ya'aburnee (n.) lit. "you bury me"; the hope that you will die before another person because you cannot live without them.

In silence, they ascended the wall. Ilja knew the best, most secret routes – he knew which steps would creak and betray their presence, which routes were less likely to be patrolled, where the strange and shifting shadows cast by the moon would shroud them best. He had not been in the guard long enough to absorb this information naturally, gradually; it had, instead, been a brute thievery of knowledge. But it came in handy; with Kinga at his shoulder, silent, he ascended the steps quickly. He could barely remember the first time he had found his way onto this wall; only the faintest traces of that memory remained: Ghju's face over the parapet, pale; bodies raining down around them, snatched into the jaws of druj almost as quickly as they fell; Khal's arms around his neck, her face pressed into his shoulder, her breaths coming short.

Only six months ago? A different Ilja Schovajsa had lived those moments. He felt like someone else had narrated it to him, rather than truly living it. Six months in the capital had clearly made him soft.

The stairs spiralled onto a platform, set a little higher than the bulk of the wall itself. As Kinga leapt down, silently, Ilja took a moment to look beyond the wall, towards the horizon – half-expecting to still see smoke. In the night, the abandoned lands of Tiamat and Mont had been embraced by gloom and silence. Even despite the dark, he half-expected to still see that enormous golem which had brought down the outer wall, but there was nothing, utterly nothing. Not even the sound of druj; did the monsters ever sleep? Ilja wasn't sure – that, then, was some small amount of knowledge he had yet to glean. That would be Ghju's job, as a Scholar, to learn these things, to carry that information back to Irij. He couldn't worry about it now, not when there was redemption at stake… could you call this redemption?

Kinga helped him down with her good hand. She sometimes had a strange gentleness to her, that came not from the absence of violence but despite an abundance of it. It was a pale facsimile of the way Pekka had guarded the others throughout their time together; it struck Ilja as a concentrated effort, something that took more effort than it ought. Kindness strained her in the way no physical exertion could, but he couldn't blame her for that. The world had not imbued the girl with much reason for kindness, for gentleness, for love. If she loved someone – was that a fact or a weapon? Kinga's love for Jaga was a knife to the throat; Jaga's love for Kinga had been instructions on exactly where to cut. Ilja could perceive this in her, more clearly than if it had been carved into her skin. It was immediately, urgently, desperately apparent. And there was – there had always been – some part of him that was envious of that, even in all of its awful horror. To love, to be loved, to have a role so clearly demarcated as to be woven into the very fabric of your nation's history… it was an orphan's fever dream, mutilated almost beyond recognition. Almost.

Kinga threw off her coat. Beneath her garment, Ilja saw, for the first time, how thin she had grown in the last six motnhs. She had always been a lean sort, designed with soldiering in mind rather than any aesthetic sense pleasure, but Illéa had shrunk her down, somewhat diminished her, as though subject to radical surgery.

Was she getting enough food in the army? Was Ghju? Abruptly, the privilege of his life in Ganzir was apparent, glaringly apparent. Were all of the Warriors struggling so, starving so? They hadn't mentioned it – he had always assumed, that with the bakery – well, he had assumed. That wasn't like him. When had that started?

He said, intending to dismiss the thought, "are you ever going to tell me about this wall, Kaasik?"

She regarded him darkly. It reminded him of those long-ago days in training, when neither of them had been able to come up with an answer for what they would have done with their lives, if not for the Warrior Programme. It was a look that suggested she didn't quite understand the question – or, at least, that she was determined to misunderstand. Wall Szymańska. He had imagined, when they had first arrived here, that perhaps it was a more common name in Illéa – but six months later, and it was still as foreign and obvious as it had been on arrival. "I imagine it's made of bricks," she said, "perhaps some mortar…"

He rolled his eyes. And people called him a clown? "Kinga."

"Cement," she said, "limestone."

"You're very funny, did anyone ever tell you?"

She stepped closer to the edge of the wall, and craned her neck to glance into the darkness below. "Yeah," she said, drily, "but they all sounded sarcastic as well."

He chuckled, and set his boot against the parapet. The Watchers would be at six on the clock, while he and Kinga were at eleven; they should have plenty of time. After all, they only needed a moment...

She rolled her shoulder, wincing at the pain that Hyacinth had wrought, and glanced at him apprehensively.

"I know," he said. She didn't need to say anything. "It'll work."

"You sound so confident when you lie, Schovajsa."

Of course I came back. I made a promise. Ilja swallowed, hard. "What could go wrong?"

She rubbed her wrist, looking nervous. "If Hijikata gets to me..."

"He won't."

"It's not me that I'm worried about," she said. "It's..."

"I know," he said, "it's what we'd do without you."

"Ilja..."

"You'll be fine. We'll be fine."

She glanced at him. Her lone eye was like a black pit in her face; there was something in her face, something too savage to count as vulnerability.

Decebal thought, there is nowhere you could go that I would not follow, and then he said, "I promise."

That mollified her; she stepped back to the edge of the wall, dangerously close, one boot dipping into nothing. "Mag Mell District?"

He nodded, sharply. Was that the right idea? He wasn't sure. He was doubting himself now. But they needed to weaken the kingdom, distract them, make it seem as though the outer districts were under attack and draw forces away from the palace if they could at all. Maybe they'd kill some tagma. Maybe they'd draw out the radiance. Maybe…

And if she happened to kill a Selected or two along the way, then they would only be making Belle and Azula's jobs that much simpler.

He said, "make it look..."

"Natural." She nodded. If a monster arrived in the city and seemed to immediately go for a target… no, they could not give the tagma any hint that this particular beast, this particular savagery, this particular it had any kind of mind behind it. She would have to be brutal; she would have to be indiscriminate. "I got it."

A druj with wings. Ilja had heard how much fear had thrummed through the voices of the Ganzir staff when they had heard talk of the thing which had been killed by the excubitors – the thing with wings, the thing for whom the walls meant nothing. No word had ever reached them, of course, that the monster had disappeared from the vaults beneath Mont; he had wondered at that, sometimes, whether the ordinary guard even knew that the tagma were collecting not just carcasses for study but living druj to keep pinioned beneath the ground, that they had been released within the walls long before that golem had ever drawn down their defences…

He hated this place. They had arrived as newborn xrafstars, still feeling out their abilities, still proping experimentally at the limits of their powers, and almost immediately they had been inundated with the secrets of a foreign nation and the confusing intrigues of a court in which he had no investment. It didn't matter what the tagma knew, what they were doing with the druj – not unless it had anything to do with the Radiance. That was all. That was all they were here for. The rest could wait, until they were back in Irij, until these devils had been left to the mercy of the dark monsters of their own creation…

In front of him, even as he thought this, Kinga pitched backwards and fell, down, down, down, into nothingness. He was glad for that. Watching her tear herself free of her monster form once had been one-too-many times; he could not imagine what the reverse might look like. To hear Ghju describe it… well, Ilja was still surprised that the other Warrior could still sleep peacefully in the same room as Kinga, even with a blade in his hand.

At least they had each other – as Zor had Ina, as Ina had Zula, as Zula had Khal, as Khal had Ghju. Ilja hadn't realised until now just how much he had divorced himself from the others, to not see how thin Kinga had become, to not realise how much anger still festered in Khal, to not see how unsteady Zor's gaze became when you tried to look him directly in the eye…

And then, from the dark space in front of the wall, there was a sharp, crunching sound – and then another – and then, the wall shook, right beneath his feet, as though stricken by an earthquake. It was not really a sound, but just pure bass, rattling through his ribcage and his collarbones, forcing hi s heart into a new, violent rhythm. He did not dare peer over the wall – she was no longer Kinga, it was no longer Kinga – but that didn't matter, because then there was an enormous, forked claw rising over the edge of the parapet and digging deeply into the brick and mortar and cement that Kinga had just named. The wall blistered under its touch as it dragged itself upward, and Ilja fully comprehended for the first time the sheer scale of the thing that his comrade had become. Bigger than the last iteration, the one she had used to attack the tagma – could she control such petty matters, the size and shape of the Moon of Kur, or was this simply an expression of how long she had gone without transforming, how desperate the monster had become to taste the air? It was more scaled, less feathered, rippling with black muscle and visible red sinew.

It was hideous.

It didn't have eyes, he thought at first, and then saw that its eyes were set into its shoulders, shielded by its jagged cheekbones, almost hidden behind the enormous maw of dagger-sharp fangs that it opened towards the sky, as though threatening to devour the very stars. A lesson learned, he imagined – it would be unlike Kinga to require a second blinding as a reminder. The eyes were small, and dark, and utterly without recognition as it stared at Kinga's comrade – he almost reached for his sword – but then it swung, snake-like in its sinuous motion.

Had they just sealed a set of death warrants? Lore. Zula. Ina. Ghju. Zor. The druj's claws dug deep into the stone of the wall, tearing up concrete and limestone as it charged abruptly along the parapet. It launched itself into the air, unfolding long and narrow and talon-tipped wings, and caught the air immediately, descending down into Tiamat and then rising again, banking sharply to soar over Aizsaule District silently, descending low enough to clip the chapel's spire with the tip of one enormous claw. Would the other Warriors spot her? Would they recognise her?

Would they even think to look?

Death from above, in a city that had survived for two hundred years by walling itself away?

For a split second, Ilja felt truly sorry for the devils lying in wait behind the walls. To look up, and see such an immense monstrosity blot out the moon, to lose sight of any trace of the sky, to have a clawed beast cast a shadow across the whole of the walled city... he could not imagine what that sort of bone-deep fear might feel like. They deserved it, of course, but still. He was sorry that their due would arrive like this. Ilja hadn't even reached the ground before he heard the bells begin to clang in Mag Mell.

Her father had named her Eunbyeol. It meant silver star. Some part of her had always wondered whether there would be something prophetic about that. It was an outstanding question: had he known? Had he hoped? Had he thought the Star would spare her?

She had never bothered to interrogate his logic too closely. By the time Jeonghoon had come to condemn his only daughter to the life of a xrafstar-in-training, his rationale had been beyond even Belle's attempts to undertand him. Too paranoid, too twisted, too mutilated by grief. She still had the letter he had sent with her to the academy. He had tried to explain his reasoning. He had tried to justify himself.

What had he written? That it would be easier to see her buried in the Warrior's sepulchre than to try to continue to eke out the life of a refugee in Opona with her survival on his conscience?

Her first night in the dormitory, aged seven, she had torn the letter into shreds and thrown it out into the rain. It was a rare display of petulance. It was a rare display of emotion. She hadn't wanted to keep it with her. She hadn't wanted to remember how unwanted she was.

Ragnar Kaasik had picked up the pieces. He stitched them back together with stationery borrowed from Klaara Aas, and given it back to her a week later. By then, she had retreated back within herself. She had stilled her hands once more against more ostentatious displays of emotion. She had fallen back into her solemnity and melancholy. She accepted the repaired letter mutely, tucking it into her grey jacket with only a slight incline of her head.

What had he said to her? It's important to remember why you're here. She had said, even the bad reasons? and he replied, coldly, especially the bad reasons.

That had been stupid of them. Neither of them had made it. Neither of them had been selected as Warriors. Both of them had been left behind. Both of them had failed, despite their bad reasons, because of their bad reasons, bad reasons and all. They had stood there on the field – civilians – and watched their classmates, rivals and friends, depart to become xrafstars. To become Warriors. To die.

Belle had been left behind. Worthless. Without any way to seek out worth. Without any way to find new reason for her father's choice all those years ago. She could only be grateful that she hadn't had to see her father again before Commandant had come to her. They had been packing their things. They hadn't even changed from their uniforms. If she had seen him, if she had to face him…

What would that have felt like? For this, she had no answer. She could not even search her memory for this much. Certainly, she wouldn't have been able to cry. Certainly, she wouldn't have been able to find the words. Certainly, she wouldn't have been able to do anything except stare at him – stare at him, wordlessly.

To be fair to herself, right now she didn't seem to be capable of much more. She just sat there. Her head bowed. The bed beneath her was softer than any she had experienced in the last ten years. A woollen yellow blanket had been folded neatly over the lower third. Lovingly. This was a room steeped in love. That realisation felt like another wound. She couldn't quite say why. It was plainly decorated: Azula had accumulated very few belongings in whatever time they had spent here. None of these decorations really looked like hers. Maybe the flowers bundled in baskets on the windowsill. Maybe the little stars painted, painstakingly, onto the blue shutters that covered the windows. Maybe the clothes draped over the back of the plain wooden chair: tight tops and loose bottoms, maximised for comfort and easy movement. The rest – the threadbare woven rug covering the worn floorboards, the little clay animals lining the slate flagstones of the fireplace, the stacked painted teacups balanced precariously on the bedside locker – that was pure Inanna, as pure as it came. Belle could have imagined that she was back in Opona. A voyeur in the Nirari home, in Azula's childhood bedroom. This didn't seem like the pilfered lair of those preparing an attack against a rival kingdom.

This seemed like a home.

She had been sitting, totally still, on the bed. Her head bowed. Her hands folded. The door creaked open, and Khalore Angelo put her head around the edge. Her hair had grown out a little bit since graduation. Belle had never realised before how curly her hair was, when it was long like this. She found her eyes drifting towards the empty sleeve that hung from Khalore's thin shoulder. She wasn't sure why it fascinated her so much. Maybe because it jarred. Everything here was warm and cosy and homely in a way that Irij had rarely been for Belle – but Khalore was missing an arm, and Kinga was missing an eye, and they were all missing a Pekka.

The Warrior said, "food is on the table."

Belle said, "okay."

Khalore's eyes were grey and cold. She grumbled something under her breath, and pulled the door shut again. Belle found herself staring at the back of the door, which had been white-washed with lime. There was a tally drawn on the back, neat boxes drawn in long lines. Belle counted thirty seven, as well as one left unfinished by the door handle. Days? She didn't think she had time to wonder. She wasn't a thinker. She wasn't much of anything – a thinker, a leader, a Warrior. What had Commandant called her? Minion. Ideal for following orders.

And, right now, she was being ordered to dinner.

She stood, and smoothed her skirts. How strange. Twenty four hours ago, and all of these people had been dead to her. It had been real, or it had seemed so. Real and tenable. Dead, all of them. Tofana had said so. Every Warrior, dead. And Belle had gone willingly after them. Why?

And now they were alive. They were alive. They considered her an enemy. She wasn't sure if this was a preferable state of affairs.

A few weeks in Illéa had reminded her of the importance of keeping her head down. She had found a job here, at an apothecary; she had flinched every time she had to handle the bellows, and she had done her best to hide that fact from her employer. Nez had gone out at night, and returned with money and jewellery and food. Belle had never asked how. And Hyacinth…

The Warriors had assumed Hyacinth dead. They had moved on. Had Matthias seen that it would be so? Had his tactics entirely banked on the callousness, pragmatism, cruelty of his successors?

Belle turned the handle of her door. It creaked as it opened. She could barely refer to the space onto which she stepped as a hallway; it was barely a square of floorboards, off which doors led to Azula's bedroom and to the water closet. Another narrow set of stairs – servant stairs – led to the loft, which Khalore had said belonged to Ina. They had moved into a stranger's abandoned house. The spoils of war, Belle supposed. Had someone done the same to her house, at home, in Nawia? When they had been forced to flee – when the fighting got too thick – had some New Asian family moved in with their own yellow blankets and clay animals, to sleep in Belle's bed and eat at her table?

It would be practical. She couldn't blame them.

Each step complained under her boot. This building would be impossible to sneak around, Belle thought, impossible to escape by subterfuge. Even from the stairs, the sound from the courtyard drifted through, as clear and loud as if the speakers were standing right next to her. Azula was saying, "I don't even think he was that good-looking," and Ghjuvan Mannazzu was saying, sounding amused, "I think you're missing the point, Zu."

Belle paused on the bottom step. Maybe she was dreaming, she thought ruefully. She would wake up in that dirty attic in which she and the other cadets had been squatting – or at home, in the dormitories, to the Commandant kicking the door open and calling muster. It all felt so utterly unreal.

And then she turned her head. Inanna was standing by the entrance, a basket of bread in her arms. A dark braid was coming loose over one shoulder, and her golden eyes were smiling, even as she spoke seriously. "You can stay upstairs if you want, Belle. I know this must be overwhelming."

Belle shook her head. Her stomach churned. Her first time speaking to Inanna since initiation. Should she say something? Express her consolations? It had only been a few weeks… she should say something.

Instead, she just stayed silent until Inanna added, gently, "we're still comrades. Matthias sent you here to help us. I'm sure he had his reasons."

Belle nodded, jerkily. Yes. Kloet had seen this – all of it – all of it? He had foreseen it. It had all been meant to happen. She was meant to be here. They all were.

Inanna smiled to see this gesture. She moved ahead, and led Belle out into the courtyard. Ghjuvan and Zoran Czarnecki had set up a long table, laden with bowls of stew and baskets of bread. In another world, Belle might have found it amusing that Nez was at the head of the table – still tied to her chair.

Hyacinth was obviously, conspiciously, plainly absent. As were Ilja Schovajsa and Kinga Szymańska. They must have been guarding her.

As Inanna walked across the courtyard to meet with the rest of her team, Azula glanced up from where she had been carefully arranging cutlery, and waved shyly. It was a strange parody of the desperate, frantic wave she had given Belle the day of initiation, just before the truck had pulled away from camp. Belle felt something prick at her eyes to see it. She had been plagued by nightmares on her last night in Opona – dreams of what had happened to Azula, of how she had died, whether she had suffered. Belle knew that no one in the Warriors Programme had ever truly claimed her as a close friend, but she had spent ten years with these people. They were the closest thing to family she would ever now have the chance to experience.

Or were they? She still had no curse. Everyone around her had an hourglass running, of ten years or less. Belle alone could dream of grey hair and grandchildren. That was a strange feeling; that was an unpleasant thought.

"Hi," she said, "Azula."

"Belle." Azula looked like she didn't quite know what to say. She had cut her hair differently; she wore it loose around her shoulders, rather than in a ponytail. She had bangs long enough to cover her eyebrows, and she was wearing a pale grey dress that came to her knees. She looked older, and more rested, than Belle could remember seeing her. Had she grown taller? In only a few weeks? "It's good to see you."

Was it? The others were watching her warily, even now. Belle pulled out a chair for herself, and sank into it; Azula sat opposite her, and the others arranged themselves around them. Ghjuvan pulled a face when he pulled the short straw by sitting next to Nez.

She, in response, merely smiled languidly at him. "I don't bite."

"I know that's not true."

"I won't bite."

"I don't think," Ghjuvan said, "that's true either."

She smiled. "Are you going to spoon-feed me, Mannazzu?"

Ghjuvan looked rather like he'd be fine letting her starve, but before he could reply, Zoran spoke. He straightened from where he had been leaning against the courtyard wall, watching his friends and his former classmates arrange themselves, and walked towards Nez. For her part, the Wheel watched him approach with something like apprehension in her eyes – even when all he did was crouch behind her and wrench her hands free with a few simple movements.

"Don't let me regret it," he warned. Belle wondered if he, too, was thinking of Ragnar Kaasik.

"I won't," Nez said. She rubbed her wrists, and flashed Belle a wink. "Trust me. You wouldn't even have time to regret it if I..."

Abruptly, Khalore slapped Nez's coin to the table; Belle half-expected it to make a dent in the wood, so sharp and hard the gesture. Ghjuvan translated this gesture fluently: "Lore thinks she could send it through bone, if she had to."

Inanna frowned. "That doesn't sound physically possible, Khal."

"When you lose one limb," Khalore said, her voice determined. "The others become more powerful to compensate."

"You're thinking of senses," Zoran said patiently, pulling out the chair opposite Ina to drop into. "Vision, and hearing, and… and I'm not even sure if that's true."

"I'll ask Kinga later." Ghjuvan said drily. He glanced at Inanna and frowned. "Thought you were heading to bed, Na?"

"On an empty stomach?" She smiled. "You think me so much stronger than I am, Ghju." She poked at her stew with her fork, and smiled at the others. "It's not poisonous, guys."

Azula was still looking at Belle. Like she was trying to find the right words. Like she was wondering what Belle had heard, and hadn't heard. Luckily, Zoran spared her the effort; he was already speaking to Nez, his voice soft. "Do you know much about how your Wheel manifests?"

Belle could almost see the Astaroth girl determining whether it would be in her best interests to answer, or to answer honestly. She thought she could spare them all the trouble, and did so now. Whatever else was going on… if these were the Warriors – Irij's Warriors – then she had been sent here for them. To help them. To do what she could.

She said, "it's fifty-fifty," and ignored the way Nez's cold yellow eyes flickered to settle on her, almost surprised.

"Fifty-fifty?" Ghjuvan repeated.

Belle nodded. At least as best she understood it… "Nez can… control the odds." That was typical of the Wheel, so typical as to be expected. "The chance of anything happening for her…. is fifty-fifty."

Nez reached for her coin; Khal pinned it in place with one pointed finger, raising one eyebrow in the Wheel's direction. That was almost funny. When had Angelo developed a spine? "Does she need this?"

Belle shrugged. "It helps."

Zoran nodded, looking thoughtful. He exchanged a look with Inanna that Belle couldn't understand. Then he looked back at her. "And you, Belle?"

"I don't," she said. "They didn't. Give me. Anything."

Another exchanged look between the older Warriors. Zoran nodded. "That might be for the best," he said. "If you're going into the Selection… we don't know if the Radiance would be able to detect a curse. This neatly dodges that." He paused. "Are you still okay going into the Selection?"

Belle hesitated. She had almost forgotten. She stared at the plate in front of her. It was chipped in one corner, but only very slightly; the material below was a slightly duller brown.

Azula said, softly, "I've just been hired as a maid, Belle. You won't be alone in there."

Belle could only nod.

"Guess it's handy we came along," Nez said, from the other end of the table. "What's the plan for the rest of us?"

Zor inclined his head. "Commandant didn't tell you Matthias' great plan?"

"I guess he thought you wouldn't need your hand held," Nez replied, her voice cold and amused.

Ghju exhaled, looking irritated. He said, "Zoran and I find the radiance. Ilja and Azula take it. Kinga and Khalore get us out." He smiled at Belle. "I guess that means you'll be working with me and Zor."

Nez cut her eyes across to Ina. "Guess that makes you… what, moral support?"

"Troubleshooting," Ina said, her voice soft and sure. "And intelligence."

"Always nice to feel needed," Nez said, her voice softly mocking. Belle wasn't sure why she had come out of the gate so eager to irritate, to gall. Didn't she see the sense in getting along with their fellow cadets? They were in a foreign land. On the mission for which they had spent their life training. There was no sense in alienating the others. "I guess the curses have a sense of humour. The Lovers, wasn't it?"

Belle could see the immediacy with which the others sharpened. Even as Ina seemed to flinch a little, Ghjuvan was about to speak. Zoran's eyes glinted like flint. For a split second it seemed like Khalore was inclined to stand. Belle hastened to speak, though she did so with her usual soft solemnity, sounding almost as though she didn't care about the answer: "and Mielikki?"

"Succumbed," Azula said. Then, after a pause: "No. Killed."

Belle frowned. "You don't sound sure."

"I am," the younger girl said. It was as close to snapping as Belle had ever heard her. "I am sure. The druj killed her. I saw it. I remember..." She shook her head. "I saw it."

Belle nodded. Those same pinpricks behind her eyes, sharper now. Tofana had been right in some regard, then. "I'm sorry."

"It was… she didn't deserve it." Azula swallowed hard. "How did you three evade the druj? How did you even get into the kingdom?"

"Hyacinth," Belle said, "Hyacinth…" Hyacinth almost terrified her sometimes. Her abilities certainly did. "Hyacinth dealt with the druj. Until Nez found the tunnels."

"Tunnels?" Ghjuvan repeated.

"Under the walls." Belle paused. The others betrayed no sign of recognition. Azula looked outright puzzled. "You didn't…?"

"Not quite," Zoran said, his voice low. "We didn't go under."

There was the slightest hint of glee in her voice. It sounded like she was revelling in having accomplished something with more panache than their successors. Khalore added, "we went through."

Belle looked around at them. She thought she was starting to understand why they held themselves a little taller. Seemed a little older and wearier. Regarded each other more like comrades rather than classmates. They were Warriors now. In a way that she and Hyacinth and Nez truly weren't.

Not yet, anyway.

When the knock came, it was not on the door of the bakery, as she might have expected, or on the door of the bedroom, as she might have feared. It was instead a gentle rapping – a tapping, perhaps – on the window. It was light and rapid; it was, in a sense, almost more of a jump than something more booming and loud. It was a small relief that she was still awake; Ina had retreated to her bedroom after dinner, wondering if the stringless stranger would make his promised appearance, and the day had died without any hint that he would.

Instead of sleeping, she had been reading the books Kinga had salvaged for her, from the remnants of a Tiamat schoolhouse. Druj had no taste for paper, it seemed. The old Illéan script, learned painstakingly and haltingly at the academy under Tofana's tuition, still rendered each passage frustrating and unfulfilling. They might have been so regardless of how they were written: they consisted of strange false hagiographies of a history that had not, could not have, been. They spoke about more kings than Illéa had ever had or could ever have had; they made no mention of the war, of the xrafstars, of Irij; they spoke of a doom befalling all outside the walls, past-tense, not future-tense. It was a strange glimpse into the Illéan narrative, a pitiful display of the ignorance in which the ordinary people – even those fortunate enough for literacy – were kept mired.

Reading here was hard, not just for the writing, but for what a lonely habit it had become. Pekka was no longer here to lean over her shoulder, or set his chin on her hair, and ask her about each book, listening intently as she butchered a novel's plotline or mixed up all of her newfound terminology trying to explain a piece of history or science. Pekka had never been much of a reader – Ina had always teased him about having taken too many knocks to the head for that – but that had only made his rapt attention all the more precious. He had convinced Kinga to convince Jaga to smuggle in an ancient book of poetry for Ina's fifteenth birthday – not a valuable antique, but a battered paperback with peeling print, long-ago published in the region of Irānzamīn from which Ina's family hailed in a time before Irij. The poetry had not even been particularly good, but she had treasured it. She wondered where it was now – whether her belongings had been packed up and returned to her family, or whether the Commandant had burned the lot as soon as their boat had left the shore.

She stopped herself before that thread of thought could continue, and she would find herself wondering whether they had treated Pekka the same.

On the sound of the knock on her window, Ina set down the history textbook that she had been pretending to read for the last hour. Each action was performed with an exaggerated kind of care, as though she was trying to keep her hands from shaking. She stood slowly, and smoothed her skirts, and crossed to the window to pull open the shutters and slide up the window. The night air that rushed in was cool, and scented with sage and starlight; it was accompanied by a few spinning moths, tumbling over themselves in a haste to reach the candle on her desk. The stranger, crouched upon the narrow iron grate which jutted from Ina's window, said, amusedly, "you know, for a humble baker, you seem to have a lot of military crawling around your house late at night."

Ina laughed, without quite meaning to. "I guess my halva is just that good." She shrugged. "They can't seem to get enough of it."

He tilted his head, looking amused. "Can you say the same of your reikäleipä?"

"I was under the impression," Ina replied, "that you would tell me."

He said, not for the first time, "reikäleipä shouldn't be eaten alone, Ms. Nirari."

She narrowed her eyes. "You mean Hämäläinen."

"I mean," he said, "that I never took you for a thief." In the gloom of the dark street, she could no longer discern the precise electric blue colour of his eyes, but she was aware of how heavily his gaze had settled upon her. It felt almost physical. Ina thought again, dark brown. "It suits you."

She wasn't sure if he meant the name, or the thievery.

"Hardly stolen," she said. "A gift. An inheritance."

There was a strange melancholy in his voice, though it didn't quite verge on sadness. "I've never known an inheritance that didn't get fought over."

"Will I have to steal a name for you as well," Ina said, "or do you feel like sharing?"

"I thought I was here to share reikäleipä," he said. Ina thought again how strange it was to see a person so utterly without strings. It made him seem sharper somehow – more real than real – oversaturated and over-defined. It made him seem somehow tethered, as though neither magic nor curse could touch him. She didn't know why exactly that struck her as so safe.

"You can't do both?"

"Multi-tasking isn't exactly my forte." He was still wearing the same pink and blue quilt jacket – the one he had worn the first time she had seen him, and the second time as well. There was a dark stain on the wrist, that she thought might have been blood, and red dust spattered on the hem, like the clay found in fallen Obušek. His gold hair curled around the collar, gently kissing his clavicle.

Ina said, her voice wry, "what is, then?"

He smiled. He had very white teeth, with very sharp cuspids. Smiling made him look younger; it lent his face a newfound softness. When he spoke, she could almost imagine the harbours; it was lilting, but with a subtle coarseness as it rasped through the vocal chords. It was Ina's own accent, reflected back at her in a strange faded form. It sounded somehow etiolated, as though time spent in Illéa had bleached it like sunlight on canvas. "Do you want me to show you?"

And abruptly, she wasn't sure.

He said, "I would ask you to trust me, but I think I know you better than that."

Somehow – utterly despite herself – she found that she could not disagree with either part of that sentence. That was upsetting. That was, in itself, some kind of answer. No, she would not trust him – despite herself. Yes, she knew that he knew her – despite herself. Ina didn't like that, that addendum, that little correction. Despite herself. "It depends," she said, "on why you were asking."

He held out his hand and – again, despite herself – Ina took it. His hand was warm; he had a scar between his knuckle and his finger, where a gold ring rested. He had a knot-maker's hands: long fingers, calloused palms, thick wrists. Gathering her skirts, she ducked through the window and out onto the balcony, her feet threatening to slip through the brackets of the grate at any moment. Zoran wouldn't like this, she thought. This was unilateral action. This was going behind the backs of the other Warriors. This was dangerous. She knew it was dangerous.

And yet, she went.