Mephi came barreling out of the gardens, shouldering my thigh. I did my best not to fall over. “Hello hello hello!” he said. Some of the guards cracked grins. A wonder they still liked him; he’d rifled through their things and had turned more than one sentimental item into an impromptu toy. I was still working with him on personal boundaries.

We were leaving for Hualin Or the next day – the island Lin’s mother had come from. She’d died when I’d been young, and all I remembered were the white flags being flown from the masts of ships and the eaves of rooftops. A sudden illness that ravaged her body and left her a husk in a matter of weeks. No one knew how to cure it, and I’d heard my mother and father talking in whispers – that several physicians who’d failed had been executed.

I was curious to see this place, this family. My mother was right: Lin had no one. But perhaps she could find kinship there. Surely they would support her claim? And then I wouldn’t have to hesitate on the threshold of her room, hand lifted, wondering if I should knock and offer a listening ear.

I clenched my jaw. It didn’t matter. I might have stopped sending letters to the Shardless Few, but I wasn’t her friend. I’d poked around as much as I’d dared and hadn’t found the sword Kaphra had charged me with stealing. If Lin had brought it with her, it was locked up tight on the ship.

“You’re brooding,” Mephi said to me as we climbed the steps to the palace.

How could I explain all the thoughts in my head to him? “I don’t know how to do the right thing anymore,” I said. “I came here to do the right thing, and now everything is muddled.”

“Does anyone know what is right?”

I gave him a sidelong look. “Are you reading… philosophy?”

He shouldered my leg. “There’s a library here. You taught me to read – you can blame yourself for that.”

Laughter rang down the hall when I entered the palace. Lin. I gritted my teeth as I heard another voice. Ragan. She’d welcomed him easily – too easily. She was so aloof sometimes, so convinced of her own intelligence. I wondered if she knew that anyone with half a nose could smell the loneliness on her. And there was something about him that set me on edge. Perhaps it was his smile, or his condescension, or the way he held up a finger whenever he had something important to say – and he seemed to think that nearly everything he said was important.

I made my way toward the voices. They sat in the dining hall, each with a mug of tea between their hands.