What a fun time I had. How little I thought about everything happening around me.

Back then, I’d looked at the guards standing on street corners and watching me play as my guardians, protecting me from falling or drowning or running into the streets in front of the horses and carriages. A year later, I’d return to the city as a disgraced soldier, accused of the indirect murder of my superior because I’d failed to shoot a girl. Talin.

Talin, the girl I can’t stop worrying about. The girl I can’t imagine not saving, not taking with us out of this place.

As I walk through Cardinia’s streets with Jeran behind me, dressed in a flowing Karensan outfit and a reveler’s mask over my face, I find myself tensing along every street with more than two guards standing watch.

Our train had finally arrived in Cardinia two evenings after we’d left Mara’s borders, to a city fully immersed in the solstice celebrations. The first thing we’d done when we arrived in the city was trade several of our knives for money, acting as peddlers selling scraps of the newly conquered Mara, and then we bought ourselves new clothes. Cardinia had once been Togaia’s capital, after all, before it became the Karensa Federation’s, and that means it’s a city where everyone is used to newly conquered visitors struggling to fit in. With so many different people in Cardinia, we’ve blended in with the crowds easily—but that doesn’t mean General Caitoman doesn’t have his soldiers on alert, possibly searching for anyone who resembles us.

The entire city has turned out for the solstice festival, and the crowds jostle beside us, giving us the protection of anonymity. As we go, I make a habit of noting the armbands on any passing guard’s sleeve, each marked with a distinct symbol detailing which city patrol they belong to.

My eyes hitch each time I spot a guard who still looks like a boy, no older than I was when I became one.

The sight sends a current of unwelcome nostalgia through me. Suddenly, I feel like a young soldier again, little more than a child recruit, double-banding my insignia in order to make sure it doesn’t slip down my boyish arm. I used to keep track of the other city patrols during my daily duties because it told me where I could find my friends that were assigned to other patrols. I push that memory away as I keep a mental tally of the symbols I see. The brand of my old patrol insignia, which had been burned into my chest, aches underneath my clothing.

Are any of those old friends still here, patrolling the city? They were only children then, like me. Would they recognize me now, even behind my reveler’s mask? On instinct, I reach up and adjust the cloth I’ve looped loosely around my head.

Jeran walks beside me, his eyes wide behind his half mask as he takes in the sights. “I’ve read about this festival,” he says in near-perfect Karenese, “but I didn’t realize how big it was.”