I started to reach out to him and then stopped. Neither my station nor his would allow it. I wanted to comfort him. The best I could offer was my own truth. “Someone I thought was my friend – no, he was my friend – turned out to be a construct of my father’s making.” I’d burned Bayan’s body in the courtyard with the cloud juniper, and had thrown a sprig of it onto the fire. I’d been alone, but I’d held a funeral for him in my own way. “I held my own funeral rites for him. I wouldn’t think it odd if you did the same.” I paused, thinking of my friendship with Bayan. “Everything you experienced with them was real. Just because they were constructs doesn’t mean your feelings – or theirs – weren’t real.”

He met my gaze, and some small kinship passed between us. “Thank you for that.” He looked so young. Once a gutter orphan, now the governor of Hualin Or and one of the most powerful men in the Empire. Yet all he could think of was the family he’d lost, the family that had never existed. I could work with someone like him, and it wouldn’t be as hard as it had been with Iloh. “I can’t make any decisions right now,” he said, “but I’d like to continue the conversation you were having with my mother – with Wailun.” He drew back, consulting with his Captain of Guard as men and women rushed to carry out his orders.

Now that the battle was over, I had time to think about Thrana. Jovis fell in behind me, as he always did. “You said she would be fine?” I said, just loud enough for him to hear.

“The same thing happened to Mephi,” Jovis said. “He was hungry and lethargic the days before, and then he fell into a deep, feverish sleep. When he awoke, he was changed.”

So Thrana was going through a similar change?

“Periodic hibernation,” Ragan said, coming up from behind Jovis, making him jump. Jovis scowled at the intrusion. “Ossalen undergo this before growth spurts. My own has gone through one phase.”

“What happens after the first growth spurt? You said Mephi changed?”

Both Jovis and Ragan shrugged. Ragan held up a finger. “Records from the beginning of the Alanga are very few. What happens next to your ossalen is lost to the ravages of time.”

34

Jovis

Hualin Or

Speaking with my brethren failed. I should have known it would. Ylan knows I keep the giant bones (? Could be bones or some other word) in the depths of my cavern home. I bring them out to him without him even asking. Still, he continues to reassure me.

“If we have a weapon that can be used against your kind, it will hold them in check.” I give him what he needs and let him do his work because I trust him.