31

He was so much taller now than when she had last seen him. Anzi’s stomach lurched for the hundredth time since she had come to the Tower, but this one was the final one, the real one. She was here, looking Oza in the eye and coming face to face with the boy she had left to fend for himself in a world she had known would be too cruel to him.

And yet he looked healthy, or as healthy as he could ever be with his frailty. Still as skinny as she remembered, though. He positively swam in his robe.

“You’re not wearing initiate’s garb anymore,” she said, partly because she was proud of him but mostly because she didn’t know what else to say. “Congratulations.”

He raised one shoulder and made a twitching gesture with his opposite hand, but made not a sound. He blinked, long lashes somehow making his eyes look even darker than they were. Did she look like that, she wondered. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at herself, and fringers didn’t often pause to examine each other’s ap