On the first holy day after the Races, he returns.

I knew I’d never have to seek him out. Instead, he walks around the ranch like he’s in mourning. Twice around the empty pastures, circling and circling before the sun’s even up. I warm some old coffee and watch, knowing how hard it must be, how lost he must feel without Imelda. My eyes roam the dark, checking for others, but he’s alone. The Empire’s too busy to have much interest in a kid like him. All the better.

I throw on a coat and head out to meet him. He’s pulled himself up onto a fence by then. He sits, thumbing a hole in his jeans, acting like he’s seven again. Poor kid.

“Farian,” I say. “This is unexpected.”

He barely looks up. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“She’ll be back. You know that, don’t you?”

For a while, he doesn’t say anything. Which is fair. I’m not sure I believe it, either. Every whisper carries war with it. There’s talk of conscriptions. Imelda’s name might get forgotten in all the mess, but there’s also talk that she’s the one who started what’s coming. One newspaper claimed she actually fought in the first battle. Sounded like a load of wash until I saw the location of the fight: Gig’s Wall. Just a few miles north of where she was planning on heading. It didn’t sound so impossible then.

“Why’d she do it?” Farian asks. “Why not just try to win the right way?”

“She wanted to break the rules. That was the whole point.”

Farian shakes his head. “So now we look like cheaters. Ashlords can point at her and say, ‘Look what the Dividian do with what we give them.’ ”

“Oh, wake up, Farian.”

He looks a little shocked by the exhaustion in my voice.

“Did you ever wonder at our people’s name?” I ask him, pressing. “The Dividian. It originates in Ashlord documents. It’s the history they gave us. A simple meaning: the divided ones. We arrived at their shores divided. We live in their land divided. It’s become second nature to us, almost like breathing. And I have no doubt it is how the Ashlords like us.”

My eyes trace the distant land, hills that were never really ours.

“Imelda took something back from them, Farian. We don’t live high and mighty. We live in their world, by their rules. One of those rules is that we’re never allowed to rise too high. They’ve been stealing who we are from us for centuries. Imelda defied that. For at least a few minutes, she united all of us. On their biggest stage, with the entire Empire watching, a Dividian outdanced the Ashlords. Don’t look down on her for changing their rules.”

Farian breaks beneath the weight of that, shaking his head, on the verge of tears.

“We don’t know if she outdanced them. She got over the fence, but then what? I think—I think I’m trying to be mad because it’s easier than being afraid. What if they killed her, Martial? What if they tracked her into the mountains and captured her?”

I reach out and set a hand on his shoulder. “She made it.”

“You know that?” Farian asks desperately. “You can’t possibly know that.”

“I feel it. Down in my bones. Don’t you?”

It takes a second, but he nods. “I’m just worried. Until I see her and know she’s all right, I’ll always be worried. Those components she stole are worth a lot, Martial. Even if she escapes the Ashlords, someone else might kill her for them. I’m worried I’ll never see her again.”

I let out a sigh. “Well, I can help a little with that fear.”

Reaching back, I remove the bills from my pocket. I’ve had them hidden in the floorboards for days. Farian’s cut of the winnings. I thought I’d have to scatter the sales, but with war coming on, vendors are positioning themselves for the long run and buying up what components they can. It’s been easy to sell off everything, except the Ivory of Earl. That one’s rare enough to get someone’s attention. I’ll sell it off when the time comes, but for now I’ll have to wait. I take the banded wad of money and stuff it into his hand.

“Twenty-five thousand legions.”

He stares at it. “What?”

“That’s your cut. Twenty-five thousand legions.”

“Martial…”

“It’s not from me.” I smile at him. “It’s from Imelda. She said go to school. She better be invited to all your premieres.”

He fans a thumb through the bills, stunned. “But…her family…”

“Will get plenty of money. Don’t worry about that.”

He shakes his head in disbelief. “I don’t get it. I mean…How could she possibly…”

I smile again. “Might never know. But I have to say, you were spot on with your nickname for her, Farian. All Imelda did was snap her fingers. And here we are, enjoying all the something she made out of nothing. If I were you, I’d give up on trying to figure out how she did it and just be thankful she did it at all. Be thankful the Alchemist thought your pockets were worth filling.”

He nods, keeps quiet, and pockets all of it. We sit and talk a little while longer, but he’s too excited to stay for long. He heads on home, talking about some video he’s already got in the works. I nod him off as the sun starts to rise. It’s quiet now. Later today, the Ashlords who board their horses here will start to arrive. They’ll come to collect their phoenixes so that they can ride them into the kind of bloody battles this world hasn’t seen in decades.

There’s more than enough work to keep me busy, but I sit up on the nearest fence and watch the sunrise instead. I don’t know if Imelda’s alive. I really don’t. But today it’s enough to stand here watching the sunrise and hope that somewhere she’s setting out her ashes, adding all the right components, and resurrecting a beautiful new phoenix.

I like to think that someday she’ll ride it back to us.