“Everything is safer for you than it is for me.”
“You’re right. I should have been thinking about that. I was thinking too much about me. About how I was feeling.” She looked down at the piano.
My curiosity got the better of my fading anger. “What are you looking for?”
“A prayer book.”
“There is no such thing as a prayer book.” I studied her to see if she was joking or making this up. “No one worships the gods. They’re not real.”
“There used to be such books. It’s an old book. And hidden, I’ve been told, in this piano.”
“So this is not your piano.”
“No.”
“Is this your house?”
“No.”
“Do you even have the right to be here?”
“No,” she said cheerfully, “which is why I must hurry. I will understand if you wish to leave. I’ll stay here until I find the book.”
But I didn’t want to leave. I planted my hands on my hips. “So you are a thief.”
“I am many things. But for the moment, yes, you’re right. Nirrim … will you be thieves with me?” She went back to inspecting the piano, knocking along its black lacquered wood.
“Have you tried playing the piano?”
She shot me a flat look of mock outrage. “We have already discussed my ability to play—or lack thereof.”
“I mean: Have you struck each key? If a book is hidden inside, maybe it obstructs some part of the piano from playing. See if a note or notes won’t work.”
“Ooh, yes.” She trickled her fingers up the keys, moving from the rumbling low notes.
“Why do you want a prayer book?”
“Information. Do you realize that although your city has libraries in the upper quarters, there are no history books? Why are there no history books?” She danced out the middle notes, shifting her hand so that she struck the notes only with her thumb and little finger, hand stretched. “And there are no books about the gods, even though people refer vaguely to them as having existed, even though there are statues of them in the High quarter.” She hit a key that thudded instead of rang. The note was dead. She smiled at me. “Clever Nirrim.” She reached inside the piano’s body and fiddled with the tuning pins, then seemed to find something. She wrenched at the flat board that held the pins.
“You are going to ruin the instrument.”
“It deserves it,” she said. “It’s in the way of what I want.”
The board popped up. Strings squealed. Tuning pegs broke off, one sailing to the floor, the others dropping into the piano. Sid reached around inside, then slid out a small red leather-bound book, the edges of its pages bright with gold. She made a satisfied noise.
“What’s so special about that book?” I asked.
“I want to know if Herrath’s gods are the same ones my people worship. What they’re like. Their supposed powers.”
I thought about how she had phrased her words. “Your people worship them. Do you?”
“Pfft. Mere superstition. Fanciful tales. At least”—she closed the book—“so I always thought. But something is happening in this city, and I want to understand it. I’d like for you to help me.”
“Me?”
“I have a proposition. Help me find the source of magic—or whatever trick is making things look like magic—and I will help you leave this island.”
“But I don’t want to leave. This is my home.”
Sid exhaled impatiently. “If you like the trap you’re in, I guess I can’t make you leave it. What do you want, Nirrim? Why were you looking for me?”
I just wanted to see you, I thought, but that seemed childish to say. “Which one told you I was looking for you? The fruit seller, the boy, or the High-Kith brothers?”
She grinned. “Who is to say all of them didn’t? I have many friends. Many admirers. You are hardly the first.”
I huffed with irritation, though I was relieved that she had returned to the teasing tone she’d used so often in the prison, that empty flirtation that seemed like second nature to her. “Why do you want so badly to find the source of magic?” I thought of the dream vials. “Do you want to bring magic goods back to your country?”
“Not quite. I want leverage. Let’s say this magic or trick can be bottled up. Its source discovered. Then I can bring it home—or bring the secret to it home. I could bargain with my parents. Marriage for a woman means the same thing where I come from as it does here: life with a man. Sleeping in his bed. I won’t do it. I have tried to explain to my parents, but they don’t want to listen. They never even let me finish. They have too much to gain by selling me off. So I can’t ever go home … unless maybe I can offer them something valuable enough to secure my freedom. Something to offset the cost they’ll bear if I don’t marry.”
I heard the muffled click of the front door latch. A gust of wind whooshed into the room.
“Why is the door unlocked?” someone said from the other room.
Sid shoved the small book into her back trouser pocket. She seized my hand. “Quickly.” She tugged me toward glass doors and pushed through them to a balcony that overlooked a sweet-smelling, dark garden. Wind tore through the trees. “We have to jump,” Sid hissed. I looked down into the garden and felt a sick twist in my stomach. “It’s not so far down,” she whispered.
I heard a cry of discovery from inside the room we had just left.
“Come on,” Sid said.
My pulse pounded against Sid’s hot hand. I touched my shirt and thought of the Elysium feather hidden beneath it. We jumped.
I tumbled into bushes, felt twigs scratch my face.
Sid tugged my hand. I heard shouts from the balcony as she pulled me through the garden and to the door in its wall. The knob didn’t budge when she twisted it. She dropped to one knee and, in the darkness, used her little knife, working at the lock while my pulse filled my chest and throat. The lock clicked. She pushed us through, and we ran.
It was only when we reached the night market and dipped into the crowd of people that we slowed, and she turned to me with bright black eyes, mouth parted in exhilaration.
“You like danger too much,” I told her.
She tipped her head slightly in acknowledgment. The lamplight caught the gold in her hair. “I know. It’s a flaw.”
I wondered, just for a moment, whether her short hair would feel like velvet at the nape of her neck.
I imagined it brushing my cheek.
I thought about drinking the dream of new, the way the liquid had fizzed on my tongue. Although the dream had been no more real than any other, and was filled as all dreams are with impossibilities, it had felt so vivid. I remembered the duskwing drinking the god’s blood and transforming into the Elysium bird, and for the first time, as I looked at Sid’s excited mouth, I felt a tickle of uncertain exploration, a wondering … was the bird special? Was it the gods’ bird?
Did the feather hidden beneath my shirt lend me some power that made Sid look at me the way she was looking at me?
Like I was captivating.
“About our bargain,” she said. “Will you help me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. What do you want in exchange?”
“I don’t know.”
She made an amused sound. “When you figure it out, tell me.”
“What if you can’t give it to me?”
She smiled widely. “Do I look like someone who would disappoint?”
“Not if it’s something easy to give.”
“That sounds like a challenge. And a criticism! You think I can’t handle something hard? What do you believe I’d do then?”
“Run away.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“True! Luckily for both of us, I know already what you want.”
“Oh, really,” I said. “Do you.”
“You just want to want something. You want the feeling of wanting.”
I didn’t lik
e that. It made me feel too seen. “Maybe I want money.”
“I can give you that. Though, honestly: boring.”
“Or to live among the High Kith.”
She waved a languid hand. “Done. If that’s what you really choose.”
A tree sighed above us in the dark. Sid caught me glancing up into the rush of its leaves and asked, “What is it? Why do you look so startled?”
“It’s my first tree,” I said. The tree rubbed against the gray sky. “I have never seen one before, not this close. There are no trees in the Ward.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should find out.” Slowly, she said, “I don’t like that you have never seen a tree. It’s like saying you have never seen the sky, or sun.”
I looked away from the leaves and into Sid’s black eyes. Then her gaze lowered. She was looking at the burn on my cheek. I immediately covered it.
“It was an accident,” I told her. “It’s ugly, I know.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, lips tightening. “It looks like it hurts.”
“No,” I said, although it did. Embarrassed by her disbelieving gaze, I said I had to leave. The sun would rise soon.
I thought maybe she was disappointed, and I couldn’t tell whether it was because she knew I was lying about the burn and didn’t like it, or because she believed me and wondered how I could be so clumsy.
Maybe she was second-guessing our bargain.
But she said, “Meet me here tomorrow night. Think about what you want from me. In the meantime, I can give you what you came looking for in the night market the other night.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “And what is that?”
“Adventure.”
23
IT WAS SO HOT THE FOLLOWING DAY that the silver ants came out, zipping up and down the white walls of the Ward in glittering lines like tinsel. They bite. You don’t want to get in their path.
“So long as the windows are shuttered and we stay indoors, the heat should be tolerable,” Raven said when she walked into the kitchen. The walls of the Ward buildings are thick, slabs of stone cut from a quarry I had never seen. They hold the chill of the night.
I was kneading the morning bread, sweat dampening the hair at the nape of my neck. It felt good to work the dough. It helped me not think too much about last night.
And what might happen later, this night, after everyone in the tavern was asleep and I snuck into the Middling quarter.
I punched the bread dough back down. I rolled it under the heel of my hand. The rhythm of this kept away my nervousness.
Or was it excitement?
“By noon, not a soul will be stirring in the Ward,” Raven said. I had almost forgotten she was in the room.
Annin cut sun melon into thin, papery orange slices and dropped them into a bowl of pale wine. With a sigh, she said, “It will be so dull with no customers.”
Morah said nothing. She cracked eggs into a bowl one-handed. Each tap of an egg against the rim of the bowl was precise and surprisingly loud. She watched Raven as she did it. She watched her the way you watch the silver ants, to see which direction they want to go in, so you can get out of their way.
“Now, girls,” Raven said brightly, “it is never possible to be bored when there are things to do. There are errands to run in the Ward.”
“I thought you said we should stay indoors,” said Morah.
“And so you should! I can’t even imagine setting one foot into that sun, particularly when I have been feeling so poorly.”
“Nirrim, too,” Annin said.
I lifted my gaze from my work in surprise.
“Just look at her,” Annin said. “Those shadows under her eyes! They look like they’ve been smudged with that kohl the High ladies use.”
Two nights of lost sleep were catching up with me. I hadn’t realized that Annin had noticed.
Raven came close, tipping her head up. In the last two years, I had grown past her height. She tucked a lock of damp hair behind my ear. It was so reassuring to feel her tenderness. She could easily lose her temper, it was true, but who among us is in perfect control of our feelings all the time? And she always became kind again.
“My lamb,” she said, “have you been sleeping badly?”
“No.” From the look on her face I could tell she was remembering when I had first come to the tavern from the orphanage, and had woken, weeping, in the night, babbling about things that she assured me were not real—except Helin’s death, which sometimes I would hope was one of the lies I had believed. “It’s not like that,” I said.
She smiled in evident relief. When you see relief on the face of someone you love you also see the worry that had been hidden. Her worry made me feel beloved. I was her girl. Her lamb. “I feel fine,” I promised.
“Annin, she is fresh as a flower. Except…” She touched my hair again, but this time let her fingers slide free, and rubbed the fingertips as she grimaced. “Very hot. My dear, you are so sweaty!”
Morah cracked another egg. The yellow globe of the yolk and its slick transparent white spilled from the shell in her hand into the bowl. She gave me a hard look I didn’t understand.
“I’ll run those errands myself,” Raven said. “Now, what did I come down here for? Oh, yes. A basket.”
“I’ll go,” I said. “I don’t mind. I’m already hot.”
“We are all hot,” Morah said.
“Oh, would you?” Raven said to me. “I bet you won’t feel the heat a bit if I loan you my parasol.”
“Parasols are Middling,” Morah said. “She can’t use one.”
“That’s right. I forgot. Maybe you shouldn’t go after all, my dear.”
“I want to,” I insisted. “The dough can have its second rise while I’m gone.” I untied my apron.
“Are you sure?”
If I had a mother, would I let her go out into this heat, especially when she was feeling ill? “Of course I’m sure.”
As I left the kitchen, the basket on my arm and instructions on a slip of paper, I heard Morah say to Raven, “I don’t know why you make her do everything.”
I felt a twist of doubt.
But Raven hadn’t made me. I had offered.
I shook away my discomfort and went out into the steely sun. The Ward was bright white, the walls shining like glaze on a cake.
* * *
“That’s enough,” Rinah called from the shadow of her home.
I glanced up from my weeding. I wiped sweat from my mouth. “But I’m not finished.”
“You don’t even have a hat on your head, child. You’ll drop dead from heatstroke. What will your mistress do then? She has no use for your corpse, believe me. Come inside, drink some water, and take what you’ve come for.”
I tucked my gardening knife into my pocket and followed her inside. The sudden cool darkness felt like a plunge into a well. I felt dizzy. I was more tired than I had realized. I gratefully accepted the tin cup of water Rinah offered with one hand, the other hand resting on her pregnant belly. Then she took my basket and filled it with enormous vegetables from her garden. Anything she planted always flourished. “Here is something extra,” she said, and slid in a roll of tanned leather. “We slaughtered one of the goats.” Rinah and her family had one of the rare homes with a plot of land. She had a coop and a few goats: rewards from the Council for bearing so many children. “I know Raven needs the leather,” she added. I would dye the leather Middling blue and cut it to coded size for new passports.
“Careful in the Ward,” she said, which is what Half Kith say to warn others against the militia.
“Why?”
“A soldier died the night of the festival. He fell from the rooftops.”
I felt suddenly cold despite the heat. As nonchalantly as possible, I said, “He must have been chasing the bird.”
“Well, yes, that is what everyone thought at first, but the militia said they found strands of black hair
stuck in fresh paint on the walls near where he fell. The hair didn’t match his. The militia think maybe it wasn’t an accident. Soldiers have been poking around, asking questions.”
I felt queasy but thought about how Sid would act in this situation. “Good luck to them.” I forced myself to shrug. “Lots of people in the Ward have black hair. I do.”
“So you do,” she agreed, but absently. Her face scrunched in sudden discomfort. She rubbed a hand over her taut belly, which showed the little bulge of a kicking foot. “Another baby. My gods. And here I am with five children already. I keep having one right after the other, just like the Council wants.” It was strange, perhaps, that the City Council encouraged the Half Kith to bear many children when overcrowding in the Ward might be a concern. Then again, the Council had ways of keeping the population in check. There were the vanishings. And arrests. Since so many people who went into the prison never returned, we could only assume they were dead or had become Un-Kith.
Rinah must have been thinking of similar things. Her discomfort and frustration slipped into worry.
“Do you not want the baby?” I asked, then felt horrible for asking a question that might have no good answer.
I remembered waking up inside the ventilated box outside the orphanage for unwanted babies. It was black with pinpricks of light. The box was cold. Maybe there had been an ice wind. I think there must have been, but I can’t know for sure because I had been placed in the box while asleep and so had seen nothing of the outside world or the person who had taken me to the orphanage. I was newly born. I had known only the warmth of arms and the human-scented stillness of the indoors. The cold was new and frightening. I had been swaddled in a blanket, but my legs had kicked it undone. I wailed. I flung my hands out for the softness that I loved, the familiar scent, her voice. But there was nothing to touch. Her face was fuzzy in my mind. For years after that moment in the box I would wonder why I couldn’t remember my mother’s face well, until I learned that babies are not able to see clearly. But as I cried in the box I thought about her vague face, her floating ribbons of black hair, her thin sweet milk, a golden necklace dangling a crescent moon that swung gently when she leaned over to take me in her arms. The box smelled. Urine soaked my legs—hot, then clammily cold.
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