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why? Why was he different? Why had he been so long alone, so long hungry for simple acknowledgment
     from another human being?
    Wraith ran a finger over one of the pieces of fruit Solander had sent. He’d lost so many people. With each one he lost, he
     lost another part of himself, because when he alone remembered the things that happened, it was as if they had not happened.
     Only when he had someone to talk to and to remember with did he feel that he had really existed at all.
    He took a bite of the fruit, marveling at its sweetness and the way it quenched both his thirst and his hunger at the same
     time. To him it represented wealth—more than the grand houses of the Aboves, more than the streets built on air, that single
     piece of fresh fruit, intact, unbruised, and free from maggots and flies, spoke of a life that he wanted to have, and wanted
     to share. With Shina—the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl he still loved and still cried out for in his nightmares. It was the
     best of the world he had wanted to give her. Of everything that he had fought for, of everyone he had tried to save, only
     Jess remained—the youngest. The one who had shared the least with him. He would have traded her for any of the rest.
    But he tried to be grateful that at least she survived, and that he did not go to his new life alone.

    Solander sat in his room working on the distance viewing kit his father had brought for him from the research base in Benedicta,
     when the doorman rang his room. Solander snapped his fingers to activate the speaking spell and said, “I’m here, Enry. What
     do you need?”
    “There’s a boy here for you,
Ris
Solander. He says his name is … er, Wraith. Were you expecting him?”
    “He’s a friend of mine,” Solander said. “Bring him in, will you? I can’t get the pieces on this
dorfing
kit to go together, but I don’t want to leave it right now. I think I almost see where I’m going wrong.”
    “Yes,
ris.
I’ll bring him straightaway.”
    He must have taken Wraith by the long way, though, for Solander already had the lens fitted against the spell-projector and
     was connecting them when Wraith finally tapped at his door.
    Solander watched Wraith as the Warrener nodded polite thanks to Enry. Nothing the boy did would have told Solander that he
     was from the lowest of the lower classes. A chadri like the merchant who imported silks and brought samples to the house would
     duck his head to any stolti. A mufere like Enry kept his head down and averted his eyes unless spoken to directly, and never
     spoke uninvited or about something not within the realm of his duty as houseman. A parvoi would have hidden himself from the
     presence of a stolti. And Wraith was a Warrener, even lower—if not by much—than a parvoi. Considering that, Wraith’s complete
     lack of awe or respect seemed to Solander astonishing, if fortunate. Just as well Solander had given the boy some of his own
     clothing, though; the questions Wraith’s old clothes would have raised with the houseman might have found their way to Solander’s
     father—and who needed that? Not Solander. He was simply grateful to have come through his father’s last test without making
     an ass of himself again.
    The houseman gave Wraith the same bow he would have given Solander and said, “
Ris
Wraith, when you need to leave you may call on me. I have greatly enjoyed our talk.” Wraith nodded politely and smiled at
     Enry, and met his eye; the houseman was first to look away.
    This pleased Solander. Wraith had none of the subservient characteristics of the lower classes. He acted exactly like the
     highest of the stolti—like Solander or any of his cousins. When Solander brought Wraith and his friends into the house and
     presented them to his father as relatives from someplace far away, Wraith would have to look Solander’s father in the eye—Solander’s
     father, who made everyone nervous— lie about where he came from and who he was,