She reached for Kazu's hand, and he squeezed hers immediately in return, and together they stepped through the gate and beyond the palace walls for the very first time since either of them could remember.
The capital spread out before them in every direction, wide stone streets branching off toward corners of the city Hazia had only ever glimpsed from a distance. Vendors called out from colorful stalls lining the roads, children darted between adults' legs as they chased one another through the crowded marketplace, and the scent of fresh bread mingled in the air with spices, brewing tea, roasted chestnuts, cut flowers, and fresh fish, all blending together into an overwhelming symphony of ordinary life that neither of them had ever been permitted to experience firsthand.
Kazu turned his head in every direction at once, trying to take it all in. "So many people..."
Hazia laughed softly beside him. "There'll be even more one day, once we have our own place among them."
He glanced at her, curious. "You've seen this before?"
She smiled, a little mysteriously. "In a manner of speaking." Not in this life, exactly. Another one, one she rarely allowed herself to think too closely about, but the memory of crowded streets and ordinary bustle wasn't entirely unfamiliar to her, even here.
The palace maids gradually dispersed in different directions, one of them calling back over her shoulder as she went. "Remember! We will meet back at the East Market before sunset! Don't be late!"
"We won't be!" Hazia called back, waving, before turning to Kazu. "Now," she said, "what should we do first?"
He tilted his head at her, waiting.
She pulled the small pouch out from inside her sleeve, and before anything else, before sweets or sightseeing or any of the countless things a child might have wanted first, she counted the coins carefully, ducking briefly into a quiet side alley to empty them into her open palm. Three silver coins. Twenty-eight copper. It wasn't a fortune by any measure, but it was more money than she had ever possessed at five years old in either of her lives combined.
She separated the coins into three careful piles. "This pile," she said, pointing, "is savings. This one is investment. And this," she added with a small smile, "is today's spending."
Kazu watched her quietly. "...Investment? What is that?"
She nodded and tried to patiently explain, "If money sits still, it stays small forever. If money works, it grows."
He didn't fully grasp the concept, at least not yet, but he trusted her completely despite his lack of understanding, the same way he trusted nearly everything she told him. "So," he asked instead, "what are we going to buy?"
Her smile widened. "Not sweets."
His shoulders slumped dramatically at that, and she burst into laughter at his exaggerated disappointment. "We'll eat later, I promise." He nodded, satisfied enough with that.
Their first stop wasn't a food stall, nor was it the toy shop Kazu had been eyeing from a distance. Instead, Hazia led them toward a modest stationery store tucked between two larger buildings, its shelves lined with brushes, ink, and stacks of paper. The old shopkeeper greeted them with a warm smile. "What can I help you with today?"
"I'd like the cheapest writing set you have," Hazia told him.
The old man looked mildly surprised. "For school, is it?"
Hazia smiled. "For the future."
He chuckled at that, clearly charmed by the answer. "A good one, that."
She purchased a stack of paper, a small pot of ink, two brushes, one slate board, and a single stick of chalk, and Kazu carried the bundle carefully in both arms as they stepped back out into the street. During the past month, Zanine had in fact diligently taught them as she had said she would, providing paper of a far finer grade than anything sold in this humble little shop, smooth sheets pressed from carefully cultivated fibers that took an artisan the better part of a season to produce properly. That paper, precious as it was, came with a cost of its own. Every sheet Zanine gave to them bore a small mark in one corner and was counted carefully against what remained locked away in her lacquered box, meant for lessons and lessons alone. Hazia had no wish for anyone to notice missing sheets, or worse, to glance over something she had written and never intended for other eyes. This paper, plain and unremarkable and utterly unwatched, was the kind she could actually call her own.
"Why do we need more paper?" he asked quietly, after a moment.
She glanced at him. "To write, of course. The paper Zanine brings is only for when she teaches us. This will be for us to use however we want."
He nodded.
She smiled warmly.
As they made their way back into the bustling crowd, Hazia inhaled deeply, and the scent that filled her lungs felt like something more than flowers or bread or dust rising off the stones beneath their feet. It felt, to her, like possibility itself. A month ago, she had been stealing steamed buns from a kitchen that despised them simply to survive another day. Today, she carried official identification bearing her own name, honestly earned wages that belonged entirely to her, the trust of a royal concubine who had chosen to invest in her future, and the freedom, however brief, to walk beneath an open sky without fear of what waited around the next corner.
She looked out over the crowded marketplace stretching ahead of them, and somewhere beyond these very streets, she knew, waited everything she had not yet begun to build. Allies she hadn't yet met. Businesses that didn't yet exist. An empire, someday, that neither the palace nor the world beyond it could yet imagine taking shape from two forgotten children.
She squeezed Kazu's hand gently. "Come on," she said. "There's still a great deal we have to do."
Kazu nodded without asking anything further, because whenever Hazia smiled at him the way she was smiling now, he had learned it meant she was already looking years ahead into some future only she could fully see. And somehow, without fail, she always found a way to make the impossible feel a little more possible than it had the day before.