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Pointing at her, he hisses, “This animal was not here, last time I visited.”

“She was given to us a few Provisions ago.” I add, “Thank you. If that was your influence.”

He smiles, but there is no warmth in his eyes. “I can assure you, it wasn’t.”

“Then, the watchers⁠—”

“You really do not know, do you, Ara?”

“Don’t know what?” I prompt, sensing Eric shifting beside me.

“I have many times wondered what makes luck land at your feet. Puts people in your palms. It can only be Rhavnan blood magic, and yet⁠—”

“We have no blood magic,” I rush. “My brother and I aren’t of the royal bloodline – as you know.”

It’s not quite the truth. But it’s not an outright lie either. Old Mother’s magic is weak – and besides, many Rhavnan people carry traces of royal blood from some distant ancestor or another. Their talents are minor. No more than parlour tricks, or funny quirks. I’d yet to see magic – even major magic from nobles – fix a problem common sense couldn’t. And all of it pales in comparison to the technologies that now exist.

“You mean to tell me,” Vikemy says, “that it is only your winning personality that convinces others to make the sacrifices they do for you?”

I feel as though I’m being rocked about at sea.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes. And let us hope, for all of our sakes, there will never come a time when you will.” He inclines his head. “Good day.”

We always make a strange procession on a Provision Day, all of us, even children, pushing our carts or carrying our crates of provisions through the curling streets of our village, past clunky ramshackle houses of mud and wood. My brother and I walk with Babba between us, now loaded with our baskets of dried fish. Her tether is slick between my sweating fingers. The blue sky is cloyingly bright, and the sun is already unforgiving. I regret not bringing my hat.

As we near the archway that opens out onto the Temple grounds, I notice Sal, my late friend Cosmer’s mother. She’s struggling to wheel her cart of freshly laundered and starched soldier’s uniforms. It’s going to flip.

Wasting no time, I bolt over and grasp the handles to pull her cart straight again.

“Shall I push it the rest of the way for you?” I offer.

She shakes her head, hard. It’s a movement that reminds me of her son. In fact, all of her reminds me of him. He had her thick, unkempt coppery hair. Her long neck. Her cheekbones.

“Thank you, Ara. I know I’m getting old. But I need to keep doing what I can, while I still can.”

I know what she means. If she’s deemed to be relying on the help of others to produce her Provision, it might be seen as less valuable. She’d then get less food and essentials from The Assembly in exchange for it.

“Oh, Ara,” she suddenly says, her lined face cracking into a smile. “You’ve become so beautiful.”

I stiffen. “Oh. Thank you.”

“To think Cosmer asked me to keep a watch on you before he left. And yet you’re the one who always seems to be keeping a watch on me.”

“Oh,” I say again, sounding rather like one of the parrots in the Palace’s aviary. “Of course. We all look out for each other.”

“I keep expecting to see him pop out from somewhere. He did that, didn’t he? Disappear. But he always came back.”

Yes. He did. Her words bring it all back.

He would disappear. He was like a fish. Fast and slippery. People always seemed to be looking for him. He lived in the house next door to mine, was an errand boy, but he’d end up leaving tasks unfinished or doing tasks he wasn’t supposed to be doing. I was often sent to look for him. People knew I’d learned the places he liked to disappear to, and I had a knack for spotting flashes of his pale skin or coppery hair in a crowd or under water.

He was just full of energy, full of life, and for that I’d always thought him well-named. Cosmer – of the Cosmos. We have that word in Rhavnan and Hevallan, but while in Rhavna it tends to mean ‘universe’, in Hevalla it tends to be the way people refer to our planet, and all of the living things in it.

He’d always been kind to my brother and I, even though he’d grown up with Sermons about my country being a lavish, greedy, corrupted place. Over the two years I’d known him, my feelings towards him had changed – so slowly it was almost imperceptible. I always wondered if telling him that would have been enough to make him stay.

He’d never mentioned wanting to become a soldier. When the crew rustler landed his ship outside Temple and began bellowing about the virtues of life in Hevalla’s army, he seemed unmoved – bored, even.