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Then she looked up, saw me waiting on the harbor wall, and stopped.

Her mouth began to tremble.

"Well," Marion Pike said, and her voice cracked. "Don't just stand there, love. Come here."

I ran to her.

She was small enough that I could almost wrap myself around her, but when she held me, there was nothing fragile about it. She smelled of unfamiliar soap, old wool, and something underneath that was simply Marion, familiar enough to make my throat close.

For a few moments, neither of us said anything.

Then everything I had been holding back came out at once.

"I'm sorry," I said. "They took you because of me. I should've—"

"Oh, hush."

She pulled back and took my face in both hands, exactly as she used to when I was a child and had come home scraped or bleeding from some disaster.

Her eyes were wet, but her expression was furious.

"You listen to me, Wren Hale. They took me because they're bullies, and because I'm old enough that they thought I would frighten easily. That was their mistake, not yours." She sniffed. "The tea, however, was criminal. I have written to someone about the tea."

I laughed despite myself, still crying a little, and she gave my cheeks a firm squeeze before letting go.

There were things between us that still needed to be said. The loft. The stove. Eighteen years of choices she had made for me without asking.

None of that had disappeared simply because I was glad to see her.

But it didn't have to be settled on a harbor wall while her hands were still shaking.

Marion looked over my shoulder.

Her eyebrows rose.

Then they rose a little farther.

Silas had come down the steps behind me, apparently ignoring every order Oda had given him about staying in the infirmary. His arm was still bandaged, the stitches at his hairline were clearly visible, and someone had found him a borrowed shirt that was a little too tight across the shoulders.

He stopped beneath the harbor lantern, leaving a polite distance between himself and Marion, and waited.

Marion looked him over from his boots to his face. Her gaze lingered there for a moment.

"Good lord," she murmured.

A faint flush appeared at the tops of Silas's ears.

"Ma'am," he said solemnly, and held out his hand.

Marion took it. She looked at me, then at him again, and some of the strain she had carried since the night of the black envelope finally eased from her face.

Much later, after Silas had carried her small bag up the steps and Oda had met her at the gate, taken both her hands, and said something that made her cry again, Marion sat beside me on a bench in the cold courtyard. She held my bandaged hand between both of hers.

"I know you've got questions, love," she said quietly. "About your mother. About all of it. I should have told you years ago." She tightened her fingers around mine. "And I will tell you everything I know, though it isn't as much as you'd like. I promise."

She looked exhausted.

"Just not today," she said. "Let me have today."