“What if another’s misfortune brings relief to you?” asked Miravia as she lit a lamp, keeping her face turned away from Mai. “If something you never wanted is made impossible through no effort of yours, only through trouble afflicting others?”

“What happened?” asked Mai as she latched the tiny glass door. They stood in shadow far from the running children, the clatter and laughter in the kitchen, and the intermittent cries and complaints of younger children being coaxed to bed in the sleeping rooms. “No one can hear us here. You know I’ll keep secret any word you tell to me, Miravia.”

A bench stretched below the lamp, the polished wood gleaming under the illumination. Miravia sank down, and Mai sat beside her, taking her friend’s hands between her own.

“A courier came from Clan Hall to Argent Hall, a reeve bearing letters. One of the Ri Amarah houses in Toskala paid to have a message delivered to us. High Haldia is fallen—” Her voice broke on a caught breath.

“Yes, I heard that, too.”

“I spoke once to you of the young scholar it was arranged I would marry. I should have gone a year ago but the roads weren’t safe. To High Haldia. Where their house is.”

“Oh, no,” murmured Mai.

“A few survived the assault, and fled to Toskala with their news. But he’s dead. Mai, he’s dead. And I’m relieved to know it. I never even met him. It’s just I didn’t want to marry someone I never met and never knew. But you did.”

“I always knew I would marry someone my father chose for me.”

“He didn’t choose your husband.”

“No,” said Mai with a strangled laugh. “He was very upset when Anji picked me. Father had no choice then. No more than I did. In Kartu, you could not say no to the Qin.”

The lamplight made Miravia’s face ghostly and vulnerable. “Where did you find the grace in your heart to accept it? And not fight it?”

“The only place to find happiness is inside. In the house I grew up in, the ones who fought to no purpose, who thrashed and flailed like Mei and Ti, they were the unhappiest ones. Even Uncle Hari didn’t know how to be happy even though everyone loved him because he was so funny and charming. But a worm gnawed at him. He was dissatisfied. He never learned how to use his anger to build, only to tear down.”

“How did you learn?”

Mai shrugged, amused at herself and saddened by Miravia’s distress. “Maybe because I am like my father in wanting to control things. So if I can control myself, then no one can touch that part of me. That’s my garden, where my spirit rests.”

“My spirit flies in the mountains and fields and forests,” said Miravia with a grimace, “or it would, if I could ever go there. They’ll just arrange another marriage for me.”

Mai felt her trembling. She kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Maybe you’ll be fortunate, as I was.”