She’d feared my father, and she’d hated him. Anything I did in a way that resembled him made her shrink away, her limbs trembling. It had to be a terrible reminder of the suffering she’d endured for years beneath the palace. Trapped in the pool and in the darkness, hooked up to tubes that carried away her blood for use in my father’s machine.

I still didn’t quite understand that. How did her blood help hold memories in liquid form? I might have to delve deeper to figure that out.

“Yes, go ahead,” I told her.

She launched herself from the railing and into the Endless Sea. I lost a little of my moroseness watching her swim and dive beneath the waves. Mephi, not wanting to be left out, soon joined her. Only Lozhi, Ragan’s ossalen, was absent.

Ragan, however, was not. I thought at first it was Jovis, but then I heard him take in a deep breath next to me and knew it was not. His hands gripped the railing next to mine. “It’ll be good to be on dry land again,” he said.

“I take it the monks do not sail often,” I said dryly.

“Not at all. We’re mostly orphans, taken in by the monastery. Or children given over whose parents would rather never see their children again than to see them go through the Tithing Festival. And then we spend the rest of our lives there, caring for the cloud juniper trees and curating books.”

“Sounds lonely.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s worse than that. It’s like being cloistered with family for the rest of your life, and they aren’t always family you particularly like. The monks don’t interact much with surrounding villages, and you never really get a day off to go into town.”

“I never asked – how did you happen upon Lozhi?”

Something passed over his face – a grimace? I couldn’t be sure. “Ah.” He lifted a finger. “A good question.” Was he stalling? “They do send monks to the villages for supplies and to trade. I drew the task once. There are so many acolytes that want to go, you see. I had a little free time, so I took a walk by the beach, and I found him there. I knew what he was because of my studies. Ossalen only appear every few hundred years, so I got lucky.”