Hidden in the fruit grove behind, we listened to his muffled attempts to talk to her. He flattered her. Asked her about her parents. She responded with cutting wit and scathing insults, and in time, he gave up and came outside to the back porch and plopped down on a barrel, whittling with a dagger.

“Gala,” Dagan whispered, emerging from the scrub.

“Who’s there?” Gala dropped his stick and unsheathed his sicklesword in one motion.

I stayed back, hidden. Our plan was twofold. He’d tell Gala that Iltani was our friend, and try to negotiate with him to release her. I’d give Iltani the means of defending herself if Gala failed to give her up. I’d sat in the scrub and mixed a concoction with what I had in my satchel. It would have to do.

Dagan walked toward him, hands up, and Gala’s eyes widened in recognition. He clapped his hand with Gala’s, and the gesture nearly made me choke.

“Remember those three servants who first came with me through the gate? Well—” I heard Dagan say as I tiptoed around the side of the house to the common room in the front, where Iltani was. She was squatting in a corner, her arms around her knees, a look of stark grief and unbridled war on her face.

My heart leapt. “Iltani!” I whispered through the window.

She stumbled to her feet, lifted momentarily by the sound of my voice. Casting a long look over her shoulder toward the back of the house, she crept over to me and grasped my hands over the sill, laying her forehead on our interlaced fingers.

“About time.” Her voice was too loud. Too much. As was Iltani’s way.

Tears sparked in my eyes. “Iltani, be quieter. Gala is going to hear. I want to get you out of here right now, but you could face the council if you leave and no one would decide in your favor.”

She shook her head vehemently, eyes red-rimmed. “We can’t risk it. I mean, I’d risk it for me. But they’d kill my abum and ummum if I left him. Gala already warned me on the road here when I ordered him to let me go. He says he would never hurt my family, but his other guardsman friends would if I ever left him. He says some of them are cruel, and with Uruku in power, they’re bolstered even more. The stinking hogs.”

“Do you really think they would?” I whispered, one ear straining to hear Gala and Dagan’s low, rumbling conversation.

“Yes!” she whispered harshly. “And now they know who they are, too. My abum came to the bridal gifting and announced who he was like an addled donkey.” She waved her hand around and nearly knocked a vase of wilted flowers off the windowsill. “If I left, the first thing they’d do is find him and demand to know my whereabouts, and he wouldn’t know because he never knows anything.” She lowered her voice. “And then they’d kill him. They might anyway for what he did, standing up and trying to reclaim me. That ignorant man.” Her words were harsh, but I knew that they were driven by a wild, protective love.