Deerhead. Had she come all this way? Ranami wondered if the girl had once had parents who’d loved her, or other street orphans she’d cared about. All of them – gone in a moment, sunk beneath the sea. She still had trouble believing that an entire island was gone. And still no one seemed to know exactly why.

“Look: it’s all right now though,” the girl said, waving her arm about. “The guy who did it is dead now, if that’s what you’re worried about. At least I think he is. Probably?”

“What’s your name?” Ranami interrupted. If she let them continue on this winding conversation, they’d never know.

“Ayesh,” the girl said.

“We’re not going to cut off your hand,” Ranami told her. “We don’t do that here.”

Ayesh glanced behind her. “You’re taking me there? The palace?”

“Yes, that’s where we live,” Phalue said.

Rain slicked the girl’s hair to her forehead. She pushed it out of her eyes, regarding them both suspiciously. “Is it to punish me?”

Ranami knew what it was like to feel so suspicious, and if the girl came from Deerhead, she might not be familiar with who Phalue was or what she was like. She sighed. “No. I used to be a gutter orphan too. I know what that’s like. We help people here on Nephilanu; we don’t chop off their hands. Why did you take the pouch?”

Ayesh’s gaze darted between the two of them. “I was hungry.”

Old instincts stirred to life. The girl was hiding something. She was hungry, yes, but there were other reasons.

Phalue didn’t have such instincts. “Come on, let’s at least get something warm in your belly.” The girl took two steps before her knees gave out again. Phalue caught her before she could fall and slung her over her shoulder again. “Easy now.”

“I have to go back…” Ayesh trailed off before losing consciousness once more.

Ranami picked up her skirts and the hem of her cloak again, leapt over a puddle and joined Phalue at her side. “What exactly are we planning on doing with her? She said she wants to go back.”

“Let’s feed her, get her cleaned up. If we want to help the orphans, maybe we should start by asking them what they need. I need to redress the harm that my father and people like him have caused.”

She should have known, once she set Phalue on this path, that she would take to it wholeheartedly – the way she did with everything. “Dearest,” she said gently, “you can never account for all the harm.”

“I should at least try.”