Tyro spends the next hour explaining more about council etiquette and educating me about the structure of a hearing. When the clock strikes six, he pulls me out of his office.

         "Now to find you something appropriate to wear."

         "What's wrong with what I'm wearing now?"

         Tyro chuckles. "It's much too fine, and you look superbly foreign. Don't worry, I'll get Galia. She'll find something to fit you."

         "Galia?"

         "The head housekeeper. One of the most reliable and trustworthy women in Kama. Wait here, I'll find her."

         So I sit quietly in the office, tracing the titles of books with my eyes and staring at the woodwork, until a woman peeks in and motions at me.

         "Come on, come on!" She rushes me. "I don't have much time to get you ready. It's thirty minutes until seven!"

         Galia is small but strong, with deep-set black eyes and a cloud of black curls tied back haphazardly with a leather thong. She wears a beige tunic and simple white linen pants.

         She pulls me along the hallway so fast I almost stumble, then throws open the door of a room and pushes me inside. Before I have a chance to take a breath, much less introduce myself, she's throw open a wardrobe and started pulling out piles of fabric.

         "No, that's not right," she says, holding up a tunic before tossing it haphazardly aside. "The color makes you look sickly. How about the purple, yes, the purple..."

         I stand still while she holds up swaths of fabric and mumbles to herself, trying to find something small enough for me in a color acceptable to her. After a few minutes she settles on a light blue tunic and tan linen trousers. She ties a leather belt around my waist to hide the fact that even the smallest men's clothing she can find hangs loosely on me and nods, satisfied.

         "That's better. You look like a proper Kamai now."

         I snort. "I'm ten shades too light and twenty pounds too light to pass for Kamai."

         She smiles. "Well, you could pass for half-Kamai, then. You certainly have the eyes."

         I grimace and she frowns, catching my discomfort. "You grew up in Shikkah, didn't you?"

         I nod. Both Shira Katzuna and I.

         She shakes her head. "I'll never understand the Shikkan's obsession with blood. There's no shame in being half-Kamai, you know. I'd say it's a strength, to have some island grit in you. Makes you stronger."

         "There's no shame in being half-Kamai here," I clarify quietly. In Shikkah, mixing blood is looked down upon. And to wear your mixed blood in the center of your face, with eyes much too dark to pass for Shikkan... I've always been conscious of how obvious my parentage is.

         How funny, that the eyes that alienated me from the Dimaraste, that almost lead to my disinheritance when my mother returned from a diplomatic trip abroad with an anonymous Kamai trader's baby inside of her, might work to my advantage here. I'll look less foreign, less Shikkan.

         "There's a reason the Shikkans that come to Kama never leave," Galia remarks as she leads me from the room, adjusting my tunic one last time like a fussy mother. "There isn't a freer place anywhere on earth."

         I stiffen. "Shikkans are free. Or they were, before the- the attack on the Dimaraste."

         Galia snorts. "Tell me if you still feel that way after a month in Kama."

         I hold my tongue and follow her back down the hall, where the ambassador and Tyro both wait.

         "I did my best, but he's so small," Galia reports. "Nothing quite fit. I can call the seamstress if you like."

         "Have him come tomorrow," Tyro says with a nod, dismissing Galia. She nods and walks away, off to some other task.

         "You look much better," the ambassador remarks, giving me an appraising once-over.

         "Better?" I quip. "What was wrong with what I looked like before?"

         "You looked like a moth."

         "Excuse me?" I ask, my brows furrowing in confusion.

         "Velusina," he elaborates. "It's this big moth with light green wings that haunts the gardens all summer long. You looked like one."

         Tyro laughs. "I can see that. All delicate, with trailing sleeves and swathes of green silk."

         I glare at them both. "I did not look like an insect."

         The Ambassador ignores my reproachful expression and turns to Tyro. "Is he properly debriefed?"

         "I did my best," he offers with a shrug.

         Ambassador Nara nods. "Well, that's all I can expect, I suppose. Now come on Shira, we have to go."

         My stomach flutters, like it's being tickled by the beating wings and feathery antennae of a thousand foreign moths. I was so brash, demanding to come to this meeting, begging, even. What am I doing? What if they spot me, what if someone sees through my alias, what if-

         I turn and follow the ambassador down the hall and out of his home, steeling myself and setting my face into a solidly neutral expression. I can only move forward.

         I know this: the past will drown me.

         We walk across a small courtyard peopled with flowers and small trees and stop in front of a small, smelly wooden structure. I wrinkle my nose and step back.

         "Vika," the ambassador calls out, "bring out the horses."

         Horses?

         "Coming!" A high-pitched voice answers. A woman with bright blue eyes and red-brown hair cropped close to her head leads a black Kamai stallion out of the stable. She smiles at the Ambassador, the lift of her cheeks highlighting her smattering of light freckles.

         "Here he is, Ambassador Nara," she says, handing off the reins.

         She notices me and smiles wider, extending her arm. "Hello, I'm Revika, the stable master. You're the silk son from Shikkah, yes?"

         "Ah-yes," I answer, gripping her forearm as she grips mine, then sliding my hand down and off her wrist in the traditional Kamai greeting. I have to remind myself not to bow. "I'm Shira."

         "Well met, Shira. Do you need a horse?"

         "He can't ride," Irei answers for me.

         "Well, we never needed to ride in Shikkah." I explain. Revika just smiles wider.

         "I'll just have to teach you, the, silkson."

         I suppress a shudder. The Ambassador ignores me and slings himself onto the horse with practiced grace.

         The motion causes his tunic sleeves to slide up, revealing his wrists. I can't help but stare at the intricate scars that circle them like bracelets- whirls and twists of raised skin, made with a combination of incredible artistry and incredibly violence. A reminder to all that the Kamai, though now traders and fishermen, are still the warriors they were a millennium ago. There's a reason the Alyezsani empire couldn't conquer them when the conquered the rest of the southwest, Shikkah included.

         "You're staring, Shira," the Ambassador remarks, raising his eyebrows.

         "Sorry," I stammer.

         He offers me his hand, not bothering to pull down the sleeve. I hesitate only a second before taking it, shoving my foot into the stirrup, and heaving myself gracelessly onto the huge animal.

         Revika laughs at me, shaking her head. "I'll definitely need to teach you."

         I blush and settle myself. I'm sitting behind the ambassador, holding onto the back of the saddle with one hand and him with the other. It's slightly humiliating to ride double, clutching him like a child, but the thought of riding alone is worse. The horse would probably kick me off and trample me into a puddle of meat and bones.

         The horse takes off and I squeak, holding onto the Ambassador tighter. The air whips by, pulling strands of my hair free from my ponytail and plastering them across my face. We whip through the streets, expertly avoiding pedestrians and merchant stalls. The horse's hooves beat staccato against the dirt road, unpaved despite the incredible riches Kama brings in as the only viable port in the Macchon Sea. The Kamai are Spartan enough to belie their wealth.

         I take a few deep breaths, doing what Tyro said and trying to prepare myself for whatever I'll see and hear. I can't do what I did two days ago and start shaking, I can't say a word, I can't do anything but listen. That sort of powerlessness chafes at me.

         But there's power in knowledge, more power than there is in sitting in a Kamai manse and staring at my own thumbs. Maybe I learn nothing at all, but at least I tried. I have to try. Just waiting for my mother to call for me day after day will drive me mad.

         Madder than I am already.

         We finally stop in front of a large wooden building. It was probably white once, but time and the salty coastal air have worn it to a soft dappled grey. Cracks of wood peak through the paint like veins.

         Though the building is as antique and, well, foreign to me as any I've ever seen, I can't deny it's beautiful. It's three stories tall, with a sculpted roof and an overhang supported by two columns. The oversized grey doors are carved with runic symbols I can't read, making them seem incredibly ancient.

         The Ambassador dismounts the horse and helps me do the same, then tethers it to a block of wood.

         "This is the seat of the Grand Council, the heart of the Kamai government." I can hear the pride in his voice and feel a stab in my chest, thinking of our own council hall back in Shikkah. I remember meetings at my mother's side, with O'otani to my left, listening to my uncles and aunts debate trade policy and public works. The smell of ink drying on parchment, laws made and passed. A nation ruled from one room.

         I take a deep breath and pull myself back to the present, concentrating on the door in front of me. The past is done, I repeat, dead and gone and rotting in the earth. This- hiding, exile, running, clawing my way back towards my birthright- this is my future.

         "Are you alright?" The Ambassador asks with a frown.

         "I'm wonderful," I reply, stepping forward as confidently as I can.

         "Well then," he says, gripping one of the door's iron handles and heaving, causing the scars on his arm to bulge and ripple. "Let's go inside."