“They’ll have to write another song for that. Ah, no no!” His noodles, left too long unattended, had begun to burn and he whirled to attend them. I took the opportunity to flee. Sweat dampened the small of my back as though I’d been engaged in battle rather than friendly conversation. Once I’d been just a smuggler, trying to find his missing wife. Now I was a spy, an Imperial guard, a folk hero – and these things didn’t always run in agreement with one another. I couldn’t have known exactly where my path would lead back when I’d accepted the magic that Mephi had given me. But now people relied on me. They looked to me for hope and safety.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were about to be very disappointed.

Mephi hurried to keep up, a few stray noodles still hanging from the corner of his mouth. “Going to see Gio?” he asked hopefully as we strode into the jungle.

“Hoping not to run into him, actually. You might like him, Mephi, but I don’t trust him.”

“He’s not a bad person.”

“Most people aren’t. But do I trust most people? Not at all.”

It had been a while since I’d last been to the hideout – and I practiced what I would say. There would be a guard at the entrance, but the Shardless Few knew me. I could tell them Gio had sent for me, and that would buy me a little time, at least. But I had to know: were there more doors in those corridors, and what lay behind them? Was there something that could help me further decipher the book? Some artifact that might help defend against Alanga with sinister intentions?

There was so little about them that we understood. Did Alanga arise in cycles? Did the old, dead Alanga come back to life, or just new ones like me? They lived for such a long time; were they like the creatures that only lived in a wet season, waiting for the rain to hatch their eggs? And the question that still haunted me: if Lin and I were Alanga too, what had happened to the creatures the old Alanga had bonded with?

The entrance to the Shardless Few caves was where I remembered it. A crack in the cliff face, mostly hidden by vegetation. I gestured to Mephi to stay close behind me. He’d slid past me easily when he’d been smaller; now he would barely fit through.

I took a deep breath, my mouth dry. I hated this part. Turning sideways, I wedged myself into the crack. I swore it was even smaller than the first time I’d slipped through. It smelled like damp earth and rotting leaves.

I made it to the other side and found a blade at my neck.