To Yan, the journey back to Emerri felt alarmingly fast. She couldn’t get used to how empty the First Star felt. It had hardly any crew, and those it did have stayed well out of her way, to the point where they might as well have been ghosts. None of them were spacers, she noted when she did see them. They were probably all, or nearly all, former Fleet soldiers who had served on board ships. The First Star wasn’t set up to facilitate Yan meeting most of the crew, either. There was a very clear delineation between the areas of the ship intended for First Sandreas’s use, and the places where the crew kept their quarters and workspaces. The strangeness of the ship’s layout disoriented her, but it stopped her from comparing it to the Iron Dreams , or any other Guild ship.

Halen probably expected that she would want to tour the inner workings of the vessel, or sit on the bridge and jump it, but Yan steered clear. Although this was Sandreas’s ship, and Halen’s, it was still too close to something she was asking to do as a spacer, rather than as Sandreas’s apprentice. If Kino had asked, maybe Yan would have gone with her, but Kino had already seen the whole ship, and had no further interest in it.

And, of course, Sid didn’t leave his room. He also didn’t let Yan in when she came to see him. She would ring his room’s doorbell— which really flashed his lights— and mentally poke him with the power, but there was no response. He didn’t answer to anyone else, either. It wasn’t even clear to Yan that Sid was eating anything, because he didn’t come to any meals—not the breakfasts she shared with Kino alone, the lunches she took with Iri and the other staff, or the dinners with Sandreas and Halen. Since Sid’s minder didn’t seem worried that Sid was dying of starvation, Yan assumed that someone was bringing him food, but his sudden bout of reclusiveness still alarmed her. She didn’t understand his change of heart and refusal to speak with her. It wasn’t like they had fought about anything—he had just decided to retreat into a world that Yan wasn’t allowed into.

It could have been just that they were back in space again, but Yan didn’t think that was it, and she couldn’t figure out what it was.

It soured what otherwise could have been a calm trip, one in which Yan could have put all the problems of past and future far out of her sight. But instead, when she wasn’t occupied, thoughts of Sid filled her waking hours with anxiety, and her sleeping ones with near-nightmares. She would have dreams where she was searching for Sid—or someone else, but she suspected it was usually Sid—and couldn’t find him, no matter how many corridors she ran down, or doors she opened. This would go on until, at last, she would come to the final door, pull it open, and wake in a panic, drenched in sweat. It was probably the feeling of the ship jumping that woke her, but it made it difficult to rest well.

Yan hoped her anxiety was invisible to everyone else, but she doubted that it was. Iri never said anything, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a keen observer of Yan’s mental state.

Halen had his way of pretending to encounter Yan, rather than seeking her out. She had expected that he might spend the trip doing some more intensive power training, like they had during the first weeks of the apprenticeship, but they didn’t. It might have only been because Sid wouldn’t leave his room, but Yan was a little grateful that there wasn’t anything intense that they needed to do. Instead Halen would just run into her, to talk for a few minutes about mundane things—nothing important at all. He seemed more relaxed aboard the First Star than Yan had ever seen him. Sometimes, when he walked away from her, she would see him trail his fingers along the walls of the ship, which she had never seen him do in Stonecourt.

Halen picked up on Yan’s anxiety and understood that the cure was to keep her busy. Although he did not give her tasks to do, she suspected that he whispered in Aymon’s ear about occupying his apprentices’ time.

Yan guessed that this was why she saw Sandreas so often. But maybe it was just because he had taken it into his mind that this was a good time to have long, drawn out talks with the two apprentices who would see him, on any subject that he happened to be thinking about at that moment. Being out of contact with the rest of the universe while they were in transit made Sandreas a different person— these short days on his occasional trips off planet were probably the only real rests he was able to have in his life. In the privacy of the ship, he became a little less severe.

Their talks weren’t even about work, exclusively. One morning, Sandreas let the conversation veer into a theological argument, one about the interpretation of a few specific verses from the Song of Terae . While Yan had taken it as a purely academic exercise (and couldn’t escape the feeling that Sandreas was probably grading her), the discussion ended when Kino got so riled up that she had to leave the room. This amused Sandreas, more than anything. When he smiled at Kino stomping out the door, Yan thought his expression would have been more at home on Sid’s face than on his own.

Kino was Yan’s stalwart companion for most of the day, Yan’s smaller dark shadow. Although they were both quiet people in each other’s company, Yan appreciated her presence, even if all they did was sit in the library and read.

If it hadn’t been for her worries about Sid, which swam to the forefront of her mind every time she didn’t have something else in front of her, it would have been a quiet and peaceful trip. But it went by quickly, and it was over before Yan had a chance to begin to savor it. At least the quickness of it meant that she hadn’t had time to worry about what was awaiting her at port. She didn’t realize that they were in Emerri’s system until Halen wandered into her breakfast with Kino and said, “We’ll be taking a shuttle down to the surface after the next jump. Are you all ready to go?”

“Yes,” Kino said.

Yan processed the question, felt her stomach flip over, and put her cup of coffee down before she spilled it. She had been counting jumps, as was her habit, but the number hadn’t really registered. “We’re back already?”

“In about three hours,” Halen said.

“Has someone told Sid?”

“Yes,” Halen said.

“Why aren’t we taking the elevator down?”

“Because we’re not so far off from Yora’s timezone that we need the extra sleep,” Halen said. “And Aymon has responsibilities that shouldn’t wait.” The short respite was indeed over. Yan frowned down at the table, and Halen put his heavy hand on her shoulder. “That’s the downside of a fast ship,” Halen said, sensing her change in mood. He, too, probably was enjoying the vacation.

“It will be good to be back home,” Yan said, trying to convince herself of that more than anything else.

She didn’t have many belongings to pack up, and one of the staff was responsible for her luggage, so Yan took care of the necessities, then spent the next few hours trying not to let her anxiety overwhelm her. She kept walking past the door to Sid’s room, wondering if she should try to speak with him. She finally made up her mind to speak with him when she felt the ship jump for the last time, settling itself cleanly into orbit around Emerri.

She stood outside his door and steadied herself before reaching out and poking Sid with the power through the door, as she had done several times in the past to no avail. As she poked him, she found that he was sitting on the floor of his room, probably meditating. This time, when he didn’t move, Yan instead turned her power on the lock of his door. It went against every spacer instinct she had— locked doors had to be treated as if they could open onto a hard vacuum, so children were taught from a very early age to never force a door or a lock— but Yan could make an exception for Sid. His door unlocked with minimal effort under her mental touch, and she pulled it open.

His room was a mess, which was very unlike him. Sid was usually neat, much neater than Kino, or even Yan. But he had shoved all his furniture around, and his bed had been stripped of its sheets. There were some dirty dishes piled up in the corner— evidence that he had been eating, at least.

He looked up at Yan and blinked when the light spilled in from the door. He had been in the dark.

“It’s time to go,” Yan signed.

“I’m taking the elevator down by myself, after the ship docks,” Sid replied. “Hernan said I could.”

“I don’t care what Hernan says,” Yan said. “You’re coming on the shuttle with me.”

Sid turned away, but Yan walked into the room and crouched down on the floor in front of him so that he couldn’t avoid her unless he closed his eyes. And if he did close his eyes, Yan could grab his arm and speak with him through the power. He knew that just as well as she did, so he kept his eyes open, merely scowling at her the whole time.

“What is your issue?” Yan asked. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

“There’s no issue.”

Yan flailed her arm, encompassing the room, but Sid just shrugged.

“Did I do something that made you mad at me? If I did, I can’t fix it unless you tell me what it is.”

“No,” Sid replied. “It’s not you.”

“Sandreas, then?”

Sid shook his head. “No. It doesn’t have anything to do with anyone. Just leave me alone.”

“I won’t talk to you if you don’t want to talk,” Yan signed. “But you have to come down on the shuttle with us. I don’t know why your minder would say that you could take a different route down. It’s not like there’s any reason for it.” She was just signing things to fill up the space in the room, and Sid was watching her dead-eyed.

“Fine,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

She hadn’t expected to actually win the argument, if it really was an argument. Maybe she should have been brave enough to confront Sid like this earlier in the trip, if she could have gotten concessions out of him before now. She felt a sting of regret. “I’m sorry for leaving you alone in here,” she said.

Sid shook his head. “It’s fine. You should just forget about me. Can you just leave me alone?”

“Why?”

He did close his eyes at that, but Yan shook his shoulder. He didn’t re-open them, but he said aloud, “I’ll take the shuttle down with you. Just let me pack.”

That was all she was going to get, so, reluctantly, Yan left him alone, glancing at his slumped form on the floor of his messy room before she closed the door behind herself and left.

Yan was very relieved when Sid did actually join her in the shuttle to go down. He was still wearing his winter hat, and Sandreas rolled his eyes but didn’t make any comment. Probably he would wait until they really were on the planet, and they tried to pick up their old daily routines. If Sid could rejoin those without complaint or causing problems, Yan was hopeful that whatever mood he had been in on this leg of the trip could be forgiven and forgotten.

On the way down, Sandreas didn’t speak to any of his apprentices except for in brief greeting: now that they were in radio contact with the ground, and would be back on the surface soon, all of Sandreas’s responsibilities had come back to him. He sat in the front seat of the shuttle and discussed some political matter with Halen in a low voice. It seemed to concern a growing partisan divide within the Imperial Council that Sandreas wanted to put a stop to, but Yan couldn’t hear the whole conversation, and so tuned it out.

The ride down to Emerri was quick. She looked out the shuttle window and watched the marble of the First Star recede into the distance, and the blues and greens and whites of the surface of Emerri come into focus, larger and larger. There was the sprawl of the capital, the grey of buildings seen from above. Sylva was down there, somewhere, Yan thought. She made up her mind: as soon as she was back in her apartment, she would call her. Sylva wouldn’t mind that.

With some sort of resolution in hand, Yan felt better. Having a plan let her settle back into her seat. Ahead of her, Halen looked up from his conversation with Sandreas and turned in his seat to give Yan a smile. She hastily looked away from him and out the window.

The shuttle landed on the long runway outside the capital. As it did, even before it came to a complete stop, Sandreas was already getting out of his seat and smoothing his cassock down. He glanced at his apprentices.

“I don’t care what’s going on under that hat,” he said to Sid. “You’re going to take it off— there are going to be photographers on the way out of the airport, and I don’t want that in the photos.”

Sid scowled and folded his arms, but when Kino reached over and plucked the hat from his head, he didn’t slap her hand away.

Sandreas studied the tattoo and said with a dubious tone, “If that is permanent, you’re going to have to grow your hair out.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” Yan said, coming to his defense. “He’ll be able to hide it as soon as it’s all healed—”

“Fine,” Sandreas said. He looked Yan and Kino over. “You’re both acceptable. And you’ll all have to get used to Emerri publicity again. No more vacation.”

Kino looked up from what she was doing, which was already absentmindedly ripping apart the knitted stitches on Sid’s hat with her deft fingers. She held up her arm to confirm that she hadn’t yet managed to rip the button off her latest cassock sleeve. Yan wondered if there was a member of Sandreas’s staff somewhere whose job was just to repair Kino’s clothes, or if she spent the time doing it herself, in the evenings, sewing new buttons onto her outfits each time she ripped one loose.

The airport was indeed full of journalists and photographers as they left the private VIP area and walked through the main concourse to the exit, where there would be cars waiting. In the sudden onslaught of attention, questions being yelled and camera shutters clicking, Yan wished the cars had been brought around to the private entrance. But Sandreas stopped and even answered a few questions, so it was very much intentional that they be seen.

Yan tried to smile— she felt her face was frozen. Kino seemed unfazed, though she hardly ever smiled, so that was no different than usual. Sid, who before this trip would have grinned at the cameras, instead just stood behind Yan with his hands shoved in his pockets and his glasses pushed up onto his forehead, ignoring everyone. Iri and the other members of Halen’s protective staff who were in their party were scanning the crowd. It wasn’t really Iri’s job to do so anymore, but old habits must have died hard.

As Sandreas prepared to walk away, Halen signaled to their guards to usher the journalists out of the way. They began to part; although they continued to yell questions and snap photos, they were all very used to Sandreas’s routine, and the way his security operated. Halen, too. was scanning the crowd, but he suddenly turned to the left. Iri’s gaze followed his, and Yan’s followed Iri’s— sudden movements from Halen put people who were paying attention on high alert— but since Halen didn’t move to put his own body in between Sandreas and whatever had grabbed his attention, it probably wasn’t dangerous. Halen could see much further over the top of the crowd than Yan or Iri, but that didn’t matter. Cutting through all the airport noise and the chatter of the journalist corps, Yan heard a familiar voice.

“Yan!” Sylva yelled. “Yan!”

Yan’s eyes widened in shock. Sylva was still not visible— she wasn’t very tall, and hadn’t managed to push her way through the crowd around them— but she was loud.

“What’s going on?” Sandreas asked as, rather than moving forward, Halen had come to a stop.

Halen glanced at Yan, looking for confirmation of what to do, but Yan was too frozen to say anything. Her plan of calling Sylva on the phone had flown out the window, and now she was faced with the prospect of seeing her in person, without any preparation. But the fact that Sylva was here still made something in Yan crack open, and she took a half-step towards the voice.

“Let her through,” Halen said in his commanding tone.

The guards complied, and the sea of journalists parted, letting Sylva shoulder her way through until she stood at the front edge of the crowd. She exactly like Yan remembered: auburn hair done up in braids wrapped around her head, her bright blue cloak on her shoulders. She seemed a little stunned that she had actually managed to make it to Yan, and she stiffened her back and looked up at everyone resolutely.

The journalists had processed that something interesting was happening, and a few of them turned their cameras on Sylva, who ignored them.

“Who is this?” Sandreas asked.

Yan realized that if she didn’t make the introductions, the whole situation would become much more unbearably awkward. She stepped in between Sylva and Sandreas. “First Sandreas,” she said. “This is Sylva Calor. I’ve told you about her.”

“Oh,” Sandreas said. “I remember now.” He looked at Sylva with an appraising gaze, and Sylva took a few steps towards him. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Calor.” He held out his hand to shake, and Sylva did with no hesitation, though it seemed difficult for her to take her eyes off of Yan, even when she was right in front of Sandreas.

“Pleasure,” Sylva said.

“Though I would have appreciated Yan inviting you to dinner, or some other venue than the airport,” he continued, with a sardonic raise of his eyebrow. “I, personally, try not to cause a scene, unless I want my personal business to end up in the papers.” His gaze roved across all the waiting journalists, some of whom had decided that, since any reporting on this would probably be stopped by Stonecourt’s media control office, there was no longer any point in taking photographs, and they were content to just watch and listen as the little private drama played out.

“I just wanted to see you,” Sylva said, ignoring Sandreas and turning to Yan.

“I was going to call you as soon as I got home,” Yan said. “I didn’t expect—”

“Let’s take this outside,” Halen said. His tone changed. “Move,” he said to the crowd, and they parted again. Yan and Sylva, though they both wanted to speak, found themselves being pushed along by Iri. They couldn’t get a word in edgewise as they were shuffled out through the concourse and into the bright sun of the Emerri morning.

It was lucky that Sid was in too bad of a mood to bother Sylva, and Sylva was too focused on Yan to bother Sid or Kino. Kino, for her part, seemed to be ignoring the whole situation, and just strode past Yan and Sylva as they stood blinking in the sudden hot light outdoors.

There were a line of cars waiting to take the apprentices home, and Sandreas to Stonecourt, but Yan didn’t get in one, even as Sid, Kino, and Sandreas got inside theirs. Halen waited outside the car, and said, “Are you coming home, or going elsewhere?”

Yan looked at Sylva. “Where do you want to go?”

“Will you come to my place?” Sylva asked. There was hope in her voice.

“Yeah,” Yan said. She looked over at Halen, not exactly asking permission.

Halen pointed at one of the other cars, one that was meant for some of Sandreas’s staff, and said, “Take that one. Maedes—”

“I don’t want to be followed!” Yan protested.

“Maedes and the security will not follow you inside Ms. Calor’s house,” Halen said. His voice was dry and amused. “But I do have some responsibilities for your safety, and I am not as tolerant of people running everywhere as Maedes has been while you were on Olar.” He looked through the tinted car windows, directly at Sid when he said this.

This was probably the best that Yan was going to get, so she shook her head and took it. Of course, with Iri and the guards in the car, the ride away from the airport was painful, and silent in the beginning. Iri crossed her legs and looked at Yan and Sylva, sitting next to each other uncomfortably on the other side of the limo. She smirked a little.

“I’m glad that Yan managed to write to you, finally,” Iri said, after they had gotten onto the highway. “I hope you’ve resolved whatever problem you were having.”

“Iri—” Yan said.

“What?” Iri asked, very innocently.

Sylva’s glare could have curdled milk. “It’s none of your business.”

“Of course not,” she said. “I’ll enjoy sitting in the car and waiting to bring Yan back home.”

Yan thought that if she wanted to be teased, she would have brought Sid in the car with her. But maybe Iri was tying to do her a favor: if Yan was thinking about how ridiculous she was being, she would be distracted from the anxiety of talking to Sylva that was otherwise beginning to pool up in her stomach and make her nauseous.

“Ms. Calor,” Iri said.

“What?” Sylva replied, crossing her arms.

Iri held out her hand. “Give me the keys to your motorcycle. I assume it’s still in the airport parking lot, and you’ll want someone to bring it back to you. I can have it back here by the morning.”

“How do you know I ride a motorcycle?”

“I know everything, Ms. Calor.”

Sylva seemed on the verge of not cooperating, but she finally relented and fished her keys out of her pocket. She slapped them into Iri’s hand with a little too much force, and Iri spun the ring of keys around her finger with amusement.

Iri continued to make stupid small talk until they pulled up outside Sylva’s house. She rented an apartment on the second floor of a small building in the more spread out part of the city. There was a lawn out front, with a tree in full flower that made Yan sneeze when she opened the limo door. Without speaking, Sylva led Yan up a rickety flight of outside wooden steps to her place. With her keys being in Iri’s hand down below, she had to resort to the spare beneath the doormat, and she was scowling by the time she got it open. Yan almost volunteered to open the door with the power, decided against it.

Yan had been to Sylva’s place before, of course, and it was unchanged from the last time she had been there. Maybe a little messier, but that was nothing new for Sylva. The furniture was all brightly colored, and there were some familiar posters on the walls— ones that had decorated their former dorm rooms for years. Yan looked at them, and couldn’t contain the odd feeling in her heart.

Sylva puttered around, seemingly not knowing what to do with herself as Yan stood by the door. The windows were all open, letting in the warm air, and as Sylva picked up some heavy books from the coffee table, the breeze came in and swept the papers they had been pinning down to the floor.

“It’s all just work stuff,” Sylva said, and tried vainly to scoop them up.

Yan finally shook herself free of whatever daze she had been trapped in, and went over to kneel and help Sylva gather up all the mess.

“It’s okay,” Sylva said, not looking at Yan. But Yan helped anyway, and it was short work getting all the papers into a neat-ish stack, and putting them on the desk away from the window where they would be safe.

“Do you want something to drink?” Sylva asked. She seemed to not know what to do with herself, and was suddenly nervous, like she hadn’t actually expected to get this far. Searching out Yan at the airport seemed like it must have been an impulsive move on her part, and she probably hadn’t really given thought to what would happen afterwards, either failure or success.

“No,” Yan said. “I’m alright.” She sat down on the floral patterned couch, and Sylva hesitated, then sat next to her.

“I’m… glad you’re back,” Sylva said finally.

“Yeah, so am I,” Yan said. “It’s been—”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner,” Yan said.

“I get it,” Sylva replied. “I could have written, too.”

“No, it was my—” Yan was floundering. “I left you in a weird spot. It was really my job to write.”

“Well, you did. So, thanks.”

“If I hadn’t…”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t have come to see me at the airport, would you have?”

“No, probably not.” Sylva looked away. “I’m not sure what I would have done.” She laughed, uncomfortably. “I would have been pretty miserable, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

“I was the one who made things difficult. I shouldn’t have put you in a weird position,” Sylva said. “I realize that now. It was pretty selfish of me.”

“What— no.”

“Well, it is,” Sylva said. She was looking away. “You’ve got a lot more to worry about than me, and I only made it worse.”

“No,” Yan said. “You deserve to be able to say whatever you’re feeling. And I’m— I should have known, probably. I think I spent a lot of time being really, really stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“I feel like I am, sometimes,” Yan said. “But it’s not that— I think I just never wanted anything to change in the whole world. But it all keeps changing anyway.”

“I know, you said so in your letter.”

“It probably didn’t make any sense. I’ve been doing pretty badly.”

“For the record, I liked your letter.” She paused. “It made me—” She stopped.

“What?” Yan asked.

“Well, it seemed like you still wanted to be my friend, and I hadn’t screwed it all up completely.”

“Of course I still— what are you talking about?” Yan asked. “You’ve been my best friend for ten years. There’s no way I wouldn’t want to be.”

Sylva shrugged. “I did kinda screw it up.”

“No, you didn’t.” Yan looked away. “You definitely didn’t. Stop saying that.”

Sylva made a weird half-laugh and said nothing.

“If I hadn’t had to leave right after—” Yan said.

“I don’t know what I was expecting when I said all that,” Sylva said. The flush in her cheeks and the way that she was now avoiding looking at Yan made it obvious that she did. “I put you on the spot. And you don’t like change, so me trying to change you and the way you feel…”

Yan felt the heat of shame rise to her cheeks. Sylva was right, of course. If she hadn’t needed to leave Emerri immediately after Sylva’s confession, she might have found some way to ruin things entirely for that reason. She would have said something about wanting things to stay the same. It was perhaps a small blessing that the trip to Olar had happened, and everything had gone so wrong. It made certain things appear more clearly, anyway.

“Why did you say something?” Yan asked. “If I were in your place, I never would have.”

“Because,” Sylva began.

“Please tell me.”

“Because you were changing!” Sylva said suddenly, the frustration coming out in her voice. “And you wanted to pretend like everything was the same, and just fine, and could go on the way it was forever. But you had Sid and Kino and First Sandreas and this whole other life that I couldn’t be part of— and, I don’t know, you were leaving me behind. And it was just killing me. I had to do something. Or if I didn’t say anything, I would explode. That’s just the way I am. It sucks.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I mean, of course, what else were you supposed to do? I can’t blame you for having a life. I shouldn’t be trying to hold you back or anything like that. I mean, it’s like you said— I’m part of the past.” Her voice was choked up in the way it got when she was trying to laugh, but really just holding back tears.

“You’re not,” Yan said. “I— Sylva. That’s not what I meant in my letter.”

“Okay.”

Yan wanted to burrow underground. “What I meant is just— you’re someone who has always been there for me. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how much that meant to me. All I wanted to do was come back here and see you because I knew that no matter what else I had done, you wouldn’t care about that. And I guess—” She took a deep breath and recomposed herself, looking away. “I don’t want to use you to feel better about myself, Sylva. That’s not fair to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s like, when I’m with you, the rest of the world doesn’t matter. I get to enjoy being with you, and I can forget about everything else. Like— I killed people, Sylva. If I let myself look away and forget about that, what does that make me? And First Sandreas is training me to take his position someday— I’m not supposed to look away from any of that, but I want to. I want to just forget about it all, and go back to the way we were a year ago, when it was just you and me. Because that made me so happy. I don’t think I realized how happy it made me.”

“I’m sorry that I said anything— we can go back to the way it was,” Sylva said. “I promise.”

“No— you don’t get it— that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I don’t know!” Yan was suddenly frustrated with herself. “I guess I’m trying to say— I care about you so much, and it seems unfair to you that I do, because I’ll just want—” It all felt so deeply pathetic to admit to, that Sylva made her feel safe. “You care about me just because I’m the person you knew for years, and I want to let you, because it would give me something I don’t deserve, and it would be using you to make myself feel better, and—”

Sylva’s expression was very strange. “Yan,” she said.

Yan just looked at her, wide eyed and unsure if she should keep speaking or remain silent. She didn’t know if Sylva understood a single word of what she had said, but the look on Sylva’s face made it seem like maybe that didn’t matter.

“Are you trying to say that you want me to love you?” Sylva asked.

It was very easy for Sylva to put it so simply. Yan was right that she didn’t care about any of the rest of it. The fact remained that if Yan let this chance go, she would never get it back. The rest of it, she would have to figure out later.

“Yes?” she managed to say.

The insecurity in her voice, and the guilty feeling in her stomach did nothing to dim the suddenly radiant smile on Sylva’s face. It was enough to make Yan smile back tentatively.

“Well,” Sylva said, sounding a little smug. “I do love you.”

For some reason, this made Yan laugh, and the laughter turned hysterical, until she couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, and she could barely breathe. Sylva was unsure of what to do, until Yan began to teeter forward on the couch, and then she suddenly realized that she could move, and she scooted forward and grabbed Yan, awkwardly hugging her as Yan laugh-sobbed into her hair. Yan felt like she had lost all of her strength, and was loose and floppy in Sylva’s arms. She leaned on old meditation tricks from childhood at the Academy, counting the seconds between her breaths in, the involuntary laughter or crying notwithstanding, and eventually she was able to get herself under control.

“I’m sorry,” Yan said when she could talk again. “I’ve been having a really, really weird time.”

“That’s okay,” Sylva said. Although she was clearly reluctant to let go of Yan, their position on the couch was very uncomfortable, and Yan was fumbling around on the side table to find the box of tissues that she had seen there. Sylva let her go, and then stood. “I’ll get some water,” she said.

Yan blew her nose as Sylva vanished into the kitchen. But Yan stood up and followed her in there even before she had finished rattling the dishes in the cabinet and filling cups with sink water. She was following Sylva around like a lost puppy, which was not any different than it had been when she was a child at the Academy. When Sylva saw that Yan had followed her in, she smiled and handed her the cup, before hopping up to sit on the counter. Thus elevated, they were approximately the same height.

Yan rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and gratefully downed the water in a single draught. She refilled the cup in the sink and drank it again, which put her right next to Sylva on the counter.

For some reason, Sylva dipped her fingers in her cup of water and sprinkled the resulting drops over Yan’s head, most of them ending up on her hair, but some of them slipping down her nose, cooler than her wiped away tears. Yan laughed again, but this time it didn’t turn into hysterics. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Sylva said.

It was blatantly an excuse to get to touch Yan. She put down her cup and wiped her hand on her pants, but she hesitated with her hand out, letting Yan smile at her before she brushed her hand across Yan’s hair to get rid of the little caught and glistening droplets.

Yan thought of sprinkling Sylva back, but the thought left her mind as Sylva’s hand left the top of her head, and instead traveled down her cheek, cupping her face and making goosebumps rise on her arms. She put her hand over Sylva’s, keeping it there.

“Oh,” Sylva said, surprised again, never seeming to have a next step after she had gotten exactly what she wanted.

Yan could have stayed like that forever, but instead she shuffled slightly sideways, so that she was between Sylva’s knees on the counter, and she mirrored the touch on Sylva’s cheek. It would have been very easy for her to say something to Sylva through the power, but there wasn’t really anything else to say, and then Sylva was leaning forward, bumping her nose on Yan’s, almost falling off the counter except for the fact that Yan was there to keep her upright, and kissing her.

It was much later that Yan left Sylva’s house. The sun was going down, and Iri was still waiting in the car. She smirked at Yan as she got in the car. “Have a good time?”

“If I had stayed all night, you wouldn’t be laughing.”

“I would have called in reinforcements. Swapped out for the night shift.”

Yan closed her eyes and leaned her head on the window of the car, not watching as they sped away from Sylva’s house.

“Are you feeling any better now that I assume you’ve resolved your problems?”

“I guess so,” Yan said. She was exhausted, and all the energy that had buoyed her while she was with Sylva had vanished.

“Are you going to want dinner?”

“Yeah,” Yan said. “I should see if Sid and Kino have eaten.”

“They probably have, but I can get something arranged for you.”

“I know how to order a pizza, Iri.”

“My job to keep you fed and clothed and all that other stuff,” Iri said, a smile in her voice. But she let Yan spend the rest of the ride in silence, not bothering her until they arrived at Yan’s apartment building. She shook Yan’s shoulder to get her attention, and Yan cracked her eyes open and stared at the tall building. The familiar sight suddenly warmed her heart, and she was looking forward to nothing more than sleeping in her own bed. She hadn’t expected to feel that way, but maybe it was Sylva that had made her feel so much more comforted by everything here on Emerri.

Yan headed up to the floor that she shared with Kino and Sid, and knocked on Kino’s door.

Kino came to the door, wearing nothing but her undershirt and a pair of shorts. She looked flatly at Yan. “You eaten dinner yet?” Yan asked.

“No.”

“You want some?”

Kino shrugged, which Yan interpreted to mean yes.

“I’ll see if Sid wants to go out. Or we can order a pizza or something.” Yan turned away from Kino, who went to go find her cassock to pull on. She rang Sid’s doorbell, which she knew flashed the lights inside his apartment. When there was no answer, Yan reached out her power to prod at Sid. But her power slid through his apartment without encountering any living human. Sid was not in his apartment.

Any warmth and tiredness she had been feeling vanished, with the feeling of ice water pouring through her limbs. She turned around to find Kino standing waiting behind her. “Did you see Sid leave?” she asked.

“No.” She closed her eyes, and Yan could feel her power move past, doing the same search that Yan had just performed. “He’s gone.”

Yan was already pulling out her phone. Her first thought was to call Sid, which she did. She pressed her phone to her ear, and listened to the droning dial tone, such that she missed the very faint buzzing sound coming from within Sid’s apartment until Kino tugged her hand away from her ear and pointed at the door to listen. There was Sid’s phone, buzzing on his desk, inside his apartment, without him there.

Yan hung up and immediately dialed Iri, who picked up immediately, sounding only a little grumpy. “Need me to find you dinner after all?”

“Do you know where Sid is?”

There was a momentary silence on the end of the line, and Yan heard the telltale sound of Iri putting her on speakerphone. “He’s not in his apartment?”

“No,” Yan said.

“Stay where you are,” Iri said.