LEXI SITS BESIDE THE WINDOW in the highest room of her kith-kin’s tower, sheer silken drapes the color of pomelo meat dancing around her in the high winds of the elevation. They call this room the surveyor’s quarters. A massive bamboo table upon which reams of colorful maps are splayed and piled dominates the space, some of them drawn by Lexi as a girl and detailing the city and the surrounding country that can be viewed from her window.

There’s a medium-size instrument resting on the sill in front of her, its slender, three-stringed neck curving into a heavy wooden potbelly. Crachians call it the reed-of-the-stone-lake, and it’s a general and agonized portion of formal Gen education to learn the instrument as a child. When they were young and betrothed, she and Brio would sit at their windows in their opposite towers and play matching reeds. The more poorly they each played, the more they made each other laugh with every sour, thronging note.

She hasn’t played or even picked up the reed in the three months since Brio disappeared; even the sight of it is enough to cause tears to threaten the corners of her eyes, but she can’t bring herself to displace anything in the towers, or in any way change the configuration of their home from how it was before Brio disappeared. In an absurd and almost masochistic way, Lexi is grateful to have this mess with the Franchise Council to give her thoughts a different dire focus. Having the very existence of her Gen threatened is the only thing that could possibly distract Lexi from how much she misses Brio and how terrified she is of receiving indisputable confirmation that she’ll never see him again.

When she isn’t distracted, Lexi desperately wants to be angry with him. Anger is so much easier and brings so much more solace than fear and loss. She knows, however, that whatever befell Brio was in the course of serving the post and the people he cared for so deeply. Lexi can’t force herself to feel anything other than a deep and gnawing emptiness when she thinks of Brio now. It’s better, even necessary, not to think of him at all.

Far below her, the Circus is quiet and appears very serene. The wraps and tunics of the men and women of the Gens are small splashes of color on the pebbled pathways and green grass. Lexi can see steam rising from her favorite soup stand in the Circus, though at this height she can’t smell the heavy ginger and onion essence of the delicious broths. Sometimes, if she’s out early enough, she’ll stop and watch the owners stretching and shaping noodles for the day in the open-air kitchen.

Beyond the Gen Circus, the Capitol rooftops are a perfect grid separated by the amber light of the streetlamps.