“I only exist in one. I cannot speak to my ancestry. I never knew my family. As for being Undeclared, I make no apologies. I may have to give up my blades for the sake of the petty comfort of others, but that is all I am willing to give up. I made that decision before I came into Te-Gen’s service.”

Lexi finds herself at a loss. Her only clear thought is that she wishes she’d had Taru’s kind of unyielding strength in the chambers of the Gen Franchise Council.

“Well said” is all she’s able to offer.

“Where do we go now, Te-Gen?” Taru asks.

Lexi is silent for a moment before answering.

“Home,” she says. “We will find a way to prevent what they are trying to do to us. I promise you. We will do that.”

A THOUSAND FACES AND NONE

DYEAWAN WAKES WITH WHAT SMELLS like the entire ocean filling her nostrils. Her first thought is what a welcome change it is from the dungeon’s cloying anise fingers constantly probing her mouth and lungs. This leads directly to her second thought, which is that she shouldn’t be able to smell the ocean from the dungeons. Accepting that, she realizes she can’t possibly still be in her dungeon cell. Finally, she remembers the dark figure, the dust blown into her face, and the potion sleep that followed.

That last thought causes her eyes to snap wide open. Her awareness spreads out through her arms and torso. That awareness dampens at her legs as it always does, though she has long ago stopped thinking ruefully about that.

She’s lying in a bed softer than any surface upon which she’s ever slept. The room surrounding it is small, the walls stone, but it’s clean and even lavish in its furnishings. There’s a silk dressing screen in one corner, a bamboo chest not far from it. A pillowy reading chair sits in the opposite corner.

There’s one other piece of furniture in the room, and when Dyeawan’s eyes settle on it the wheels in her head stop turning completely for a moment.

The contraption beside her new bed isn’t quite a chair and isn’t quite a wheelbarrow. A platform of polished wood rests atop two tracks of a dozen medium-size wheels. A thick rectangle of lush red and gold carpet has been laid over the platform. There are paddles attached to each side of the platform, a complicated series of strings and sticks connecting them to the tracks of wheels beneath. The tops of the paddles are like the armrests of a chair, thin and long.

Even if she can’t immediately understand it, Dyeawan somehow realizes why, and for whom, the conveyance has been placed there.