“Do they have someone in mind?”
“Oh yes.”
“Someone you like?”
“Oh no.”
“Someone you despise?”
“I don’t despise anybody. I am simply not made for marrying.”
I almost asked that he describe the woman his parents wanted for him, but a small, ugly feeling stopped me. I became aware again of the perfume on his coat. “You would seduce women anyway, even if you were married.”
He sighed. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
“Does your family know where you are?”
“Not yet. I hope to keep it that way.”
“Maybe you should just marry,” I said. “Make them happy.”
“But I can’t.” He sounded perplexed. “You must understand why I can’t.”
“I would make my parents happy, if I had parents.”
“You would marry a man your parents had chosen? Someone you didn’t love, and never could?”
I shrugged. “Yes.”
“I thought—”
“What?”
“I thought you and I had more in common than we do.”
“We have nothing in common.”
“All right,” he said. “If you say so.”
“Honestly, your dislike of marriage is an excuse.”
“Really.” For the first time he sounded prickly. “In what way, pray tell?”
“Everything to you is an adventure. Being in prison is one. You wanted an excuse to run away.”
He started to speak, but the gated door at the end of the hall clanked and creaked. Sid said something swift and angry under his breath in his language, but kept silent when the guard came to collect my blood. Swiftly, I took off Sid’s coat so that the guard wouldn’t notice I was wearing something beyond my kith. I offered my arm through the bars. The needle went right into the bruise that had already formed on my inner right elbow.
“Leeches,” Sid muttered after the guard left with a vial of my blood. “And now you’ll sleep, and I won’t be able to argue with you.”
It was true; I was instantly drowsy. Shivering, I tucked myself back into Sid’s coat. “My sentence is for a month. Maybe yours is, too, and we can argue until we are released.”
“A month? They are going to drain your blood every day for a month?”
“I hope so. Sometimes they keep prisoners longer than they say they will. Some people never come out of prison.”
His silence seemed stunned. I closed my eyes. I curled into his coat and drifted toward sleep.
“I want you to think that what my parents would force me to do is wrong,” I heard him say.
We are all forced to do things, I almost told him, but I felt too tired.
It occurred to me, belatedly, that Sid had sensed that sturdy bowl of grief inside me when I told him about Helin. Maybe everything that came after—the flirtation, the silly bargain, the secret—had been to distract me when he saw that he couldn’t take away my sadness.
I thought I heard him call to the guard.
“It is wrong,” I murmured to Sid. I didn’t mean it. I would do anything for a mother, a father. But I said it again, deciding that I would believe it was wrong, for his sake.
16
“NIRRIM, WAKE UP.”
There was urgency in Sid’s voice. I heard footfalls coming down the hall. I got to my feet. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“We’re leaving,” he said.
I was confused. “To go where? A different part of the prison?” Fear rose within me. “Why? What will they do?”
“Nothing. Don’t be afraid. They are letting us go.”
The footfalls came closer.
“That’s not right.” I began to doubt whether I was awake or had somehow slept for nearly a month. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days.”
“Then my sentence isn’t over.”
“Now it is. I promised you a favor.”
A pair of guards unlocked our cells and we were led through the prison’s maze to a dimly lit office that seemed out of place: the size of a large cell, but with a thick rug on the floor, its pattern like interlaced fingers of many colors, and a tiny man behind a desk with a sputtering oil lamp. I wasn’t sure where to rest my eyes. I could feel Sid beside me, taut with energy. Behind the tiny man at the desk, a window glowed silver. It was the moonlight. It was like mercury. It was so strong that I finally believed Sid: it had truly been only three days since the full moon and the festival celebrating its god, one of the few gods this city remembered.
The man at the desk looked through my passport and stamped one of the booklet’s pages with a T for Tybir, the name of the prison. Sid had no documents, which was strange to see. I had never met anyone with no documents. There was, however, a letter that the man behind the desk read several times, looking up occasionally at Sid. Finally, the man scrawled something at the bottom of the page but did not stamp it. He folded the single page along its already creased lines and rose from his seat to hand it carefully to Sid. The man said, “Your—”
“None of that,” Sid said. “My stay here was delightful, I assure you.”
The man seemed flustered. Belatedly, I realized I was wearing Sid’s coat. Worried I would be punished, my gaze darted between the man behind the desk and the guards, but they paid no attention to me. They stared at Sid. The air prickled with their fascination.
Sid strode past the desk to the door beyond it. He pulled it open. Warm night air wafted in, fragrant with flowers. The ice wind had broken. “After you, Nirrim.”
“Really? We’re leaving?”
“Yes. I’ve had enough.”
The prison door shut behind us. The night was still. The moon was a large mirror, its light so bright that when I pushed up the sleeve of my—Sid’s—coat, I could see the bruises on my inner arm. The wall was as white as polished marble in this light, though I knew by day it was pocked gray granite. A gate in the wall was flanked by guards, but I was already in the Ward. It was Sid who would pass through the gate to the rest of the city. “What did you do,” I asked him, “to get them to release me early?”
“Isn’t it more fun to guess than to know?” he said, and I finally turned to look at him.
I could see Sid more clearly now. I saw the mistake I had made.
Sid’s face was even more striking in the moonlight: severe cheekbones set in an unexpectedly soft face with a softly lined mouth, and eyes so dark they must be black. Short fair hair, which I had never seen before—no Herrath had light hair. Sid was a little taller than me, but not if I were to stand on tiptoe. I was struck, as I had been before, by Sid’s beauty, but it wasn’t that which stole my breath. It was the tunic Sid wore: sleeveless, as I had noticed before in the prison, showing bare, slender arms. What I had not seen then, and could see now, was that the tunic was tight enough that it showed the curve of her breasts.
“Oh,” I said.
She lifted her brows.
My mind scurried back through our conversations. “I thought you…” I couldn’t finish my sentence.
“You thought what?” She frowned, studying my face. Then her expression eased—not in a relaxed way, but rather into tired lines. “I see,” she said. “Well, that’s no fault of mine.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I can’t help what you assumed. Did I say I was a man?”
“No.” My face grew hot as I newly understood things she had said.
“Disappointed?”
“No,” I said hastily. “Why would I be?”
“Indeed, why.” Her shrug was extravagant, her long hands unfurling as if flicking away water after washing. Her black eyes strayed from mine to the wall. I had the impression that I had vanished, or diminished. I felt the impulse to apologize but sensed that the apology might grate more than the mistake, which seemed less to offend than to disappoint her, as though I had become suddenly far less intriguing. There was a pain in my chest, small and sharp as
the snap of fingers.
It wasn’t normal to feel pain at any of this.
It wasn’t normal to feel drawn to her—not in the way I now knew I had been.
I started to shrug out of her coat. “Here,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Keep it. I don’t need it now.”
The warm night air was as soft as suede, salty from the harbor I had never seen.
“The ice wind might come again,” I said.
“I’ll be gone before it does.” Then, with a twist of her mouth that seemed decided to be amused, she brushed my shoulders and tugged at the hem of the coat to straighten any wrinkles. The gesture felt at once affectionate and dismissive. “It suits you. Even if it’s a little big.” She placed a palm against my cheek. I started at her touch. She dropped her hand.
Later, I wished that I had called to her, that I had said I missed her as soon as she turned to walk away. I wished she had seen how I brought my hand to my cheek. Her touch shivered down my back.
It lingered long after she passed through the wall’s gate.
17
THE INSIDE OF THE TAVERN was darker than the moonlit night. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and when I did I saw Annin asleep at a table, hair spilling over her arm. I was surprised to find her there, and wondered if she had been too tired from work that night to return to her room. I tried to shut the door quietly behind me, but the iron bolt was heavy. It thunked into place.
Annin stirred. She lifted her head from the table, rubbing her mouth. Then she saw me and stared. “Nirrim? Is that really you?”
“Shh,” I said, but she bounded from the table to pull me into her arms.
“We were so worried.” She pressed her hands to my cheeks, searching my face. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” When she hugged me again, her face brushing mine was wet with tears. Was it wrong to feel a small pleasure? I hadn’t known she cared so much.
“What did they take?”
“Just my blood. You must be quiet. You will wake—”
“You’re here, you’re safe! They will want to know.” She called for Raven and Morah. There came the sound of stumbling, the thin complaint of wooden doors. A nimbus of lamplight floated down the stairs before I saw any feet. Morah’s first—bare, like Annin’s—then Raven’s slippers.
Morah stared when she saw me. “Three days only? Your face … where did you pay?” She looked ready to open my coat, to rummage over my body until she found the damage she was sure they must have left.
Raven approached me, her slippered tread heavy.
I thought of you, I wanted to tell her, when I was in prison. I thought of how afraid you must be.
But I would never betray you. I would never tell anyone what we do. How you find people who want help, and I forge their freedom.
You can always trust me.
She lifted the oil lamp to my face. “Not a mark,” she said.
“No. I—”
“That coat.” She gestured with the lamp at Sid’s jacket, which I had not removed despite the heat. “You stole a Middling coat? You broke the sumptuary law? You fool.”
“I didn’t, I—”
She swung the oil lamp. It smashed against my cheek. I felt a lick of hot pain. I heard cries. I clapped a hand to my blazing cheek.
“How dare you,” Raven said. “After all these years, after all the care I put into you.”
I shrank back from her, glass cracking under my sandals. “The coat has nothing to do with it. Please, listen to me.” I babbled the story of what had happened.
“You caught the bird?” Annin’s voice was filled with wonder.
Raven turned to look at her and Morah. “Go to your rooms.”
“But Nirrim,” Annin said. “You have burned her!”
“Now,” Raven said.
Annin protested, wide-eyed, but Morah took her by the hand and tugged her up the stairs.
“Oh, my girl,” Raven said once we were alone. Her shoulders sagged. Her gentle face was lined with misery. “I am so sorry.” She reached to touch my burned cheek. I flinched, I couldn’t help it, and when I saw her eyes shine with sudden tears I felt guilty. I stooped to gather the shards of the lamp. She stopped my shaking hands. “Leave it,” she said, and sounded so heartbroken that I began to cry, I said I was the one who was sorry, could she forgive me.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Come, sit. I will help you, and you will tell me everything.” She fetched salve and a clean rag and a bowl of cool water. “Ah, no glass in the skin. That’s good.” She stroked the dripping cloth over my hot cheek. Water dribbled into my hair. “There. With any luck, you won’t even scar.” She smoothed the tingling salve over the burn. I gasped with relief. “You said nothing about the documents?”
“Never,” I said. “I swear.”
“Do you swear upon the gods?”
“Yes.”
“Who was this person? That girl.”
It felt strange to hear Sid referred to as a girl. I hadn’t mentioned to Raven and the others that I ever thought her anything else.
It had been a mistake. I make them all the time.
Usually I see things that are not there. This time, I had not seen something that was.
But she had known what I was. She had been flirting with me.
And I had liked it. A flush in my cheek burned beneath the lamp-oil burn. A confused, private feeling bundled itself up inside me. It curled around the idea of her.
“She is no one,” I said. “A stranger.”
Raven smoothed my damp hair behind my ears so gently that I felt tired, ready to lay my head in her lap, if I dared, and sleep.
“You said the bird came to you,” she said slowly.
“Yes,” I said, and she was silent. Then she said, “Let’s keep the matter of the Elysium to ourselves.”
Of course. It would only bring unwanted attention.
“Sweet child,” she said. “I was so frightened. Do you understand why I reacted the way I did? I had thought I’d lost you.”
“It’s all right.”
“I love you,” she said.
She had never said this to me before. Her words made me yearn for her love even though she had just offered it, as if my feelings were late, too slow to believe what she had said, or as if it was only now that I had her love that I could let myself actually feel the need for it. I have someone like a mother, I had told Sid. I hadn’t been sure of my claim’s truth. But it was true. I was so grateful.
I told her I loved her, too. She guided me upstairs as though I were half my age. She tucked me into my bed, just like a real mother, and tsked when she lightly touched my throbbing cheek. “You must see to that in the morning,” she said. When she lost her temper, and hurt me, she was always so tender afterward, as though I were her treasure. It felt so good that it was almost worth being punished. And didn’t parents correct their children, so that they would learn?
She stood in the moonlight, ready to leave, Sid’s coat tucked in the crook of her arm.
“Wait,” I said. “The coat. May I keep the coat?”
A flicker of annoyance crossed her face.
“Please,” I said.
“What’s the use? You can never wear it.”
“I like it. Maybe,” I stammered, “maybe Annin could help me alter it. Dye it.”
“Well, you know, you did lose my coat. This one is just my kith.” She must have seen the distress in my face. “Oh, very well.” She returned to lay the coat across the foot of my bed. “You’ll have quite a job making it look fit for a Half-Kith woman. But if it’s what you want.”
“Yes,” I said gratefully.
She kissed my brow. “I would do anything for you.”
After she left, I shifted into a sitting position in my bed, though moving at all made my cheek pound. I slipped my fingers into the inner pocket of Sid’s coat and withdrew the crimson-and-pink Elysium feather that had fallen three days ago when I was on the roof, and that I had plucked
from the gutter after leaving the prison. I had climbed back to the roof in the moonlight. I had collected the wet heliographs from the cistern, slipping the tin squares into my pocket.
The feather seemed to glow. Its quill was opalescent. I tucked it into my shirt, right above my heart. It tingled against my skin.
I lay back down and drew Sid’s coat over my chest like a blanket. I wondered where she was. I tried to picture what she was doing beyond the wall, and couldn’t. I remembered her voice and her face and her scent, though the coat didn’t smell like her, not anymore.
18
“THAT WILL LEAVE A SCAR,” Morah said in the morning when she dressed the burn.
“It’s not so bad.” I could feel it. The hot oil had left a thin streak down the hollow of my cheek.
She shook her head. “You can’t see how it looks.” We didn’t really have mirrors in the Ward, except when we stole a glance in a polished steel plate or visited Terrin, who made lavish mirrors to sell beyond the wall. Some were so large they looked like sheets of still water. It was unsettling to visit Terrin’s shop, to see myself refracted. I didn’t like being surrounded by myself. Raven had little business with her, so I had been sent there only once to barter for a handheld dressing mirror, which was Raven’s right as Middling to own. I offered what Raven had suggested: four blue duck eggs, which seemed too small a price to me. I could see, reflected all around me, embarrassment creeping pink into my cheeks. Terrin didn’t even let me finish. Of course, she said, and gave me the palm-sized mirror backed with green velvet. She refused to take anything for it. What Raven wants, she gets, Terrin said, and I flushed again, this time with pride, to see how much someone admired and loved my mistress.
Morah said, “There is a red stripe from your cheekbone to your jaw. You will have it forever.”
“It will fade.” I didn’t like Morah’s hard look. She respected Raven and obeyed her, but she didn’t care for her. Morah didn’t know, any more than Annin did, that Raven and I forged documents to help Half Kith leave the Ward, so I couldn’t expect her to understand Raven’s reaction.
I touched my chest above my heart, where the Elysium feather lay hidden beneath my shirt. The feather seemed to thrill beneath my touch. “Morah, why does a Lord Protector rule Herrath?”
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