I let out my breath. “I’m not sure.” And I wasn’t, although I’d put together the pieces from my father’s memories and Jovis’s tale of his missing wife. My father couldn’t bring himself to dismantle the constructs carrying my mother’s memories. So he’d sent them far away, on that same blue-sailed boat that had taken Jovis’s wife.

He lifted another pastry from the basket. “You want to offer the replica to her?”

“They loved one another,” I said. “I meant what I said when I spoke to her envoy. Maybe there’s a way to keep the constructs alive without draining our lives. I’m willing to take that time and effort if she’s willing to wait. Shiyen might tempt her. It’s that or try to get close enough to dismantle her.”

“So you’re hoping for romance to win the day?” He let out a bitter laugh that twisted a knife into my heart.

I wiped the crumbs from my fingers before we reached the encampment. The constructs I’d seen from the palace walls were even more terrifying up close – their gazes empty, hands listless at their sides, blood staining their sleeves. They were barely held together by the shards within them. She must have figured out how few shards she could use – they’d still be a limited resource.

A woman with large, dark eyes met us. She put a hand over her heart in greeting. “Nisong will see you. If you’ll follow me.”

I left the wagon with Jovis on my heels, the thrum in my bones a welcome reassurance. Surreptitiously, I took another cloudtree berry from my sash and crushed it between my teeth. Strength flooded through my limbs. Mephi and Thrana stood back, their hackles raised, heads low. Both looked like spooked cats. Still, they fell in behind us, sniffing the air with lips pulled back. Mephi’s head reached Jovis’s hip, but Thrana was a solid presence, a wall of muscled beast at my back.

Nisong didn’t wait for us in a tent, or surround herself with the niceties most rulers did. She met us in front of a bonfire, the smoke rising behind her, her constructs standing listlessly around her.

She was taller than I was, her face landing somewhere just short of middle age. Her hair was bound in a simple braid; scars marked her face and her bare arms. Two fingers on her left hand were missing. My father might have made her from disparate parts, but she stood the way the Nisong of my memories did – feet planted firmly in the ground, her chin raised as if asking for someone to challenge her. She stood the way I did.