Al supposed that Riyala was beautiful. It had grand staircases up streets with palm trees and bright, pink flowers in beds between the middle hand rails. It had festively colored buildings in bright pastel stucco, mosaic tiled trims and corners for the richer houses. Short walls of dark stone surrounded houses, keeping the yards tight and tidy. The streets rose up hills, homes popping up like bright flowers amidst the grass and rich soiled roads. He’d read of it as a breathtaking paradise in several books and from the hearsay of classmates and clients. He believed them, but he was not in the mood to appreciate their opinion.

Raulin was miserable. Anla was indignant. He leaned towards her, watched her, was as polite as possible to her. She repelled any attempts at reconciliation. Both Tel and Al, who’d had several conversations about their situation, had decided to give them space and treat them as if it wasn’t an internal problem. They had hoped that given a week of cooling down, she would have budged a little on her feelings. If she had, she was good at hiding it.

They walked several blocks from the wharf and found a neighborhood with narrow streets and thick vegetation. It was quaint and felt like a small village. Raulin found a hotel of three floors on the corner of Koule and Barrist streets, the layered vertical wood facade on the outside giving the building a shaggy sort of look. It was two rooms, as always, but he was with Telbarisk and Al was with Anla. He hadn’t even asked the group for preferences, knowing full well what Anladet would say.

Al knew they’d be staying in Riyala for some time, so he pulled out his clothing from his pack, folded it, and put it in his drawers. Anla decided to hang her clothing in the wardrobe next to the window. He paused, turning towards her, trying to find the right words to start the conversation he’d wanted to have for several days.

“Riyala is pretty.”

She turned a little, but continued her task. “Yes.”

“It’s the kind of city you’d want to take in with a friend.”

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

That wasn’t where he wanted to go with the conversation. He’d hoped he could nudge in something about going for a walk with Raulin, but this might work. It didn’t really matter where they had this talk, only that they had it. “Yes. It’s a nice day and I’d like to go shopping.”

“Let me finish and then we can go.”

There was an open-air market only two blocks away with at least fifty vendors lining the sides and middle of the cordoned-off street. While it seemed chaotic at first glance, there was some order he began to see once he was able to watch for a few minutes.

Anla began walking slowly on the right side past several spice, tea, coffee, and legume vendors. They engaged her in conversation, but didn’t bark offers nor force her to try a sample of their wares. She was polite, but moved on to the next section that was filled with accessories for women.

“What do you think of this place?” he asked after she had haggled a woman down to two-thirds her asking price for a scarf.

“I think I could spend a lot more than a few gold if I stayed too long.” She smiled as she wrapped the chiffon around her neck, a brown and gray tartan with gold woven in.

“You know Raulin says you can tell a lot about a city from its market.”

Her smile dropped. “Does he?”

“Yes. Whether it’s busy or not, what’s for sale, whether the vendors try to cheat you, things like that. I bet he’d like this one.”

She made a non-committal noise in her throat as she continued past a middle stall with strips of dried meat.

“Anla, why are you still mad at him?”

She took a deep breath. “Because, Al, there are few things I care for more in my life than my family. I only have my brother left. He was right there in front of me, asleep. I didn’t get to tell him I love him and that I’ve been looking for him every day since he disappeared. I couldn’t because I had to help Raulin. I was willing to let him stay there, being raised in a kilik household with siblings that weren’t his blood because it was a good life. And Raulin took that from him. He promised that if I helped him kill Garlin’s new father, we would get my brother and that he would be safe. That didn’t happen. Garlin has been sent elsewhere to be killed. He may already be dead. And that’s all I can think about every time I look at him.”

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“Anla, Raulin tried everything he could to find him and bring him to you. He spent hours after he visited the widow scouring Cataya for the Alliance. Then he got up early the next day and hunted the docks until he found the other children.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “He told me.”

“But none of this is his fault!”

“We could have taken him that night, but Raulin told me to exercise caution, that it might look suspicious if my brother was gone right after his adoptive father was murdered. He told me to sit back and play the part of a stunned woman who had seen a murder instead of ensorceling the widow into giving Garlin to us. He didn’t even ask…”

“You always say you won’t do it again now that you can influence instead of enslaving.”

“I’ve always said that I have no qualms with following and helping Raulin, so long as I was able to find my siblings. It was the only thing I asked for.” She sighed as they stepped out of the market. “I know that it was misfortune. I know he tried. But it is, yet again, another time that he has let me down and hurt me. And I don’t want to give him another chance to do the same.”

Al’s jaw clenched for a moment, but he fought against saying the arguments that came to mind. Telbarisk had taught him that part of discussing meant listening, sometimes watching, for the finality. Conversations weren’t about winning. Sometimes you could debate someone into agreeing with you, but not always, and not always right then and there. Chats could sometimes plants seeds that made the other person think when you weren’t there. Al had to hope this was the case.

They returned to the hotel. Raulin had just left his room and passed them in the hallway. Anla paused to purse her lips at him, glaring as he began to ask how their day was going. He stopped, bowed quickly, and kept going.

“Was that necessary?” Al asked.

“He needs to know that he is not allowed to speak to me.”

He sighed, grabbed a book, and headed downstairs, disinterested in speaking with Anla anymore. Anla went inside to think.

There was a knock on the door about ten minutes later. Each of them had their own distinctive way of announcing themselves: Al’s was four quick raps with the second and third closer together, Raulin’s a double knuckle staccato. This was three even pats with a flat hand. “Come in, Tel” she said.

He opened the door, ducking under the lintel to enter. “I was wondering how you were doing. Is this room nice for you?”

“I’m sure it looks much like yours does.”

He sat on the floor. “The bed is against that wall,” he pointed, “and the box for clothes over there. I think your room is nicer in its arrangement.”

“Are you bored? You came to speak about furniture?”

“No, I came to listen.”

She sighed. “I’m not going to forgive him. There needs to be some sort of give and take in a friendship, and he has only taken from me, over and over again. I’m done.”

“That is the way your judge friendship? I must not be a friend, then. I’ve only taken your money and time.”

“But, you’ve given back by listening.”

“Raulin doesn’t listen?”

“Raulin…all right, he does, we are friends in that we get along. But, sometimes someone does something that is too hurtful to you to forgive. That’s where we’re at.”

“This suits you, then? You prefer not to speak to him. You withhold yourself to punish him for something he’s done.”

“It doesn’t suit me. I wish we could break the spell and go our separate ways so that I wouldn’t have to deny him my company; I would be away from him, finished.”

“Ah, the spell.”

He said no more, letting her think about that for a moment. “I will not make up with him just because there is a possible threat to my life.”

“You’ve called this ‘integrity’ before. You’d rather die with integrity than live with humility?”

Her eyes flashed and her jaw set. “Yes. This is the first time in my life when I’ve been able to have things I thought I’d never get to have. Respect, dignity, control. I have worth now because I don’t have to scrape by every day, begging people for kindness. I’ve can hold my head high. I don’t ever want to look down at the ground again.”

“And what of us, Al and I? Are we worth your integrity?”

She looked away in thought for several minutes. Tel was patient and waited. “I need time,” she finally said.

“We have time. And, you have me and Alpine to talk to, should you want.”

Anla did a lot of walking the next day, to the market, to the ocean, through the surrounding neighborhoods. It allowed her to think while a small amount of the anger drained away. Not enough anger that she was willing to speak to Raulin, but that if she saw him, she wouldn’t warn him off with a glare. She wanted to try this, but Raulin was busy with his contract. She didn’t see him for three days.

She went to the market on the fourth and was returning to the hotel when she saw him in the street, looking at her. Anla tried to calm the flush to her cheeks and forced her jaw open, but she couldn’t help but narrow her eyes. Did he think she had forgiven him, that all he had to do was flash his boyish smile and she’d speak with him again?

She fought the urge to spit and was about to turn into the hotel when a puff of air and a flash of deep red blurred next to her. Raulin opened his arms and a woman ran into them, pulling him down into a kiss. She barely heard him greet her. He looked so happy, so overjoyed to have this petite, curly-haired woman wrap herself around his arm. They turned and took off down the street, leaving Anla standing in front of the building in shock.

After a few moments of nothingness, she felt a tangled pit in her stomach. It blossomed into something that seized her chest, twisting and writhing until she felt something break. Whatever had happened, it stole her breath until she finally blinked.

“Oh,” she said, walking inside the hotel. She made her way up the stairs, closed the door, and locked it.