“It’s been nine moons. And whether you want this to happen or not, here we stand.” Nasu dried his dish and set it on the shelf with the others.

“And would you come with me if I did suddenly have to rule Alu?” she asked us. “All of you? What of our lives here?”

“Oh, Arwia, of course we would,” I said.

“Really?” Dagan sat back and stared at me. “After the conversation we had about me going north?”

“This would mean supporting a new queen, Dagan. Not commerce.”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, that’s true. I am tired.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand. “We are all tired. This has been a terrible night.”

“Kammani?”

Kasha’s voice was raspy with sleep. He stood on the stairs, a foot dangling as if to step down, staring at me with worried brown eyes that looked so much like my abum’s.

“Uruku is coming for us? We are not safe?”

Nanaea, Kasha, and I had finally been able to be a family again here. I’d watched Nanaea work hard at her sewing, trying to be responsible, and watched Kasha run around with the neighbor boys, chasing dogs and shooting birds out of the sky with their slingshots. We were living normal lives filled with nothing more tumultuous than arguments over who was taking too long at the washbasin.

So what answer could I give this boy, one whose own father had died by Uruku’s hand?

Pushing myself away from the table, I went to him and ruffled his dark curls, and kissed the top of his head, which still smelled of smoke from the torches and cookfires at Simti’s wedding.

“We are as safe as we can be right now, and we are going to make sure it stays that way.”

He relaxed as I walked him back up the stairs to his chamber. But after I settled him in and rubbed his back, I wondered how in Selu’s name I was going to keep that promise to him. Would Arwia agree to ask Sarratum Tabni for an assassination instead of a war? And if so, would the queen even agree if what Nasu said was true?

While Kasha drifted off, I eased his angst with a childhood song from our ummum, my eyes drooping as I stroked his hair. “Sleep, little bug.” I yawned. “Sleep.”

When I finally made my way down the stairs and tucked myself into the pallet I shared with Nanaea, she was already asleep, her measured breath blowing a single strand of hair back and forth in front of her face. I lay down, drunk with fatigue, and tucked the pillow under my chin.

But just as I was drifting off, a man’s whispery baritone sang from the moonlit corner of the room:

The river is wide

The river is deep

I take their souls to earn my keep

I startled and sat up, my heart pounding, and squinted at the shadows.

“Hello?” I whispered.