THE HONEY-STRIPED WOOD of the railing glided smoothly beneath my cold hand. Sconces lit my way up the winding stone stairs, and I could see parts of the Middling quarter through the diamond-paned windows that appeared at every floor.
The patched-quilt colors of the night-market tents.
A garden behind the wall of someone’s home, bushes and trees blurred together in the darkness, warped by a defect in the window’s glass.
The nearly uniform shapes of houses, the same rust-colored ceramic tiles, doors painted the same sage green as the door at the address Sid had given me.
It had taken me forever to find the house. She had included no map and no instructions. I had spent much of the night wandering, looking for street signs, not daring to ask anyone the way. I assume that if you were able to get into the Middling quarter once you can do so again, the note read. No one had answered my knock at the door of the tall Middling house, which even in the dark looked intimidating in its newness—rich red brick with an undertone of blue, shiny-painted shutters, carefully groomed flowers waving from their window boxes, petals sulfur yellow and soapy white. Flickering light from the oil-lit street lantern behind me wavered over the door. I knocked again. When no one answered, I tried opening the door, my pulse thudding. It unlatched easily, opening with the soft sigh of well-oiled hinges.
A warm breeze pushed me from behind, tunneling into the house, stirring my brown skirts. The empty room I entered glowed with the light of small lanterns that showed powder-blue painted walls, a soapstone mantelpiece that bore a brass bell fit for one’s hand. Old ashes lay in the grate, a sign that whoever lived here—was it Sid?—had had the comfort of a fire during the ice wind. A window was open. I could hear the muted cry of far-off seagulls. An uncorked bottle of wine and two delicate glasses sat at a little oval table. One glass was stained red at its bottom. A pink-striped chair looked dented in its upholstery, as if someone had recently sat there. I touched the silk. It was faintly warm.
A muffled thump, weirdly musical, came through the door at the other end of the room. I followed the sound.
Sid was lying on the floor under the belly of a piano, prying with a small knife at something I couldn’t see.
The floorboard creaked beneath my step, so she must have known I was there, but she continued at her task. I saw her face only in profile, brows furrowed, chin tipped up, lips bitten in concentration.
“You’re late,” she said.
“You’re rude. You didn’t even answer the door.”
“I was busy.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting started without you.” She slid out from under the piano and stood, brushing herself off. She was dressed in Middling clothes, though without regard for how she would dress if she were in fact a Middling woman. The trousers were a tight fit, made for a man, and although the dark blue tunic had a feminine cut that nipped in at the waist, it was free of the simple embroidery that a Middling would normally flaunt as a sign of minor status. In the buttery yellow lamplight, I could see details that I hadn’t in the moonlight outside the prison: the fullness of her mouth; a freckle beneath her eye; her proud posture; the skin that was a few shades lighter than mine; the eyelashes surprisingly thick and black, a contrast to her fair hair. I could see that even in good light, it would have been easy to make the same mistake I had in the darkness. It would be easy to think she were a boy, if I only glanced once. But I couldn’t believe that anyone would glance at her only once.
She smirked. “You’re staring.”
This was different from her friendly arrogance in the prison. There was an anger to her that seemed directed at me even though I had done nothing to deserve it.
She slid her long hand inside the open mouth of the piano, feeling around inside. The strings hummed and twanged.
“Do you play?” I asked. In the Ward we were allowed only little wooden flutes that played simple melodies. I knew what a piano was only because I had read about them in books at Harvers’s printing shop.
Sid shuddered. “Not on your life.” She roughed up her short golden hair, frowning into the instrument.
“I suppose you’re no good at it,” I said, “and don’t enjoy something where you have no opportunity to show off.”
Her gaze snapped up. Her black eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t come here to be ignored.” I wasn’t sure what allowed me to give voice to the resentment brewing in my chest. Normally I wouldn’t, to anyone. “I risked punishment going through the wall to meet you. I wandered for hours trying to find this place because you left no directions. So tell me why I’m here and what you’re doing or I will leave.”
Her expression changed, screwing up with rue. She scrunched her eyes shut and covered her face with her hand. “Directions,” she groaned. “I didn’t give you directions?”
“None.”
“I thought you would recognize the address. I thought you must come to the Middling quarter all the time.”
“The last time was my first time.”
“I am such an idiot.”
“You are,” I agreed.
Her hand slid away from her face. “I’m sorry. I waited for a long time. I assumed you weren’t coming. It bothered me.” She said her last words slowly, seeming to consider them as she said them.
“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 like 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.”