"I was discreet. But I think he sensed someone following him. I've narrowed it down to the Brass Quarter. I lost him near the marketplace."

"Let's go there tomorrow. All we need to know is where he lives..." He'd never entered that other apartment building we saw, so he must live somewhere else.

"We're close." Drystan picked up the book of magic history by his bed but set it aside again. "I couldn't find any signs of deception in Cyan today."

"She's hiding something, though."

"Without a doubt. But I don't think it affects us, at least not directly."

"I'm not trusting her."

"Me neither."

"Why was she asking us about our favorite sounds?" I asked.

"It's a Temnian thing. They ask about favorite sounds, favorite tastes, favorite textures and the like quite often in conversations. They say that it gives away things about a person, so they can make up their mind about them. Sort of like how Maske makes up his mind about someone in a seance."

"I wonder what we gave away."

"I don't know. If she turns out not to be a spy, we can ask her."

We murmured our goodnights but, as usual, sleep evaded me. I was so tired of never feeling safe, always wondering who I could trust. I did not know this Cyan girl and whether she would grow too curious about us. It seemed inevitable that the Shadow would find us. I turned the Phantom Damselfly over and over in my hand. The metal thrummed under my fingers. I watched Drystan's back rise and fall in sleep and listened to the rain drumming on the rooftop.

I debated falling asleep with the disc in my hand again, but at the last moment, I set the disc aside, fearful of what I might learn.

I need not have bothered.

This is a memory that I do not wish to remember.

Only fragments remain a like a jigsaw puzzle scattered on the ground, some pieces the blank brown of the backs, and others bright specks of color. But they are without context. I do not remember how long ago this was. A long time. If only I could choose to forget the rest.

My charge was in the next room. I was in stasis. My real body had perished, and my new one of flesh and bone still gestated. For now I was all cogs and metal and crystal. Something triggered my warning mechanisms, and I found myself awake. In the next room, my charge was screaming.

I ran through the door, trailing my false fingers against the smooth Venglass walls, and my charge a my boy a was dead. I do not remember the sight of his body. That is a puzzle piece with a blank front. Nobody was in the room, but the window portal had been left ajar. I rushed to the window, the glass glowing with the coming dawn, but saw no one. I went to the bed, cradled my hand against his face. I could not feel him through my false skin. To me, he had no more substance than a wraith.

I believe I was there for a long while. It is impossible to know. I sent out my sensors over the ground, but all was quiet. The night flowers closed, and morning blossoms opened. The Venglass around us glowed brighter. The hanging gardens swung in the warm, summer breeze. I could not smell the flowers, though the old me, the me who had been real, almost remembered what they would have smelled like.

Normally, I would be awakening my charge. But there was no way to do so. Blood had stopped dripping onto the floor.

The Alder burst into the room. I failed them.

"Did you do this?" they asked me.

"No."

"Who did? Who did this?"

"I do not know."

They accessed my memory banks. They did not believe me, and so they relived what I saw. But there were gaps in the data. They decided someone had corrupted me. Or I had corrupted myself. That I had been compromised.

I was put to sleep.

And I remained asleep for ever so long, my little Kedi.

I awoke, bolt upright in bed. The Vestige was on the bedside table where I had left it. It was only a dream. Wasn't it?

In this dream, I saw inside Penglass. No one has ever been able to penetrate it. No one. It had been calming. As calming as that yearning I felt to touch Penglass on the Penmoon a as though it held the power to take away my troubles.

I remembered the sound of dripping blood from the dream, and I shuddered, wrapping my arms around myself. In the dream, I had been the damselfly. All senses were muted. I could not smell and I could not feel. Sight and sound were strange a the colors lacking subtle shades, and sounds almost mechanical. My fingers had rested on a still cheek, unable to even kiss the boy goodbye.

A sob caught in my throat. My eyes burned. My vision blurred. Grief for a young boy who may not even have been human tore through me, for a boy dead for centuries, possibly millennia.

My gaze fell upon the small, innocuous disc. I did not even know if it was my grief, or hers. I picked it up, and the sorrow grew stronger. Another sob threatened to choke me. I walked to the stained glass window and opened it with a creak, preparing to throw the disc out onto the pavement below, where it would shatter and never bother me again.

"Micah?"

I flinched. Drystan was sitting up in bed. The open concern on his face undid me again. The disc thumped to the floor from my numb fingers. I sobbed, and not just for the long-dead boy. I cried for Iphigenia Laurus, for Micah Grey, for the boy Drystan Hornbeam had been and the young man he had become. I cried for Aenea, for Frit, even for Bil, the clowns, and everyone in the circus I had hurt. I cried for Maske. Everywhere I turned, there was nothing but fear and heartache.

Warm arms wrapped around me. A tear that was not mine dropped on the back of my hand. I rested my face against his neck, his heartbeat against my lips. This simple touch was what we both needed without realizing we did. That it was alright for us to grieve for what we had lost. For what we had taken.

When the tears dried, we each went to our cold, lonely beds. The next morning, neither of us mentioned it and we avoided each other's gaze. By the afternoon, I almost wondered if it, too, had been a dream.

11.

THE FORESTERS.

"We are the roots of society a we give them the soil and the water to help them thrive, but receive naught in return but promises and worms. It is time, my brethren, to step into the light and take charge of our own destinies."

Pamphlet of the Forester Party While I was no less suspicious and still feared the knock of the Shadow or the policiers at our door, time passed, easing the worst of the rough edges from when I had torn myself in the circus.

I still knew little about Cyan and what to make of her, even though Drystan and I had spent hours with her during magic lessons. She took to the lessons with glee, and her fingers were soon just as nimble as our own.

"My merry magicians. I'll be going for supplies from Twisting the Aces. Fancy coming along after lessons?" Maske asked one morning.

We needed an excuse to go into town, and this seemed almost fortuitous.

"Of course," I said.

"Wonderful," Maske said, finishing his coffee. "To the lessons."

We were learning to place needles in our mouths and draw them out, linked, on a piece of string. It was a fairly safe trick, but my tongue was still sore from dozens of minor pinpricks. I kept fearing I'd accidentally swallow a needle.

I fought down nerves during the lessons, which only resulted in another few jabs of my tongue. Drystan mastered the trick easily, his arms crossed as Cyan and I struggled.

Afterwards, the four of us set off into town, well-wrapped against the cold.

The distant strike of a blacksmith's anvil echoed as we walked toward Twisting the Aces, the wind whipping our hair into a frenzy. The bell tinkled as we entered.

The store was much the same, with Lily behind the counter.

"Hello, my dears, it's been a time. So wonderful to see you again," she greeted us, her eyes on Maske.

He consulted the list of supplies, rattling off replacement machinery parts and their measurements, taking care to linger close to Lily. I picked out the smaller items a candles, invisible wire, magnets to conceal within clothing.

Lily flitted about the shop. "I think the spare cogs are up here," she muttered. Stretching up, she knocked something off the shelf. Out of reflex I caught it and passed it to her a a square of deep purple glass, set in a frame of lacquered wood of red and blue. The frame reminded me a little of the clown's motley at the circus, and my gut twisted.

"Thank you, my sweet! I was wondering where that was," she said, hanging the glass in the window so that the playing cards dangling from strings shone purple in the light. She resumed her post behind the counter, wrapping the purchases as we brought them to her.

My eye fell upon the cabinet with the Vestige artifacts for sale, but I stayed far away from the crystal ball. I wanted no more visions.

"When we have our first show, we'll be sure to invite you," Maske said, smiling at her. "We may be performing seances shortly as well."

She clapped her hands together. "Oh, please do let me know when you perform! I consider myself quite the spiritualist. I went to a seance at Lady Archer's not long ago a she was a frequent customer o' my late husband's a and it was so frightening my heart just about burst from my chest. Lady Archer communed with her long-lost brother, and she had no doubts that it was him. Not a doubt in the world. I haven't been to one since, but I'd dearly love to!"

"Of course, my lady," Maske said, making a show of bowing to her. "Could we arrange for the larger purchases to be delivered?"

"No problem at all, sir, no problem at all! Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow will be fine," he assured her. "Just to the Kymri Theatre, please."

She bobbed her head. "That's an awfully nice building. Is it just as pretty inside?"

"It's a beautiful building, though sadly in a state of disrepair."

"Oh, but if you hold performances there I've no doubt you'll spruce the place up. I know a nice florist, if you need, closer to opening night. Bouquets of roses do ever so brighten a place."

Maske nodded to us. "You three run into town if you like. Mrs Verre and I have made arrangements to meet for a cup of tea."

"Oh, have you now?" Drystan drawled, amused.

"Indeed. Off you go."

"Thank you, my lady," Drystan said gallantly to Lily, giving her a bow before we stepped out onto the cobbled street.

"She's a good-looking woman but I can't say I see what attracts him. That woman is exhausting," Drystan said once free of the shop.

"She's nice!" I protested.

"She's very... enthusiastic," Cyan said, diplomatically.

"She's nice," I insisted. It was refreshing to be around someone who had such a sunny disposition. So often people were full of doom and gloom. Maybe that's what Maske liked about her.

Drystan frowned. "What's that?"

Up ahead, we heard shouting. A group of people holding signs marched down the street, and we were swept up with them and herded toward Golden Square in front of the Snakewood Palace.

"What is this?" I cried over the din. The yelling coalesced into chanting.

Men and women crowded the square, holding signs and chanting "Equality! For the Tree!" over and over, their voices rising to a fevered pitch. The horde blocked traffic. Men and women driving carriages and carts yelled obscenities, adding to the fray. The gates of the palace were locked, grim guards posted behind the wrought iron.

The palace lay in the center of the city, the three large Penglass domes peeking over the roof. It was costly to integrate Penglass into architecture, as it was so smooth that buildings erected around it tended to leak. I wondered if the young Princess Royal peeked out from behind one of the closed shutters.

We were caught within the press of people, Cyan and Drystan pushing against me, Cyan's elbow digging into my side.

"What should we do?" I yelled over the melee. We stumbled toward the middle of the square. I could not believe how many people there were. I knew a bit about the Forester party. They wanted to abolish the monarchy and establish a democracy like Southern Temne. But I always imagined they were a small faction. This protest made me realize that, as first a noble's daughter and then as a circus performer, I was, in many ways, out of touch with how Ellada actually felt.

Drystan pointed toward a staircase at the corner of the square. While it was filled with people, it wasn't the same crush, and we'd be able to take the pedestrian bridge to escape. We pushed our way through the throng, people stepping on our feet. I smelled unwashed bodies, coal dust from workers, and cheap perfume. Some were trying to profit from the protest, selling food and blank sign boards, a bucket of paint at the ready. People were chanting so many slogans that I could no longer tell what anyone was saying.

A commotion at the podium in front of the palace made us pause. A man appeared, and in the push and pull of the throng, he was the picture of calm, holding his arms out. He was tall and blocky, wearing simple clothes, though they fit him well, with mutton chops on his cheeks. I recognized the face instantly, from both my vision during the first visit to Twisting the Aces and from the flyer foisted into my hands afterwards.

Some people chanted his name: "Timur, Timur, Timur."

The leader of the Foresters. Rumor had it that he once worked for the bureaucracy before he became disgusted with politics and took matters into his own hands. Nobody knew his full name. He rarely appeared in public.

"People of Imachara," he said. "It is time to reclaim our rights. For too long have we been the servants of those who claim themselves higher than us. It is time to bring equality to the entire tree, from the roots to the highest of branches."

People cheered and he smiled at them magnanimously. Something about his manner reminded me of the ringmaster of the circus. He had an air of the showman about him. The air of a liar.

"I do not wish for violence. I wish this to be a peaceful change. A government where the people have the right to make the decisions of our country, and not just the monarchy and the nobility. Ellada is wearing down. As more Vestige breaks, we are left weaker and more vulnerable than ever before. But what will the current power do about this? I do not know. Do you?"

People cried out that they didn't, stamping their feet.

"We are not autonomous. We need far more from the former colonies than they want to give. They are bleeding us dry, my brothers and sisters. But through negotiations and diplomacy, perhaps a new government, free from the taint of the empire, will make a true and lasting peace with our neighbors."

I could not trust him, despite his pretty words. There was something he was leaving out, some plan beyond the promises he was offering.

"Bollocks," Drystan whispered next to me.

Below us, the carpet of people screamed in agreement with Timur, from the gates of the palace onto the spiral of streets. It was madness. Despite promises of peace, a fight broke out on a corner, two men tussling. People backed away to give them room. One of the brawlers picked up his discarded sign, which read: "LEAVES FOR ALL". He smashed it over the other man's head. I sucked in my breath and grabbed Drystan's clammy hand. I did not need to glance at him to know that the gesture reminded us of Drystan's fatal swipe at the ringmaster with his own cane.

But the man below was not dead. He staggered to his feet, wooden splinters in his hair. More men joined the fray, swinging fists. I heard the distant wail of sirens and a group of policiers pushed through the crowd, and more sentries emerged from the palace gates.

"Something tells me this won't end well," Drystan said.

Down below, I saw a distinctive hat. "Look," I pointed. "It can't bea"

"It might be."

All three of us stared at the hat as it moved and bobbed its way through the people. The man paused and looked up toward the palace. I could just see his profile, but my eyes were keen enough to know that it was the Shadow.

"It's him," I said. We'd planned to leave Cyan and find the Shadow on our own, and here he was, right in front of us. Was he here looking for us?