latibule (n.) a hiding place; a place of temporary safety and transient comfort.

A few hours more and then they had retreated indoors for emergency rations of canistrelli, the remnants of an old Mannazzu family recipe, and rurki, whose making Eero had taught to Jaga and Jaga to Kinga and, at last, Kinga to Inanna. The Warriors had held onto these recipes like gold dust in those first long months in Illéa, when they knew nothing of the unknowable kingdom in which they found themselves stranded and the longing for home – for familiarity – had been utterly unbearable.

Those times felt like ages past; there was a new kind of comfort here, in the way Ghjuvan could predict precisely how the group would assemble in the bakery kitchen, the expressions with which they would costume themselves. Zoran would sit in the chair by the oven, his feet set and his knees even and his eyes dark; on the table beside him, Khalore perched, her glower unparalleled and unwavering, except for when her gaze flickered across Ghjuvan's and some understanding flecked between them. Ilja would lean against the wall – he liked leaning, their grey man – and Kinga would mimic him on the opposite wall, arms crossed. Ina would stand with her arms braced against the counter, keeping an eye on the door, and, occasionally, if she was tired, sink down to sit on the floor with her arms around her knees.

Six months in Illéa, and familiarity was blooming, and with that familiarity was an unerring sense of stagnancy. Six months here, and he had begun to think they had lost sight of their objective, lost grip of the thought of the radiance, lost the simple drive which propelled each of them: home. They would go home as heroes; they would go home, safe; they would go home.

Six months here living placidly, and yet it felt as though they had lived a decade in the last three days. Ghjuvan had only to meet Kinga's eye to tell that much; there was a pallor to her skin, and sweat clinging to her brow. She glanced away, and made her excuses to leave. Ina had tired of the Illéan practises of outhouses in their first month here, and constructed a paltry bathroom for herself in what had once been some kind of utility room at the rear of the bakery; Kinga slipped away there now, no doubt to pull the seams of herself back together before Ghjuvan found himself compelled to use his razor against what had once been his friend.

When he turned his attention back to the conversation at hand, he found that they were still discussing murder. Ilja was blasé about it, as he was about most things. But there was a tension to his brow that suggested he did not take it as lightly as he pretended. They were still their fellow cadets, students, friends – those they had grown up alongside, ten years sharing bedrooms and meals. And yet, if they had to do it…

If Nez was the Wheel?

Could they really pretend that any of them trusted Nerezza Astaroth with the power of a xrafstar, the duty of a Warrior? Hyacinth might have been a different story, but after what she had done to Kinga – what she had nearly done to Ilja – what she could do to Khalore, to the others, even now, if she rose back to consciousness…

They were wasting time. It was apparent in the air now. They knew that they had to move, to act. The radiance couldn't wait much longer. And some part of Ghjuvan knew – knew – that the last six months here, planning, biding their time, had dulled the righteousness of his comrades, whetted their appetite for glory, for – what would Ilja have called it? Salvation? Ina would not approve of what they needed to do; Zoran would struggle to find the grit. But they must.

They were at war with Illéa; Illéa just didn't realise that yet. And in war, what was not permitted?

Somewhere in front of him, Ilja was speaking to Khalore under his breath, proffering some kind of analgesic borrowed from the palace. He said, patiently, "I'm willing to shove it down your throat if I have to."

She snatched it from him. "Charming, Iliusha."

"What can I say? I'm a sweetheart."

"Not exactly the word I would use," she said, but there was no malice in her voice. She swallowed it with a sip of water, and grimaced without feeling as Ghjuvan met her eyes. Phantom pain again? His heart ached. He had thought she had been doing better. But, then, it had been a stressful day…

Ilja said, "do you have anything else for us, Ina?"

Ina looked down at her shoes, and bit her lip, and said nothing. Zoran, beside her, set a hand lightly on her wrist, and smiled, and listened, as Ina said, "she wasn't in a mood to share much."

Khalore said, sharply, "your curse doesn't work on Nez? Or on xrafstars?"

"More Nez than anything else, I think. She can't lie to me, but that doesn't mean she has to tell me the truth..."

"So we wait," Zoran said, "we get Azula to put her hooks in them, we ask our questions..."

"What questions are these?" Ilja said, at the same moment that Khalore said, "is there anything you can ask her which would convince you that we can trust her?"

Ina said, almost irritably, "it's Nez, for god's sake, we used to predict the weather by how she slept..."

And Ghjuvan said, abruptly, "you haven't seen anything about this, Zor?"

Zoran was silent for a moment, and then shook his head. "No," he said, "nothing."

Ilja said, "Hyacinth went overboard. As far as we're concerned, she drowned. Are we even sure that she is…?"

"And if she is," Khalore said, "then Mielikki?"

Ghjuvan really hated it when those two agreed with one another, and even moreso when they were right about something. It was a nasty feeling; it was inconvenient. He could see in Ina's eyes a third name, unspoken; he cut in before anyone else had a chance to give it voice. "I think our problems are great enough without inventing ghosts to worry about, comrades."

"Great," Zoran said, "and plentiful."

Ina said, abruptly, "Belle doesn't have a curse."

She was rewarded with the eyes of all upon her; she seemed to have expected this reaction, and could only smile wanly in response, shrugging slightly as she met Zoran's gaze.

"It's true. Belle doesn't… she's not a xrafstar." She continued before anyone could chase this pronouncement with more questions. "I didn't manage to get much from Nez, but I got that much."

Ilja said, "what else?"

Ina glanced up. "Promise me that we won't hurt them."

Khalore exhaled irritatedly. "Ina."

But the golden-eyed girl would not relent. Ina's strength was a quiet kind, but it was not to be disputed. "They're Warriors as well, Khal. Hyacinth was chosen along with us – saved our life on that boat. I won't let anyone gut her just because it would be convenient. And Belle hasn't done anything wrong..."

"And Nez?"

Ina looked relieved to find that Kinga was missing; certainly the spectre of Ragnar dwelled in the room as she said, "she's our comrade, if not our friend."

Ilja was cracking, slowly. Ghjuvan could see it. They were Kur – they were Kur, Illéan by blood, devils in their bones. It was why the curses found it so easy to nestle in them, to find a purchase in their hearts and their livers and their throat. They were part-devil, but they were part-devil together. Ghjuvan thought again of Kinga's name, appended to a wall in the enemy's territory, and felt heavy anew with the sins that weighed their blood down. And no one had ever taken two curses at once – if Kinga buckled beneath their weight, if Ghjuvan faltered, if Ilja succumbed, then they would not only have lost Warriors but they might have lost curses back to Illéa… they were here to find the radiance, Ghjuvan thought, they were here to get them all back.

Before the Schreaves could destroy the entire world. As though he had heard Ghjuvan think this, Ilja's voice was softer this time when he spoke. "What else, Ina?"

Ina said, slowly, like she was musing over each individual word even as she said it, "they were sent by the Commandant."

Zoran paused. "The Champions, you mean."

"No," Ina said, carefully, precisely, "no." She took a breath. "The Commandant stole the Wheel from Abreo and initiated Nez alone."

Ghjuvan blinked. "That makes no sense, Ina."

"I know," Ina said, "I know..." She set a hand on the worktable and shook her head. She looked tired, Ghjuvan realised; she looked bone-wearied. "The Wheel went missing during our initiation, remember? Myghal didn't receive a card, and the material for initiation was missing from the crypt. Nez said…"

Khal shook her head, and murmured something disparaging under her breath. Ghjuvan checked her with a hand on her shoulder and said, "what, Nanna?"

"Matthias told him to," Ina said. "Matthias told Commandant that it had to happen like this."

The colour had slowly drained from Zoran's face, but when Ghjuvan looked at him, he merely shook his head, mute. Nothing? Their Hierophant had seen nothing? And the last generation's seer was still pulling strings from somewhere beyond this life… Matthias Kloet had been insane in those last few years, his mind torn to shreds by all that he had known and everything that he had seen. They couldn't have trusted him; they couldn't have relied on him to know what day it was. And he had sent them this much: a psychopath, and a girl without powers, and the sun in human form.

And he had said it had to happen.

"So," Ina said, "it's probably in our best interests to leave the curses where they are..."

"If you trust Matthias," Ghjuvan said.

"If you trust Commandant," Ilja said.

"If you trust Nez," Khalore said.

"If," Zoran said, and the word hung in the air like a suspended sword.

Ina said, "I'm just telling you what they told me."

"If we do," Ilja said, "if we do trust them – all of them, every step needed for this to make some form of sense – then how does this help?"

"Belle was Selected," Zoran pointed out, softly. "That puts her right beside Silas. That was always the plan, right? And Hyacinth's curse is…"

"Powerful is putting it mildly," Ghjuvan agreed.

"Does that help?" Ina asked.

Ilja and Ghjuvan exchanged looks; the grey man relented first, and nodded. "Once we've infiltrated the palace," Ilja said, "once Ghjuvan is in the Schools and… once we've found the radiance…"

She understood. Of course she did. Inanna Nirari was no fool. "A distraction," she said, "you're talking about…."

"A distraction," Ilja agreed, slowly, "a distraction..."

"Destroying another wall," Ina said, "killing thousands more people – as a distraction?"

Ilja said, softly, "Illéans. Not people. Devils."

"It's Ganzir, Ina," Ghjuvan said. "Unless we've brought the druj right up to the wall of the palace, then the royal guard will be on us in a second the moment we make our play for the radiance. The royal guard, the ordinary soldiers, the tagma – we'd be cut down where we stood."

Zoran shook his head. "It just seems…."

"Sooner than that," Ilja said, "If we're being honest with one another. We're overdue an offensive. We can't let the tagma rebuild numbers if we want to have any hope of getting out of this kingdom alive..."

"So," Khalore said, and as she said it, all of the tension seemed to dissipate from the room and they were left again just tired teenagers, huddled in the back room of a bakery, planning murder. "Hyacinth."

"Hyacinth," Ilja agreed. "She and Kinga together… you'd almost have to pity the poor bastards who tried to resist them." He paused, and cast his gaze in the direction of Kinga's usual position. "Where is our dear Kaasik, anyway?"

"I'll get her," Ghjuvan said. "She's just setting her arm."

He was wrong, of course, but he couldn't have known it then. He climbed the stairs slowly, listening to his fellow Warriors beginning to speak again behind him, and he found her in the bathroom, she was actually standing in front of the sink, holding her eyepatch in her hand and resting her arm on the edge of a sink patched with spots of blood. As she turned to look at him, he found himself looking into her eyes – eyes. One was a dark brown, flecked with lighter flints of brown that might have seemed golden under a more forgiving light than this. And the other –

It was an eye that was neither fully human nor fully druj, and yet somehow twice the worse for it – for the wrongness of it, how white the iris, how black the sclera, how jagged and twisted the pupil. It was shaped much like a bird's eye might be, long and almond-shaped and somehow elegant, awfully elegant, in its simplicity; looking at it, he rather felt like it could see something that he could not, like it was digging in deep into parts of him that no one else had ever glimpsed. It was an unpleasant feeling; it was a violation. He said, "would you...?"

Chastened, she glanced away; he could breathe again. "You shouldn't sneak up on me like that."

"You do it to Nanna plenty."

"Only when I find it funny." Her voice was wry, verging on droll, but it cracked into a weary huskiness in the middle of her sentence. She was still hurting, even if she was putting on a glassy-eyed facade to the contrary. The way that she was turning the fabric of her eyepatch over in her hands belied some greater turmoil in her gut. Kinga didn't usually fidget; Ghjuvan would never have mistaken her for an anxious person, but the six months that had elapsed since initiation – since Pekka – seemed to have eroded her armour somewhat. Or perhaps they had simply never seen her in the real world. Maybe they had only ever seen Kinga-in-training, and never Szymanska-on-the-battlefield – or maybe this was Kinia-at-the-dinner-table, the girl that she had been, the sister and cousin and niece and daughter of a dozen lost to the same curse. "What do you think?"

"Is it still…." He gestured.

She shook her head, but he surmised that by no, she meant yes. "It's still," she said simply.

"And you don't…?" That night in the barracks, when she had first shown him the eye – the eye that was neither truly Kinga nor her curse, but something stranded horrifically between the two – she had said, it sees something I can't, and he hadn't quite understand what she had meant but he had let her put her head against his shoulder, short hair matted with ichor and sweat and human blood, and told her that they would figure it out, and hoped that he wasn't lying.

"I don't." She was binding it again, slowly winding fresh bandages around her face, concealing that awful black pit that had opened up in her face. She was moving slower than she might ordinarily; her damaged arm was slowing her, dangerously slowing her. "So, what do you think?"

Ah. He understood. Kinga had filled him in on the matter the day before, after she had returned from trailing the stranger across the rooftops of Aizsaule District. He wasn't sure why she had done so; he wasn't sure what she had hoped to gain from the confession. And now Ina was to meet him again? "I trust Ina."

She chuckled, drolly. Her hands fluttered against her hair; without needing to be asked, he stepped forward to help her to pin the makeshift patch in place at the base of her skull. The edges of her short hair had been singed by the same power that had wounded her arm – whatever Hyacinth's curse was, it was potent. "And him?"

"In no world," Ghjuvan said coldly, "would I trust him."

"I don't know." She always chose the weirdest things to tease him about; after ten years, he was beginning – beginning – to realise that he would never understand her sense of humour. There was an undercurrent to her voice, something tense and painful. "He hasn't done anything wrong yet."

He shook his head, and pinned the eyepatch into place with perhaps more force than the circumstances demanded; she made a small sound of irritation and flicked the sleeve of his civilian coat like she was trying to swat him. "Sorry." He exhaled. "He's not one of us."

"Ghju," Kinga said, her tone verging on glee, "you're beginning to sound positively cliquey."

"And you sound improved."

She tilted her head. Ghjuvan. "Improved?"

"Slightly," he corrected himself. She did this. When she was concussed, or when she was sleep-deprived, or when she had miscalculated just how strong Pekka's right hook was and caught it on the jaw – she got odd. "How are we going to explain your arm to Hijikata?"

"Cut it off?"

"Yes," he agreed, "so subtle."

"Do you have a better idea?"

He gave her a look, askance.

She shook her head immediately, sensing his meaning. "No. Not yet."

"The alternative is..." He drifted off. There was no need for more. They could both imagine what he was suggesting: fang and feather and blood and bone and talon and teeth. A druj, trapped in Ina's little closet bathroom; a monster wrought from nightmares, ripping its way through Kinga's skin. And she was scared – Ghjuvan could see that, sense it, feel it like it was his own. Ghjuvan. She was scared that she wouldn't be able to keep it restrained, keep it contained. She was scared that she wouldn't be able to find her way out of it again. She was scared that she would lose herself in it, or lose the others to it, scared she could not retain control. She would – she had shown that, time and again, that she would, that she could. But not for something like this, something so petty as pain. Ghjuvan rather imagined he would have to take a knife to Zoran or Lore to convince Kinga that a transmogrification was in their best interests.

"I'll go AWOL." She was prodding her arm experimentally, flinching slightly where her finger found blood or artery. There was a determination in her voice, something flinty. "They won't come looking for a cadet–"

"We need you," Ghjuvan said, "as an excubitor. I, a Scholar. Tagma both. Those are our roles, that is what we can do for the mission, this is what we are asked to do as Warriors."

"My role is to protect you –"

His voice was perfectly even and calm, and he knew that she hated that. "And we, you."

"It's not the same." When she shuddered, Ghjuvan wondered if her chains shuddered with her – whatever invisible, hidden chains that she imagined bound her to the others, come-hell-or-high-water. Wasn't it miserable to live so, Ghjuvan wondered, puppetered about and propelled by duty rather than love? Ghjuvan.

"It is," Ghjuvan said, "it is the same – and I know that even you can see that."

"Very funny. We're back to making blind jokes?"

"I wasn't aware that we had stopped," Ghjuvan said – Ghjuvan – and then, abruptly, he was no longer in the bathroom but back in the kitchen, sitting on the chair that Zoran had vacated. Lore glanced down at him, and recognised his presence with just a nod and a slight smile and a small fistful of canistrelli, passed hand-to-hand. Ah. They were discussing the same topic that he and Kinga had just left behind – but as he glanced to his right, he found that Kinga was here as well, her arm slung, shaking her head, and saying, "I'm not sure I'll get away with it during the day..."

"That's fine," Ina was saying, from where she sat by the window, curled up on herself. "I'm not asking you for anything, Kinia. I just wanted to tell you."

Kinga didn't look like she knew what her reaction should be to this sentence. "Well," she said, "thank you for keeping me updated."

And Zoran, standing next to them, said, "what are you going to do?"

"I'll go," Ina said, "I'll speak to him. As long as everything here is resolved by then..."

"Alone?" Kinga's voice was sharp. For once, she and Zoran were in total agreement. "No."

"Absolutely not."

"He won't hurt me."

"That's adorable," Kinga said, sweetly. "Still no."

"Kee," Ina began, sounding exasperated, and was interrupted, abruptly, by Ilja, who was sitting on the table beside Khalore.

"Stringless man sounds," Ilja said, "like exactly the type of person we shouldn't be fraternising with when we're already dealing with… the others."

Ghjuvan's voice sounded slightly strained with vertigo as he said, forming the words with some difficulty, "do you think it's a coincidence? The timing?" The information that Ina had shared with them about this figure was narrow; he rather suspected that much of Ina's feeling on the matter came down to gut instinct rather than anything intelligent.

Ina said, with a sigh, "I think it's something I have to ask him about."

"Them," Zoran corrected, his voice brittle, but Ghjuvan could tell that Ina was not going to be deterred. She arranged her skirts around her, and shrugged, and that was that. Ghjuvan wasn't going to be the person who tried to persuade her; more information could only be a boon.

Instead, Ghjuvan just said, simply, "you know how to call me if you need me."

Ina smiled. "Of course."

Ilja stood, slowly, brushing off his coat. "I should get back. Morozova is in town; might raise questions if she sees me slipping through the gate." He clapped Zoran on the back, and kissed Ina on the cheek. "Let me know if Zula made it, will you?"

It was Zoran's turn to say, "of course."

Khal looked to Kinga. "We should….?"

Kinga jerked her head, glancing at Ghjuvan. "Sounds smart."

Ghjuvan cocked his eyebrow. He had missed something, clearly, but he wasn't going to interrogate it too deeply; he just slid to his feet, pausing only to sling his sword at this hip. Then he followed his fellow Warriors out into the courtyard and up the stairs to Khal's little attic room, where they had left Belle and Nez and Hyacinth. Nez was still tied to the chair in the centre of the room; as Khal crossed the threshold, the Wheel's head jerked slightly, but she otherwise remained still. Asleep, or merely feigning? Ghjuvan kept an eye on her, and sensed that his comrades were doing something similar, as Khal crossed the room to where Belle had curled up on the armchair near the blockaded fireplace and said, "come on."

Belle stirred slightly, and set deadened, dark eyes on her comrades. "What?"

"You've graduated to the main house," Khal said bitterly. Ghjuvan frowned. He hadn't… they hadn't discussed this. Had they? He couldn't deny it was a fine idea. Of the motley trio, Belle seemed like the least opposed to the others. What had she said? Tofana told us you were dead? She had come here as a second wave, a succeeding landing party; of the group who had not qualified as Warrior, she was one of the least offensive by far. "Do you want a bed tonight or not?"

Belle said, dourly, "I suspect Ghju's going to take my head the moment I cross the threshold."

Ghjuvan said, "I'd need to sharpen my sword first, Belle. You'd have a few minutes to yourself first."

"What a relief," the girl said, and stood. It was easy to see why she had been chosen for the Selection; she was slight and pretty, the kind of girl that Ghjuvan's mother might have compared to a lily or a reed. The ravages of rough living apparent on Nez were absent – but then, Belle had been apparently gainfully employed for much of her time in Illéa. Her clothes were homespun and plain, but well-kept; she had co-operated much of the way back to Ina's, and so had been spared the scrapes and wounds which had characterised Kinga's arrest of Nez.

Guiding the slight girl out of the attic, Ghjuvan was struck by how much of a stranger she seemed. He had never been close with her – she had never seemed close to anyone in particular, included in Azula and Hyacinth's circle of friendship almost by convenience than by any great familiarity – but she had been a constant, a name and a face at every muster and every dinner. How far away it all seemed.

How long had it been since Ghjuvan had thought of Myghal? He and Khal had joked about it one night, one of the navy evenings that Ghju had spent on the threshold of Khal's room while his old friend picked bits of ceramic and flattened food from the cracks between the floorboards. She had thrown a plate of food; he had been trying to distract her from the fact that she every-so-often reached for the floorboard with a hand that was no longer there. And they had spoken of Myghal, of what he might do now that he was free, a civilian merely and finally. He would have found a girlfriend, Ghjuvan thought, and a little apartment on a central street in Opona, and a job in a butcher's shop on the west side where he could put his knife skills to use. In the evenings he might cook cawl or tatws pobdu, and he might read about the new Swendway government in the newspaper, and he might occasionally, when the night was quiet, think of his friends, somewhere across the ocean filled with monsters, on an island swarmed by nightmares. It was a nice thought. Ghjuvan wasn't sure if it was a realistic one.

Belle moved quickly across the courtyard; she genuinely seemed to be watching Ghjuvan's sword, so to soothe her, he quickly shucked it by the door. He left it leaning against the chair in which Zoran usually drank his tea at lunchtime; Belle seemed to let loose a breath that had been a long time in the keeping, and was a little more relaxed in following Khal up the narrow stairs at the back of the bakery, to the rooms that Azula and Ina kept overlooking the street. Ilja was by the door, and Kinga was quick to go to him, muttering something cynical about men without strings and girls with dead boyfriends. Ilja looked like he wanted to argue, but could not quite find purchase for the same; the Moon and the Chariot left the courtyard together, shoulder-to-shoulder, moving slowly. Kinga only paused at the gate, and glanced back at Ghjuvan.

"I'll meet you on Wall Schreave. Afterwards."

Afterwards? Ghjuvan's gut dropped a little bit. They were moving forward with the plan, then. Kinga had seemed set against it. Ilja must have talked her into it while Ghjuvan was…. gone. Good. It was needed. He nodded. They were still on their day off; they would not be required back at barracks until dawn the next day. As long as that didn't look suspicious... "Mag Mell Gate?"

"Somewhere around there." She could have just called him to the place that he was needed, and he knew that she knew that. This was something refined and hesitant – a refusal to compel him.

"I hope it helps," he said, and meant it.

"If it doesn't," Kinga said, "it'll make a fine cover."

They left then, the grey man and his dark shadow, and Zoran said, from the doorway, "nothing useful."

Ghjuvan glanced at him. Usually it was Ghjuvan who snuck up on others like this; he wasn't quite adjusted to the situation being reversed, to other people appearing behind him and saying cryptic things. He raised his eyebrow, and Zoran was quick to clarify.

"I don't see anything useful. Petty things." He smiled thinly. "It's going to rain tomorrow."

"You might be grateful for that," Ghjuvan said, thinking of how empty Matthias' eyes had been at the end of his life. "It might mean a gentler curse."

"Maybe." Zoran sounded unconvinced. "It feels… unhelpful."

"You're helpful," Ghjuvan said, "regardless of prophecies or augury. You're our beating heart, Zor."

"Not sure you of all people can say that, Ghju."

"I'm frequently far too humble, it's true." Ghjuvan smiled. "Have you considered going to bed, Zoran? You look exhausted."

He shook his head. "Not sleeping well," he said bluntly.

"Things remembered," Ghjuvan said, "or things foreseen?"

"I think one," Zoran said, "but I hope the other."

There was silence for a moment. There was a thin wind moving over the wall; it rustled Azula's carefully cultivated flowers and stirred the edge of Zoran's coat. Ghjuvan wondered how far Ilja and Kinga had gone in that short amount of time; he wondered how much longer it would be before the bells began to clang in Mag Mell District.

Would they be able to hear the screaming from here?

Zoran pulled his coat about himself. "I'll go for a walk," he said, "get some air, check on Hyacinth and Nez, you know."

"Make sure you make it back," Ghjuvan said, "before Ina goes on this date of hers."

Zoran grimaced. "Not sure I'll be of much assistance if anything happens, Ghju."

"You came third in our class, Zoran. You'd be more help to her than I would."

He chuckled drily. "Perhaps."

"Enjoy your walk."

Zoran nodded. "I'll try."

Ghjuvan watched him go. He cut a smaller figure, somehow diminished, lonelier than Ilja and Kinga had seemed going on their merry way in turn. Zoran was tired, Ghjuvan thought, that was all, merely tired. The whole group felt off-kilter, thrown off-balance, horrifically off-mark. That was no crime; that ws no sin. The last three days had carried more mania and madness than the last three months put together. Girls returned from the dead and girls who wanted you dead and girls with a way into the palace…

Ghjuvan sighed, just as the gate creaked in Zoran's wake, and wandered back into the bakery, taking his time as he went. Ina kept the place lovingly neat; there was something aching about it, how earnestly she had created a home within an enemy kingdom, how quaint the furnishings and beautiful the decorations in a borrowed home, stolen from people spared death at her hands only by death at the hands of her friends. Ghjuvan wondered if this was the home that she had imagined sharing with Pekka, once upon a time – missing only a beloved cat or some golden-haired children underfoot, containing far more talk of violence and bloodshed than she could have ever hoped. Would she have done this, if she had never been a Warrior? Would she have baked? Her family were carpenters, if he remembered that correctly – like Pekka's, like Zoran's. Lots of carpenters. Opona could have been a wooden city, for all the woodsmen running around the place.

He paused on the threshold, watching her pick at what little had remained unsold, wrapping it in paper or tucking it into little wooden boxes. There was something precise about her movements, like a bird searching for seed among dust; she was exacting, and nervous in that exactness. She was waiting, clearly, for a knock at the door or a knock at the window or a knock on the counter – a strange kind of waiting, wherein Ghjuvan could not tell if she would be more glad for it to happen or not to happen.

"You should rest, Nanna. I'll shut the shop."

But Inanna was worrying her lip, and Ghjuvan sensed that sleep was not, quite, on the agenda for the night. She had all the hallmarks of a conspirator – what kind of plan had she and Zoran cooked up while he was otherwise indisposed? He was disinclined to ask, but she seemed disinclined to offer; it just seemed easier to remain in silence for a moment longer, packing up the canistrelli and the rurki, listening to the soft footsteps overhead as Khalore showed Belle around the upstairs bedrooms. Finally, the quiet became too much to bear, so Ghjuvan just said, simply –

"It isn't Eero."

"No," she agreed, "not Eero."

He stepped forward, rounding the counter, into the body of the shop, until he was level with her and helping her, lifting the breads into boxes and picking the crumbs from the shelves. "Then who?"

"I don't know," she said, slowly, softly. "But it feels like he's on our side."

"No one's on our side here, Na. We can't trust anyone."

"But each other," Inanna said, and Ghjuvan was forced to concede – not that he wouldn't have otherwise, of course. But – at this point – if never before – then he had rather imagined that this went without saying at this point.

"Each other," he agreed, and took her hand. "Just each other."

As if on cue, the door burst open. Behind it, Azula – Azula, with a smile, brandishing a roll of parchment bound in grey ribbon. "Lilja always said I wouldn't amount to much," the youngest Warrior said, her voice chipper. "But I think even she imagined I might do better than becoming a maid..."

"That's great news, Zu!" Ina beamed. "Fantastic news."

"At this point," Ghjuvan said, "there'll be more of us in the palace than actual Illéans."

Azula hopped across the threshold, ducking around Ina's elbow to pluck a stray cake from the box she was packing. She was smiling, of course - some small remnant of the girl she might have otherwise been. "I don't see why we need everyone else. I'll grab the radiance myself in a day or two..."

Ina paused. "Your curse, Zu?"

"Didn't even need it. Have a little faith, Ina, please?" Azula paused, and threw the cake between her hands, shedding crumbs across the floor, looking only mildly chastened at the look that her older sister threw her. She seemed positively giddy with this success of hers; Ghjuvan imagined that she couldn't have had many recently, cooped up in this bakery so. "Oh – I saw that captain Kinga's always talking about, Ghju. Hijikoya?"

"Hijikata." Ghju frowned. "Kinga talks about him?"

"And Ilja's supervisor." Azula took a bite out of the cake in her hand. "Morozov."

"Morozova." She was doing it on purpose, Ghjuvan suspected. "What were they doing at the viceroy's?"

"They were rushing about," Azula said, "looking aggressive – soldiers, you know."

Ghjuvan frowned, but said nothing. For now, there was too much to say, and too much to wait for. The matter of Hijikata and Morozova, who were only driven together when they could not escape it – it was something to wonder about later. Something to think about once the blood had dried on his sword, and Ina was back safe in her bed, and Kinga was human again. Something to turn over once Nez had spilled her guts and Hyacinth had contained herself and Ilja was ensconced within the palace once again, watching over Azula watching over Belle watching over the radiance. Something to wonder about later, when they could worry about Commandant, and Nez, and Hyacinth, and the tagma, and the Eero-who-was-not-Eero.

They had time. They had plenty of time.