One week after the encounter with soldier Bjon, it was the fourth time Amyra came to the edifice at the address C-D.3rd-B.7/87. Deep in the core of the tumultuous third domain of Ceres, sinuous alleys stinking of piss with walls painted with mold and slurs directed to anyone at random: priests, the Monarchy, market vendors. In the decaying seventh borough of the city, edifice number eighty-seven appeared trapped in a jail of old, unkept stone.

The street was unusually calm. Especially considering the establishment where she was to find soldier Bjon was a tavern of sorts, based on how drunk those who entered the edifice left it, that is. Soon, Amyra came to understand the reason for the unnatural disparity with the rest of the noisy borough. Only northerners—judging by their nasal accent and lighter skin— entered the establishment. Unlike the other edifices, too, the number of the building wasn't engraved with metal sunk into the rock at the doorsteps, in northern fashion, it was written on the door, blood-red like a bleeding wound.

Amyra had been there simply to study the area, but she had never seen soldier Bjon enter the establishment. If he'd kept his word, he was inside it. Standing in front of the door, she peered around the empty street to the point where the path was cut off by alleys. She adjusted the dagger sheathe clinging to her hip — an item stolen from one of the merchants crowded at the eastern city gates aiming to attract tourists for over-expensive deals. Empty on the inside, the sheathe was completely ornamental, but it had deterred potential thieves from approaching her whenever she roamed through dangerous parts of the city. Cutting the braids she had been required to keep as a nurse and her increasingly unkempt cloak helped create the useful illusion of a menacing look.

She steeled herself, inhaled, and when she finally knocked on the door, her knuckles passed through empty air, the door swaying open. Startled, Amyra recoiled two steps back. In front of her stood a northerner, too, judging by her skin, a shade lighters the Ceri nut-brown, and long hair the color of rust. "You're not one of us?" the accent confirmed the assumption, nasal sounds drowning the rest she uttered. She scrutinized Amyra as if being proposed a piece of rotten meat by a marketeer.

"I look for Bjon," Amyra said.

"Bjon?" Her lips distorted when she pronounced his name, and the rest of her face followed to form a lazy grimace. "You must be intimated if you allow yourself to refer to him by his given name."

Amyra persuaded herself not to deliver a quick response. This woman didn't know her and most certainly wasn't aware of what was at stake. "I am a nurse and have once taken care of Bjon." She chose to remain vague, only insinuating a professional relationship.

In reality, Amyra wasn't sure she had ever taken care of Bjon while working in the royal domain. Guards were the bulk of the population of the royal district. Among the thousands that inhabited the barracks of the domain, a hundred were admitted into the sickhouses daily. They were numbers for the nurses and their faces quickly faded from memory. Hadn't it been for his trial with that monster of Davir, Amyra would never have recognized the northerner soldier.

"You are the famous nurse then," she said, then yelled. "Mjkor, the nurse is here. She came for Bjon apparently." When she devoted her attention to Amyra again, she seemed to read every fiber of her body from head to toe.

"Let her come with me, Sheyla," the man behind her announced, his face still hidden by the only partially open door. Sheyla finally opened the door to Amyra and the face of a young man was revealed to her. Although ignorant of the deeds in the establishment, his youth shocked her. He couldn't be older than fifteen years old.

The interior of the tavern reeked of alcohol and fermented food. It was mostly dark, the only lights being blue gems, poorly sculpted, sloppily scattered on high shelves all over the room. Curious how a place with furniture that seemed old enough to have witnessed two generations pass was illuminated by the light of rare minerals only the most prestigious nobles could afford to buy.

"I will take you to Mister." Mjkor seemed proud to accomplish the task as he guided Amyra, those in the room revealed to Amyra, sitting around the tables, drinking or eating, staring at Amyra as if it was blasphemy that she put her feet inside the establishment. All were northerners. Amyra was the intruder. She deviated her gaze from all that stared at her too menacingly.

The boy led Amyra to a set of stairs that led to the underground. When they set foot at the base of the stairs Mjkor spoke. "Stay here, I'll wake him up." Before them, countless people lay sleeping on the ground, women and men alike. Unidentified snores sounded as Mjkor advanced in search of the soldier. On the wall hung all sorts of weapons and at the back of the room, Amyra noticed, sacks of Flogos, all full to capacity. She had been surprised the revolutionaries that had perished in the tavern had acquired such weapons. Although she had never fathomed, it made sense northerner rebels who came from the region where the mines of Flogos were extracted would be the origin of the illegal supply.

Mjkor's dawdling woke up more than just his target, but in the end, he brought Bjon to Amyra, his face still crumpled and heavy with signs of sleepiness. "Graces, Mjkor." Bjon stepped up the stairs that led to the ground floor. He didn't say a word to Amyra. Hadn't he stopped in front of her, Amyra would have been unsure the man acknowledged her.

Like those already around the tables, once they were seated, Bjon asked for a bowl of fermented corn and ate spoonful after spoonful, without peering an eye at Amyra. Like any other southerner, Amyra thought northerner salty and vinegar-filled food was disgusting. But Amyra's stomach thought otherwise. She had been surviving on the bread she only mustered the courage enough to steal from marketeers when her stomach was being stabbed by hunger. The fact that northerners were barbarous enough not to offer food to visitors didn't make things easier. But her choice was irrevocable, not worrying about eating for the span of the next two solar arcs trumped her pride and her taste in food.

"Can I have some, please?"

Mid-chew, Bjon blue eyes met Amyra's. "What?"

"I'm hungry."

"Sheyla," Bjon called. Sheyla stood at the opposite end of the room, behind a counter, drying newly washed wooden cups. It took Bjon two other calls for her to turn their way. "A bawl of Suma for her." Sheyla didn't utter a response, but she was highly efficient, bringing the food in a matter of seconds so when the bawl was dropped—with a loud tap against the table—some corn overflew the container to scutter about the table.

"Pardon her," Bjon said with a tone more bored than apologetic. "We are not used to having non-Mali in our quarters. Bjon picked all the corn that overflew to the table and ate them, one by one. Amyra expected him to grab his spoon and tackle his bawl, but she realized it was already empty.

Mali quarters. Amyra had her answer. "You are all here for the uprising against the Monarchy?"

"Eat first," Bjon said, disinterested. "Then we talk outside."

From her peripheral vision, Amyra caught sight of a woman clad in the green uniform of the city guard. She walked past them and left the establishment. They infiltrated both guards of the capital. Two years as a member of the revolution and she ignored all of it. Why the lack of foresight? She imagined awareness of how deeply the revolution was working inside the ranks of the Monarchy should bring hope to the up-rising, but she lacked that knowledge, just like Bjon didn't know of her involvement with the revolution before her death-dare in the forest where they met.

Amyra swallowed down her curiosity, nodded, and ate. The fermented corn was better than she expected and once full, she wondered if it had been her hunger biasing her judgment. Aching to form a plan to get to Una, she stood right away and turned to the exit of the edifice.

"I'm leading here," Bjon said sternly, and she stopped in her tracks. He shook his head. "Southerners," he sighed. Instead of the entrance from where Amyra had come into the establishment, Bjon led the way to a door to the back of the building and they found themselves trapped in the imperfect square where met the back walls of four buildings.

Bjon locked the door behind him and scanned his surroundings, the top of the buildings around before his stare fell back on Amyra. She understood what she was to discuss with Bjon wasn't to be heard by the rest of the occupants of the establishment.

"This a branch of the revolution?" Amyra asked certain Bjon wouldn't respond.

As confirmation, he seemed to size her up. Next, he shook his head. "You're not asking questions," he said. "And I'm not repeating that warning. What do you know?"

She lacked both arguments and choices to consider if her objective was to get to Una before it was too late. Despite the unfairness of Bjon's exerting such authority over her leading her instincts to ache to counter him, she tamed her feelings. Made her best effort not to let her internal turmoil surface on her face and she grabbed at the only choice she had left. She complied.

"My sister Una has always been different," she said. "Since she was a child. Her eyes were not typical." Amyra hadn't seen the characteristic clear grey bottomless eyes until she had encountered soldier Davir. No one else in her family shared those eyes. Not late Gorin, or aunt Lena. "Sometimes she healed people—me," she said, "on two occasions." When Amyra had almost died of southern fever five years ago and she had been badly injured in the head after crashing head-first onto rocks when she fell from the boat while fishing with Gorin. "Supernaturally healed people," she clarified. "Two years ago, Mister Fanou came to our house and showed interest in Una. First, he offered education in the capital, but aunt Lena refused and he took her from us forcefully. Mister Anya promised that if I came to the capital and worked for her, she would help me get Una. She landed me a spot as a nurse mentee in the royal domain. I had been her informant ever since. Well, until she attacked me. I wish I had realized sooner that she had been simply using me without any intention of helping me see Una again. She talked about a father who controls all of the children they have."

All through her explanation Bjon's face remained in an incredible sameness. As though nothing of what Amyra had said was news. As if he knew what had been happening and more than Amyra imagined. Amyra braced for what was to come, her body tensing. She pleaded for something hopeful, even if meager compared to all the chaos surrounding her. The last two weeks had drained her. Battling for each meal, roaming to find dry warm places to sleep at night, all while keeping an eye on potential criminals, the stress that preceded each time she resolved to steal to eat. It was worse in the Slums in Goan where she grew up. She was drained and she needed something hopeful to give meaning to her struggle.

"They have my wife," Bjon said simply. "She's—" he trailed off. "She's Gulgrana, too. Like your sister."

Such a way to refer to her sister caused infinite discomfort to Amyra. Una wasn't Gulgrana. She wasn't a soul-eater out of the Nightlates. Amyra even refused to believe Una's talents were sinful. Sin wouldn't have saved her life twice. Again, Amyra refrained from voicing objection.

"I have been looking for her for three years. If the Mistress hides them somewhere, it's far from Opace and fire. She—they aren't nowhere to be found in the commoners' boroughs of the city."

"Opace?" Amyra asked, puzzled.

Realizing he assumed Amyra knew more than she actually did she said, "anti-spiritual mineral. Gulgari cannot stand proximity to it. It burns them worse than the sight of fire."

She had grown up mocking the northern, especially the Mali, for their food, their lack of well-established cities contrary to all built in the southern Anutehi region, and their superstitions and traditions. It was ironic that now, in order to get to the bottom of finding her sister, she needed to accept all that she had mocked as being the truth.

"An informant confirmed that there is an academy in the borough of the nobles where apparently are kept all the Gulgari."

"Where is it?" She snapped. A warm feeling, she hadn't experienced in a long time took over her. She had to exert control over herself not to smile. Ancients be praised, Great Ancients be praised countless times. "Tell me, please."

"I bought that information, but it remains to verify, calm down," Bjon said. "Plus, the residents of the noble borough don't deem any of us worthy enough to enter them. The noble borough is rounded by walls kept by guards. Even if one could enter, there would be no way to stay in the domain long enough to find said academy without being expelled and driven to the prison."

He spoke as if he had anticipated all of Amyra's questions.

"We are not allowed to enter the noble borough. I serve on the royal guard. That is a great risk to take for information that remains to verify." His gaze lingered on Amyra's face, suggestively.

She knew what he would utter next. And Amyra was inclined to say yes. She would infiltrate the borough if that meant she could get to Una again. But, just like Bjon, she wasn't replaceable. If she was sent to prison it was over. Bjon had the excuse of being a royal soldier, he was useful to the revolution. But Amyra didn't have a party anymore. She was in it alone, for herself and her sister. "Perhaps we could send one of your companions there? Someone well-trained and with no strategic value to the revolution."

"And that for?" he scoffed. "You'd risk your life venturing in the noble borough if you had nothing of value to retrieve there?"

"They don't know about your wife?" Amyra said.

"Why would they?" he asked. "We are in this alone. It seems. The Mali are here for Malina. Damn the Ceri revolution, we want our independence and get the mining chiefery out of our lands. We were annexed to the nation for economic interest only. All we want is our land back. As for my wife, it is a personal problem and I deal with it as such."

Amyra understood. His blue uniform of the royal guard, siding with the Ceri popular revolution. All of them were just means for him to get to his objective. The calculating nature of it was almost chilling. And again, as if Bjon had perceived her thoughts he spoke.

"The Monarchy does all it can to expand its power, damn who it crushes in the process. All to benefit the noble. You toughen up and fight for your interests or you let yourself be destroyed and exploited to dryness."

The Monarchy. The word alone brought Heron to her mind. Every time she remembered his existence her stomach seemed to tighten. She had seen and been told stories of how the Monarchy crushed brutally all that dared discredit it with its implacable military force. The massacres of its own people that most didn't even dare to voice. That had eased her conscience during the planning and carrying out the orders of the Mistress to take the heir to her. But now an obvious truth pricked through her reasoning, painfully like a thorn: the only fault to attribute to the heir was the fact that she was born in the wrong lineage. And that truth devasted her. Sometimes kept her up at night. Still, she knew she would have done things as she had done to get to Una.

"You are now in charge of bringing the heir to the Mistress?"

Bjon seemed taken aback by her question. His eyes narrowed and he kept his silence. "That's between me and the Mistress."

"It seems you don't even believe in the popular revolution of the Ceri. It is a waste of to spend energy on bringing Heron to her."

"You're on the run for doing exactly that," he scoffed.

"That is why I am warning you," she said.

"Guilt?"

She didn't react.

"We'll work a plan to get you into the noble borough to search for the academy. If that fails us, all I have to get to my wife will be the Mistress' way. I cannot afford to give up on that because you're guilty about failing to capture a tyrant in the making."

She nodded with reluctance and like Bjon decided to keep Heron out of all this. Una was the only one she was allowed to think about. "You are sending me there?"

"What choice do we have?" he said. "If anything, good comes of the Mistress' way, you will know and I will think of your sister."

"She won't give up any of them."

"That will see." With those words, and without warning, the conversation was over. Bjon led Amyra inside the establishment again, leading the way to the counter where Sheyla waited, elbows on the wooden counter, looking completely bored. "Sheyla she is staying with us for a while," he said. "Show her around, please."