Ambros was quiet through dinner. He picked at his food, which was very good. Briar took pity on the man and helped himself to bits when it was plain Ambros wouldn’t eat it all. Even the sight of Chime discovering she did not like mushrooms failed to engage Ambros’s quiet sense of humor. Finally, as the dishes were removed by wide-eyed servants—the advocate had told the hostlers what she had come there to do, and the hostlers had spread the word—Gudruny asked, “My lord Cleham, what occupies your thoughts? Repairs that you can now order done?”
Ambros looked at her. His face lit with a smile that he shared with them all, one that turned his eyes to pale blue diamonds. “Actually,” he said, his voice cracking slightly, “I believe I will confer with my fellow members of the Noble Assembly. It is time, and past, that the forced marriage of unprotected women is banned in Namorn.”
That night, Sandry lay awake, listening to Gudruny’s soft breathing, her son’s muffled snorts, and her daughter’s occasional mutter. Others might find the company, and the close quarters, annoying, but she liked it. Here were three lives she had wrested from Namorn and that disgusting custom. And she had come to like Gudruny’s steadiness and common sense. At first she’d meant to find Gudruny some other post when she got home, but not any longer. Unless Gudruny wanted to leave her service, Sandry would keep her as her maid. She liked having Gudruny—and the children—around.
Listening to them, she felt a tug in her magic, in a part of her that had not been active in far too long. She followed that magical tie and found herself emerging into the direct sunlight of a summer afternoon at Winding Circle. She stood on a familiar straw-thatched roof. It gave off the rich scent of sun-bleached hay as she sat down on it. When she looked around she saw Tris. Unlike their last time on the roof, this was not the child Tris, but Tris the adult, who wore her many braids tucked into a silk net. She lay flat on the straw close by, hands clasped behind her neck, staring dreamily at the clouds that moved overhead. Briar straddled the peak of the roof, a piece of straw sticking from his mouth. Daja, too, straddled the roof, leaning back against the stone chimney of Discipline cottage.
“How did you do this—create this so it actually feels real?” asked Sandry, delighted. “I can smell, I can hear ... which of you did it?” Below, she could see Rosethorn’s garden in full summer extravagance. Around them spread the temple. The spiral road was empty: Very few people cared to venture along its unshaded length during the post-midday rest period during the blast of Mead and Wort Moons. Yet the long hand on the Hub clock moved as it ticked off the minutes. The wind brushed Sandry’s face as it carried the scents of lavender and herbs into her nostrils.
“I did,” Briar admitted. “I was locked up for a while in Gyongxe. It was either go mad imagining what might happen to me, or ... retreat, inside me. I made it, inside my power.” He lay back on the peak, balancing easily. “After that—I did things I’m not proud of when I got out. It was a bloody mess. Thousands died who should have lived. I don’t know why I’m here, and they aren’t. I didn’t want any of you knowing that. I didn’t want you knowing I thought I should be dead. That’s why I shut you out.”
Silence stretched. It was all he could tell them for now.
“Mine is just silly,” admitted Tris. “So many of the mages I met with Niko took it so personally that I learned to scry the winds that I forgot who you all were. Niko acted like it was something you had to expect—that when you learn a strange kind of magic, one that so many fail at, you have to expect jealousy. I don’t want people to be jealous, I don’t want them to be anything. I was afraid to find out you’d be like them.” She hung her head. “I’m just too gaudy. That’s why I want to go to Lightsbridge. So I can just do what I want and people won’t stare at me.”
Daja and Sandry exchanged shrugs, as if to say, That’s Tris for you.
“I made something that helped Ben Ladradun kill a lot of people,” Daja told them somberly. “So many. I thought catching him and seeing him get an arsonist’s sentence would fix it in my heart, make it right, but it never did. I still liked him. So I helped kill him fast, so he wouldn’t be in pain. I didn’t want you to know something of mine—something of ours, because it was living metal, and we were all part of that—caused so many deaths. I can’t forgive myself, some days. I didn’t think you could.” She closed her eyes, her full mouth quivering.
Sandry looked down at her knees. She wore pink, as she had that same day in the advocate’s office. “I tore three people to pieces to save the life of my student,” she said flatly. She heard Tris draw a deep breath. “Did you think I would be safe at home? They were murderers, they were being eaten alive by unmagic, with little humanity left in them. There was no other way, and yet—” She put her face on her knees.
“So now we know the things we hid from each other,” Tris said drily after a while. “Does it change anything?”
“How could it?” Briar wanted to know. “Fighting off those pirates didn’t make us hate each other. We knew why we did it. Not being able to forgive ourselves isn’t the same as understanding each other. We’re a lot easier on each other than we are on ourselves. As for you, Coppercurls, you’ve always been fooling around with the weird magics.”
“That’s just you, Tris,” said Daja.
Sandry lifted her head. “I wouldn’t be you for a thousand gold majas, Tris. I see the way people twitch around you. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
Tris looked at her. “So we’re a circle again.”
“Suits me,” Briar said. “I never knew how much I missed it till we came back.”
“Till we remade us,” said Daja. “Till Berenene reforged us.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t thank her,” Sandry told them as she lay back on the thatch. “She may be related to me by blood, but I much prefer the family I chose.”
“Briar, can we come back here?” Daja asked. “Will this be here?”
“I made it for us,” he replied, surprised she hadn’t realized it. Here, in this place, they could feel what he felt. “All right, I made it for me first, but it was us. It is us.”
It’s always us, the four said.