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His gaze sharpened. “Why did she run away from her father’s court?”

Now Leah could feel perspiration building up in her armpits; her breathing was coming faster. If she survived this, she was never again leaving her lodgings without a general-purpose antidote stashed in her pocket. “I don’t know. I haven’t lived in Welce for five years. I don’t know the politics of Chialto anymore.”

“Why did
you
leave Welce?” he wanted to know.

She stared at him. No one had asked her that question the whole time she’d lived here. Even Darien hadn’t asked—although he knew, and everyone she’d left behind in Welce would suspect. She didn’t want to talk about it, not with this clearly ruthless stranger, but she also didn’t want to die. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “but first get me a bucket or something, because I’m going to vomit.”

He did better than a bucket—he handed her a small pink capsule. “Swallow this,” he directed. “You’ll feel better very quickly.”

She eyed it doubtfully, and Chandran actually smiled. “No need to be suspicious,” he said. “I wouldn’t poison you twice.”

She took the drug from his palm and he poured her another cup of keerza. It didn’t taste much better even without the noxious additives, but she gulped it down along with the medicine. It was surprising how fast it worked; her stomach calmed almost immediately.

“I think I’ll tell Billini that he shouldn’t send any more friends your way if he wants them to remain his friends,” she said.

Chandran actually laughed at that. She hadn’t thought laughter was in his repertoire. “Billini might not know me as well as he thinks,” he replied.

“I’m guessing very few people do,” she retorted.

That amused him, too, but his nod was solemn. “Now. Your reasons for leaving Welce.”

She shrugged. “I fell in love with a man and I thought he loved me back. There was a baby. It turned out the man didn’t want me, and I didn’t want the baby. So I gave the child to people I trusted, and I ran away someplace I wouldn’t have to think about any of them again.”

Of course, she did think about them, all the time. That small face, so red and angry, so impossibly beautiful. One glimpse, that’s all she’d allowed herself, and it was the image she saw every night before she fell
asleep, every morning when she first woke up. Her lover’s face she’d had a little more success erasing, but sometimes it visited her in her dreams.

“And who besides the regent knows you’re in Malinqua?” Chandran asked.

Leah shrugged. It was becoming easier to breathe, easier to sit up straight; the antidote was faster than the poison. “I don’t know. Darien can usually be relied on to keep a secret, and I asked him to tell no one, but he might have felt compelled to let my family know where I am. Or maybe not. No one has come looking for me.”

“Did you want them to?”

Leah narrowed her eyes and surveyed him. A big man with an unreadable face and no doubt a whole catalog of secrets of his own. She understood why he would want to know her motives, but she was surprised he would ask after the state of her heart.

“I didn’t,” she said.

“Do you think you might go back someday?”

“And leave Malinqua?” she replied flippantly. “Where everyone has been so kind to me?”

He smiled again at that. “You are feeling better, I see.”

She came to her feet—still shaky, but not so bad she thought she’d fall over. “I am,” she said. “But I’m tired—I’m sure you understand. I just want to get home.”

He rose, too, subtly reminding her how imposing he could be. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” he asked without inflection. The question behind the question was obvious enough:
Even though I tried to kill you, are you still planning to return?

She made him a mock bow. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll bring my own food and drink with me, though.”

The smile showed briefly through the beard, then disappeared. “Somehow, I thought you might.”

•   •   •

L
eah walked slowly through the stubborn rain and let it sluice away the last side effects of Chandran’s mystery drug. She still felt a little wobbly, but her stomach had relaxed enough that she could imagine
being hungry before long, so she made a slight detour through the Little Islands part of town. It was a polyglot neighborhood filled with immigrants from a whole host of southern nations. Here you could find shops carrying the bright fabrics of Dhonsho, boutiques selling books in Coziquela, and cafés serving the traditional dishes of Welce. She would swing by one of those cafés and pick up something for dinner.

But first she made her way to a side street to visit a small, squat building with no windows and a single door. Painted on the plain white stone exterior was a simple mural featuring a sturdy tree planted beside a flowing river; a small bonfire burned next to a plot of freshly turned earth, while a flock of unidentifiable birds circled overhead.

The five symbols of the elemental affiliations signified that this was a Welchin temple. Leah didn’t often bother to slip inside and pull blessings—these days she rarely felt like she deserved blessings—but today she felt the need for a little guidance.

She stepped quietly inside, dropping a few coins into the tithing box. Three visitors were already there, all congregated on the green torz bench. They weren’t speaking to each other, at least at the moment, but they seemed to be enjoying the silent communion all the same. Well, that was the torz gift—the connection of one person to another person, to all people, part of the great human chain of being.

Leah had been born torz, was still torz as far she knew, but she felt like she had severed all connections five years ago and still hadn’t figured out how to reknit them. Wasn’t sure she wanted to. She hadn’t had anything approximating a real relationship in five years, and she’d done just fine.

Everyone looked up when she walked in, and two of the other visitors offered tentative smiles. She knew what they were thinking, and it annoyed her. She nodded brusquely and moved as far away from the others as she could, taking a seat on the red sweela bench. But it was a small place and there was almost no way to avoid staring across the room at the others.

They wanted her to pull blessings for them from the weathered wooden barrel in the middle of the room. You could choose your own blessings, of course—just dip your hand in the big pile of coins and draw out whichever ones felt right against your fingers—but
superstitious folks always wanted to have three blessings pulled by three different people. Three
strangers
was best of all.

On the rare occasions Leah dropped by a temple, she preferred to be there alone, so she could move from element to element without having to share the experience.
A torz woman who welcomes solitude,
she thought with a twist of her mouth.
That must make me a rare creature indeed.

But if she had learned anything during her five years in Malinqua, it was to do favors anytime she had the chance. So she nodded again to the other visitors—
Once I am in a state of balance, I will gladly work with you
—and then closed her eyes.

She always started on the sweela bench; it was the element of fire and mind, and she always thought more clearly when she sat there. Chandran’s little trick had seriously unnerved her. How had she become so careless? She scarcely knew Billini, and here she was trusting him
and
his circle of friends. She needed to be smarter than that, less vulnerable. If Chandran decided to turn her over to the empress’s guards, her useful time in Malinqua was over.

And then she would have to make the staggeringly difficult decision about what to do next with her life.

She could fail to return to the market tomorrow. If guards were there to apprehend her, they would wait in vain. Chandran might track her down through Billini, but Billini knew nothing about Leah, including her address. Neither of them would be able to find her if she never showed up on their premises again.

But she’d miss her best opportunity to make contact with the Welchin princess. There might be chances to approach Corene on the street as she visited the famous sites of the city, but Leah doubted that the royal guards would allow a random stranger to get close enough to whisper introductions.

The market was her best option.

She would return tomorrow, but she would be prepared for betrayal. She’d bring more than her usual complement of weapons under her clothing, and she’d wear her sturdiest shoes. If she had to fight and run, she’d fight and run. It wouldn’t be the first time.

That settled, she felt better about the day. She nodded decisively
and moved to the white bench. Elay. Air and spirit. Never an element that spoke to her clearly, and today was no different; she just wasn’t the kind of person who thought on an ethereal plane. But she stayed there a few moments anyway, taking in long, slow, calming breaths, just to say she’d tried.

The black bench next—hunti. Bone and wood. Strength and unflinching determination. Leah hadn’t had much hunti in her before she’d come to Malinqua, but she’d toughened up considerably since then. She stiffened her spine, hardened her resolve. She wouldn’t let Chandran’s antics scare her off. She’d be prepared for anything when she returned to the market tomorrow—but she would return.

She slid easily over to the coru bench, silky blue to reflect the element of water. The coru virtues had always appealed to her, even more so these days; she liked to think she’d learned to adapt no matter what came her way. The trick with embracing coru was to avoid becoming so flexible that you lost sight of your goals and your personal morality. You might bend and rearrange, but you had to hold to that hunti certainty or you’d be lost.

No delaying it any longer—time to join the people on the torz bench. They squashed up against each other to give her space, but of course her leg brushed against someone else’s knee anyway.
Sorry,
he mouthed, trying to draw even farther away, but she just shook her head and smiled. It was almost a relief, actually, to be forced to remember that there were other people in the world—people with their own hopes and fears and disreputable secrets. Why had
these
particular individuals abandoned Welce? What terrible memories had
they
left behind? And what comfort did they draw from this brief interaction that would gird them for their private battles during the rest of the nineday?

She wouldn’t ask, of course. But she felt a strong surge of affection for all of them, just because they were there—seeking, like she was; trying, just like she was. Fighting to stay human and do something with their lives that mattered.

She sat a moment with her head bowed and her hands folded, slightly apart from the others, then she looked up and summoned a broad smile.

“So? Shall we draw each other’s blessings?” she invited, and they beamed back at her in gladness and relief.

She didn’t even pay attention to who pulled what coin for whom, even when the young girl clapped her hands and the older woman exclaimed, “Oh, my!” She just handed over the bits of stamped metal when it was her turn to choose and cupped her palm when it was time for her to receive. She civilly declined an offer to head out into the rain and find a place that might still be serving food, and she waited till the three of them had left before she examined the blessings that had crossed her palm.

Hope. Serenity. Change.

She flipped through them a second time, a third. What an unexpected set of blessings. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt either hopeful or serene, but change had dogged her for the past five years. For the past six years, really, since her final few quintiles in Welce had been turbulent in the extreme. But she would dearly love to have both of those unexpected blessings visited upon her, unlikely though it seemed. She would take these as reflections of her hidden desires and a reminder that, if she lived long enough, she might one day win her way back to peace.

She dropped the coins one by one in the barrel and headed back out into the rain.

SIX

T
he bad weather kept them inside for three days.

Corene didn’t mind too much, since she was still exploring the enormous palace. She thought she might stay within its walls for a quintile and never visit all its music rooms, libraries, studies, and dining areas—there was even a greenhouse so humid and warm that she thought it would be her favorite spot on cold Quinnelay afternoons. Now, of course, the weather was hot and naturally humid, but she liked the conservatory anyway.

But everybody else seemed edgy and morose at being cooped up indoors. By
everybody
Corene meant the small group of people who quickly came to constitute her particular circle: Steff, Melissande, Jiramondi, and Liramelli. Corene was not the kind of person to make friends easily, but she liked this group; she found it enjoyable to pass the time in their company.

“I do not care if it is raining. I do not care if my shoes are ruined and my clothes are simply
plastered
to my body,” Melissande declared on the third day as they sat in one of the smaller parlors and played a listless game of penta. It was a Welchin card game Corene and Steff had taught
the others, and they were all bad at it. No one could win enough hands in a row to amass a fortune of any significance. “I must get outside—I must see the world! I must breathe air that has not been breathed a thousand times by someone else.”

“It’s supposed to be nicer tomorrow,” Liramelli offered in her serious way. “We can get out then.”

“Can we go someplace where I can buy clothes?” Corene demanded. “The empress has kindly provided me with a few Malinquese jackets and trousers, but I am so tired of the few outfits I brought from Welce.”

“I hope you plan to buy more Welchin clothing,” Melissande said. “I like all those decorations on your tunics. I like your distinctive look. We foreign beauties must constantly remind our hosts that we are different and unique.”

Jiramondi bowed in her direction. “Trust me, no one forgets that you are unique.”