here. You’ll have to sit by me—I’m sponsoring the two of you for citizenship.”

“What, already?” I asked.

She tugged her earlobe. “Every week we vote at the forum on where to place the new refugees. Everyone is taken into a household, where they learn about Elytherios and how we live here. It’s just a formality. The other members of my household agreed to allow you and Ceilos to stay with us, so we’ll be voting on that.”

I glanced over at the two strangers. Isaak was talking to them in English—I caught snatches of their conversation, but they were far away, and the language was too new to me to understand much. “Isaak’s father has been staying in the guesthouse all this time?”

Gitrin frowned, following my gaze. “Yes. He was here before I arrived. They hadn’t placed him yet, though, because no one knew what to do with him. It’s irrelevant now, I suppose. Now that we have the posternkey, we’ll be able to send them home soon enough. With the data stored on there, you and I can make the modifications to one of our shipping posterns.”

I started to nod, then caught myself and tugged my earlobe instead. The chatter around us was starting to die down, and Gitrin ushered Ceilos and me over to a crowded bench near the courtyard’s center. The woman I recognized as the smuggler from Hope Renewed stayed standing, and she cleared her throat, looking out over the crowd. When her eyes ran over mine, I shrank into myself, remembering the way the rioters had shouted, “Death to the geroi!” I could already tell that that reflex would be difficult to overcome.

“Degiim, friends,” she said in a much gentler voice than that she had used the first time I’d seen her. “N’elytherios tou shenos. We have much to discuss at this week’s forum, so thank you all in advance for your time.” The crowd murmured agreeably, and she went on, “We’ll start with our first pair of new refugees, Corin and Gios. These two are a husband and wife from Hope Renewed who were attempting to have a family. After being declined by the”—her voice hardened—“eugenics committee multiple times, they attempted to use Ferre to have a child extralegally. I was running a shipment to them when we got caught by the Enforcers, so Syrin and I ran an emergency evacuation.”