The talk Lizzy promised came that night.
Everyone else had gone quiet. Elara was asleep in her chair again, which was starting to look like a choice. The girl had curled up on the cot with her back to the wall, facing the room, the way people slept when they'd learned not to trust what was behind them. The golden-haired man was gone. He'd left an hour ago without saying where, same as always.
Dawn was on the inn's roof.
It wasn't really a roof, more a flat ledge of pale blue stone that ran along the top floor, but it was quiet and nobody came up there. The ring above the city had dimmed to its night color, a dull silver that barely lit anything. Below, the merchant district was still awake. It never fully slept. Lanterns, voices, somewhere a fight that ended as fast as it started.
He heard her before he saw her. Lizzy never bothered to be quiet around him.
"Found you," she said, dropping down beside him and letting her legs hang over the edge.
"Wasn't hiding."
"You were a little bit hiding."
He didn't argue.
They sat there for a while. Lizzy kicked her heels against the stone. Dawn watched the lanterns.
"So," she said eventually. "The kid."
"Yeah."
"What she said." Lizzy pushed her glasses up. "*It only took them somewhere it thought was better.* Dawn, she wasn't in Rinzard. She's from here. How does she know anything about that light?"
"I don't know."
"Did you tell her? About Rinzard?"
"I didn't tell her anything. I barely got her to say yes."
Lizzy chewed on that. "Then she heard me tell it."
"She was asleep when you told me downstairs," Dawn said. "And she said it before you got close to that part upstairs. You were still on the palace."
Lizzy went quiet.
Dawn had been going over it all afternoon. The timing didn't work. Nothing about it worked. A slave kid from the bottom of Crysallis, on the other side of the world from Rinzard, talking about the beams like she'd watched them up close. And not just describing them. Saying what they *wanted*.
"Maybe she's a seer," Lizzy said. "Some sequencers get flashes. Pieces of things."
"She doesn't have stars."
Lizzy looked at him.
"I checked," he said. "Nothing. No constellation pushing through, no arcana. Same as those people in the market."
"Then what is she?"
"No idea." He leaned back on his hands. "Add it to the list."
"There's a list?"
"There's a very long list."
Lizzy snorted. Then she was quiet again, and when she spoke next her voice was lower.
"That guy. Goldy."
"Don't call him that to his face."
"You call him that."
"Not to his face."
"Fine." She tapped her fingers on the stone. "Earlier, when I was talking. I was going to say something about him and then it just. Wasn't there. Like I walked into a room and forgot why." She glanced at Dawn. "That's him, isn't it."
"Yeah."
"Does he do that a lot?"
"Only when you get close to asking his name."
Lizzy stared at him. "That's insane."
"Yep."
"And you're fine with that?"
"I'm not fine with any of it, Liz." It came out flatter than he meant. He rubbed his face. "I'm just tired of being surprised. Every day it's something. Titans. Floating islands. A guy who can turn off part of your brain by looking at you. At some point you stop reacting and just write it down."
Lizzy looked at him for a long time. Long enough that he started to feel it.
"You okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine."
"You said that downstairs too."
"Still true."
She didn't push. That was the thing about Lizzy that nobody else got. She was loud about everything except the things that actually mattered.
Below them a cart rumbled past, crystal slabs rattling in the back.
"The collar," Dawn said.
Lizzy's ears flicked. "Yeah. I was going to bring that up."
"I want it off."
"I figured." She pulled one knee up and rested her chin on it. "It's not that easy. I've been here four days, I asked around. The collars down here aren't just metal. They're sealed. Arcana work, tied to whoever owns them. You pull too hard and it does something."
"Does what?"
"Nobody would say. Which isn't great."
Dawn's jaw tightened. "So who takes them off?"
"Whoever put it on. Or someone who knows sealwork well enough to undo it." She shrugged. "There's supposed to be someone in the district. An old crafter. People talk about him like he's half a joke and half a ghost. Lives somewhere in the eastern alleys."
"You know where?"
"I know roughly where."
"Roughly."
"Roughly is better than nothing, Dawn."
He let out a breath through his nose. "Tomorrow then."
Lizzy grinned. "Look at you. Two days in this city and you've already adopted a kid and started a side quest."
"I didn't adopt anyone."
"She follows you around."
"She follows me around because I'm the only one who hasn't hit her."
That landed heavier than he'd meant it to. Lizzy's grin faded.
"...Yeah," she said quietly.
Neither of them said anything for a while after that.
---
Downstairs, Elara wasn't actually asleep.
She'd heard the door at the end of the hall open and close an hour ago. She'd heard it again just now. She opened her eyes and found the golden-haired man standing at the window like he'd never left.
"You did it to her," Elara said. Not loud. The girl on the cot didn't stir.
He didn't turn around. "Did what."
"The girl with the ears. Lizzy. She was about to say something about you and you took it out of her head."
"I took nothing. She simply decided not to ask."
"She didn't decide anything." Elara sat up properly. "You did that to Dawn too. In the morning, before the Guild. I saw it."
Silence.
"Why?" she asked. "Your name isn't a secret from me. I remember it, even with everything else gone. So why hide it from them?"
The golden-haired man was quiet for a long time. Outside, the silver light of the ring caught the edge of his face.
"Because a name is a door, Elara," he said finally. "And I don't know yet what's waiting on the other side of it in this era."
She looked at him.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Elara held his gaze for a while. Then she lay back down and turned her face away from him.
"You used to be better at lying," she said quietly.
He didn't respond.
But he didn't deny it either.
---
The eastern alleys of the merchant district were worse than anything Dawn had walked through so far.
They left early the next day, before the ring had fully turned gold. Dawn, Lizzy, and the girl, who had stood up from the cot the moment Dawn reached for his coat and simply followed. Nobody told her to. Nobody told her not to.
The alleys were narrow enough that the three of them had to walk single file in places. The crystal walls here weren't just dim, they were dead. Grey and dull, cracked through, some of them patched with scrap metal and cloth. The light from the ring didn't reach this far down. People had strung lanterns between the buildings instead, cheap ones that flickered and buzzed.
Lizzy walked in front, reading the turns from memory. Dawn walked behind the girl.
He noticed how people looked at them. Not the way they'd looked at him in the plaza, open and curious. These people looked and then looked away fast. The kind of looking that meant they'd already decided whatever was walking past was trouble, and the smartest thing to do was not be involved.
"Charming place," Dawn muttered.
"I warned you," Lizzy said over her shoulder.
"You said roughly."
"Roughly includes charming."
They turned a corner. Then another. Lizzy stopped twice to ask directions from people who clearly didn't want to give them. One old woman, missing most of her teeth, pointed down a passage without a word and then shut her door hard.
At the end of the passage was a door.
It was ordinary. Wood, which was strange enough on its own in a city made of crystal. No sign, no markings. Just a door with a small brass bell hanging beside it.
Lizzy looked at Dawn. Dawn looked at the bell.
"Well," Lizzy said. "Ring it."
"You ring it."
"You're the one who wants the collar off."
Dawn sighed and rang it.
For a long moment nothing happened.
Then the door opened about three inches, and an eye looked out at them. Grey, old, sharp. It moved from Lizzy to Dawn and then dropped down to the girl standing between them.
It stopped on the collar.
The door didn't open any wider. But the eye didn't move away either. It stayed on the markings etched into the metal for a long time, longer than it needed to, and Dawn watched it go from irritated to something else entirely.
"...Where did you get that child," the old man said quietly.
"Plaza," Dawn said. "Two days ago. Her owner was beating her. We'd like it off."
The eye flicked back up to him.
"You don't know whose mark that is, do you, boy."
"Should I?"
The old man was quiet for a moment.
Then the door opened the rest of the way.
"Get inside," he said. "All three of you. Before anyone sees you standing here with her."