“Which is the reason why I think my dreams matter. Did she leave something behind in me? Is that why I’m still thinking about her?”

“Could be,” said Wad. “She told me she left a little bit of her inside of everybody she needed to … influence.”

“Including you?” asked Ced.

“I assume so.”

“So are you still feeling drawn to her? Dreaming about her?”

“No,” said Wad.

“Too bad,” Ced replied. “I was kind of hoping that it meant she was still alive somehow. Trying to talk to me. But why would she talk to me? I was never anything to her.”

“She was a memorable woman,” said Wad.

“When are we going to Drabway?” asked Ced.

“As soon as I can make arrangements for a proper shop for you. In the right part of town.”

“Good. Because I’ve got unfinished business here.”

“What kind of business? Your teacher says you’ve learned all he can teach.”

“But I haven’t learned all that I can learn. Besides, even though I’m no kind of treemage, I’ve come to know this wood … intimately.”

“You want time to say goodbye to the trees,” said Wad.

“More or less. To tickle their branches. To touch the buds and leaves of spring. Nice thing about being a windmage—I can touch a million things at once.”

So Wad gated to Drabway and within a couple of days he had rented a shop that once belonged to a baker who ran afoul of one of the rich families of the city. He only had to promise that nobody would make bread there. Otherwise the price was right and the place was alongside a wide and busy street, so it would serve Wad’s purposes just fine. Ced’s, too.

But as he performed these errands in Drabway, his mind kept returning to Ced’s dreams. Because Wad had lied—he had thoughts of Anonoei all the time, waking and sleeping. His dreams were more like memories—Anonoei enticing him, or cuddling with him, or taunting him, or … but no, they weren’t really memories. They were like things that had really happened. But always she said the same thing. “I’m here for you. Will you be here for me?”

He couldn’t recall her ever saying that exact statement, though it was the implicit bargain between them. Why did it keep coming back to him, waking and sleeping?

It was like the way Anonoei called to him when she was facing Bexoi, before she fell silent. Not an actual call, but a feeling, an insinuation into his thoughts.

I’m here for you. Will you be here for me?

Was she alive? Was her ka calling to him from Duat? What could she possibly need from him, now that she was dead?