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Preventing war, capturing a traitor—Brandt and I can catch corrupt merchants all day long, but this is far more dangerous work. My face stares back at me from my vanity mirror, looking even younger than my nineteen years. Fresh, ruddy, and too soft to save a nation. I hope the Dreamer knows what he’s doing, entrusting this task to me.
    “I’m so glad you’re back,” my maid Sora tells me as she lays out a fresh gown and chemise. “Vera’s been staying in the barracks the past few nights to avoid her family again, and it’s been just dreadful.”
    I tense at that name—Vera Orban has got reasons to doubt me more than almost anyone else in the Ministry—but I mask it with a grin. “Sending you on a million errands?”
    “Cider and parchment and a whole basket of pastries from Kruger’s! I don’t know how she stays so slim with an appetite like that.”
    “I’m sure being such a pain in everyone’s arse is grueling labor,” I say. Sora reaches for my hairbrush, but I grab it first and set to work disentangling my damp hair. “How are you otherwise?” My eyes catch hers in the mirror. “The tunnels aren’t troubling you, are they?”
    Sora’s gaze drops away from mine. She’s only a sliver of a girl, her hair the color of a candle’s flame and as flimsy to boot. She hasn’t the strength to deceive, I think, and that bodes poorly for any tunneler. “N-no, miss. They’re all right.”
    “Please don’t lie to me. What is it, tithes? Here—this should more than cover you for the month.” I scoot a jewelry box stuffed with trinkets toward her.
    “Oh, Miss Livia, I couldn’t possibly—”
    “Nonsense. Keep the tunnel bullies at bay, and soon enough, we’ll get you proper papers, all right?”
    She smiles; even at fourteen, her doe lashes and fine bones mark her as easy tunnel prey. I see too much of my former emaciated self in her. If I can help even one tunneler escape as I did, then I’ll have served the Dreamer well.
    “I’ll do my best, miss.”
    Edina Alizard pokes her head into my room, her dark curls pinned up and draped so that they perfectly frame her deep brown face. I notice Sora tensing at the sight of her. “Ah! Miss Livia! You’re back. I’ll take that to mean my assets in the Land of the Iron Winds did their jobs.”
    “They smuggled us right to the Citadel’s front door with no trouble at all.” It was what happened in Oneiros that has me shaken. “Thank you for that.”
    Edina smiles warmly. I want to believe Edina actually likes me, but she’s the sort of person who can find virtue in even the most savage gang enforcer. “Do you know if Brandt’s around?” she asks.
    “He is, but we’re meeting with the Minister shortly. Shall I give him a message?”
    She tilts her head, contemplating, then shakes it. “Not to worry, I’ll catch him later. Best of luck with the Minister.”
    Sora shakes her head, watching Edina depart. “I’ll never understand how as nice a girl as her could have such a wretched father. The Writ of Emancipation went up for a vote again yesterday.” Her lip curls back.
    I pause, hairbrush stuck in a knot of my curls. For years, the aristocrats’ council has contemplated a number of writs designed at granting full citizenship to the tunnelers. And for just as many years, they’ve found countless reasons not to grant them. “I wager it didn’t pass.”
    Sora makes a retching sound deep in her throat. “All thanks to Lord Alizard.”
    “Of course he’s going to block it,” I say. “Look at all the money he makes, keeping the gangs in his back pockets. His livelihood depends on keeping the tunnelers out of proper society.”
    “It’s just not fair. Hardly anyone manages to escape.” She crosses her arms. “Some of the tunnelers over in the Bayside branch are talking about storming the next aristocrats’ convention. Force them to look at us, hear us out.”
    My heart twists for her—for all the tunnelers. I can barely make use of