"I'm an idiot, a complete idiot," Ayan said as she and Tilli left Mrs. Putyam's office with Miriam.
The words rang true even though Miriam couldn't believe them. "What do you mean?"
"Mat," Ayan hissed, "he's Pelan."
Tilli led them up the stairs. "I think we all heard that."
"No, I mean, he's. Pelan. That's why he recognized the embroidery on my shirt. And you said yourself that his accent is different from Key's."
"But he's adopted," Miriam said, "wouldn't that explain the evidence?"
"Yeah, he's adopted. By a Thisaazhou family! And he wears his hair in a braid. And he ties it with a purple ribbon. And he only speaks Shugbo. Even to Key, even though we know it's not his first language."
"Is she making sense to you?" Tilli asked Miriam, who shook her head.
"It's a Pelan custom," Ayan explained, "If possible, you use a language everyone can understand. The only shared language between the five of us is Shugbo. It would be inhospitable to speak anything else." She stamped her foot. "That's why he looks like Askan. He braids his hair, but he doesn't wear an ibi'an."
"A what?" Miriam only now realized they were on the third floor, though her and Ayan's room was on the first.
"A headscarf," Ayan translated as Tilli unlocked the door to her room. When they got inside, Ayan plopped down on Tilli's bed and continued to tell them about the Pelan temple she had visited Antarand and the signs she should have recognized. Miriam struggled to follow. After a minute or two, Ayan fell quiet, and they waited in silence until the door opened again and Key and Mat came through.
For a moment, Mat looked as if he might leave. He stood stiffly and looked at each of them in turn. Then his shoulders slumped forward, he walked to Key's bed and took a seat. Key, in contrast, ignored them. She sat down next to him and rubbed his back. Miriam wondered for a moment if she should leave, but neither Ayan nor Tilli moved from their spots.
Then Ayan spoke haltingly in a language Miriam was unfamiliar with. "Pehevo min kho menevo pukhi muno." Mat's head rose at the sound and his eyes fixed on her. "I don't care if you're Pelan," she said in Shugbo, "Them and the Xurugwi were the only ones who were nice to me after I got arrested, so you're probably better off that way."
"be'avu ma." Miriam couldn't be certain, but she suspected Mat spoke in the same tongue Ayan had. It was strange to hear him speak it. Ayan had said he always spoke in Shugbo, but she had never really noticed. Her powers of observation were apparently rusting.
Mat switched back to Shugbo. "My name is Matsias Beleed." He looked at each of the girls in turn again. "I was born in Ethion. And the night I left, the enforcers in my city burned down the temple with my family inside. My brother and a few others escaped on a train. I was supposed to go with them, but I ran back to help and..." his gaze dropped to his prosthetic leg.
Key pulled back from her brother to look at him. "You mean there were others who survived? You never told us that."
Mat stared at his hands. "I didn't know how. I should have stayed with them. And now, I'll never see them again."
Tilli sank onto her bed. "How did they get on the train?"
Mat only looked up a moment. "A friend of my parents--Lishald Fandel. He works for the railroad. And sometimes he travels by hopping trains." Mat smiled for just a moment at the thought.
"Do you trust him?"
"Yes. But I don't know what his plan was. And there are a lot of things that can ruin plans in Ethion."
Suddenly, everything clicked for Miriam. "Lying without lying," she muttered.
Key turned to her. "What's that?"
"Ever since I met you on the train, there was something off about the chords in your voices. You weren't telling the truth, but you weren't lying either. I think I finally know why."
"You get good at telling half-truths when you're hiding," Mat said, and this time, the chords rang true.
"That's what you were telling me the night of the Kporo match. I mean, you were trying not to tell me, but... that's what your voice was telling me. You're siblings, and you're not." Key wrapped her arm around Mat's shoulders again. "And you're Thizaazhou and you're not."
Tilli crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't get it. Why didn't you tell us? I mean, I'm Xurugwi." A hand went to the necklace at her throat. "You really thought I would care about you being Pelan?"
Key shrugged. "Well, we didn't know the history between the Xurugwi and the Pelan until Mr. Connor's class."
Tilli looked like she was about to retort, but Miriam stopped her. "Leave him alone!" The words were out of her mouth almost before she thought them. As the others turned to stare, she put a hand in her pocket where own Xurguwi necklace sat. "I know what it's like to hide your faith. It's not always easy to tell who will be on your side."
"Then you won't tell anyone?" Mat asked hopefully.
"And have some other jerk like Antony come after you?" Tilli said, "Of course not! No one should be attacked over politics." Ayan agreed with this, but Miriam was concentrating on the chords in Tilli's voice. The truth of the statement didn't just ring in her ears. She could feel it in her bones.
