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Asha leans toward me.

“Does he always listen like that?”

“Usually.”

“That must be nice.”

“It is.”

She squeezes my knee beneath the table, then reaches past me for the butter.

We spend two days with them. The innkeeper insists her bed is perfectly adequate until Daurek stands beside it. She gives us the room with the long cushioned window seat as well, and he says we will manage. We do.

Asha takes us to the cake seller. I show Daurek the well and the lane where we used to dance. On the second evening, Tovi finds the ribbon seller, who knows five tunes now and is offended that I am surprised.

Daurek dances with me in the space beside the shuttered stalls. Asha watches for half a tune before pulling Tovi out to join us. He steps on her foot, she tells him about it, and then she is laughing with her head back while they turn.

I had wanted to bring Daurek here so he could see where I came from. I had not known how much I wanted to dance with him while my sister laughed beside us.

I catch his arm a little harder. He bends his head toward mine.

“Yes?”

“Nothing. Keep going.”

He does.

On the second night, late, Tovi falls asleep across the table with his cheek on his arm. Asha pours the last of the cider into my blue cup and pushes it toward me.

“Now tell me the part you’ve been saving.”

I turn the cup so the chip faces me.

“The forest joined us. It’s called a bond. It means...” I’ve told Daurek I wanted this. I’ve told a registrar. Telling my sister is harder than either. “It means I’ll age the way he does. Slowly.”

“How slowly?”

“He said I might have centuries.”

Asha doesn’t move. She has flour in the crease of one knuckle, and she looks at that instead of me. Across the table, Tovi breathes out long and slow, and neither of us laughs at him.

“Centuries,” she says.

“Yes.”

“And me?”

I can’t answer that. I open my mouth to say I’m sorry, that I should have asked her first.

She leans across and puts her hand over my mouth. Flour, and the warmth of her palm.

“Don’t,” she says. “I already wrote you that letter.”

I nod against her hand. She takes it away.

“Then you’ll be the one who closes the stall,” she says. “Somebody has to.”

On the morning we leave, Asha wraps the blue cup in a clean piece of linen and puts it into my bag.