Giddon had a sudden vision of a six-year-old Hava stomping her feet and bossing him around, stern, but full of earnest feeling. “Probably.”

“You’re hopeless.”

But the shop, which was the sort where you found yourself wanting things you previously hadn’t known existed, soon absorbed Hava’s attention as thoroughly as it did Giddon’s. Clocks, typewriters, microscopes, compasses, all scratched from use but polished to a high shine, were tucked among unfamiliar devices. He found something with a mother-of-pearl handle and spinning arms that looked like it might be an eggbeater, so pretty and so redolent of some history in a foreign house that he briefly wondered if he could find a use for it. Then he reached instead for a small, golden tube shaped like a spyglass, extended it, looked into it, and saw nothing but darkness.

“That’s for making stars,” the shopkeeper called, from her desk at the front. “Here, bring it to me. I’ll show you.”

At the desk, the shopkeeper demonstrated how to aim the tube toward a light source, then, with one’s eye to the eyepiece, move it around. Pinpricks of light appeared and danced inside the eyepiece.

“Go stand in the doorway and aim it at a bright patch of sky,” the woman said, then chuckled at the surprised noise Giddon made as bright stars moved and slid inside the tube. “It’s a starmaker from Mantiper,” she said. “You’re looking at the actual night sky in there, every star in its proper place.”

“What?” said Giddon, incredulous. “How?”

“It contains a compass and a level, so it knows which way you’re pointing. There’s a light filter inside that moves depending on where you point it, showing you a representation of the actual location of stars at midnight, in the Mantiperan capital, on the first day of the Mantiperan year. Not that I’ve ever tried to compare it to the night sky in Mantiper! I bought it from a Mantiperan ship captain.”

Someone pushed past Giddon into the shop.

“Yes, of course, come right in,” said the shopkeeper with an ironic sort of amiability that Giddon noticed, then dismissed. He was busy trying to find familiar constellations that would support or disavow what the shopkeeper had said about the starmaker.

Then he felt a soft hand tugging him back inside and submitted to it, letting Hava pull him into a hidden corner of the shop. When he raised inquiring eyebrows, Hava cocked her head toward the person who’d come in.

Peeking around a stand of shelves, Giddon saw a blond woman in a pale yellow coat, standing in the middle of the store with her chin high, hands raised, and eyes closed. Giddon recognized that stance, as if she were sensing the air with her fingers. And of course he recognized the woman.

Bile rose in his throat.

“What are you looking for this time, Graceling?” asked the shopkeeper dryly.