LEAVING CARIN’S roundhome left Lyah with a strange sense of wrongness. She made her way to the village hearth-home, where the children of near-fifteen—only two of them—covered tables with food for the feast. She saw Ryd standing by himself, leaning against a pillar of the pavilion. Walking over to him, Lyah clapped him on the shoulder before moving on to circle around the hearth at the center of the pavilion.

The sun had crested the roofs of Haveranth, and it shone down more gently than it had for High Lights. Village folk milled about, clean and exuberant, and Lyah wished she felt she could join them in their joy. Her mouth tasted bitter from the lie she had told Carin, how she had said she didn’t want to keep anything from her friend.

Having made a half circuit of the pavilion, Lyah looked across the hearth-home to where Old Wend was telling a story to a gaggle of the children who usually made Ryd’s life miserable. Even now, out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ryd shifting his weight as if preparing to flee. But it was behind Old Wend that Lyah focused her gaze. Jenin watched her back, hys dead eyes glinting in the morning light.

This she had kept from Carin, and she would keep it from everyone.

When Lyah looked at Jenin, the face of her dead lover so steady and unflickering in the midst of the very alive bustle of Haveranth on a feast day, rage bubbled up inside her. Someone in this village had cut hys throat with a knife, and had left hys blood to stain the earth.

Lyah would find out who.

She yearned for the use of the magic she had described to Carin, to be able to make the wind whisper the name of Jenin’s killer. For all her yearning, though, there would be no whispers on the wind, no name born from magic. Lyah would have to find the killer another way.

When the first bell tolled throughout the village, everyone gathered at the tables to eat, and Lyah went with them. She noticed Ryd hung back, skirting the main crowds of villagers and only placing a few pieces of mutton and apple with cheese curds on his plate and climbing onto a nearby barrel to look around. As was customary, she moved farther away from him, blending with the crowd without being part of it. Her full reentry to the life of Haveranth was about to happen, and Lyah’s feet took her toward where Jenin stood on the edge of the pavilion’s green.

Lyah stayed at hys side, unspeaking, for she didn’t want to risk anyone noticing her talking to no one. She knew Jenin was not really there, that hys presence was only a specter or a ghost. It didn’t matter. Being near hyr was the only thing that kept Lyah focused on the task at hand.

She searched through the crowd for Carin, but didn’t see her.

As the sun slowly climbed farther into the sky, Merin made her way to the center of the pavilion. When she spoke, the chatter of villagers died into a buzz, then into silence.

“Three Journeyers set out on Planting Harmonix to find their names,” Merin said. “Three have returned to us.”

“Three have returned to us.” Lyah repeated the sentence reflexively, even though this day she referenced herself. Her eyes fell upon Dyava’s face, cast in a shimmer of light reflecting off a glass bauble hanging from the pavilion’s edge. She had not spoken to him since she returned, and when she looked again at Jenin, hys eyes were on Dyava as well.

Merin went on, but Lyah didn’t hear. She instead broke her gaze away from Jenin and Dyava and searched through the crowd for Carin, yearning to have the comfort of her friend near her and knowing that it was traditional to stand alone for the naming ceremony, to be a part of a village first, other bonds second. Now she understood more fully why. Now Lyah understood why the bonds of village came first.

Carin was first born, so she would be first named. Lyah would be next, followed by Ryd.

When Merin fell silent, Lyah waited. Her breath felt elusive, as if her lungs had to chase the air in order to breathe. Next to her, Jenin still stood, hys face unreadable.

“First born,” Merin said. Her voice rang out through the hearth-home of Haveranth, louder than it should have been. Loud like it had been on Planting Harmonix when she made them leave after Jenin’s death. Loud like the call of the hawk above their heads on the Journeying.

The silence after felt louder still.

It continued on, and Lyah felt anxiety creep up behind her and perch on both shoulders. Carin should have spoken now, should now have a different name.

Lyah saw Rina then, not far from her, the smith’s face ashen like the dregs of her forge.

“No,” Lyah said aloud. No one else spoke, all the village folk afraid of what Merin might say. The wind whistled past the pavilion, heedless of custom or ceremony.

Merin’s own face did not keep its expression, but sank for an instant into despair. “Nameless,” she said.

Lyah’s heart plunged into her stomach, roiling there like sick-up. “No,” she said again.

“Nameless,” the village whispered. “Nameless. Nameless. Nameless.”

The people pulsed with the word, their combined whisper blending with the wind. It was not magic like Lyah had imagined speaking Jenin’s murderer’s name to her, but it found a home in Lyah’s gut and burrowed like a worm.

Lyah closed her eyes, willing herself to know Carin’s name, pushing at the edges of her apprenticeship to Merin, pleading with everything around her to hear Carin’s voice calling out over the din of whispers.

“I’m Lyari,” she murmured against that whisper, as if by speaking her own she could summon Carin’s. “I am Lyari.”