Her mind had wandered and she remembered Alyssa was still waiting for an answer. She supposed there was no reason not to do something just because it wasn’t how things were usually done.

They made plans to meet here again tomorrow and then Alyssa left.

Alone in her office, Iona drifted off into wondering how she would structure their sessions and it took her a few minutes to notice Alyssa had left her hat behind on the desk. The young woman had probably left the building by now, so Iona decided to just hold onto it and give it back tomorrow. She picked it up.

The texture of the hat triggered something in her. As she felt it she heard the word felt in her mind, but she knew it didn’t mean felt in the sense of feel, it was . . . what the hat was made of. Iona didn’t know how she knew that. It was a dream-word. Iona saw lots of things in her dreams that didn’t exist in the world and she knew the words for them, but she never spoke them aloud because nobody else would know what she was talking about.

She had never before wanted to apply a dream-word to something in the real world, but here it was. The hat was made of felt. It seemed a stupid word and yet she knew it was right.

But there was more. A scatter of tiny, fragmentary thoughts was thrown up by the word, as if something had been tossed into the attic of her mind and disturbed the dust. Flashes of people, places, things that didn’t exist but that somehow meant a lot to her anyway, and came at her too quickly to hold onto—

The door of her office opened again and Alyssa entered. She stopped short and looked at Iona curiously.

Iona realized she was sitting behind her desk, holding Alyssa’s hat and weeping.

“Sorry,” said Alyssa, pointing. “I forgot my—”

“Yes,” said Iona, blinking and handing over the hat. “Sorry, I lost a colleague recently. It’s his funeral this afternoon.” This was true, though it was not the reason for her tears.

“Oh, I see. I’m very sorry.” Alyssa seemed to accept this as an explanation and left.

* * *

Iona had plenty of time before the funeral so she decided to walk rather than take a rickshaw. As she left the school and walked down the main thoroughfare, King’s Tower loomed up ahead of her. It currently had scaffolding all up one side. When Iona had designed it—so long ago now she could hardly remember—it had been a sleek needle shooting from the center of the city and up above the skyline. These days it was swollen by extensions and additions, mostly designed by Iona herself and all to the detriment of the building, in her opinion, though she’d done her best with them.

The planning department, which had long stood in the shadow of the tower, had been scheduled for demolition just as soon as work on the new, larger planning department was completed. In place of the old planning department a new buttress would be built to support the tower on its heavier side. Six more floors had recently been added at the top of the tower, bringing the total to thirty-one, and the king’s apartment had been moved so it was once again on the top floor. But before they could build any further extensions they needed to reinforce that side—Iona had been clear on this even though the planning department would have happily signed off a ten-story extension if she’d let them.