Lin hadn’t been able to secure caro nuts from Nephilanu, and she didn’t have enough oil left on Imperial to give to other islands. My father was on Anau in the midst of an outbreak, caring for a sick family. Was he sick, even now? Neither my mother nor I had brought it up. He’d always avoided the bog cough, but at his age, he might die if he caught it.

Seven years and I’d sent one letter. I knew he wouldn’t scold me for it. But he’d look at me with love and disappointment, and it would devastate me for the pain I’d caused him. Yet I wanted that feeling more than anything, because it meant he would still be alive to be disappointed in me. I could get in contact with the Ioph Carn. I could ask them to smuggle something.

“I’m not sure what to do,” I said, running my hand through my hair. I’d let it grow a little longer again. “I can do something, but I’m not sure if it’s the right thing. It could be a very good, or it could be a very bad – but most likely it would be both.”

If I sent a message, if I told them I’d be willing to do something for them, I’d be putting myself back in the same place I was seven years ago – beholden to the Ioph Carn. I’d thought I’d finally escaped that. How much would Kaphra ask of me? What did he want?

But if I never did anything to help, what sort of person would I be?

“If you don’t do the thing?” Mephi asked. “What is it then?”

I sighed. “It’s very bad. It’s only very bad.” I had to stop telling myself I didn’t have choices. I did, and I’d have to live with the consequences of whatever I decided. The task the Ioph Carn set for me might not have anything to do with Lin. It might not hurt her at all. I couldn’t know yet.

“What’s very bad?” Lin appeared behind me, dressed in her traveling clothes. I hated it when she was dressed that way. It made her feel too normal, too approachable.

I calmed my fast-beating heart and squinted at the clouds in the distance. “The weather. I think sometimes that the spots of sunshine we get are only so we can remember how much nicer it was before the wet season started – and be all the sadder for it.”

She laughed. “And everyone is always so excited at the first wet season rain. It wears off too quickly.” She fished around in her sash, pulling out something that fit into her palm. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to give to you.”

I held out my hand and she dropped a shard of bone into it.