“I can find another boy just as easily for twenty.”

“And I can go faster and take more at once for fifty.”

“With those weak arms? You’ll be lucky to get four deliveries done. Twenty-five.”

“Forty, and I’ll mend the poor excuses for curtains you have in your store window and that dress you’re wearing.”

Mrs. Forthright caught her tongue at my final offer, glancing down at the frayed hem of her old dress. I gave her a hard look, already frustrated by how little I would make from such hard work.

“Forty,” she agreed at last. “But if you drop a speck of sand on the way to any of the deliveries, you’ll be gone without a single piece. And don’t think I’ll give you directions—you are here to make my life easier.”

I fought to hide my smile. “Where would you like me to go first?”

The task was simple enough, but it didn’t make carrying the bags any easier. I had helped Henry load his father’s wagon with mud barrels hundreds of times, yet the distance we had been forced to walk with each bushel had been minimal. Fairwell’s strange streets seemed to constantly double back on one another, and for the first time in my life, my sense of direction abandoned me. I wandered helplessly from one street to the next, relying on chance to find the shops I needed.

I had wanted to love Fairwell so badly, to take in everything it had to offer. Now I was ready to smash in the glass signs and sculptures outside each shop. When the sun reached its highest point in the sky, not even the rainbow of light they created could put the smile back on my face. Finally, after I passed the same glass shop half a dozen times, a little woman with an enormous grin stuck her head out her door to ask if I was lost.

I handed her the delivery slip on which Mrs. Forthright had hastily scribbled the address.

“You’re nearly there,” she said. “Two streets over—you’ll have quite a battle trying to get through the crowds, I’m afraid.”

“Why?” I asked, shifting the bag’s weight on my shoulder. “Did something happen?”

“The men are leaving for the capital,” the woman said. “They were summoned last night to prepare Provincia’s defense. Just manual labor, of course, but the Wizard Guard needs the able bodies to do it for them.”

“What about Fairwell’s defense?” I asked.

The woman gave me a sad smile and patted my arm. “Exactly, my dear, exactly. What do they care so long as they’re safe in their castle? In the past, we’ve suffered through years of fighting and destruction, but none of our calls for help were ever answered. There’s a crime in that, you know, a real tragedy. I don’t think any of our men should go.”

But they did, by the hundreds. I found the large street not by her directions, but by the sound of smashing glass and humming voices. I abandoned the bag on my shoulder in front of the nearest shop and pressed my way through the crowds to the very front.

The children in front of me threw flowers, and petals showered down from above, but there was no way I could tear my eyes away from the broken glass in the road. Every now and then, a glassblower would present one of his or her creations, bending down to place it on the road. The men, dressed in everything from dress coats to torn trousers, smashed the figurines to pieces beneath their boots.

It went on this way for some time, until every piece of glass had been ground into a fine dust and mixed with the fallen petals. When the last man had finally passed, a group of women came along and began to brush the dust into bins.

“What’s happening?” I asked the woman next to me. Her little girl chewed on the end of her braid and pressed her face into her mother’s skirt.

“It’s tradition,” the woman said, patting her daughter’s head. “You’ll have to excuse her. She’s never been without her papa for long.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking down at the girl again.

“The glass and petals,” the woman continued. “They’re refired into new shapes and forms. It’s meant to show that even if the city is set forth into ruin, it can always be built back up. We’re a city of re-creators, you know. It’s in our blood to start again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but it seemed somehow appropriate to me that we were standing on Restoration Road.

With the deliveries finished and my money collected, I ran back to Mrs. Pemberly’s inn. The woman caught my eye as I ducked back inside and shook her head. The wrinkles on her face deepened with her frown.

“They’re still not here?” I asked, my fingers fiddling with my necklace.

She shook her head. “I’ll send them up as soon as they get back.”

The hours went by, and there was still no sign of either North or Owain. A dragon isn’t an easy job, I reminded myself. But it was half-past six, and I was ready to start traveling again. We had wasted too much time already.

Half sprawled across Owain’s creaky bed, I wrote a letter to Henry. I told him about the wizards, about the fight and earthquake in Dellark, the rover beetle, and Fairwell’s destroyed bridge, but there was no way to explain the strange headache I had, or the hollow feeling at the pit of my stomach. Examining the letter, I saw that my words were disjointed and angled; none of my o’s were fully rounded, and I hadn’t dotted any of my i’s.

I don’t know what to do, I wrote. I want to look for them, but I’m too scared to go outside. Does that make me a terrible person? One of them—or both—could be terribly hurt, and would anyone know? I’m not sure when I’ll have time to write again, or if this letter will even find you at all. Write to me if you can, please, at this address! I miss you very, very much.