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“Hey, Ree!” Terlu waved. “Looks like you had a full boat. Very full. How did everyone fit?” Now that she compared the number of people and the mountain of furniture, suitcases, and crates to the size of the boat…

it didn’t seem logistically feasible. She widened her wave to include all of Yarrow’s family. “Welcome, everyone!”

Marin grinned as she helped another of Yarrow’s relatives disembark—a middle-aged man with a tuft of white hair in the center of his otherwise bald head.

“My boat has a few tricks up her sleeve. Or in her hull, more accurately,” she said, with a wink toward Terlu.

“Still, it was a squeeze. Some of them are very glad to be on land.”

“Sorry, Marin, ma’am,” the man she’d just helped said. “I’ll clean your boat once, you know, everything isn’t tilting and rolling so much.”

“No, thank you, sir. You just stay on the land. Permanently, please. I didn’t think it was possible for a body to expel that much and still have innards.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “Maybe don’t eat anything for another day or two, hmm?”

“Or a week,” he agreed. But he was smiling—a warm and friendly crinkled-eyes and crooked-teeth smile. He shifted his smile toward Yarrow at the end of the dock as he raised his voice and boomed, “Yarrow! Great to see you! You’re looking well. Remember me? Your uncle Rorick?”

“Yarrow!” One of the older women rushed forward with tears in her eyes. “Oh, how you’ve grown! Look at you!” She had tattoos of flowers on her golden cheeks, and the inked petals framed her tears. “You remember me, don’t you? Aunt Rin? Ah, little Yarrow, not little anymore! Just look at you!”

And that set off the lot: the arrivals flocked off the dock, crowing his name.

Terlu caught a glimpse of panic in his eye, and she lunged in front of him.

She pasted a great, false smile on her face and said, “Hi! I’m Terlu.

Maybe everyone take a step backward so Yarrow can breathe?

” She made shooing motions as if they were chickens crowding around their feed.

Behind her, Yarrow laid his hand on her shoulder. She wasn’t sure if it was in warning or in thanks, but she was not going to let him be overwhelmed on his own island.

“It’s very lovely you all came,” Terlu began.

Yarrow murmured in her ear, “Is it?”

“We weren’t expecting so many of you. Are you all gardeners?

” She glanced at the toddler who was clinging to a woman’s hand with one of his and had his other hand shoved into his mouth.

With their pale green skin and white hair, they didn’t look related to the others.

“I’m not sure we have space for everyone to sleep. Marin, do you—”

Marin hefted a final crate onto the dock. “Oh no, can’t stay,” she called over the crowd. “Got another stop to make before sunset. They’re all yours.”

Ree sang, “The sea calls, and we must sail—beyond the horizon, into the bluuuue!”

The second sailor echoed in harmony, “Into the bluuuue!” It was so perfectly pitched that Terlu smiled and thought the other plants could take a few lessons from these two.

One woman with silvery hair and a wide smile patted Terlu’s shoulder.

She had a bony hand and wore a city-style dress that was embroidered with flowers.

She didn’t look related to the rest—perhaps she’d married into the family?

“Don’t you worry about space, my dear. We’ll fix up our own homes, and it’ll be just fine. This is where we belong, after all.”

“Is it?” Yarrow said.

Ignoring him, the man who said his name was Rorick drew a deep breath. “Ah, it smells like home!” He then beamed at Terlu. “Are you Yarrow’s wife?”

A woman near the back gave a gasp that was almost a laugh—she was the one who Yarrow had said was his sister, with gold-and-black braided hair. “Whoa, Yarrow married?”

Excitedly, the crowd clustered around Terlu, led by the woman with the wide smile, and she had to explain: no, she wasn’t his wife. They were friends. She was helping him with the greenhouses. She’d written the letter, on his behalf—

Yarrow cut through the chatter. “Why are you all here?”

His relatives stilled.

A man’s voice said, “You invited us, Yarrow.” And the crowd parted so that the speaker was facing both Terlu and Yarrow.

He has Yarrow’s eyes. It felt like looking at a version of Yarrow, aged several decades.

He was muscular, though wrinkles lined his arms and face.

His back was straight, despite the cane.

Yarrow scowled at Terlu. “What did you say in that damn letter?”

She glared right back at him. This wasn’t her fault. “Exactly what I told you I said.” Okay, so it was partially her fault since she’d had the idea for the letter, she’d written it, and she’d sent it— fine, it’s mostly my fault.

“I’ll ask again then,” Yarrow said, no warmth in his voice, “why are you all here?”

Rorick answered, “You haven’t heard the news from the capital? There’s been a revolution. The emperor was killed, and half of Alyssium burned. The empire has fallen. Until we received your letter…”

“We thought that’s why you wrote,” Yarrow’s father said. “To save us.”

“We’re here,” Yarrow’s sister said, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed as if she didn’t like the words she was saying, “because we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Chattering all at once, Yarrow’s relatives described the chaos in Alyssium.

Terlu knew already that there had been a revolution and that the emperor had been defenestrated. What she didn’t know was that afterward, in the chaos that followed, the library had burned.

Marin hadn’t mentioned that detail.

Not all of it had burned, thankfully, but some of it.

Many books were still unaccounted for, and Terlu hoped they’d been stolen rather than destroyed.

A stolen book could be recovered, or at least appreciated by whomever owned it, but if all the books had burned or fallen into the canals…

She was able to extract enough of a description to know that the North Reading Room, as well as a portion of the North Wing, had been lost.

If I’d been in the North Reading Room when the revolution broke out…

Terlu shuddered.

And then she realized the truth: I was there. That had to have been how she was saved. Rijes Velk must have used the chaos of the revolution to extract Terlu.

The epiphany took her breath away, and as she absorbed it, the voices of Yarrow’s relatives faded.

Terlu tried to imagine what kind of chaos there had been in the Great Library…

Somehow in the midst of the bedlam, Rijes Velk had stopped to think of a lowly librarian who’d broken the law and acted to save her. It was an extraordinary gift.

How can I ever repay that?

Suddenly, she knew what she had to do.

Breaking away from Yarrow’s relatives and weaving between them with repeated apologies, Terlu ran down the dock, where the two sailors and the shrubbery were preparing to leave. “Marin!”

Marin was untying the line from the dock.

“Told you, I can’t stay. I’ve got another stop to make, and this was…

Let’s say there’s a reason I’m a supply runner, not a goddamn ferry.

But they paid, on top of what your gardener already paid me.

And here they are, deal complete.” She was still smiling, but it looked strained.

For a formerly solo sailor, it had to have been an uncomfortable ride, even with the help of a second sailor and a verdant deckhand.

Knowing she shouldn’t ask for more but determined to do it anyway, Terlu dug her hand into her pocket and produced the ruby from the little dragons’ hoard.

“I can pay. Rijes Velk. She is, or was, the head librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium. I don’t know where she’d be now, if the library burned.

” Please let her have survived. She didn’t want to think anyone had sacrificed themselves for her.

Or that someone so kind and so brilliant and so indomitable as her had suffered.

Behind Marin, the second sailor, the man with the purple hair and diamond horns, said, “We are very sorry, but we aren’t returning to Alyssium.”

“Plans change, Dax,” Marin said as Terlu dropped the ruby into her hands.

“But you said—”

“Ruby, Dax. Really big ruby.” Holding the gem up to the light, Marin whistled. “Can’t guarantee I’ll find her,” she said to Terlu.

“Can you guarantee you’ll try? If you find her…” She felt her throat tighten. How did you find the words to thank the woman who’d given you a second chance? A second life?

“Not going to kill her, if that’s what this is for.” Marin’s tone was light, but the look in her eye was serious.

“What? No! I want you to make sure she’s okay.

Get her out of the city, if necessary, and take her wherever she wants to go.

And… thank her for me? Please?” Terlu didn’t know if the head librarian had survived the violence, but if she had…

She saved me while her world was crumbling around her.

From what Terlu had gleaned from the chatter of Yarrow’s relatives, it had been terrifying.

During the uprising, the area in the city where Yarrow’s relatives had lived had been destroyed.

Never mind that many of them had supported the revolutionaries.

Fire didn’t care. They’d lost their shops, their apartments, their livelihoods, and had been facing lives as refugees on whatever island would take them in when Marin had found them with her letter.

Marin grinned and pocketed the ruby. “You’re an odd one, but I like your style.

If it’s possible, I’ll do it. Good luck with this lot.

” She shoved away from the dock. “And tell your gardener that I’ll be back by Winter Feast with his usual supplies, times ten for the new folk, especially if he can get me some zucchini seeds—that’s a promise. ”

“Thank you,” Terlu said.

“Ree, hoist the sails,” Marin called.

“Yes, Captain!” the plant shouted, and then he scuttled toward a winch, his branches flapping with excitement. The other sailor, Dax, joined him and together they raised the sail.

Terlu watched them for a moment. Ree, it seemed, had found his place. She hoped the three of them could find Rijes Velk and that, when they did, she’d be safe and well. I’ve done what I could.

As they pushed back from the dock, Terlu trudged back up to the cluster of refugees and tried to smile as if they were ordinary visitors and hadn’t just delivered news that the world had turned upside down.

Yarrow wasn’t even attempting to appear welcoming. He looked as if he wished he could dive into the sea and swim after Marin. Anywhere but where he was right now.

Reaching him, Terlu said, “We should get them all inside where it’s warmer.” She pitched her voice low so that only he would hear.

“Not my cottage,” Yarrow whispered back, a hint of panic in his voice.

“Laiken’s tower?” she asked him. “It’s closest.” Sooner or later, they’d need to meet the sentient plants. Perhaps it would be a reunion for some of them.

“Fine.”

Facing the crowd, she murmured to Yarrow, “Who is who?”

Yarrow’s sister pushed her way to the front.

“I’m Yarrow’s sister, Rowan. And this is my wife, Ambrel.

My cousin, Vix. My aunt, Rin.” She pointed to each person and named them and then continued on through the crowd.

Most were relatives, she said, but a few were neighbors and/or close family friends.

The toddler, Epu, was the child of their neighbor, a woman named Pipa with zigzag tattoos on her pale green cheeks.

Terlu shoved as many names into her head as she could, using a trick she’d developed when she first arrived in Alyssium—she assigned them each a different bird or animal: a squirrel for cousin Finnel (brown hair and a tiny nose), a sparrow for uncle Ubri (feathery hair and quick movements), a duck for cousin Percik (a broad duck-like smile), an emu for aunt Harvena (beady black eyes and long legs)…

Stepping closer, the older man with the cane, Yarrow’s father, said, “And I am Rowan and Yarrow’s father. My name’s Birch. Yarrow… son… It’s good to see you again.”

She looked at Yarrow, expecting at last here would be the reunion that she was certain he’d been aching for. It had been him and his father for so long, and his father had only left because he’d become too ill to stay. Surely he’d greet him.

Yarrow grunted, and then he turned and walked away, back toward the greenhouse.

“I had hoped he’d forgiven me by now,” Birch said.

She hadn’t known there was anything that needed forgiving. Why couldn’t he have shared more before I wrote that letter? Forcing herself to smile again, Terlu patted Yarrow’s father’s arm. “Come inside, all of you. You’ve had a long journey.”