Alira led them across town.

Five minutes in the stable and she had outfitted herself in breeches and boots so that she was not wandering the street strictly in her nightclothes. She assured them Lian would not be returning the way he had gone—not after the downpour they had had earlier. The pumps would be running at full capacity, and the old access tunnels were far too dangerous for a seasoned pipe worker, let alone a skinny boy with no map. A fair contingent of household guards rolled out quickly, joining a contingent of Alwynn-Muir’s finest, fanning out across the parish, hoping to ensnare Aralt’s wayward kervallys if he wandered the city on foot.

“You’re angry, but you aren’t surprised,” Alira noted as they walked. “He’s done this before?”

He nodded. He had lost track of how many times. “He’s a reckless little fool.”

“You have an odd way of describing the next Kavistra of Askierran.”

“He has an odd way of irritating the piss out of me. He excels at it. Don’t be too hard on Camryn about being duped,” Aralt told her. “Lian has a way with people.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said, her breath coming fast. He supposed matching his stride was an effort, and he slowed down. “But not with you. And it bothers you.”

“Oh, he has a way. It’s just…different with me.” At the fountain, they had almost found a path forward together. Remembered their kinship. Their bond. Had he been mistaken not to press Lian further? Or had he pressed too much. When Lian was small, he had just picked the boy up, thrown him squealing with glee into the air, caught him, and all was well. Now, he wanted to throw the boy off the top of Mar Alvis.

“He certainly seems to confound you.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“To me it is. To Scanlin Ross as well, aye? I thought as much. He knows you better than you know yourself. Tycho’s a different story, though.”

“He’s different all right,” Aralt replied, wishing a moment later he had held his tongue. He had been on edge since waking up from his nightmare. It took effort not to dig his nails into the scar on his chest. Alira had never seen it. He never wanted her to. Precisely how he was going to ensure that when they shared a marriage bed, he did not know, and not knowing fueled his procrastination. His thoughts strayed to Dozer. Alira, on the other hand, stayed right on target.

“You’re awful sometimes, do you know that?” She sidestepped a puddle left earlier by the deluge, but in his haste he splashed right on through. The rain had stopped, leaving behind a heavy fog that slowed their progress through the harbor town. What might have been a romantic stroll and a balm for his aching heart was instead a manhunt. Upper-story shutters folded back to allow the curious a view of strange goings-on. “What I said before, about you being jealous? I think you are.”

“What? Of him? Don’t be absurd.” Nevertheless, the accusation stung.

He cast a glance over his shoulder. Tycho had elected to ride. Scanlin had done the same, his grey mare almost invisible as they clattered up and down misty alleyways without success. Aralt had sent others to the airfield. He needed his First Sword, especially if they were to find Lian weaving the kyrrith anim for some fell purpose at the kirke.

He released a clenched jaw, willing his anger back into the pit of his stomach where he had been keeping it for days. Alira moved ahead of him on the boardwalk, her shape a shadowed silhouette in the hazy moonlight. He looked away, spinning a moment in time. A misty evening. Rain pattering on the roof of a half-timber house. The scent of ripening windfalls wafting in from the orchard. The laughter of water shushing from rooftop cistern into the washtub upstairs. More laughter. Her laughter…Larissa Kyncaid. Had he ever been a fool, it was with her. Had he ever been jealous…. He tamped down those memories quickly.

“Gareth?” Alira stopped in front of the bakery and flicked back her hood. Her pale green eyes shone like precious jewels. “Is something wrong?”

He searched for something to say that did not include the name of the first woman he had loved. Thought he loved. “You didn’t come back earlier.”

“I most certainly did. You were sleeping.” And so, it seemed, she had elected to do the same.

He paused to look through the window. At that hour it was the only shop filled with light. The aroma of baking bread brought Sylvan Keep to mind. He imagined Gitom and Susa waking to fire up the ovens. Perryn, preoccupied by nuptial planning, would be pacing his office, stepping in time to the ticking of the antique clock on his desk until it was time to meet with Leine Baclan and the architect over the design of the new esri byre. Later, he would walk into the village with Wynter, or take her to some secluded picnic spot in the forest. The one that Telta and Tevin were known to steal away to. It suddenly felt as far away as a dream and no more real, all of it unraveling like threads in the tapestry of his life. It made him uneasy.

“Gareth?” Alira’s fingers entwined with his.

“I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t. And she knew it. Larissa frowned like that, lips pursed, her nose wrinkling, knowing when he was lying. And he had lied. But then, so had she. They would like one another, no doubt—and, having shared all those secrets that passed unspoken between women, would both end up hating him.

A velvety blanket of swirling gloom billowed around them as they approached Mar Alvis, a thick mantle like sweet wine poured over the sleeping city. He could hear but no longer see any of their search party.

“You have to admit it. Tycho has a way with Lian that you envy.”

“Any ‘way’ that Tycho has isn’t anything I’d envy,” he told her.

“I don’t know who you’re insulting more, Tycho or Lian. If that’s been troubling you, do let it go. It isn’t anything of the sort. Not between them,” she amended primly. “That would be most unseemly.”

What had Scanlin said? Their ways are not our ways. Of all of them, Scanlin would have spoken up had he any suspicion of anything untoward. Lian himself had refuted it and the boy was a poor liar at best. He felt ashamed that his thoughts had flown in that direction at all, blaming it on the trauma that had shaped perceptions in his youth. Blaming it on Lian’s refusal to explain the scar so much like his own. He needed to put his own misgivings to rest before they clouded his judgment further, but there was no denying Lian had been ill-treated by someone. Not by Tycho, though. Not by Tycho. Would that it could bring him some peace.

“You’re jealous because Tycho understands your kervallys in a way you do not. It would bother me,” Alira said, “if I were in your place. But you needn’t be so hostile. He’s had the benefit of time. You knew the boy. Tycho knows the youth—and he risked a lot to get Lian here. To you.”

“What am I to do with the missing years?” he asked, throat tight. “Three years, Alira. And why come here? Why not take him back to Kyrrimar? To Leyth? My parents would have protected Lian.” And no doubt would have shielded Tycho, too.

“You’ll find the boy you knew if you’re patient. There’s plenty of time under the moons for him to tell you his story.”

“I’d need lunar charts to keep up with the way he waxes and wanes.”

Alira laughed at him. “That’s normal for one his age. When you don’t know where you fit in, or how. Don’t you remember?”

“No. I always knew what I wanted, and I was never as daft as he can be.”

“That’s the part you don’t remember.” She stopped, surveying the street behind them. Moonlight had changed the gaily painted row of shops and houses to shades of grey. “Let’s ask Scanlin Ross and see what he says.”

He spun her around playfully and kept walking, linking his arm around hers. “Let’s not and I’ll just admit you’re probably right.”

“Am I now? We’re making progress, syr Tremayne. And the rest? Am I right about the rest?”

He was saved from answering when they turned a corner and the pinnacled towers of Mar Alvis rose before them. He held her closer, kissing the top of her head. He wanted her to be right. About all of it.