“You don’t like them?” Annika asked.

“They’re fine.”

“What’s your favorite food?”

He dragged his bread through the leavings of his meal. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” said Sylvi.

Eryk shrugged. No one had ever asked him. “Um … anything sweet.”

“Puddings?”

He nodded.

“Pies?”

He nodded again. There was a cake they served in Kerch, thick with cherries and served with sweet cream, and there were Shu candies coated in sesame that he could eat by the handful. But he wasn’t supposed to talk about the places he’d traveled. He was just a boy from the south. “I like everything,” he said.

“What’s your favorite color?” asked Sylvi.

“I don’t have one.”

“How can you not have one?”

Deep blue like the True Sea. Red like the roofs of the Shu temples. The pure, buttery color of sunlight—not really yellow or gold, what would you call it? All the colors you couldn’t see in the dark.

“I never really thought about it.”

“Mine’s rainbow,” said Sylvi.

“That’s not a color.”

“Is too.”

When Sylvi turned her attention to bothering the family beside them, Annika said, “You haven’t asked where our mother is.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“The drüskelle got her, the witchhunters. When we were still living near Overut.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did your father die in battle?”

My father is dust. You all are. “Yes.”

Her eyes darted to a man with fair hair and bright blue eyes seated at the farthest end of the elders’ table. It was not a position of much esteem.

“Is that your father?” he asked.

Annika looked down at her plate. “You and Lev will probably be best friends by tomorrow.”

He frowned. “No we won’t.”

“Your mother is sitting next to the Ulle. You won’t be eating with me in a few days’ time.”

“Yes I will,” he said, then added, “if we stay.”

“You said you would.”

Eryk fiddled with his spoon. He should talk to his mother about what Annika had learned. He knew that.

Annika said, “Do you want to come swimming with me and Sylvi tonight?”

“It’s too cold to swim.”

“There’s a pond fed by hot springs just up from the creek.”

He glanced over to where his mother was speaking to the Ulle, her black eyes flashing. “I don’t think I should.”

Annika gave a stiff shrug. “All right,” she said.

But he could see that it wasn’t. He remembered the feeling of her hand in his. For the next few months, he could be Eryk. He could belong to this place. He could have a home, maybe even friends. And friends went on adventures. They broke rules together.

He gave Annika a nudge under the table. “What time?”

Even after the lamps were long extinguished and Eryk was certain his mother was asleep, he hesitated. His mother distrusted the vulnerability of sleep; she never really seemed to dream deeply and was always ready to leap from her bed at any sound.