Vada grumbled but forked over the money anyway. Agnes waited until the girl had gone and then crouched by the water.

“Errol,” she called. His head popped up instantly, his filaments flashing blue.

“We’re going to get Sera,” Agnes said. “You stay here. We’ll be back.”

Errol snapped his teeth at her and Vada took some dried meat from her satchel. “Think fast, you greedy monster,” she said, tossing it under her arm and up into the air. He caught it expertly and let out his strange croaking laugh, and Vada grinned. Errol flashed mauve-lilac-gold before vanishing beneath the water—those were happy colors. Errol was always happiest when he was eating.

Vada took Agnes’s hand and there was a sudden lurch in Agnes’s chest, like she’d lost her balance. It was the first time Vada had touched her since they’d left Arbaz. As if she had sensed that Agnes needed the sea voyage to truly come to grips with her new life and all that it entailed. But now was the time to stand up and claim that life; Agnes felt a shivery lightheadedness at the feel of Vada’s skin against her own.

“Come,” Vada said. “We must get inside the city before they close the gates.” Then she grinned and squeezed Agnes’s fingers. “What soft paws you have, little lion.”

Agnes’s laugh sounded more like a hiccup. She was holding hands. With a girl she liked. In public. She undid her bun and shook out her hair, feeling a strange sort of wildness, a power filling her up unlike anything she’d ever known. Lion indeed, but there was nothing little about the way Agnes felt in this moment. Vada’s smile was a dazzling thing, but she said nothing, only squeezed Agnes’s hand once more.

The docks were full of stalls selling ropes and maps and compasses as well as charcoal braziers where chunks of cod and tuna cooked alongside strips of bell pepper and zucchini and onion. Misarros were everywhere. The air was heavy with the scent of salt and fish and sweat, and underneath it all, the stench of tension.

There was a boy selling copies of the Ithilia Star and Vada was quick to purchase one. BYRNE TAKEN FROM ARBAZ, it declared. And beneath, it read:

The Triumvirate has taken a young Byrne into custody and he is currently being transported from Arbaz to Banrissa. No word on his name or which branch of the family he belongs to, but sources say Ambrosine is furious. Will she finally relent and open the passages around Culinnon?