We walked ahead of the others the next morning, Tam and me. Like we used to walk to the river back in Harrow's End — moving so the words came easier.

  "Tell me about after," I said. "The village. After I left."

  He was quiet for a bit. Choosing his words.

  "The wall got repaired in two weeks. Birn and Cottie — the ones who were burned — both healed up fine. Birn went to Cresswick and apprenticed with the tanners. Cottie married the wheelwright's son, has two daughters now." He glanced at me. "They don't talk about the fire much. It was a long time ago to them."

  I breathed through that.

  "The winter was tight," he said. "But Mirca organized trades with the eastern farms. It wasn't as bad as—" He paused. "She let it seem worse. The grain shortage. She let people blame more of it on you than was actually your fault."

  "Why?"

  "Because she was scared and she was grieving. Your mom was her oldest friend. I think watching you—" He paused again. "I think you were a reminder of things she couldn't fix, and she took it out on you, and she won't ever really admit that out loud but I think she knows it."

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  I looked at the road ahead.

  "The part that hurt me wasn't the fire," Tam said. "I want you to know that. I've said it in my head probably a thousand times, working out how to tell you." He stopped walking. I stopped too. "What hurt was the leaving. No note. No goodbye. You were just — gone. And I didn't get to say anything, or ask any questions, and you made the decision that I wasn't the kind of person you could trust with the truth."

  "That's not—"

  "I know that's not why you did it," he said. "I know you were trying to protect me, or protect yourself, or both. But that's what it felt like. Like you'd decided I couldn't handle it. And that—" His jaw tightened. "That hurt more than the fire ever could have."

  I looked at him. Eleven years of knowing this face. Every version of it.

  Right now it was carrying something it had been carrying a long time, and it was almost done.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "For real. The actual thing I did wrong — which was leaving without saying goodbye — I'm sorry for that."

  He looked at me for a long moment.

  Then he started walking again.

  "Okay," he said. "Don't do it again."

  "I won't."

  "Good." A pause. "So this Sealstone. Lyra explained it to me but she went very deep very fast and I lost the thread around 'ley-line resonance frequency.'"

  I laughed. Actually laughed. It came out a little rough from disuse but it was real.

  "Short version," I said. "It's a lens for my kind of magic. I have to use it to stop an immortal from turning the world to ash."

  "Right. And you can do that?"

  "I'm working on it."

  He smiled — that crooked, familiar smile I hadn't seen in three years.

  "Same as always," he said.

  Yeah. Same as always.