KOREN

He wandered through the city, lost, disoriented, calling to them.

"Atalia!" he cried out in marketplaces.

"Ofeer!" he shouted on bustling streets.

For days now, Koren had been wandering this vast, confusing world. Valentina had offered to send a thousand guards across the city to scan every house and alleyway, but Koren had refused. His sisters would cower away from any soldier of Aelar. He had to find them himself.

Yet as the days went by, the task seemed insurmountable to Koren. This was a city larger than some nations. How would he find two souls among a million? And what if Atalia and Ofeer had left Aelar, were now traveling the wilderness or sailing on the sea, seeking a way back to Zohar?

"Have you seen two sisters?" Koren asked in every tavern, bathhouse, and theater, describing Atalia and Ofeer.

"The lioness!" they said.

"The prince's paramour!" they said.

"Tirus's killers!" they said.

It seemed that everyone in the city had heard some tale or another about Atalia and Ofeer, yet none had seen them since Valentina's coronation. Koren kept wandering, feeling lost in this city. He had never imagined a place like this, had never imagined that men could build structures so tall, cities so vast. Temples, towers, statues, courtyards, palaces—all crowded together in a mosaic of human life. People from around the world filled these streets, not just native Aelarians but slaves and citizens from every land around the Encircled Sea and the distant provinces beyond. Priests and paupers, soldiers and slaves, buskers and beggars, travelers and tinkers—every color, shape, and form of man and woman, all forming the tapestry of Aelar.

Yet Koren sought only two people. A tall, bluff warrior with flashing eyes, and a broken woman seeking healing.

He sat in a tavern, one of countless in the city. In Aelar, only the wealthy had kitchens in their homes. Most lived in cluttered apartments, stacked tall one atop the other, that contained little more than beds. They ate in public taverns, cooked in public kitchens, bathed in public bathhouses, and used public latrines where rows of toilets rose along the wall, not so much as a curtain to offer privacy. Here was a small tavern, and a mosaic covered one wall, depicting food items and their prices. Koren filled his plate with olives, stewed pears, fava beans, and even some fried shrimps—a food he had never seen in Zohar. He skipped some of the more exotic items, such as roasted dormice and buttered snails, which the locals consumed with fervor.

He sat at a back table, prepared to plan the rest of his search over his meal, when a hooded figure took a chair close to him.

"You might," rose a voice from the hood, speaking in Zoharite, "consider searching for your sisters a little more furtively. We Zoharites aren't the most popular people in this city of late."

Koren's breath caught. The figure pulled back the hood, revealing the face of a woman, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes large, the hair long and black.

He recognized her. He had seen her before—on the slave ship that took him to Aelar.

"You were Porcia's lumer," he said. "Worm, she called you."

"Call me Noa." She pulled the hood back over her face. "And never call me a lumer again. My lume is gone, and the lumers are all dead, haven't you heard?" She rose to her feet. "Now come with me, Koren. Unless you want to finish your shrimps?"

He didn't. They left the tavern together.

Hidden in her cloak and hood, Noa led him through the city. They traveled to the crowded alleyways of the dregs, far from the villas that surrounded the Acropolis. A place where apartment buildings rose eight stories tall, stray cats hissed, and beggars held out trembling palms. A woman dumped a chamber pot from a balcony, splashing the street. An unshaven man sat in a corner, flicking a knife. They stopped by a bakery, the smell of fresh bread wafting through the windows, mingling with the stench of the city.

"You didn't get to eat your shrimps," Noa said. "I think you'll find you have more of a belly for bread."

She nodded at him, pulled her hood lower, and vanished down an alley.

Koren hesitated for a moment, his breath shaky, then steeled himself and entered the bakery.

Two women stood inside, their backs to Koren. Both were kneading dough and forming rolls for the oven. One was tall, her black hair cut to the length of her chin. The other was smaller, her dark hair flowing down her back. Both women were busy talking, not noticing that Koren had entered.

"I told you, Atalia! God. You have to braid the bread. If you ever grew your hair longer, you'd know how to braid."

"Oh be quiet, Ofeer. My bread is fine. Who cares what bread looks like? It could be shaped as a dog's turd, so long as it tastes good."

"You only taste half the food with your tongue, you know. You taste the rest with your eyes. Luckily, I know something about presentation, or this whole bakery would close down."

Koren stepped closer. "Atalia?" he whispered. "Ofeer?"

The sisters fell silent. Slowly they turned around.

For an instant they both just stared, eyes wide.

Do they still recognize me? Koren thought, standing still. They had not seen him for a year, and he had changed. His beard had thickened. His frame had thinned. His eyes, whenever he gazed into a mirror, no longer gazed back with mirth but seemed sunken, too dark, too old.

The moment of stillness ended.

Both sisters ran toward him. With a cloud of flour and a clatter of rolling pins, they leaped onto him, squeezing him, nearly crushing him, pinching his cheeks and mussing his hair and hopping and laughing and dancing. He laughed with them. He grabbed Ofeer and lifted her into the air as she squealed. He tried to do the same to Atalia, only for her to slug his shoulder and shake him and shout at him for being a damn fool for ever leaving her at sea. They all laughed. They all embraced again. They all wept, shaking, speaking of those they lost.

Of Epher.

Of Maya.

Or little Mica.

Of Mother and Father.

Joy mingled with grief, laughter with tears, until Ofeer shrieked and smoke filled the bakery, and she rushed toward the oven and pulled out blackened rolls.

When the smoke cleared, and when fresh rolls were baking, they sat together for a long time, silent, leaning against one another, remembering their home.