I fell asleep after that, and slept soundly for the first time in months, even years. When I woke, I saw that the water in my pool was deeper and clearer.

“What happened here?” I asked the Raker.

“You thrash around too much,” he said.

Ulín’s expression is odd; I cannot read it. “When did you figure out he was my brother?”

I shrug. “When you called him Tajer, a while ago. He shared that name with me, later.” Truth is, I wondered even before that.

A look of betrayal flickers in her eyes, then dissipates. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Would you, in my place?” Perhaps it does not matter if she would. “Our tales were unsheathed together. You told me his story as you knew it, and now I am telling you mine.”

That hint of betrayal is in Ulín’s voice when she speaks. “Are you trying to make me feel for him?”

I feel frustrated now, too. “No, I’m not trying to make you feel for him. He is not an easy person to feel for, although I’m sure many feel something. Do you want me to stop?”

She is silent. In my mind, I have already drafted the dictionary of her silences. This one, I think, is curiosity beyond reason, a desire to know that transcends even pain.

I say, “Very well. Then I shall continue my tale.”

That morning, the Headmaster was shocked to see the Raker back in the training court. Ladder’s face was motionless, but the corners of his eyes twitched just so, and I had studied his body. If he did not know the Raker was back, if no ladder had been extended to him, then how did the Raker return from the coals of the Orphan Star?

I asked him that question myself later that night.

“You ask too many questions,” the Raker said.

“If I wasn’t too curious for my own good, I would still be with my people. I would be a part of the Shoal.”

“Do you regret leaving?” he asked.

“You ask me without wanting to answer any of my questions. I will trade answers with you, if you wish.”

He threw himself upon the bed once more, and turned his face away.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall.

Studying nameway bodies came in handy for me then. He would speak first, I knew. He was more powerful than me by far, but impatient; I had him at a disadvantage.

Not too long after he said, without turning to face me, “I answered your question about your pool.”

Ah. It wasn’t much of an answer. He had spoken up first, as I expected, but only to keep score. He was also right. I had asked him about my pool, and he all but confirmed that he cleared and filled it.

So I answered his earlier question. “No, I do not regret leaving. When I was living in the isles, I wanted to know the purpose of the Stone storyline. Well, I found it. We were warriors once. We encircled our people with protection, and we ventured forth in curiosity toward people and places not our own. We did many things, sometimes contradictory—we journeyed and remained, fought in wars and guarded peace, disrupted and betrayed and led our people to safety. In every story I found where the siltway people took part, there were Stones. I do not regret discovering this. In the isles, we Stones have no purpose.”

“Except to rebel,” he said.

“Rebellion is not a purpose. Perhaps I do not understand your words.”

He sat up on his bed to look at me. At close quarters he looked troubled, with sunken eyes and disheveled hair unraveling from his braid. I did not have a good look of him when he came in at night, and during training I did not spar with him. But now that I attended, he did not look well.

The Raker chewed his lips. “What is rebellion then, if not a purpose?”

“It is . . . I am trying to translate. It is a pushing-away. From one thing, which you are expected to do and to be, you set toward something else.” I made a push-away motion. “Studying your language, I understood that a person moves upon ground. But there’s more than that. When you push away, you acquire speed, and this speed can carry you past your target. Rebellions move you, not just upon ground, but against and alongside other people. One does not know where one might end up, one is carried, one seeks to have choice and might again lose it.”

“You would enjoy speaking to my sister,” the Raker said.

Ulín blinks. “Do you enjoy speaking to me?”

I reply, “Maybe.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize. It is my choice to continue to speak to you.”

I contemplate her. Her anger, her discomfort, her confusion. Her curiosity, which is so much like mine. The warmth of companionship we shared earlier. The guardedness of now.

I can stop right here, or continue.

I choose to continue.

I tell Ulín, “I do not love languages the way you do. Studying your language is not a curiosity for me. It is a rebellion. In the beginning, I was all too willing to instigate it, but now I am carried. A story moves back and forth in translation, and it is remade every time. Each of us is a story translated to a language vastly different from its first. You can try to translate yourself back, but it won’t be the same story.”

After a while, the Raker continued his tale. “I went down to the Orphan wanting to die. The Headmaster thought I was finished.”