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Appreciates the honesty. Well, she had thought he might be tired of hiding what he was.
    Tremaine went toward the only set of doors that stood open, stopping in the archway. There was a fire in a large and ugly brick hearth and the electric sconces were lit, chasing shadows back into the dark wainscoted corners. Calit was on the floor by the fire, dressed in dungarees and a bulky blue pullover sweater that was too big for him. Spread out on the floor around the boy were an array of toys, all of the kind that could usually be bought from street peddlers in Ile-Rien and presumably here as well: a few crudely carved wooden animals, picture cards with famous sights in the city, some polished stones and three brightly colored tops. Calit was arranging the collection with the concentration of an explorer surveying artifacts of a foreign land; which, in a way, he was. He was an Aelin, one of the people who the Rienish called Gardier, and had come back with them from their brief involuntary visit to the Gardier’s world. He glanced up, nodded a solemn greeting to Tremaine, and regarded Ander with suspicion.
    Tremaine advanced cautiously into the room. “Where is everyone?”
    “The attic appears to be haunted,” Nicholas said, following her in, Ander trailing behind. “Ilias is with Giliead, dealing with it. I think Kias is shifting some empty barrels out of the pantry.”
    Tremaine nodded slowly. “So we’re living here, then?”
    Nicholas gave her a raised eyebrow. “Temporarily.”
    “Right. Did anyone tell Gerard and Florian?”
    “They’ll be along later tonight, once they finish at the Port Authority.”
    “I can go pick them up, if you like,” Ander offered blandly.
    Nicholas regarded him with equal blandness and apparently decided to take his relationship with Ander to a new level by actually speaking to him. “I suspect Gerard is capable of making his way here unescorted.”
    Considering that Gerard was capable of world-gating an eighty-eight-thousand-ton passenger liner, he was probably right. Leaving them to it, Tremaine went down the hall and started up the stairs. The second-floor landing gave on to another hallway with a sitting area at the far end beneath a curtained bay window. There were four doors off the hall, all open, and all the lights were on. She looked into rooms until she spotted her carpetbag, a couple of Syprian leather packs, Ilias’s sword in its scabbard and one of the wooden carved cases that held arrows and a goathorn bow, all piled on a dark bureau.
    She wandered inside. The carpets and upholstery were all dark, the furniture of a heavy wood in a bulky style out of fashion even for Capidara, and there was a fire in the hearth. There was also a radiator in the corner, but it was cold. She supposed she should feel lucky for the electricity, such as it was. God, I wonder what the plumbing is like. She buried her face in her hands. Best not to find out just at the moment. But it was better than being one of the poor bastards at the refugee hostel, with nowhere to go.
    Needing to distract herself, she checked the carpetbag to make sure her journal and the folder with Arites’s papers were all there, but someone, probably Ilias, had packed it carefully. She had left most of Arites’s writing stored on the Ravenna, since it would need to return to Cineth, but she was using his partially complete dictionary to teach herself to read Syrnaic. She shut the door and quickly changed out of the new but uncomfortable dress suit and into Syprian clothing. The shirt she pulled out of her bag was a faded gold and the pants a soft dark blue, each with block-printed designs along the hem and with seams reinforced by braided leather. It was the first time she had worn this shirt and she discovered it had ties to allow the sleeves to be looped up and secured at the shoulder, leaving the arms bare. A sensible arrangement for a garment that might be worn on a fishing boat, but it was too cool to wear like