smells of large towns made Ana anxious, and even now, she tried to quiet the unease roiling in her stomach as they walked.
Yet she found her eyes lingering on objects unwittingly: the traditional silver-blue of a kechyan cloak, the bright red of a damashka nesting doll, the glint of white-gold hoop earrings. She could, so clearly in her mind’s eye, see these objects as she’d known them back in her world, in the Salskoff Palace. Luka, donning his Imperial kechyan with the white tiger’s emblem; Papa, kneeling by her bed with her first damashka in his large hands; Mama, sitting on a settee beneath a high Palace window, her earrings catching the sun as she swept her beautiful dark hair over her shoulder.
Her throat burned with the unexpected ache of tears. She blinked and turned her attention to the nearest object of distraction: an open-door warehouse.
Sultry heat rolled out in welcome waves, and the strike of a hammer against molten metal rang against the early-evening sounds of the town. Yet in the shadows, there was something else.
A young boy with black hair and tired eyes knelt by a furnace, his palms upturned, his back bent like a hook. Soot covered his face, but even from here, his features marked him as coming from one of the Aseatic Isles. But his midnight eyes sat atop sunken cheeks, drained of life and whittled down to bone.
“You, boy!” shouted the blacksmith, his hammer pausing in the air. “The fire needs to be stronger!”
The boy’s eyes flicked to the blacksmith. Hunching over, he turned his palms to the flames. They brightened, dancing bursts of gold and orange that melted into a bloodred core.
A year ago, her gaze might have swept over this scene as an ordinary aspect of daily life in her empire. Just another Affinite at work, earning his living like Yuri and the other Affinites at the Palace. She remembered how Yuri would go to town and bring back treats for her, sneaking into her chambers late at night when Markov took up his shift by her door. Yuri had been content; he’d been earning enough to feed a mother and a younger sister in some village down south.
But now, watching the Aseatic Isles boy huddle over the fire, his soot-stained face streaked with sweat and misery, she found a shadow of doubt creeping over her thoughts.
A little under a year ago, she had seen the same sadness in the lines of May’s eyes, in the hollows of her cheeks, in the sag of her skinny shoulders that tried to pitch up the dirty, ill-fitting tunic she’d been given to wear. The quiet despair in the Aseatic boy’s eyes cast a mirror image to May’s back then.
A cold foreboding spread through her; Ana found her steps slowing. The streets were filled with people laughing, chattering, passing the blacksmith’s shop without a care in the world. Had she been just like them one year past? She wanted to reach out to the boy, to speak to him, to do something.
A hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling her from her thoughts. The world flooded back in a whirl of colors and sounds, and she realized that Ramson Quicktongue had been saying her name. Before she could jerk away, he drew her and May into the nearest shop.
The door clicked shut behind her, a bell chimed overhead, and the smell of wood wafted over to them from a fireplace in the back.
They stood in a shop for lacquer art. Tigers and vases lined the shelves while swans and icehawks and phoenixes twirled gently before the windows, all painted with swirling patterns of leaves, snowflakes, and fruits. Instinctively, Ana wedged herself between May and Ramson, glaring at the con man. “What are you doing?”
He stooped, his eyes trained on something moving outside the windows.
Beyond the lacquered fowl figurines, on the cobblestone streets outside, a procession passed by. Three horses trotted through the streets, their riders’ snowy-white cloaks flowing proudly behind. Silver tiger crests flashed on the riders’ chests, and blackstone swords gleamed at their belts.
“Whitecloaks,” Ramson muttered by her ear.
Imperial Patrols—the highest order of soldiers in the Cyrilian Imperial Army, they were peacekeepers, intended to monitor and quell any clashes between citizens and Affinites. Most important, though, armed with blackstone and Deys’voshk, they were trained to fight Affinites should they get out of hand.
Ana remembered visiting cities in her childhood, before her Affinity had manifested. She’d felt inexplicably safe in the presence of the Patrols’ billowing