Sliding my bag onto my back, I push open my bedroom window and sit backwards on the sill. I might not be the most athletic person, but being able to work up on the roof where I don't have to deal with the chatter and clatter of the other house inhabitants is worth the effort.

I pull myself up, landing flopped over like a fish unceremoniously dropped onto dry land. After squirming onto the tiles, I clear away a spot to work, pull my things out of my backpack, and begin.

As I type, I wonder what Leavi's doing. She was quiet all the way home. She's been quiet around me for the last week, so that's no shocker. But she hurried straight up to her room—didn't even stop to talk to her new best friend. She seemed impatient, impassioned, the way she used to be when we got handed a new assignment at Trifexer's.

But it doesn't matter. I don't even know why I care.

Actually, I don't. We don't have anything to do with each other, and we don't need to. She gets her company with Jacin, and I don't need company. My papers, my equipment, my study. That's all I need.

Well, that and food, water, and shelter, which I also have. So, I'm good.

An incredulous voice calls up from my bedroom. "Are you on the roof?"

Surprised, I lean over on one elbow, looking over the edge, just in time to see Riveirre's head poke from the window. "Nope," I answer.

She cranes her neck to look at me. "Why?"

"Because I don't particularly care to deal with lots of avoidable noise while I work. Do you?"

"Hold on." She disappears back into the room. "I'm coming up there."

"Why?" My voice drops to a mutter. "I just said I liked working in the quiet."

"You know I can hear you," she says, climbing her way up.

"So?"

Somehow she gets up here much more gracefully than I did, ending crouched with one knee on the tiles.

"What do you want?" I ask.

She stands. Her hair hangs in long, loose waves around her shoulders, and she pulls the midnight mess to one side. "I need your help."

I raise an eyebrow at her. "Oh? And what, exactly, can the great and magnificent Mastera Eleaviara Riveirre not do that she needs my help with?"

She frowns. "Carry a man."

A startled "What?" escapes me before I can give a better response.

The tiles creak under her feet as she closes the distance between us. Kneeling beside me, she pulls some papers from her pocket and spreads them out in my cleared area. "Look at these."

I glance down. "Incredible," I remark dryly. "It's a map." An incomplete one, at that. It sort of looks like it could be the manor, if the manor went through a major earthquake and lost random chunks to the abyss.

"Yes, it's a map. But not just of the public parts of the manor." She points at a section at the left edge. "This is the forbidden north wing." She meets my gaze again, almost as if for dramatic effect.

Unimpressed, I ask, "So?"

"So, a few weeks ago, a maid went in there and never came back out."

"Oh no!" I feign terror. "A pit of doom must be hidden there! Or," I add, dropping the act, "she got fired for going somewhere she wasn't supposed to. I don't suppose you actually saw her not return?"

"No, but that's not the point. I thought the same thing you did until I ended up back there."

I drop my head into my hands. "Don't tell me you got fired," I mutter. "Please don't tell me you got fired." I look back up at her scowling face.

"No! Do you think I'd come to you for help over a lost job? Look, I actually saw something back there, but if you're not going to take this seriously, I'll go find someone who will." She starts to gather her papers.

"Aw, does that mean I was your first choice?" I turn back to my presswrite. "Okay, go ahead. Have fun trying to get people in on your conspiracy theory in broken Avadelian."

"Does it sound broken to you?" She's switched to the common language, accent still thick but words quick and clear. "Jacin gave me a dictionary. I've been studying."

She's a quick learner—I saw Jacin give her that only a week ago. Admiration rises in me, but I shove it down. Admiring an object that doesn't want your attention doesn't do any good. "Good for you." I turn back to my presswrite.

Frosty silence. Crouched beside me, she's close enough I can feel the faint heat of her presence, but she stands, and the warmth disappears with her. "Lady Veradeaux has a man imprisoned in her manor."

I glance up. That is a little strange. I didn't know the manor served as the prison, but it's not like I've been inside it much. There's a lot I don't know. "Okay. What'd he do?"

She throws her hands wide. "What do you mean 'what did he do?'"

I reply slowly. "I mean that anyone that's been imprisoned by the local government probably has a reason to be."

"Do they have a reason to be starved to death too?" Her arms cross, eyes dark.

"He's dead?"

"No, Sean, would you just—" Her breath fogs the air. "Would you just listen to me for once? How in skies' name can someone be imprisoned and dead?" She tugs her hair into a bun. Painfully calm, she starts over. "The subject in question shows evidence of extreme malnutrition and neglect."

She must think I'll only take her seriously when she uses her science vocabulary. "And?" She seems frustrated that I'm not getting the point.

"And much more of this, he will be dead, Sean."

I pause. "Yeah... That's sad." I'm not sure what she wants from me.

She's speechless for a moment, either cold or anger painting her cheeks red. "That's sad?" she finally sputters. "That's sad? That's it? That's all you have to say?"

"Well, what do you want me to say, Riveirre?"

"That you'll help me! That's why I came up here after all."

"What, you want to go storm the manor, break this stranger out, and then lose your job?"

"No. I want to sneak into the manor and save a boy's life."

I hold up a finger. "You still didn't address the issue of losing your job."

"We have this week's wages. If they suspect us, we move on and get a job somewhere else."

"You think we'll have that opportunity? If they're willing to kill through neglect, and whatever they may-or-may-not have done to that maid, you think we'll know they're onto us before they do something?"

"Then we'll leave. We'll just leave. You hate it here anyway."

"Yeah, well, we still need money, Riveirre."

"We have money. I just pointed that out."

"Sure. A whopping fourteen copper between the two of us, assuming neither of us has spent anything. What's that going to buy us? A week at an inn?"

"A week's enough to find jobs."

"Oh, and that was a week excluding your animal rescue project."

"It'll have to be enough."

"It doesn't have to be anything. Let it go, Riveirre."

"And let this man die? Sean, you didn't see him. He's our age. He—"

I wave my hand to cut her off. "No, I didn't see him, and I don't want to. Better him alone than all three of us."

Her hands explode into the air. "You've got to be joking!"

I stand. "No, Riveirre, I'm not joking. They've got him imprisoned for a reason. They must need him for something, or maybe he is some sort of criminal, like I said earlier, and deserves to be incarcerated. Either way, I doubt they're going to kill him. But if what you think about the maid is true, they will us."

"How can you be so cold?"

"How can you be so illogical?" She's going to get us killed if she keeps on like this.

"I guess because unlike you, I have a heart." Her deep, brown eyes hold steady with mine, as if waiting to see if I'll change my mind.

Simmering anger rises beneath my skin. I'm not emotionless. I'm just able to think things through before foolishly committing to them. I look away, jaw clenched.

She hesitates. Then, shaking her head, she turns to leave.

"Everyone has a heart, Riveirre."

Her steps pause.

"I'd just like to keep mine beating. What crime is there in that? You, on the other hand, are going to wind up dead."

She whirls around. "Well, I'd rather die doing what I know is right than live knowing I left him behind!"

"You mean like you did when you left Karsix?" She draws back, but I continue. "Sneaking out of a city under quarantine was the 'right' thing to do? No, and you know it. It was the logical thing. It was the way to survive. But it was not the 'right' thing."

My words shoot through the air like crossbow bolts, and her voice dissolves into a pained whisper. "How dare you."

"How dare I what, Riveirre? Analyze the situation? Tell the truth? What exactly have I done wrong?"

Her hand slices through the air. "That was not the same thing. We couldn't save them, Sean. We couldn't—"

"So then that's what this is about. You want to make up for what you couldn't do before. Save the criminal and atone for abandoning the city you couldn't, right?"

"No! Sean—"

"Well, guess what. It's people like you—people who try to play hero—that leave everyone else picking up the pieces. And you know what else?" I take a step closer. "When you get found out, and caught, and murdered, you know who they'll guess is your accomplice? Me. So sure. Go ahead. Go pointlessly die. And kill me in the process."

Something shimmers in her eyes. "Wow, Sean," she breathes after a moment. "I always thought you were a jerk, but now I guess you've finally proven it."

"Better a living jerk than a dead hero wannabe."

Face tight, she turns, striding back across the tiles.

"You're going to get yourself killed," I repeat calmly as she reaches the edge. "And you're not going to have changed anything."

A pause. Then, quietly, "At least I'll have tried."

She slips back inside.

I shake my head, exhaling softly. Nothing I say is going to change her mind. I move back to my spot and sit. The click of my keys and the keen of the wind are the only sounds now.

What is she thinking? She's going to die. Pointlessly. What, does she think that she's just going to waltz—sorry, sneak—in there, open the cell, and walk out with him? That's not the way things work. Life isn't a bedtime story.

"You're not going to be a hero, Leavi," I mutter to myself. "And being a martyr doesn't do anyone any good."

Leavi... you'll be dead. And no one will know what happened but me.

"No," I reprimand myself. I don't call her that, I never have, and I'm not starting now, not when she's about to die. I'm not supposed to care, Riveirre, what happens to you. You're just another arrogant scientist with delusions of grandeur. You don't matter, you're not an equal, and you're not important.

You. Are. Nothing.

Nothing to me, nothing to anyone. You're just Mastera Eleaviara Riveirre. You're not a person.

But you'll be dead soon.

My fingers rap sharp on the keys. It doesn't matter. It's not important. I don't need to do anything. Everyone dies at some point.

But if that's true, why does it matter that I survive? Because I'm a person. She's just, she's just—just her. I was only trying to get her to stay because it was the logical thing for her to.

But if she doesn't matter, why was I wasting my time on her?

Because—

Because—

"Just because!"

Because she's a person, too.

"No!"

Yes! Not "Riveirre," not the "haughty mastera," not just my "traveling partner," not "Mushroom Girl," or "Miss Safety Patrolman," or anything else.

Leavi.

Her name.

She's a person.

I shove my things back into my bag, sling it over my shoulder, and swing into my bedroom.