"She's alive!" "By the river gods, she blinked!" "Bring water! Bring the oil!" Hilda Palmer's voice cut through the courtyard like a bell. People shoved forward, muddy boots and skirts crowding the straw mat that served as our threshold. I opened my eyes to a sky of faces and the smell of sweat. "Hilda," I croaked, throat full of grit and someone else's life. "Where—" "Shh!" Hilda slapped my cheek with the flat of her hand. Her nails left a line of red. "Don't talk. Look at her, look at her—Mason! Mason, get here!" "Mason!" someone called. "You killed her, didn't you? You schemed to keep what's yours!" Mason Amin pushed through, sleeves rolled, the village scholar's robe crooked. He looked smaller than his reputation, like a fox caught with its tail between crates. He smiled a careful smile. "She's not—" he began. "Not what?" I spat, shocking the woman who had been me. "Not alive? Not awake? Mason pushed me." Silence slammed into the yard. A child stopped chewing cabbage. A dog went still. Mason's smile snapped like cheap thread. "What did you say?" he asked, too loud. "I said you pushed me," I said again. The words tasted of old city grit and stubbornness. "You shoved me off the ford when I reached for Milo. You pushed me." Ariya Dupont, draped in borrowed finery and pretending faintness, pressed a hand to her mouth from behind Mason. Her mascara