Outside the apothecary’s store, Rakel pats her satchel, now complete with the fifth and final ingredient, a translucent golden-brown gem the size of her thumbnail. I’m still processing the revelation that the three rounds of the so-called Death in Paradise game she just played to acquire it could have gone a very different way.

“Think you could give me some warning next time?”

“There won’t be a next time if I can help it.” She gives me an alley cat’s grin. “Now, you know what shopping always makes me feel?”

“The warm glow of an acquisition? Victorious in the battle for a bargain?”

“Hungry. I could eat my way through a market.”

“Food? Now?”

“Let’s just say it would be a bad idea to take poison, even a slow-working one, on an empty stomach.”

I jerk to a halt.

“How else did you think we were going to test the cure?” She skips ahead, then turns to face me, spreading her arms at the city around us. “Just say you knew you were going to die, what would you request for your last meal?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. Everyone has a favorite food.” Her eyes narrow and she starts walking slowly backward. “Don’t tell me it’s horse. I mean, maybe that would explain a few things but … Please don’t tell me it’s horse.”

“It’s not horse.”

“Then what’s the problem? Here, I’ll go first. I love chicken chargrilled with lemon and topped with goat curd, and spiced barley salad comes a close second. Was that so hard?”

“Fine. Rose cake. I love rose cake. With pistachios. And cardamom. Drenched in syrup.”

She gives me an arch look. “Finished with a petal on top of each slice? All pretty like?”

“Exactly.” I wait for her to mock me, or at least laugh. The gruff warrior loves his sweet and delicate baked goods. But all she does is lengthen her stride.

“Me first, then. You can choose dessert.”

We set out toward the food market, picking up the pace as we draw near, the scent of flour and yeast billowing around us. “If we weren’t an entire province away, I could almost imagine that’s Ekasyan bread fresh out of the oven.”

“Seems you could buy anything here. What’s going to make capital-style bread an exception?”

I sniff. “It’s a very particular bread.”

When we arrive at the food market, I realize I was wrong. Completely wrong. Not only is there Ekasyan bread here, but no less than half a dozen baker’s stalls are churning it out like the starwheel is about to stop turning. I purchase a couple of loaves—amazed at the ridiculously low asking price—and we keep moving, coming to a cluster of vendors selling savory pastries.

“These are some of my favorites,” I tell Rakel when I’ve bought a half dozen alob dumplings. They’re filled with white cheese and herbs. Steamed first, then fried in a heavy pan. Crispy and chewy and melty all at once. “Here. Dip them in this spicy sauce. I defy you not to like them.”

She bites into the dumpling. Her eyes light up.

“Good?”

“Mmmhmph!”

“And these ones?” She points to a tray of plump pastry-encased triangles, baked to a golden sheen and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

“They’re filled with various things. Mutton. Camel. Some will be horse.”

She shudders.

“But I like the ones filled with spinach, onion, garlic, maybe a little squash. Here, these.” I gesture to the seller and hand over a couple of copper coins. “Go on, take one.”

She’s halfway through chewing, when she wrinkles her nose.

“Don’t like it?”

“The pastry is just fine. But what is that stench?”

I catch scent of it on the next drift of the breeze and smile wryly. Of course, she’s never been anywhere near fishing docks, river or ocean. “My guess? Fishmarket.”

“It’s so …” She brings the neck of her robe up over her nose.

“Pungent?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

We skirt the edge of the fishmarket, past trestles heaped with goggle-eyed trub fish and silver-finned sheklaws, snake-like lossol eels and huge blacktails. Smaller specimens, sandzigs and hullsuckers, are piled high in barrels. There’re even some things I haven’t seen—strange creatures with more legs than I could count and eyes bulging at the ends of long antennae.

“What are those?” Rakel points to tray upon tray of pearlescent shells, disgust wrinkling her nose.

“Oysters.”

“Ugh. Looks like someone hawked them up and spat them out. How could something so much like snot be so popular?”

“They say they’re an aphrodisiac.”

“Do they now?” She eyes me sidelong.

“Are you trying to make me blush?”

She winks. “Trying would imply it hadn’t worked.”

I shake my head but don’t hide my smile.

We take our food down to the stone marina, upwind from where the fish sellers have begun to slop out their stalls for the night.

Rakel shucks her boots and perches on the edge of the pier, dangling her legs over the water. She gazes out toward the horizon, then gives a wistful little sigh. “Have you ever thought about what’s on the other side of the sea?”

“If I’m honest?” I ask, settling beside her. “Not really. When you’re in the capital, it’s easy to forget how much world is out there. Nisai wanted to travel. But the Aphorai delegation was the first trip his mothers had permitted him to take since he’d been named heir. And I only go where he goes, present circumstances excepted.”

She appears to mull that over, then asks: “Mothers? Plural?”

Her voice is strangely tight. Of course. Old wounds run deep.

“The Council of Five.”

“Calling them all his mothers is a bit rich.”

I lounge back on the pier, propping my weight on my elbows. “They didn’t all bear him. But they all take personal interest. They named him heir, after all.”

Rakel tears off a piece of dumpling pastry and throws it to a swooping gull. “Politics aside, wouldn’t you like to know what’s out there?”

“I don’t need any more mysteries in my life,” I say, tracing a finger along the pier where Rakel’s shadow ends and the sun begins, the stone worn smooth by wind and water and uncountable footsteps. “There’s too many I haven’t yet solved.”

She snorts. But a moment later she turns to catch my eye. The ocean breeze has tousled her hair, and I reach out and push a stray tendril behind her ear. Her eyes widen; then she ducks her chin and looks away.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I curse myself.

“Well then,” she says, her tone strangely high and light. “My belly is full. Time to hit it with something it’s not going to like nearly so much.”

I jerk upright. “What are you talking about?”

“The sooner we find somewhere I can fabricate the poison and cure, the sooner we can test it out”

“I haven’t forgotten the plan,” I say, stalling for time. “But I definitely missed anyone saying anything about you being the one to test this out.” It’s the gods’ cruel joke that Rakel was caught up in all this. The last thing I want is for her to deliberately risk her life, though I doubt that would be enough to convince her.

She lifts her chin. “And why shouldn’t I be?”

My chest constricts at the emotion in her eyes. There’s the usual defiance, the stubbornness I once thought pride but now realize is a strength forged amid the kind of battles I haven’t had to face in turns. But it’s not the tenacity in her gaze that makes words catch in my throat. It’s something searching. As if the question that hangs between us has nothing to do with poisons.

“We can’t risk you,” I venture. “If it works, you need to know how and why. If it doesn’t, you need to watch that happen, too. There might be clues. Should the worst come to the worst … you’re much more important than I am—you’ll have a far better chance on your own to keep going and figure this out.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” It’s barely more than a horrified whisper.

“I knew from the day needle and ink pierced my skin that another life came before my own.” Another life. One. A Shield shouldn’t have deep loyalties beyond the oath made to their charge, let alone voice them.

“But without you, how am I going to get anywhere near the capital, let alone the Prince?”

“I have faith you’ll find a way.” I sound calmer than I feel.

“I don’t even know the way to Ekasya!” She’s running out of excuses.

“You’ll use the map. Just like I have been.”

She presses the heels of her hands against her temples. “I don’t want to lose you!”

The pain in her voice is a blade-sharp shock. How long has she felt this way?

No. I can’t think about that. I will my muscles to relax and try to keep my thoughts in the moment, listening to the wavelets lapping against the great stone pylons, the birds squawking over the remnants of the day’s trading. “Please, Rakel. Let me do this.”

Her shoulders slump with a defeated sigh. “We should probably find a guesthouse.”

“Stay a while longer? I’d like to see the sunset.”

It could be my last.

Her expressions softens. “We’ll stay as long as you want.”

We sit side by side in silence as the horizon changes from blue to gold, through red, pink, purple, and indigo. Each time either of us stretches or shifts, the gap between us grows smaller, so that the deep velvet night finds us pressed together from shoulder to knee.

“Ash?” Rakel asks, her face turned up to the stars.

“Yes?”

“Do you love Nisai?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean, do you love him?”

Ah. So that’s what this is about.

“In another life, perhaps Nisai and I would have had another relationship. In this life, Nisai serves the Empire. I serve to keep him safe. Nothing must ever get in the way of that, even each other. My loyalty to him is borne of love, and it always will be. But anything beyond the fraternal was set aside turns ago.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then swallows audibly. “Have you ever cared for anyone other than him? I mean … really cared?”

My heartbeat is suddenly loud in my ears. There are so many things I should say, that I’m duty-bound to say. But there’s something else, something I’ve known for days, even a moon now, but kept confined behind the fortifications I’d long built around yearning or desire.

If I don’t say it right this moment, I may never have another chance.

“Truthfully? Not until now.”

When my hand finds hers, she wraps her fingers in mine.