Ghrasia stepped into the Osono square and walked purposely toward the fountain, where Ahkio was stripping off his tunic. Her steps faltered as he pulled off his trousers. She stopped there for half a breath as he leaned over and splashed his face with water. Ghrasia tried to work some sense into her head and some spit into her mouth. He’s just a young man, she told herself, but it had been a good long while since she saw a man with the proportions of some passionate sculpture dripping naked beside a fountain.

“Am I keeping you from the fountain?” Ahkio said.

She started. She hadn’t noticed him turn his head. Her gaze had been… elsewhere.

“Not at all,” she said. “I wanted to speak to you.”

“I’m just going up to change,” Ahkio said. “Come up.”

Ghrasia weighed her response. Her hesitation must have disgruntled him, because after a short while, he simply pulled on his wet trousers and threw the rest of his clothes over his shoulder. He began to walk into the council house.

She made her decision. She followed.

He opened the door to his room. Ghrasia expected to see a number of hangers-on there – she had seen him trailed by students and merchants and members of the clan leaders’ families since their arrival. There did not seem to be a moment where he wasn’t meeting with someone over a meal. But save for heavy furniture and riots of book-filled trunks and stacks of paper, the room was empty.

Ahkio went to the wardrobe. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”

“I’ve had small squads running patrols across the clans,” Ghrasia said, “in response to the recent murders and rumors about strangers.” She shut the door, turned back.

Ahkio had pulled off his wet trousers and begun to dress in the dry ones.

She realized her voice had trailed off. She cleared her throat. Heat bloomed up her face. Somewhere above them, captured within Sina’s soul, Javia was laughing. How old was he? Nineteen? Twenty? Even her husbands would laugh. She preferred experienced, quick-witted men, not pliable young ones.

“I apologize,” he said, and yanked on his tunic. “It didn’t occur to me–”

“Not at all,” she said. “I have just been… more tense than I anticipated.”

“I had a lover once who said desire is like–”

Ghrasia suspected he was about to quote The Book of Oma at her. That indignity would be too much. “The patrols,” Ghrasia said.

“Have they found something?”

“I had them map out where each of the murders occurred – such as the ones at Kalinda Lasa’s – and follow-up with the local militia and safety ministers,” Ghrasia said. She stood on the other side of the tea table from him.

“You found a pattern,” he said.