“Who was your grandfather?” Aunt Khora asked warily.
“That doesn’t matter right now, ma’am,” Marish told her firmly. “Please let me get on with this story.” Turning back to Itana, he said, “Itana, I’ve already told you how your brother died, how he was sent on a suicide mission. Naam told me when he was dying that there was a recent letter from home that I needed to read. You had sent it in response to something Naam had said in his last letter about sending a friend to investigate your memory problems. You begged him not to tell you the name of the friend, and said that the friend should only meet you with a mask over his face. You also told him your mother had been murdered in a random burglary. I wondered later if that was why he agreed to go on the mission. I know he felt like he had
