The thought of Kem’s anger was like having sand in her throat. Elen didn’t feel like eating, but she never refused freely offered food. “Of course.”

She accompanied Luviara out of the hostel courtyard. Fulmo stood by the hostel door like a sentry, utterly still.

“Doesn’t he come with us? No guards are needed here.”

“He’s not like us. He eats starlight.”

“What?”

Luviara smiled mischievously as she headed after the others, Elen beside her. “It’s a tale that started in the villages along the border of the Desolation. All the gagast who serve in the palace come out of the Desolation. I have traveled in the border region and written down whatever accounts I have been able to gather.”

“Do you doubt the story? About eating starlight, I mean.”

“Stories are complicated. If I had to make a guess, I would say the belief arises from the habit of gagast to stand in perfect stillness at night with their faces turned heavenward. One might think they are absorbing starlight.”

“Have you asked Fulmo?”

“Gagast do not speak any human language. Some can read and write, which strikes me as curious. You’ll have noted Fulmo has only a thumb and three fingers, but he has a delicate touch and exceptional manual dexterity despite his massive size and clumsy-looking hands. To return to the question of language, it’s said the aivur can communicate with the gagast through light.”

They made their way along a colonnaded pathway. Ipis had dropped back from the forward group and seemed to be listening.

Elen asked, “What are the aivur truly like? It seems you’ve met them on your travels.”

“So I have.”

“Are they humans who were lost when the Pall descended, and who were transformed into something both more and less than human through sorcery?”

“That’s what the Chronicle of the Winter Poet claims. You’ve read it?”

“In the intendant’s archive. Yes.”

“I’m curious to know what else you’ve read. Most intendants don’t offer deputy couriers access to their archives.”

Elen ignored this blatant fishing attempt and answered the safer question. “Well, in the play Flower-Bright Sunrise, the aivur are depicted as a peaceful and beautiful people who have lived for generations in great tree cities in the distant south. They never eat meat or enact any violence. Naturally a young human man falls in love with one of their noble court. So that makes it seem aivur have always lived in the world. But according to the intendant’s daughter, who traveled with her spouse into the east, ‘aivur’ is just a name for the vicious Blood Wolves and the merciless Sea Wolves. She says they were born in the Pall, because the Pall cannot harm them, and that is why they must be burned. Like Spore.”