Esie helped me get down the herbs hanging from the ceiling that fit my criteria before we bundled everything together using a couple of blankets that had been shoved into a corner of the healer’s cave. There were also a handful of healer’s supplies that I found there that could be repurposed to a poisoner’s ends even if they didn’t exactly fit in with the recipes Rawley had taught me. Esie seemed intrigued when I added them to my cache, and while I found myself telling her about how they could be used after a comment here and a look there, she didn’t deride my healer’s training. She knew about it, of course, after the whole trial about whether I had healed Melka by giving her her breath back, but I typically avoided mentioning any part of my childhood. That was always easier than the pity or horror or disgust that most others seemed to have at the idea of being a healer’s daughter, and I had no desire to waste my breath on her.

Still, Esie seemed more interested in the plants and possible concoctions than anyone else except for Prevna when she was discovering a new natural poison she could use. She also was more…knowledgeable than I expected. It wasn’t anything obvious, like using healer’s terms or throwing around complex healing solutions, but she did seem to know exactly what to ask about when it came to the plants and their uses. Like she had experience, but she certainly didn’t have beads in her hair and her wrists didn’t have the poisoner’s mark.

I kept my suspicions to myself. Esie wasn’t someone I could afford to offend despite her penchant for teasing and acting like she didn’t have a care in the world. As far as I could recall, it was the first time we had talked about something other than the Lady of Calm Waters and her favors, or whatever beautiful thing Esie took me to see during our talks. As it was, I could only take everything I found with her help, so I let her have her secrets even as I wondered what her history was again.

There was no one else around despite the prime defensible location the healer’s camp held. Esie caught me double checking the caves signs of other people. She informed me that Jin was being very thorough to make sure the purge went exactly how she wanted it. No one was left anywhere on the mountainside; everyone was being collected into her camp to make sure no death bringers could slip through the cracks.

Part of me worried for the Red Hand, Jika and Kuma’s band. It seemed like they had been barely hanging on to their territory even before the purge and now, with it, there was likely going to be a free for all when all the bands were released. The temptation to expand when there was plenty of unused territory from what the death bringers had conquered and neighboring bands no longer being entrenched in their traditional spots would be too strong. And while any potential death would likely be heavily scrutinized, the bands in the Cut were well known for getting what they wanted without becoming death bringers.

Not that I could do anything about the purge or what came after. I’d likely have to settle with hearing what happened from Jika if someone actually bothered to bring her to the Seedling Palace now that the villagers had already been moved.

However, the lack of people in the healer’s cave wasn’t just unsettling because I had expected someone to be making use of its location, but because it was completely empty. No bodies, nothing. Logically, I knew that the whisper women likely hadn’t moved the people who had died during the ambush that had happened here. Just like I knew that it had been more than the necessary five days for the bodies to rise as shamble men. But it was thing for tribe members to get lost in a storm and never turn up again, so we were unable to light a funeral pyre for them, and quite another to walk through a space where I had seen the people die and now, due to their absence, I knew they were likely shuffling toward a Statue Garden.

We didn’t stay long in the caves before we carried my new cache to a large pine with a strong shadow nearby. Despite Esie never taking me through the shadow paths in the Palace, I thought she’d take my hand and lead me through them this time. It’d be easier for her to take me to the place she wanted to show me and we both knew about the trouble I was having due to the ghost pulling my paths back to where I had left the attacker.

But, instead, she smiled at me and gestured to the shadow. “Practice makes perfect.”

I couldn’t help but glare at her a little before I lifted my chin. “Any particular place you want me to go to?”

“Aim for the top of the Scale’s tree. I’ll be able to show you the way from there.”

“You’ll be able to find me?”

Her smile turned indulgent, which I didn’t like. “Keep your presence open until I crossover. Now quit stalling. Surely, one little snag in your path can’t stop you?”

I stomped my foot down into the shadow, and one gut twisting wrench of gravity later, I was back in the shadow paths. If I had used my visualization of sinking into a lake the transition likely would have been easier, but that would’ve taken longer and not had quite the same impact.

I could still feel the shadow that wanted to catch the path I was trying to make like a hole I couldn’t patch, but it helped that it was no longer directly in the way of where I wanted even if it was close by. I struggled longer than I’d like admit getting the path to stretch to the Seedling Palace rather than sliding sideways to where the other shadow was. But eventually I got the path anchored to the darkest shadow I could feel in the Scale sect’s tree and I dragged my blanket full of ingredients along as quick as I could.

I stepped out of the shadow paths to a place I’d never been before. Pine cone lanterns lit up a wide branch in front of me, but the place I had stepped out into seemed like a large alcove sunk deep in shadow. A handful of others were in alcove as well or leaving it for the more crowded lit up area. I had no desire to join the crowd, but I knew better than to hover in one of the shadow paths’ main hubs, which was what this had to be. I slipped to the edge of the wide branch and turned to take in the area.

My breath caught.

The “alcove” I had just left was actually part of a statue that looked like it been grown from the tree itself. It was a giant sized balance scale made out of branches braided together and then the long blue-black and purple needles of the Palace’s pines twisted around each other in a cord at least as thick as I was wide, but that managed to look delicate with the size of the statue. At the end of one cord was the shadowed ball I had used to leave the shadows while the scale tilted up, as if that ball weighed it to the ground, and the other end of the scale had a shorter cord of needles that held up a cluster of pine cone lanterns. Her fire and shadows, weighed in balance, even if they didn’t match each other.

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“Some like to debate whether the fire or shadows are supposed to hold more significance,” Esie said as she snuck up next to me and I glowered at her again. “The majority agree that the shadows win because they obviously are supposed to weigh more in the balance but others like to point out that the fire holds a more lofty position while the shadow ball is being smashed into the ground.”

I clenched my jaw but after the repeated surprise I couldn’t help but push her a little. “What do you think?”

She chuckled. “I say they’re perfectly balanced.” I tried to protest but she was already walking away and motioning me to follow her. “Not exactly the top of the tree, but it shouldn’t take us to long to get to where we’re going.”

Whisper women stared at us as we passed with our blankets full of stuff, but they all seemed to recognize Esie and then resolve to ignore the oddity when they did. She tossed out a few quick comments to those we passed and it didn’t take long for some of my suspicions to become a certainty.

I asked, “You’re a Scale?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “As much as your mentor is both Seeker and Peacekeeper.”

I wanted to ask which one she was more obligated to: Scale or the Lady of Calm Waters, even if I knew it was a stupid question, but she picked up her pace through a series of quick turns and I lost my chance and the idiotic impulse to ask that question with it. She was already sharing more than she ever had before I completed the Lady of Calm Waters’ favor. Patience would get me further than recklessly pressing for answers every other minute.

We stopped high up in the tree. High enough that there was more sky than pine needles all around us for once. It was another landing like the whisper women’s residential areas with a dome on one side and a balcony around it, except on this one was balcony was four times as wide as normal with some elevated areas and some level. The dome sap building was also larger than normal with multiple windows on every side and what looked like one for an air vent at the top.

But more than that, more than anything else, two thirds of of the balcony was filled with plants and even a small pond, like the garden in the Seed Landing. I could tell that they had all been placed where they would grow best—and in the remaining space there was clearly a work area with a fire pit and other tools for preparing plants.

I turned my wide gaze on Esie as my hands gestured helplessly to the poisoner’s marks on my wrists, where the beads had hung from my hair. “Is this yours? But you don’t have anything.”

Her smile turned a little sardonic. “I don’t like to have anything so easily identifiable. Kaylan would say I’m a poisoner, but I prefer ‘herbalist’. A little less intimidating, don’t you think?”

It still felt like all the words had been snatched from my mind upon seeing the balcony full of plants.

Esie sighed. “I wish I could have the Warming Winds celebration up here—it’s so much easier to get a good view of the sky—but then it would be less fun and more telling everyone off for stepping on the belladonnas.” She gestured to the dome. “You can put your findings in the storage dome. I used to do more work in there but I found I like the balcony better.”

I did as she said, though I had to stop and marvel again when I actually entered the storage dome. Everything, contrary to Esie’s normal demeanor, was carefully labeled and stored efficiently. My blankets of pilfered goods stood out in a bad way against how organized everything else was, but I put them in an unused corner and promised myself that I’d get them just as organized when I had time. Soon.

When I rejoined Esie, she gave me a sidelong glance. “Do you like it? I heard you took to the garden in the Seed Landing.”

I nodded and waited for what else she had to said.

She didn’t make me wait long. “If you’re more interested in poisons now, I could teach you some. As I represent our Lady’s interests, and she’s your patron, we wouldn’t be violating the mentor ban. Though if we also have our way, that ban will no longer be in place once you join a sect.”

“You’d teach me? Just like that?” I surveyed the whole platform again. “Why didn’t you mention any of this before?”

“It wasn’t the right time.”

I frowned. That could have any number of meanings. Anything from the possibility that I hadn’t been in the right headspace after getting cut off from healing to the possibility that I hadn’t been entrenched enough with my patron and Esie, to the mere possibility that she didn’t have time before. Even if she acted like she did.

“And now is?” I asked. “Will the sect I join even allow me to have mentors outside of them?”

“So quick to dismiss the Seeker and Scale sects? I’m surprised,” Esie said. “Besides, you’re a special case. I doubt Mishtaw will want to let you go after all the work she put into you and most know better than to gainsay our Lady. Nor can I guarantee that the sects will take up your learning in earnest even if we get the ban dropped. They won’t want to get on the wrong side of the enemies you’ve made.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” I demanded.

She gave me a look of mild appraisal. “What you’ve been doing. Using the allies you’ve made and been given. Taking charge of your own learning. Make yourself useful so that even others want to kick you out they can’t.”

“Everyone seems to have an opinion how I should go about joining a sect.” The complaint slipped out before I could stop it but she just laughed.

“Of course we do. Whisper women always try to influence the candidates they’re interested in. It’s what makes the sect declaration ceremony so much fun—seeing who got their wish and who didn’t.”

I pressed, “And you don’t have any input on which sect I join?”

“That choice is up to you. Just like the choice is yours to make it out of sheer stubborn pride or something a bit more thought out.”

She didn’t even have to say any sect names and I could tell what she was implying. If I wanted to go the sheer stubborn route I’d try to join the Peacekeepers or the Hundred Eyes purely because that’s the sects my enemies belonged to. The idea of that did appeal to me on some level, especially when paired with the vision of triumphing over them despite them trying to keep me in the bottom ranks. Or I could pick any of the other sects for whatever benefits they could provide me, including the fact that Jin and whoever else didn’t like me didn’t belong to them.

I didn’t have a clear answer on what I wanted to decide yet. It felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle without all the pieces, but I also wouldn’t get those pieces until I joined a sect and ultimately found out how well they fit or not.

“Well, let’s not keep your mentor waiting,” Esie said while conveniently ignoring how long we had already made Mishtaw wait.

But then I pictured how worried and annoyed Prevna likely was, and I decided that trying to pry more answers out of Esie could wait until I caught up with her and Mishtaw. We stepped through a shadow that pooled at the back of Esie’s storage hut and back out the main shadow in Mishtaw’s residential area.

Prevna’s arms wrapped around me before I even made it two steps out of the shadow, despite the other people around. I awkwardly patted her shoulder. Not quite able to return the embrace with the sudden overwhelming nature of it and all the eyes watching, but also because I knew she wasn’t going to appreciate it when I told her I had taken another risk without her.

I stepped back and she let me go. I gave her a tight smile. “Made it.”