“He’d have understood,” she said after a pause, her brown gaze soft and serious.

She was right about that too. As I stared at her, I realized for the first time how similar her disposition was to Dayo’s. It was hard to tell at first, with his bright-eyed optimism and her sharp political savvy, but whenever Dayo or Ai Ling determined a path to be right, however treacherous, they pursued it with unshakeable tenacity. How else could Dayo have kept me at his side all those years, knowing I was destined to kill him?

My appetite had vanished, but I nibbled a fig pastry so Ai Ling’s risk wouldn’t be in vain. The orange punch sparkled on my tongue, burning as it went down, roiling in my already-nervous stomach.

“Don’t worry about Queen Min Ja seeing your memories,” Ai Ling said after a moment, sensing my distress through the Ray. “What’s it they say in Swana? ‘For every field of cattle, a ditch of skeletons.’ We all have stories we aren’t proud of, Tarisai.”

I scowled down at my plate of sweet fried chin chin. “But I tried to kill someone.”

Ai Ling’s jaded smile returned. “This is An-Ileyoba,” she pointed out soothingly, reaching to squeeze my knee. “Who hasn’t?”

I laughed shortly—and then, as I watched her, a memory slipped from my mind to hers. I jerked my knee away, eyes widening with horror. “Am’s Story,” I muttered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just, you reminded me of—”

“It’s all right.” She gazed into her chalice of punch. “I was thinking of it too.”

I had seen Ai Ling’s memory of Dayo’s thirteenth birthday party, before he was immune to death.

Amidst mountains of presents and throngs of laughing children, a masked assassin had burst into the Children’s Palace playroom.

The intruder flung darts into the necks of our guards. Sanjeet managed to grapple the assassin in a headlock, nearly subduing him, but the man grunted and reached up, fumbling for Sanjeet’s neck. Only after three sleep darts did Sanjeet slump heavily to the floor. I rushed the intruder next, hoping to steal his memories, transforming him into a confused husk. But he tossed me aside like a sack of yams. The assassin unsheathed a knife and headed for Dayo, grim with purpose.

Then Ai Ling burst from the crowd of wailing children, balling her slender fists. “You don’t want to hurt him,” she squeaked, “do you?”

The assassin stopped, staggering back. Ai Ling’s suggestion lodged in his body like an arrow. Still he grimaced, shook it off, and advanced.

“You don’t want to hurt him,” she repeated.

Again he shrugged off the invisible arrow, even more quickly this time. “Oh,” he growled, “but I do.”

Ai Ling’s heart-shaped face blanched. “You don’t, because you’re a good person. It’s beneath you.”

The assassin hesitated, then laughed, hoisting her up by the scruff of her candidate tunic and jeering at her with rotting teeth. “You don’t know me at all, little girl.”