Few things moved on Sayam Street apart from the gleaming asphalt. The palm trees and ferns stood like time had stopped, edges of yellow burrowing into the faded green of their leaves. Cracks ran through the paint on the wide one-story houses, and patches of barren earth had just begun infecting the lawns.

Only a couple of children were there to witness the cars arrive. For a moment they stopped and stared, unabashedly, before reigning in their curiosity. They were young, no older than eight, Pen reckoned as she watched them pick up speed and enter one of the houses. Not too young to know.

Glane held the door as she got out. Two rovers had accompanied them front and back carrying four guards each, all of whom now stepped out onto the pavement, too. They did so hesitantly, but not to honor father; orders must have forced their hand. Pen disliked having them around. Already, she could hear the curtains moving, the neighbors sneaking a peek. She almost looked at the Toelei house to her left, checking herself just before Glane turned around and escorted her to the gate. Two soldiers followed.

»They won’t be coming in,« Pen said.

»You heard the young miss, sergeant,« Glane said, unlocking the gate.

»Thanks, private, but there’s a protocol.« When the man behind the voice didn’t look familiar, Pen knew what was to follow. Wellan’s City Guard counted a good three hundred soldiers, most of them stationed in parts of the city she rarely visited. To give her a detail of her own required him to pull guards from those other stations, men who often turned out oblivious to who exactly was protecting her. She had absolutely no mind for this.

Glane built himself up to his full height and looked down at the blue beret of his superior. »Do you know what day it is, sergeant?« he asked, gravely. Before he could continue, Pen grabbed his wrist, turned it, and watched as the sergeant described a full turn on his heel and reentered his vehicle. The others followed his lead after getting a good look at the scarred mark of the Third Order themselves, and soon, the jeeps howled down Sayam street much faster than they had arrived. An insect’s distant but cutting buzz was the only sound remaining.

Pen started up the carved stone steps leading to the house followed by her protector. The lawns and shrubbery on both sides were as green as the heat allowed and trimmed like Aphun’s beard. A banister of waist-high hydelias blossomed brightly along the path to the front door as if to defy the merciless sun, smelling of times past when Pen had been no taller than their stems, chasing Lya through the undergrowth and picking berries.

The thought of the forest made her skin prickle with goosebumps. But it wasn’t long before the guilt set in. Rannek had tricked her back there in his office, bloody shirt on his desk, asking her to help people in need. Whether she would speak one word during the journey, she hadn’t yet decided, but he wasn’t the only one to be blamed. She let him trick her. Just hearing about travel had made her head spin. If only she had—

Pen heard a hissing sound to her back. Glane’s blade. She spun around only to find the giant pale man holding a big bouquet of flowers, his blade nowhere to be seen.”Did you—” »Did you just do that?« Pen asked.

»They shall grace your dinner table,« he said contently. Then, his eyes changed, looking at her with the same pain she’d seen at the market. »Apologies, young miss. I did not mean to scare you.«

»I’m not scared.« She walked up to the house and leaned her back against the wall. The bright limestone was hot to the touch, making her shoulders burn. She held off the pain looking un-scared as ever as she watched Glane bow twice; once to her in apology, and once as he unlocked the door.

The air inside was cool and dark, welcoming her with a shiver. Pen kicked off her sandals while Glane kept his head low stepping through the doorframe. He moved gracefully for a man his size, and without sudden movements. Not once had she seen him bump his head inside the house even though it clearly had been constructed for smaller people, her people, coming at him at every turn with low-hanging roofs, girders, and lamps.

As he took off his shoes and beret, Glane paused to inspect a stain on the latter tainting the sky-blue of the city guard. Pen opened the curtains covering the window to let some light and warmth inside.

Another bow and search for a key later, he started unlocking the thick door to the living part of the house. Pen glanced at the door to father’s practice next to it. The wood was polished and void of dust, yet the window’s reflection revealed its neglect: there were no fingerprints. No one unlocked it anymore except once or twice a year, on the days when Glane woke with the unquenchable desire to clean everything. For while the mark on his wrist spoke true about his capabilities, he was far from a Gwai, and possessed far more skills than those of killing. The handful of times she had witnessed him displaying his Curse, frightening as they were, could never measure up to the fervor with which he cleaned, tidied, cooked, and tended to the gardens every frag he could spare. Spending days, sometimes seasons cooped up with him, it was shockingly easy to forget what he was capable of when the garden gloves were off.

More than anything, Glane was fast. Only a couple of breaths she waited in the foyer as he opened the door, went inside, and checked every room of the house leaving nothing but a light swirl in the air. He knew well to hide his ungodly speed from others lest they got scared or worse, decided to report him. Hesryk’s Call had prohibited any Cursed from using their powers in the Republic during times of peace, and had banned all members of the Four Orders. Rannek’s scheme of employing Glane as her protector thus was a fickle one since technically, he had revoked his membership, yet still wasn’t allowed to use his speed. The pale prefect of course knew as well as her that Glane would not slow himself one bit if she were to actually be in danger. Witnessing Rannek maneuver gray areas such as these had taught her a good deal about politics; mostly though, it had proved father right: true power seldom lay where you suspected it. And certainly not with prefects.

»Everything’s in order, miss.«

Her feet smacked quietly on the floor panels of the living room. Curtains had been opened just before her entrance, judging by the cold air. She passed the couch, the disk player, the coffee table stacking coasters and napkins and magazines in towers as high as they were symmetrical, and moved on to the kitchen.

Everything was in order, true, but it was one as cold as Glane’s home climate, and ever-changing, too. Nothing left out would stay out. One stain, and a carpet had to be washed and rearranged so the tarnished part wouldn’t be spied. Pen would sometimes fall asleep on the couch just to find the furniture around it standing at slightly different angles when she woke up. Thank the gods for giving her the wisdom to ban him from father’s study. She could only imagine the alphabetical mess he’d make of the book shelves, or how he would ’cure’ the chair’s friendly creak. How he would kneel down to just maybe check underneath the cabinet.

»Where’s the spoons?« Pen asked.

»A common phrase, yet still a mistake.« Glane pulled out the middle drawer next to her, revealing a curious grouping of silverware: Spoons, and small spoons, and nothing else. »It is ’Where are the spoons’. Those details will make all the difference one day when you travel to Grale.«

He liked to talk about that day as if there was a chance it would ever come. There was, theoretically, but not to her. Down the path of journeys, causes, and ideals that Rannek tried to lend her name to surely laid a trip to Tyn Ryswen, a quaint visit, people handing her gifts and flowers, expressing pity for her father’s fall from grace, admiring her lack of accent, her manors... But she’d be traveling in a cage. A cage with wheels, perhaps, and more entertaining than her current one, but this cage was home, and her name was hers and no one else’s.

She reminded herself once more: an exception, that’s all tomorrow would be.

Pen rummaged in the fridge while Glane found the hydelia bouquet a clay vase to sit in. She took out berries, patiti nuts, and golgoya, mixed them in a bowl, and leaned against the counter gobbling up the food. Before long, the bowl had emptied, but her hunger remained strong. »Where are dinner?«

Glane turned to her with a brow raised in suspicion. »You kid me, miss Penroe. Dinner shall be ready at sundown, but if you fancy a snack, there are some kuhren left in the fridge. You have only had one, haven’t you?«

She had, and wouldn’t ever again. So far, Gralinn cuisine seemed to Pen like an utter failure except for their fish dishes, only for the reason that all other dishes appeared to still include fish as a core ingredient. The day she learned that this included sweets, Pen had felt a deep sadness for the children of Grale.

She took a clementine out of the color-sorted assortment of fruit on the kitchen counter. »I’ll be in the study. Leave me alone until dinner, will you?«

”Of course,” Glane said in Tahori, his biting accent making the words sound like a threat. She bowed, he bowed, and off she went into the spotless living room. »We have a big day ahead of us, don’t we?« he asked behind her.

»... Guess so.« She kept her step steady and relaxed until the corridor swallowed her. The study’s door was ajar, frightening her only for a breath until she remembered that he had checked the rooms just before. However fast he was, checking wouldn’t make him crouch down that far, yet the small fear always remained that one day, he would. And he would find the opening.

Inside, Pen closed and locked the door like she always did. She had kept her gaze away from the neighbors’ house upon arriving, and dared only now to approach the window. Peeking between the curtains, she spotted the empty driveway, the same sheers that had hung in the Toeleis’ kitchen window for the past forty-three days, and the untrimmed, sun-roasted lawn in the slice of backyard to her right. They hadn’t come home.

School was likely to be over, as far as she remembered from schedules years gone from her life. Pen turned on the radio and flipped through channels playing Gralinn orchestral music, solo lylar pieces, and news segments before settling on a broadcast of Gekiko dance music. Cymbals and horns and umums wove a dense carpet of noise that would go forever before even one of its dozen patterns changed. After turning the radio toward the door, she pushed back the chair and laid down on the carpet.

For the longest time after his incarceration, she had neglected father’s study because his absence felt so imminent here. Even after the books, the notes, ’the evidence’ had been returned by the City Watch, the room was a shadow of what it had once been. No stillness had ever existed when he was working, and he was always working, reading and writing and talking while the piles on the desk grew taller. She was the only one who would care to clean up back then, standing on her toes just to glance his face behind letters and medical papers, and when he left, her purpose in this room vanished with him. Only Glane’s arrival had forced her to finally tend to it, because she would not let him sort through father’s belongings like the rest of them. A year still passed before she decided to move the desk for a thorough cleaning.

Pen rolled and scooted around until her head lay in the corner of the desk’s leg room. Turning right, she could see part of the door through a slit under the back board. It was still closed. She reached left into the gap underneath the cabinet and searched the panels past the carpet’s fringes. Her fingers found the edges. She tapped the floor segment and it popped open revealing the half-by-half-a-hand opening.

Listening, she couldn’t make out any sound over the muffled drums coming from the radio. Pen stared at the underside of the table counting notches in the dark, polished wood. It had occurred odd to her that there was a hidden hole in the floor of the study, but when it refused to contain any secret documents, messages, or even just cash, she’d kept on cleaning without thinking too much of it. Had the voice not called out that day, she would have surely closed it or worse, glued it shut. Pen smiled at the thought of what face she may have made. A spirit, she thought at first, reprimanding herself soon after for entertaining such a foolish idea. A while passed before she put the hole and the voice together, and sat down to listen closer. The voice sounded young like hers, ringing with such pain she’d thought the girl laid dying; only later did she learn that there was neither death nor a girl on the other side of that hole.

A new melody joined the relentless drumming, growing louder. It was sung badly, flatly, and refused to adhere to the pulse of the band. It also came from her left. Pen covered her right ear and scooted closer to the cabinet, struggling not to laugh at the voice jumping up and down the register singing the lyrics of last year’s greatest Gralinn banger:

»Find me lyiiing on the street-uh,

Luck run out, friends nowhere to beee found,

Speak to me, but in vain,

Cause whatever I say can’t explain-hah,

And what right do I haaave to complain;

I ain’t a saint.«

The voice trailed higher still mimicking the stringstick solo that followed. Pen gasped for air. She’d assumed he would have noticed the cars and soldiers outside, but apparently not—Yuri would rather die than let her hear one word of Gralinn leave his lips. Judging from the swells and pauses coming from the opening, he was walking around his room just singing.

But then the performance ended abruptly. Pen held her mouth shut, worried that he had heard her laughing, and listened closely as nothing came from the opening for a long while. Suddenly, Yuri’s voice sounded as distinct as if he was inches from her ear. ”Please, don’t be there.”

Pen snorted, having to seal her lips with her fingers to not attract Glane’s attention. She checked under the backboard with shaking shoulders to find the door closed as before.

”I can hear the music, Penny,” Yuri said.

Pen waited for her breath to calm. ”When did you start studying the high arts?”

His sigh was distinct, as well. He must have sat right above the opening in his floor. ”Propaganda, that’s all they are. In order to shake the pale man’s rule, we have to study his ways. How he thinks. Feels.”

”Me thinks you understand a little too well.”

”Ha ha.”

“Honestly, good pronunciation! Only the pitch could use some improvement.”

“You can talk shit all you want, I’m just glad my secret’s safe.”

“Is it, now?"

”Only if you don’t tell your other friends.” He paused. ”Oh wait.”

It had taken months of Glane’s dull company to muster up the courage to talk to Yuri again after that first time. Two years later, she was accustomed to reading his moods by ear, and could easily distinguish a girly death wail from the whimper of a boy who’d stubbed his toe. Though there was something in his voice today that she couldn’t quite pin down. Something not at all humorous.

“Parents coming home?” she asked.

“Psh! Dad just called the other day. Fucking undersea lines still swallow every other word, but I got the gist.”

“They’re extending the trip.”

“At this point, it ain’t a trip anymore. They’re looking at houses in Andis.”

“Andis? That’s freezing! Might as well move to Grale… How did he get that idea?”

“How do you think? Losbilin is literally called ‘the city of coin’. Oh, but don’t worry, he says it’ll only be for a few years.”

“Then what?”

“Then he’ll go from loaded to magnate, and I’ll be twenty, and he and sub-mom can go fuck themselves.”

The words were the usual ones, but she could hear he didn’t mean them. “… Still, kinda sucks right now.”

“Yeah. But don’t worry, nothing’ll change between us.”

“You’ll be gone.”

“But I’m still gonna be your Pen-pal.”

“Oh gods.” She sighed, but couldn’t deny that it was an interesting proposition. Distance would make things easier. Were it only for Rannek and Wellan and the City Guard, she might have not even bothered with keeping their friendship secret. Glane however was a wholly different animal. Whenever the notion of inviting Yuri over for dinner crossed her mind, she couldn’t but think of that boy on the schoolyard who’d grabbed her arm, and his eyes when Glane had grabbed his and broken it with nothing but a squeeze. Putting a continent between her friend and her protector could prove the one way she could both keep him safe and stop hiding under desks speaking hushed words through holes in the floor.

She tried to picture the boy with the broken hand, and his face in that moment, a blur of surprise and pain and fear. She had never learned what his intentions had been. He could have wanted to ask her a question; he could have tried to attack her. Neither ever happened again in school after that. Boys and girls alike shunned her, shunned her with silence, distance, only never their eyes. It was only so long until she lost the will to attend. Sometimes though, she wondered whether Yuri’s eyes had been among those staring on her last day in school, and what he might have seen. She’d tried so hard to keep a face of strength and indifference. Had he seen that face, or just her trying?

“So, how was your day?” Yuri asked.

“Went to the port. Bought a book.”

“Sounds uneventful, I don’t buy it. Did the honorable sir Galenthor make a mess again?”

Nope, she thought, that was all me. “He’s making strides. The only people Glane threatened today were his own.”

“Fighting the good fight, I’m not mad at that.”

“Guess what he called himself.”

“Galenthor the Gallant.”

“No.” She savored the pause. “He called himself a tool of justice.”

There was a lot to be told from a person’s laugh, particularly Yuri’s. It would hit her ear in short bursts like wind-up toy when he was mocking her. It would trail higher and higher when he found something absurd. It would grow throaty, nasty even if he knew he shouldn’t, but couldn’t stop laughing.

Today, a joke she knew should hit him at his core elicited nothing more than a mild chuckle.“Did something happen?” she asked.

“Huh? Funny, I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

“Why?”

“Nuthin’. No reason. Just an ordinary day like any other. Heard there’s some cool new jinoas at the rail yard. Late for school, left early, too. Besides that… What else, what else…”

She moved her mouth as close to the opening as she could so he would hear her sigh. “You finished?”

“… Well, there was an attack.”

He knew. Of course he knew—the attack had happened at town hall, in front of plenty civilians. Tonight the presses wouldn’t slow one bit to respect father, printing headlines that gave Rannek good cause to leave the city. Teenage rebels taking a stab at him, on the anniversary of father’s downfall, did put him in a precarious spot. ”Oh, right,” Pen said. ”I wasn’t there.” She had to be careful not to tell him too much.

”They’re talking all kinds of talk, but nobody knows exactly what happened. Hasn’t been mentioned once on the radio yet.” All jest had suddenly faded from Yuri’s voice. He sounded conflicted. ”Do you know?”

”Not really.” Could she tell him Rannek was alright? No, he was too isolated in his office for anyone but her and the guards to know. ”Shots fired, that’s what I heard. Some guards died. But I don’t—” But they hadn’t died yet, not as of an hour or so ago. ”... I don’t know if that’s even true.”

”Fuck.” There was nothing cynical about his tone. Pen grew worried. ”Thanks, anyway.”

”You’re...” She choked. ”Dammit, Yuri, what’s up with you?”

”What’s— Nothing! It’s just...”

”Just what? I can’t tell you everything I know, it’s not safe. I told you that.”

Now it was Yuri sighing. ”That’s not why I’m upset, I—”

”So you’re upset?”

”... I’m allowed to, aren’t I?” Pen realized they sounded just like the old couples hogging the whicker benches on the beach. Stupidly, it made her blush, which made her glad he wasn’t there to see. ”I’m fine with you keeping stuff secret,” Yuri said. “It’s not about that.”

“What else, then?”

But he stayed silent. In that moment, she wouldn’t have minded one bit to get a glimpse of his face to see what exact pain laid there. She wouldn’t have minded giving him a hug, either. But it simply wasn’t part of their relationship. And she had made her peace with that.

The opening had taught her a lot about communication. If you put up the effort and really listened, sound could make up for the lack of almost everything else. It was for this very reason, she reckoned, that the opening in her house, the one in his, and the underground pipe that connected them had been installed in the first place. They’d listened in on father. It had always astounded her how so many different groups of people could fear a most nonviolent man, yet they did, and hence, the list of parties who had reason to keep tabs on him was long.

What truly struck her as odd, though, was the fact that they left it installed for her and Yuri to discover. They didn’t even seal it. In her eyes, such recklessness excluded the Empire as a suspect. In Yuri’s, it didn’t. Either way, Pen couldn’t but feel a certain gratitude for the crime that had gifted her her only friend.

Thanks for spying on my dad, she thought.

”I shouldn’t tell you this,” Yuri said.

Pen pressed her cheek into the bottom edge of the cabinet. Yuri having secrets of his own had hardly ever registered as a possibility. He liked nothing more than talking, and besides, it was a rather new experience to her as well. Lya had never had secrets; they’d been too small for that. Father had held but one secret his entire life. Only Rannek and the soldiers kept things from her, which by now she understood as a mercy as most of their secrets proved amazingly boring. ”Tell me what?”

”I... I know one of the kids.”

”Which kids?”

”The ones who... gods, they really killed someone?” And suddenly, that tone of his seemed not at all strange. It made sense. He was worried, but not for himself. Gods no, she thought. Not him. ”Fuck, Pen, I’m sorry, it’s not—”

”How?” It was all she could come up with. Pen rolled to her back and exhaled, feeling the cabinet’s imprint fading from her cheek. Koeiji measured just over six-hundred-thousand people; what were the chances, she wondered.

She felt for him, but also for herself. She’d cherished having a friend that held no ties to the ugly world of politics. Someone who could share the moment with her without being consumed by what was and was to come, by the hidden workings of society. I know one of the kids. One sentence, and that innocence was gone. Brooding, waiting for him to answer, she noticed her self-centeredness in feeling so, and soon all she felt was bad.

”I told you about Ogi, right?” Ogi. Small but wide, and smart, and in dire need of protection on the schoolyard. Was he— ”His best friend’s brother was one of the attackers. At least that’s what I got out of Ogi before the fight started, he was pretty riled up... He’s with his friend right now, their families are super close. I only played ball with the guy twice, but to think... He was nice, you know. Seemed nice. Good at school, popular, too. Same time—” A harsh sound came through the opening, an impact, a slam. ”Fuck him for doing that to his family.”

”I’m... I’m so sorry for them.”

”Wish I could tell them that. Honestly, you might be the only one that really understands what they’re going through.”

“It’s not the same.”

“One of theirs tried to kill the prefect, that’s—“

“Not the same.”

”… Maybe not. Fuck, I don’t know.” He paused. “I’m sorry for you, too. Of all days, they chose Faroe’s. That’s just low.”

”Nothing new.” There was something else he’d said. ”What fight?”

”Buele was making fun of the shooters. Someone was bound to shut him up.”

Oh Yuri. ”You.”

”Trust me, I wasn’t in the mood, either—Ogi asked me to. My conscience has never been cleaner, still I feel like shit.”

”I get that.”

”I know you do.” He sounded tired. ”Thanks, Penny.”

Pen wanted to comfort him more than anything in the world that moment, but she had ran out of words. Lying under the familiar desk, on the carpet smelling faintly of dust and incense, a sudden yearning welled inside her bringing tears to her eyes.

She missed her father. She could read all the books in the world, but his guidance was a singular gift, not a hereditary one. He would have been able to talk sense of this better than she ever could. He would have liked Yuri, Pen was certain of it, and would have let her meet with him whenever she liked. He would have kept the house untidy. He would have taken her on trips, and hugged her. She wept silently, and when the tears stopped coming, she wiped her cheeks dry.

The music had not changed, at least as far as she could tell. Slowly, Pen let the rhythm crawl into her brain, and reined in her drifting mind. She instead focused on Yuri, imagining all the subtle details of his face that the distance could hide from her. Maybe he had a stubble. That one time over the bushes and fence, she was sure to have seen dimples on his cheeks. But it had only been a glance. Perhaps it was best this way. Forming one face after another, imagining how it would look in the sun, beside a candle. How it would feel.

Pen woke to a knock. She opened her eyes and yanked her head back instantly, finding the door closed. Through the gap underneath, two soles were looking at her. The knock sounded yet again.

»Coming,« she said loudly. The soles took leave. She rolled to her back and relaxed, listening to Glane’s soft steps fade outside the door. ”Still there?” she whispered to the opening. There came no response.

She sealed the opening with the floor segment, stood up, and put the chair back into place. It had gotten dark. Different sounds came from the radio, modern folk songs, in a language unfamiliar to her ears. She turned it off and looked around at the still room. The wells in her eyes had dried. Pen realized she felt neither good nor bad, only famished, and headed for the door only to smell the stench of fish creeping through its crevices.