Lan looked at where the landlady sat, on a little wooden stool by her broken wooden table, mending a scrap of cloth. The realization came like a portrait snapping into place. The Elantians might burn down their towns and cities, destroy their books, and cut off their language, but the one thing Lan had counted on the Hin to hold on to had been hope. Hope was that fickle little fellow that had tided her through the cold nights and hungry dawns when the exhaustion of another day stretched long and bleak before her. Hope, she realized, was what Māma had given her the day she had whipped out her
...more
