I huffed out an uncomfortable breath. “You know, when we keep meeting alone – Mephi and Thrana don’t count – people assume things. Your maidservants are gossiping.”

She shot me a sharp look, though her cheeks were flushed. “What’s more important here? The safety of my people or the idle chatter of my servants? Don’t bother me about unimportant things.”

Gossip could topple an Empire almost as surely as rebellion could. But I kept these thoughts to myself. “Then what did you want from me? Why am I here?”

Her expression turned pleading. She could keep herself so aloof, her thoughts so well-hidden. Yet she rarely seemed to do so around me. “I need your help.”

“What do you need me to do?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. Maybe it was the way the lamplight caught the warm brown shades of her eyes. Maybe it was because, for the first time, I hadn’t thought of them as Emahla’s eyes.

I shouldn’t be offering my help. She wasn’t actually Shiyen’s daughter and heir. I had no idea who she truly was. Did she?

“Tonight. When everyone is sleeping. I’m going to find out what the governor is hiding.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you have… spies for that sort of thing?”

“I don’t trust spies.”

I held in a flinch. “So you’re going to sneak around the hallways at night, running into the governor’s guards, and then you’ll explain yourself how?”

“No, not the hallways,” she said, with a satisfied little smile. She pointed one finger up, just as Ragan usually did.

And then I realized her meaning was quite different from his. I let my gaze drift to the ceiling. Above us, the rain still pounded at the roof. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“I’ve done it before. I’ll head to the governor’s room and see what I can find. You, on the other hand, would have a reason to be patrolling the hallways at night.”

“And you want me to…?”

“Do just that – patrol the hallways and look for anything odd. Report back to me in the morning if you find anything. Wailun hasn’t said so outright, but she doesn’t seem keen on supporting my leadership. I need to find out why. We’re running out of time.”

I’d seen the similarities in their faces as clearly as everyone else must have. If Lin was not Nisong’s daughter, whose daughter was she? She certainly looked like her mother’s family. Or was she an illegitimate child, as this Nisong claimed to be, born soon before or after the legitimate one? But then why would Shiyen name her as his legitimate daughter?

And there was a thought I kept shoving away: if constructs could look like people…

No. She was far too complicated for that.