“I don’t know,” said Hava, climbing beside him with an intent expression.
“Do the people who live above these shops have to walk the long way through the amble?”
“I think residents and businesspeople carry a pass,” Hava said. “Noa said something about it on the ship. She grew up inside one of the ambles.”
“What if you have a medical emergency? What if you’re giving birth?”
Hava clapped him on the shoulder. “I promise I won’t let you give birth alone.”
“Brat.”
“Bully.”
The familiar teasing hurt. It was part of a happiness that was gone now. Giddon pushed on.
At the top of another staircase, down an alley and around a corner, they reached an arch guarded by two uniformed people. A square was visible beyond.
“Do you think we’ve made it through?” said Giddon.
“I surely hope so.”
“Proof of purchase,” said one of the guards as they approached.
“Proof of purchase?” Giddon replied.
“You must purchase something in the amble before exiting,” said the guard.
“Are you serious?” Giddon said, startled by this. “If you enter a shopping area, you have to purchase something? Is this a law?”
“It certainly is,” said the guard. “What part of the Royal Continent are you from, sir?”
“But what if I have no money? What if I’m poor?”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t look poor.”
“I purchased something,” interrupted Hava, then handed an object to the guard that seemed to be a tiny, silver figurine of a fox, its eyes made of yellow diamonds. Giddon noticed that she was changing how her face looked. Her eyes were gray, and Ungraced.
“This looks like a game piece from a City game,” said the guard, fingering the fox. “A valuable City game. Is this from Bazil’s Game Shop?”
“Yes,” said Hava.
“And you only purchased one piece?”
“Yes.”
“That’s odd, isn’t it?”
Hava shrugged. “I only needed one piece.”
“Hm,” the guard said doubtfully. “For all I know, you brought that game piece into the amble with you. I don’t need to see the purchase. I need to see the proof of purchase.”
“Is this it?” said Hava, holding up her hand.
At the sight of the bright, white paper with a colorful shop insignia held in Hava’s hand, Giddon glanced away, for it made his gorge rise.
The man handed the fox back to her, a new disinterest on his face. “Very good,” he said. “Move along.”
Giddon waited until they’d crossed the square. Then he allowed himself his second frustrated “Hava!” of the day.
“Yes?” she said, tucking the shiny little fox back into a pocket.
“What if he’d tried to take that proof of purchase from you?”
“You saw that he didn’t.”
“How did you even know what it should look like?”
“Weren’t you watching the people in the amble? I saw a dozen shopkeepers hand a dozen proofs of purchase to people.”
The main thing Giddon had noticed in the amble was that every small, dark-haired woman was Bitterblue to him, until she turned and showed the wrong face, or spoke in the wrong voice, or moved the wrong way. “You have money,” he said. “Why are you stealing from Keepish artisans?”
“Because I wanted it,” she said, “and because I hate this place. It killed my sister.”
The answer undid Giddon, who didn’t have a Grace to hide the tears that filled his eyes. He blotted them quickly with his sleeve. Bitterblue? he said. I’m afraid she’ll take anything I say right now as a reason to run away.
I think you have to accept that she may run away, Giddon. It’s not in your power to stop her.
Giddon blotted another tear.
“Hava?” he said.
“Yes?” she said, warily, not looking up from the map.
“You can talk to me.”
Her mouth went hard. “Bully,” she said. Then she pulled inside herself, that way she did when she wanted to pretend he wasn’t there. It wasn’t something she did with her Grace; it was just something she did. She turned and began walking.
“Wait,” Giddon said, taking her sleeve.
“Hey! No grabbing!” she said, yanking her arm away.
“Wait!” he said again between clenched teeth, for he wasn’t stopping her because of their conversation. He was stopping her because he’d just caught sight of someone in the square, someone he almost didn’t recognize, so strange was it to encounter her in Ledra.
“What is it?” said Hava quietly, understanding.
“There’s a pale, blond woman walking toward a staircase,” he said, turning to admire a fountain nowhere near the woman, “with a tall brown man in a long fur coat, you see? The woman is wearing a light yellow coat.”
“I saw her,” said Hava, who turned to admire the fountain with him. “So?”
The more Giddon thought about this, the stranger it was. “She’s an Estillan Graceling,” he said. “Her name is Trina. She’s one of the first people I ever led through the tunnels to Monsea. Last I knew, she’d found employment in a hotel in eastern Monsea, near the silver mines. So what’s she doing here?”
“What’s her Grace?”
“She can find hidden objects.”
Hava paused, giving a little annoyed shake of her head. “Be more specific.”
Giddon remembered the passage through the tunnels with Trina, who’d been quiet, almost aloof. She’d had no family. Nor had she shown much interest in the others who’d made up the escape party, until one of them had referred to her Grace as a party trick. Then her uneven eyes had flared.
“Say you’ve lost something,” he said, “like a piece of jewelry or a memento. Or say there’s something you want, but you don’t know where to find it, or even if it exists, like a starfish on a beach, or”—he used the example from the tunnels—“a seam of gold in the walls of a tunnel. As long as she understands the essence of that object, she can find it.”
“Could she find Bitterblue’s body?” asked Hava abruptly, and Giddon was undone again.