Sid.

an didn’t exactly obey Iri’s order. As soon as Iri hung up the phone, and before she could arrive, Yan pressed the palm of her hand to Sid’s door. She unlocked it with the power; although she knew this would set off alarms in Stonecourt, she didn’t think anyone would mind her doing it. Kino watched her apathetically as Yan shoved open the door and burst inside.

The interior of Sid’s apartment was very clean— sterile, even— because he had thoroughly put everything away in preparation for their trip to Olar. The few hours in which he might have been inside it had done nothing to disrupt its dark order. She immediately saw his phone sitting on the coffee table, and she picked it up and tried to unlock it. She didn’t know his password, though, so this was useless.

She made a cursory inspection of all of the obvious surfaces in the apartment— desk, dining table, counters, bookshelves— looking to see if Sid had left a note. He hadn’t, at least none that Yan could see. His computer and tablet and everything official of his was left dumped on his bed, like he had shaken it all out of his bag. His closet contained all his cassocks, but when Yan pulled open his bureau drawers, she found that they had been cleaned out of socks and underwear, and none of his casual tee-shirts remained. He was running, and he had somehow managed to leave the building without anyone noticing.

For someone with the power, it was probably very easy to leave unnoticed, even if he hadn’t messed with the cameras. All the cameras and security surrounding their apartment were meant to detect intrusions, not escapes. After all, it wasn’t like they were prisoners. Still, Yan glanced around the apartment, and discovered that one of the wooden dining chairs was missing, leaving an odd number.

Yan had a sinking feeling that she knew exactly what Sid had done. She investigated the back window, not the one in his bedroom that looked out over the fire escape, but the other one in his bathroom. She compared the size of a dining chair to the window frame, saw the evidence of fingerprints on the outside of the glass, where Sid must have pressed his hand for support.

As Yan examined this, Iri arrived, followed in to the apartment by Kino, who shuffled around silently, not investigating so much as observing.

“No one saw him leave,” Iri said, out of breath as she found Yan in the bathroom.

Yan pointed at the handprint on the outside of the glass.

“It’s too high up for him to climb down,” Iri said.

Yan went back out into the dining area, followed by Iri, and sat down on one of the nice dining chairs. She gripped the seat with white knuckles, and it was a very simple matter to grab the chair with the power and lift it wholesale off the ground, with her on it. It was a stupid trick, one that led to the lion’s share of injuries among young students at the Academy, before they figured out that getting distracted while fifteen feet in the air was a great way to break an arm, at best. Sid, with years of experience using the power, could probably maneuver himself safely up and away— for at least as long as it would take to get out of sight of all the building’s cameras.

“Fuck,” Iri said as Yan levitated in the chair before her.

Yan dropped back down to the ground with a thump. “He’s gone,” she said. “He took all his casual clothes. I think he’s running, not just doing something momentarily stupid.”

“Any clue how long he’s been gone?”

Yan pulled Sid’s phone from her pocket and tried to glean how long it had been by the amount of charge remaining, but there was no real way to tell.

“Where’s Hernan?” Yan asked, wondering if Sid’s minder had any clues.

“He’s gone home,” Iri said. “Unlike me, he didn’t have to be on duty all afternoon. I think he actually has all of next week off, technically. Everyone who came to Olar was given some time off— everyone on duty now is temporarily reassigned from Stonecourt general security”

“You should have told Halen to let you go home immediately,” Yan said, feeling bad that she had delayed Iri from taking time off. This momentarily distracted her from Sid’s disappearance.

“Forget about that right now,” Iri said. “I’ve alerted—”

“Don’t tell Sandreas and Halen,” Yan said. “They’ll be so mad.”

“You think this can be kept a secret from Halen?” Iri asked. “You’re incredible.”

“No— I’m sure he’ll find out eventually, but if we can get Sid to come back before Halen has to get involved, then Sandreas will have less reason to be mad.”

“You think so,” Iri said. But she sighed. “I’ve already let the rest of the security team know that something is up, if you breaking in hadn’t alerted them already. I can’t keep this a secret. And I’m on thin ice with First Sandreas— I don’t think I would keep my job if I didn’t follow procedure for this.”

“Can you at least tell them it’s not an emergency, and that Halen doesn’t need to be notified right this second?” she begged.

“You think you can find him?” Iri asked. “Do you have any clues where he might be?”

“He’s pretty conspicuous,” Yan said. “I think he’s probably aiming for the elevator. And he’ll have to show ID at the very least to go up, and a note from a captain to board a ship, probably, unless he thinks that just his name will be enough to get a ship to take him on as a passenger. And he’d have to get on a plane to get to the elevator in the first place.”

Iri pinched her lips. “He could be taking a train to the elevator. Don’t need ID for that if he chains local route to local route. I don’t know how much of a rush he’s in. And how do you know he’s headed there?”

“He wanted to stay behind on the First Star until it docked,” Yan said. “I think he’s looking for a way off planet. He might be going back to Galena.”

Iri was thinking out loud. “That’s where his family is. Right. Did he say he wanted to leave?”

“No,” Yan said. “I mean, you you know he’s been weird, but— I didn’t think—”

“Yeah, of course not. You would have kept an eye on him if you had thought he was going to do something stupid.”

“Yeah,” Yan said. She bit her lip, feeling guilty about having not put the pieces together before this second, and for giving Sid too much time to slip out from under her nose. If she hadn’t gone with Sylva, she might have noticed him leaving. She definitely would have noticed him using the power to fly away. But it probably hadn’t just been pure impulse on Sid’s part to leave as soon as Yan was out of the way— he had clearly been thinking about it for a while. Maybe the best she could have done by staying nearby was delay it— after all, she would leave the building sometime

There was a moment of painful silence. “Right,” Iri said, gathering her thoughts. “I’m going to get a watch set up at every train station, bus station, everything.”

“Without telling Halen?”

“Look, Yan, he’s going to find out. You’ll be lucky if the only thing that Sid gets is yelled at.”

Kino spoke up. She had gone to look out the window, and wasn’t facing Yan and Iri. “You should let him get what he wants,” Kino said.

“What?” Yan asked, shocked.

“He wants to leave. Let him go,” Kino reiterated. “Even you think that Sandreas might dismiss him anyway. Just let him go.”

“No!” Yan said. “He’s making a huge mistake— leaving everything he has here.”

“Not everything,” Kino said. “He has a home to go back to.”

That was a low blow. Yan stood. “I’m not going to let him throw away his life. Why would you want him to? You can’t hate him that much.”

“I don’t hate him,” Kino said. She still hadn’t turned around to look at Yan. “He’s making the right choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kino turned around, and the expression on her usually still face surprised Yan. Her eyebrows were furrowed, but her eyes were wide— it wasn’t an expression of disdain for Sid, at the very least. “He doesn’t want to be responsible for all of this,” she said. “Let him put it down.” She was almost begging.

“That’s not why he’s leaving,” Yan said.

“Then why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But Sid isn’t— he doesn’t want to avoid responsibility. He just…”

Kino turned away again. “It’s better to let him go.”

“No,” Yan said. “I’m going to find him. You don’t have to help, but I am going to. Iri?”

“Regardless of Sid’s feelings,” Iri said. “I think it is important to make sure that he hasn’t been kidnapped.”

That was a possibility that Yan hadn’t even considered, and her blood ran cold. “Do you think—”

“No,” Iri said. “But Halen and First Sandreas would want to make sure that he’s safe. And if he wants to go back home, then he can do it by leaving in a way that doesn’t embarrass the whole government.”

“Right,” Yan said. “Right. Kino— even if we find him, he might still want to leave. I don’t think First Sandreas would stop him.”

“But you would,” Kino said. “That’s why he left without telling you.”

“How could I stop him?” Yan asked. “Clearly he—”

“He’s your friend,” Kino said, as if that explained it all. Maybe it did.

Although this bolstered Yan’s resolve to find Sid, she just frowned. “Are you going to help find him or not?”

“If you want me to,” Kino said. She closed her eyes briefly. “But I won’t try to make him stay.”

If that was as good as Yan was going to get, she would take it. Having two power users search for Sid was far easier than having just one.

Iri was looking around the apartment to see if there were any further clues about where Sid had gone. She fished through the pile of stuff he had left on his bed. “His wallet isn’t here,” she said. “Probably means he took his charge card and is intending to spend money somewhere.”

“You can track that?” Yan asked.

“I will put in some phone calls to get that data to me, yes,” Iri said.

“Ah,” Yan said. She didn’t know how she felt about all her purchases being visible to Halen— not like she ever bought anything in particular— but she should have probably assumed that they were. It was helpful now, at least. “Do that, then.”

“I will while we’re in the car.” She gestured for Yan and Kino to follow her out, and they left Sid’s apartment and headed downstairs to where the car was waiting, still full of the security staff who had been watching over Yan and Sylva. “Airport, train station, bus stop…?” Iri asked Yan as they got in the car.

“Let’s drive around this area first,” Yan said. “Maybe he hasn’t gone very far. And you make the calls you need to— and that might give us some clues.”

The car pulled out into traffic, and they started to circle in an ever widening radius. Yan closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window. She would have looked asleep to any observer, but she was deeply immersed in the power, casting it out in a wide bubble, passing over every person and car and building that they passed, searching for the familiar feeling of Sid. The panic of losing him gave her an extra push, her power extending half a block further than it had any right to; she was focused like the edge of a knife, much like she had been on the Sky Boat . But this time, there was no need for her to push her feelings away. She needed to find Sid.

Next to her, Kino was doing the same; Yan only felt her slippery power when it passed directly through her own body, but she was comforted to know that Kino was searching with her. Yan tuned out the sound of Iri making phone calls. They drove around the area for about a half hour, moving in the opposite direction from Stonecourt, but no matter how far out Yan cast her power, there was no sign of Sid. Every second that stretched on was one where Sid was getting further away.

Iri’s phone calls ended after some time, and she silently tapped out messages on her phone. To whom, Yan didn’t know. At this point, the fear was really beginning to set in, and, although she knew logically that there were only so many places for Sid to go, and nowhere for him to hide while on Emerri, she still couldn’t help but feel a kind of despair. She was tempted to change her mind and get Iri to call Halen directly to find Sid. When Yan imagined this happening, she pictured Halen finding him instantly.

But that would have been worse for Sid, she thought. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if Halen was the one to find and confront Sid, there would be no way he would return to his apprenticeship. He would leave. Kino must not have realized that, or must have thought that there was no way that she and Yan would actually find Sid, because she would have pushed for Halen to do the searching in that case.

“Got him,” Iri said triumphantly. “Got you now.”

Yan’s eyes flew open. “Where is he?”

“A convenience store near the train station,” Iri said. “Looks like you were right, and it looks like he’s buying himself some dinner. He withdrew a bunch of cash.” The car immediately turned in that direction, the driver swerving through traffic effortlessly.

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“How long ago was this?”

“About a half hour.”

“Are there any trains that have left since then?”

Iri checked. “No, and there aren’t any heading anywhere in the direction of the elevator for the rest of the night, actually. He’s probably going to have to find somewhere to wait. I doubt he wants to wait in the station, even if he has to buy his ticket now. He might be doing that with cash, to avoid the travel logs having too much of a record of him.”

That was Sid: clever enough to know to avoid that type of monitoring, but forgetful about how far Halen and Sandreas’s security apparatus could extend.

Yan gripped her knees as the drove, and only resumed searching for Sid with the power when they came closer to the train station. Yan didn’t feel Sid inside as they pulled up.

“He’s not here,” Yan said.

“He’ll have to come here eventually, even if we can’t find him now,” Iri said. She ordered a couple of the security force to head inside anyway and watch for Sid and speak to the stationmaster and station security.

As the car idled in the passenger drop off zone, Yan squeezed her eyes shut and extended her power to the maximum extent of its range, trying to sense even the tiniest hint of Sid’s presence. But he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

“Is there anywhere around here that would be a good place to wait for a train, if he’s not going to sit in the station?” Yan asked. She wasn’t very familiar with this part of Yora city. The train station was closer to the edge of the city, among some of the slightly more industrial areas and the outskirts that turned into forest. Yan had rarely had opportunity or reason to come here while she was a student. She wished momentarily that Sylva was with her, since Sylva had often taken the train to visit her family elsewhere on Emerri. She knew this part of the city well.

Iri looked out the window. “There’s the nature park not far from here,” she said. “Is Sid a camper?”

“I don’t know,” Yan said. “But that’s not a place that a lot of people would go during the night, so it might make sense if he’s trying not to be seen.”

“Let’s go,” Iri said. “And keep watching the streets while we drive. He could have done the easy thing and gotten a hotel, or found a cafe to sit in all night. There’s not much in the way of that in easy walking distance of here, though,” Iri said. “And I doubt he took a bus elsewhere.”

Yan nodded, and the car sped off, taking a new, winding route away from the train station. She kept casting out her power, fishing for Sid. None of the buildings seemed likely at all, and her search in that direction overlapped with places she had looked on their drive in. But the forest on the other side of the tracks seemed more and more promising, dark and deep.

They drove along the outskirts of it, and Yan’s power glanced over something familiar: a glimpse of Sid, moving quickly. Faster than walking. The feeling of him disappeared as quickly as it had come— she had just brushed him on the very far edge of her range, and now had lost him again, but it jolted her like an electric shock, and she sat bolt upright in her seat.

“Stop!” she yelled. “I felt him!”

They were unfortunately driving along a busy road without a shoulder, and the park area was surrounded by a high chain link fence. Neither of these obstacles truly would have stopped them, but as Yan breathlessly explained that she had lost Sid’s trace, Iri decided it would be fine to keep driving until they could park the car and enter the park thorough a gate.

Now that Sid was located, Iri seemed relieved, like the whole situation was suddenly less urgent. But for Yan, the urgency only ramped up. She wanted to leap from the car and find Sid immediately, to run headlong through the dark woods until she found him, to track him down with all her power.

She leaned forward in her seat, straining physically just as she strained with the power.

“Calm down, Yan,” Iri said. “We’ll find him.”

“I know.” But that didn’t stop the feeling of urgency. It was Kino’s hand on Yan’s arm that made her relax a little, Kino pushing her back into her seat. Yan glanced at her, ready to be annoyed, but Kino’s expression was one more of a wide-eyed sympathy than anything. Yan slumped back until the car parked, and then she did jump out, stumbling on the gravel lot and barely catching herself from falling.

The nature park was dark, the sun having gone down behind the tall, thick pines. The whole air was full of their smell, and their discarded brown needles slid with a shushing sound beneath Yan’s feet, softening the crunch of the gravel. The wind blew, and the trees groaned and creaked. The whole scene had an air of desolation about it, and it made Yan shiver.

Iri opened the trunk of the car to grab some of the standard security equipment that they came with: flashlights and everything else, but Kino made that unnecessary. With the power, she gathered dry pine needles into a ball in the air, and lit them on fire— a glowing glob of torchlight that she kept contained to light the whole path in front of them, far better than the flashlights that Iri carried.

Yan turned to the few remaining members of the security team. “You should stay here, or not follow us,” she said. “I don’t want to scare Sid.”

Iri was on the verge of disagreeing, but she gave the order to agree with Yan. If anything was going to go wrong, it seemed unlikely that the two security forces members, neither of whom were power users, would be able to do something that Yan and Kino couldn’t. All they would be would be extra eyes on the scene, and Yan and Kino were both going to be hyper-aware of everything around them as they searched for Sid using the power.

Yan began to jog off into the woods. It was difficult to keep her bearing on the loose dirt riddled with rocks and tangled tree roots, especially in the dark with only the dancing light of Kino’s fireball before her illuminating the way. She eventually gave up on looking with her eyes, closing them and using her power to guide her steps, giving herself a topographic map of the area in front of her feet as she took in her awareness of the huge hemisphere of the world before her. Sid was out there somewhere, and she would find him.

Kino was looking around with keener eyes, studying the ground in front of them, looking not just for Sid in the power, but for any traces of the route that he might have followed. Any discarded granola bar wrapper on the ground was a potential clue, and any footprints, though it was unlikely that they belonged to Sid. There were many paths he could have taken, and Yan doubted they were on the right one. Iri seemed to know her way around the trails, and she directed Yan and Kino down the widest one, the one that would bring them most deeply into the park as quickly as possible.

Although it felt like an eternity, their jog through the dark forest, and it left Yan out of breath, it couldn’t have been very long before she caught wind of Sid again. He moved into and out of her detection radius for a little while longer, and Yan hastened their pace, but after about five more minutes of this finding him and losing him again, he stayed a shining beacon in Yan’s mental view. He must have gotten tired of walking, because he had sat down on a rock, Yan could feel it. He didn’t know he was being followed, or he certainly would have kept moving, or found some way to evade them.

As they came closer, Yan wasn’t sure if it would be better to approach Sid directly, to let him know that they were coming, or to sneak up on him. It probably wouldn’t be idea to burst in to his clearing at a run, so Yan told Iri and Kino to slow down. It gave her a chance to catch her breath, anyway.

It didn’t matter that they were loud as they entered Sid’s clearing, and they ended up coming through the last line of trees behind him. He was sitting cross legged on a flat boulder, with a soda bottle next to him, and his dinner, a wrapped sandwich, on his knees. He was dressed in a windbreaker and jeans, with his hood pulled up over his head. Because he had his own glowing light source above him, he didn’t immediately notice the intrusion of Kino’s into the clearing, until the dancing shadows it caused made him turn his head and look behind him.

When he saw Yan, Kino, and Iri, he stood, knocking his sandwich to the ground. He looked around, balling his fists, and he seemed on the verge of running.

“Stop!” Yan signed. She saw that he wasn’t wearing his glasses— they were tucked inside his windbreaker pocket. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“You going to stop me?” Sid asked aloud.

“Where are you trying to go?” She kept having to sign, since he made no move to put his glasses on.

“None of your business,” Sid said. “I didn’t want to get you involved in this.”

“Are you quitting the apprenticeship?” Yan asked.

“It really doesn’t matter to you.” He folded his arms across his chest.

Kino stalked over to Sid. He flinched back when she reached out for the pocket on his chest where his glasses were resting, and he slapped her hand away when she tried to grab them. “Don’t touch me,” he said.

“She just wants to talk to you,” Yan signed.

Kino reached again for Sid’s glasses, and again was slapped back. Sid pulled the glasses out of his pocket and chucked them into the underbrush at the side of the clearing. Iri jogged to retrieve them.

“There’s nothing that anybody needs to say to me,” Sid said. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”

“She wants to let you leave,” Yan signed. “If there’s anyone you should want to speak to, it’s her. She’s not going to try to convince you to stay.”

“And you are?”

“I don’t understand,” Yan signed. She tried to put as much pleading in her gestures as she could, but the pleading was already bleeding out into anger. She was as annoyed at Sid as Kino was.

Iri found the glasses and held them out. Kino used the power to summon them out of her hand and into her own. Sid looked at her coldly for a moment before snatching them away and putting them on his face. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Explain to Yan why you want to leave,” Kino said. “It’s the least you can do.”

“Why?”

“She might go with you,” Kino said.

Sid narrowed his eyes at her. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked. “You’re trying to get rid of her?”

“No,” Kino said. “But it would be better if you both left.”

“So you want to be the only candidate for First.”

Kino cocked her head. “Yes.”

“Then why are you even here? Go away.”

“Yan asked me to come.”

“You could have just left me alone, if you wanted to come here and gloat over you winning and me losing.”

“I’m not gloating,” Kino said. She stared at Sid’s face, trying to make him understand something. “I wish—”

“What?” Sid said.

“Tell Yan why you’re leaving,” Kino said.

“It really doesn’t fucking matter! I can’t handle it, and Yan can! That’s all!”

“What can’t you handle?” Kino leaned towards him, getting in his face, and Sid shoved her back.

“You think I could convince Yan to leave with me— you’re fucking stupid. I don’t get people to follow me— this whole time I’ve just been doing whatever Yan wanted. Sandreas knows that I’m not good enough to do this stupid fucking job.”

Kino had been right: the reason Sid had snuck out without even saying goodbye was because he thought that she would try to convince him otherwise. It lifted Yan’s sprits, but she was not so stupid as to yell out that Sid should embrace following her and come back.

But what Sid had said made Kino stop and step back. It was not the answer that she had expected or wanted.

“Fine,” Kino said. Her voice grew cold more than it was flat. “Then prove you don’t just do what Yan says by leaving.”

“Kino!” Yan yelped. “Stop it!” She regretted bringing Kino with her. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time when they had left their apartments, but she seemed determined to make things worse. She really did want Sid to leave, for her own reasons.

“Maybe I will,” Sid said. He folded his arms, but he glanced at Yan with something half-genuine in his expression. “Sorry.”

“Are you really just leaving because of what Sandreas said?” Yan asked. “None of that matters.”

“It does.” He shrugged.”If I wouldn’t make a good First, there’s no reason for Sandreas to keep me. I’d rather quit than be fired.” Some of the anger had slipped away, but this half-logical justification was worse.

“He wouldn’t send you away.”

“Not even for this?”

“He doesn’t know you’ve left yet. I made Iri not tell him.” Yan didn’t know if this was actually true— Halen probably knew— but it was worth a try.

Sid let out a harsh laugh. “Sure.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Why not?” Sid asked. “You’re perfectly capable on your own. And you have Kino.”

“I—” There wasn’t really any way that she could express in words how much it had meant to her to have Sid by her side on the Sky Boat , and she didn’t think that he would appreciate her bringing it back up. “You’re my friend,” she said. “I don’t want to be without you.”

“Maybe Kino’s right.”

“About what?”

“I could convince you to come home with me instead, if you really do care that much. My sister would love you.”

“Sid—”

“I know. I’m joking.” He turned to Kino, who was scowling the ground. “Why did you say that?”

“Because you might have had a reason worth listening to,” she said, kicking at the ground. Pine needles scattered beneath her feet, revealing bare brown dirt.

“Such as?”

Kino’s whole posture stiffened, and she raised her voice. “I thought you might care about the meaning of the orders you could give. But you just want to be the one who comes up with the orders. You don’t care at all if people die. If you had said that you didn’t want blood on your hands, maybe Yan would follow you.” She turned away, and it was clear that she was restraining herself from lashing out at Sid. Her fists and jaw were clenched. “It’s better if you go, if you don’t care.”

“You think I don’t care?” Sid asked. He suddenly reached into his pocket, and a brief investigation with Yan’s power revealed that he was clutching his tin of vena, hard enough to deform the thin top of the tin with his fingers. His tone was becoming rough and unmodulated, losing control of the language that he usually put so much deliberate effort into. “You weren’t there, Kino. You don’t know anything about what it is like.”

“I don’t know!?” Kino yelled. And she whirled back around and leapt at Sid, reaching out to grab him by his collar.

The only reaction that Yan could think to have was to use the power to grab the back of both their shirts, and haul them back away from each other, both stumbling backwards on the loose ground. Yan let them go as soon as they were outside of each other’s arms’ reach.

“Stop it!” Yan yelled. “Just stop!”

Even though they had barely touched each other, Sid and Kino were both breathing heavily and glaring at each other.

“Sid,” Yan said, “if you really want to go, I can’t stop you. But you should at least tell Sandreas that you’re leaving. He won’t try to stop you if you really want to leave. I know he won’t.” She thought of her uncle, and the promise First Sandreas had made to him. She was sure the same thing was true for Sid and Kino, even if no one had been around to extract such promises from him.

“You’re not going to try to convince me to stay?”

Yan spread her hands helplessly, gesturing at Kino and Sid and the whole world. “I don’t want to make you miserable just because you’re my friend,” she said. “If you’d be happier going back to your family, or wherever it is that you want to go, I don’t want to hurt you by—” She had run out of words. “If you hate being First Sandreas’s apprentice, I— I know it’s not that you hate being my friend. It’s just the way life is.”

Sid switched to sign. Kino probably understood enough of it that she could understand their conversation if she paid attention, but it was still his private language with Yan, in a way. “Would you have come with me if I had found the right argument?” Sid asked. “Is Kino right?”

Yan thought about it for a second, then shook her head. It was the same answer she had given to Sandreas, the same answer she had given to her uncle, and— in a way— the same answer she had given to Sylva, a long time ago now. “I don’t think I could leave,” Yan replied.

“You’re stronger than I am.”

“No,” Yan said. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

She took a chance. “I don’t think you’re really going to leave, either.”

He almost got angry at her. She could see it in the way his shoulders stiffened, and the flash of a sneer across his face. But then his shoulders slumped. “I’m going to let you tell me what to do,” he said. “Just do what you want, and what Sandreas wants.”

“No,” Yan said. “That’s not right.”

“Then I’m going to stay just to spite her?” And he jerked his thumb in Kino’s direction.

“No.” She took a few steps closer to Sid, so close that it was almost difficult for him to see her sign near her chest. “You just understand that even if someone is telling you to do something, it’s still a choice that you’re making for yourself. If you understand that, it doesn’t matter what anybody else says.”

His expression was almost pitying. “It must be nice to think that you aren’t a person who will bend under pressure, or moved around like a puppet.”

“You don’t,” Yan said.

“Yeah,” Sid said aloud. And Yan knew that she had convinced him, or given him the space to convince himself. He had to be staying because he actually wanted to— Yan’s attempt at convincing him had only given him an excuse to stay, one that he was primed to hear, even if the way he interpreted it wasn’t flattering to himself. She wondered what it would cost— Sid looked defeated. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll stay. Sorry, Kino. Yan wins.”

“It wasn’t a game,” Kino said. She turned away. “I don’t care what you do.”

She began to stalk back towards the path, where Iri was standing and watching. She passed Iri and vanished into the dark trees, though her radiant fireball followed her and bobbed away until it, too, vanished into the darkness. Iri watched her go, and almost started to follow her, but remembered that Kino was impossible to follow unless she wanted to be followed, and remained with Yan and Sid.

“Are you really staying?” Yan asked.

“Unless Sandreas kicks me out,” Sid said. He gathered up his garbage that had fallen on the ground and shoved his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “I guess.”

“I’m glad,” Yan said. She nudged him with her elbow, and he let her lean against him, wrapping her arm around his shoulder so that they could walk out together. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s why I tried to go without you noticing.”

“That would have made it worse,” she said. “If you left, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to you. I would have been—”

“Yeah.” He kicked some of the pine needles on the ground as they walked. “Sorry about that.”

“Please don’t do this again.”

“I probably won’t,” Sid said. “I try to do new and stupider things every time.”

Yan squeezed his shoulders. They were passing back into the path, and Iri followed behind them. “Sandreas is going to be mad, probably.”

“I thought you said you didn’t tell him.”

“He’s definitely going to find out.”

“Hah.” Sid wrestled himself out from under Yan’s arm. “Well there’s not much he can do to me if he isn’t going to kick me out.”

“I hope you’re right,” Yan said. She was less worried about Sandreas’s punishment than she could have been. It all seemed immaterial next to the buoying fact that Sid was in front of her, and they were going home. She found herself smiling at him as he tripped his way backwards through the dark and rutted path, and he found it within himself to smile back at her.

His smile lasted until they reached the end of the path, until they reached the gloom of twilight in the parking area, where a swarm of cars were waiting. Halen leaned against the closest one.