But the Premier just shrugs. There are twenty regions in this city, he continues, and every single one of them will soon be adorned with sculptures. Let them remind us of Karensa’s destiny, fulfilled. He gives me a pointed look. Best get used to it, Talin. You will have to oversee Mara’s installations with me.

I look at him, and through our bond, I see a glimmer of his thoughts—his vision of the engraved lintel from the Striker arena and the pieces of the Waterfall that were being unloaded from the train.

He means to waste no time, then. He intends them to take their places here with the rest of the skeletons, as soon as possible.

Relics of Mara’s greatness. Objects that hold a place deep in a nation’s psyche. Soon they will be on display here too, proof of that nation’s collapse. Plate sets and family heirlooms seized from the Maran nobility will fill Cardinia’s National Museum. I can see the pillared building from here, its beautiful façade hiding its stolen interiors.

Even though the memory of Mara’s sneering noblemen still lives fresh in my mind, I can’t muster any satisfaction at it. Their wealth and greed will outlive them, put on display behind glass while they lie buried, rotting, in the ground. So what was the use in accumulating it all?

Maybe my sadness is foolish. Mara had been the nation full of people who spat on the ground I walked over, a country that refused to let my mother past its walls and shot refugees who dared to enter its gates.

But it had also been home. It had also birthed Adena and Aramin and Jeran and Corian. It had tried, at least, to hold a greater evil at bay. So I turn my eyes away from the National Museum in the distance and let my breath out, dizzy from the war of emotions in my chest.

I stay behind the Premier as he stands up on the carriage that pulls him down the main thoroughfare toward the palace, waving to the crowds that have gathered to watch him. Dancers in scarlet costumes parade before and behind the carriage, while the one behind us brings his advisors. Even from here, I can hear their laughs and chatter. Some are already drunk, eager for the night’s festivities.

We finally reach the front of the palace. The square wall running along the palace’s perimeter has a gate in the middle of each side, and only the Premier and his immediate procession are allowed to enter through the front. The advisors split off from us here, heading to the side gates, while we continue forward. The gate’s doors, like those I remember from the National Laboratory, are made of black steel, and as we approach it, they slide open on their own without a sound.

Here, Caitoman guides his brother off the carriage and up a set of stone steps leading to the top of the palace gate, where a rampart draped with red-and-black banners and equipped with an ornate chair is waiting for him.