Mephi kept looking up at me, and though I didn’t return his glance, I knew he was worried. “They are going to fight tomorrow,” he said finally. The road to the harbor was unpaved, gravel crunching beneath my feet. The fields around us were still, the farmers retreated into their huts. A few passed us on the road on their way to the palace. They didn’t bother glancing up from beneath their umbrellas and their hoods. “We should help,” Mephi said.

“I already tried that,” I said. “She doesn’t want me there.”

“But what about everyone else? They want you there.”

“Lin can handle it on her own. Ragan will help too. They don’t have a lot of soldiers, but she’s clever – she’ll figure something out.” My voice was more confident than I felt.

“Jovis.” He swerved in front of me, his paws firmly planted. “You and Lin had a fight. You need to make things right because she needs you there. Everyone does. You can’t walk away.” There was something odd about his voice, like he was choking on something.

I lifted my foot and darted around him. “This is me, walking away.”

He slid past me, his body low to the ground, his ears flattened, jaw clenched. “Very funny. Jovis makes big jokes when he can’t face big feelings.”

Ouch. So maybe that was true. “Can’t you be small again and talk less?” I said. “You were very sweet back then.”

He clacked his teeth together. “Even ossalen grow up.”

“Grow up into what?”

His ears flew forward, his eyes wide. He cocked his head at me. “Don’t know.”

I ventured to scratch his cheeks, though he swerved away from me, still not ready to forgive. “The right thing is to go dack – back.”

He was speaking strangely.

“Mephi,” I said, exasperated. “Not again. Not now.” I seized his big head in my hands. “Drop it before you choke.”

He narrowed his brown eyes at me, but his jaw shifted and I saw a bulge in his cheek.

“Drop. It.”

He spat something onto the ground. “I found it. It’s mine now,” he said by way of explanation. I knelt to pick it up.

It was a clay flask, a small one, corked at the top. I knew what it held. The memories she’d extracted from Ragan, after taking a sample of his blood. That’s why I hadn’t been able to find it. Mephi had gotten to it before I had. “Where have you been keeping this?”

He ducked his head low. “Here and there.”

Judging by the chipped clay, he’d been stuffing it wherever he could hide it. I wiped the flask clean and pocketed it. “For the very last time, just because you can take someone’s things, doesn’t mean that you should. I never see you just taking the food from food stalls.”