WHEN I WOKE, THE SUNLIGHT was a hot blade on the bed. The hour was late and the still air felt like wet fur. I had cast off the sheet in my sleep.
Faintly, from downstairs, came the scrapes and clinks of someone busy at a task. There was the burnt scent of that foul eastern drink Sid liked so much.
I turned my face into the pillow. The pillow didn’t smell like Sid anymore. It smelled like me, and I was glad, because it was painful enough to want her, painful enough to remember exactly the shape of her mouth beneath my tongue, without having the specific scent of her perfume and skin pressing against my face.
Would there have been any words that could have made her stay last night?
I could have said, I know it’s not forever.
I could have said, I still want this, even if it vanishes like sugar on my tongue.
But I didn’t, and maybe even if I had, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The second time I opened my eyes, the house had an empty silence. I was relieved.
I went through my Pantheon winnings, dumping them onto the bed. I set aside all the money for Raven, the jewels and the box with the meowing cat for Annin, and a little knife for Morah, mostly because it reminded me of her. It had a strong and appealingly simple blade, with an edge to reckon with, and a hilt so intricately wrought with gold over steel that it was difficult to follow the path of the pattern. I uncorked the little metal vial, noting the slosh of its contents, and sniffed. It smelled like water. I didn’t see why anyone would bother to put such a small quantity of water in a vial—this was no canteen or flask. It fit in the palm of my hand. After encountering silver wine and pleasure dust at the party, I wasn’t about to taste anything I couldn’t identify. I took it to the bathroom and dribbled some of the vial’s liquid into the sink. It was a faint pink.
I remembered where I had seen something like that before.
I glanced into the mirror. The faded burn on my cheek had returned. It wasn’t a cream or the dressmaker’s mirror that had made the burn disappear for a night. It had been Madame Mere’s pink tea.
“Well?” she said when I entered her shop. “Was it a triumph? Which dress did she like best? Was it the final dress, right before it came off?”
I held out the little metal vial. “Is this yours?”
She looked at it, then at me quizzically. “No.”
“Is what’s inside yours? What is this liquid?”
She took the vial, opened it, and sniffed. “Oh, that,” she said, and smiled.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because if I didn’t already know before that you were Half Kith, I would know now.”
My pulse stuttered. My face must have betrayed me. Madame Mere said, “Only someone raised behind the wall or a traveler like Lady Sidarine would ask about elixir.”
“You knew?” Fear coursed through me. “Why did you pretend you didn’t?”
“My little kithling. I run a business.”
“You’re saying that you stayed silent in order to keep Sid as a customer.”
“No. I have plenty of customers. I turn many away, and dress only those who intrigue me.”
“Do you intend to blackmail me? I have nothing to give you.”
“I know you don’t. That is why I said nothing, and never will. Have you not noticed that most High Kith do not work, and that I do?”
I felt foolish for having thought she was blind to the obvious—that I was Half Kith—because of her assumptions. I had been the one to miss what was in front of my face.
“I work because I enjoy it,” Madame Mere said. “Everyone loves beauty, but what I love more is making it. I like to map out someone’s desires in pattern and cloth. I like to stitch them together. And if some of my kith think it’s strange for me to do it, they overlook my strangeness for the privilege of wearing my clothes. You, my dear, want more than what life has given you. What is so wrong with that? This is what I want, too. It is what everyone wants.”
“So you won’t tell the militia?”
“That would be a very boring outcome to your unusual situation.”
I was not at all reassured. “That doesn’t sound like a good reason to trust you.”
“I disagree. You have been to one of our parties. Surely you saw how, beneath all the finery, everyone is hungry for something different, something new. You, my dear, are exactly that. Why would I give you up?”
“So I am … your entertainment.”
“You are a story whose end would come far too soon in prison.” She busied herself pouring pink tea. “Would you like some? I can’t tell you what the elixir in that vial does, but it’d be best to pour it out if you don’t know. It could make you weep golden tears, or make what you imagine come to life, though usually only for a brief time. My elixir is very benign. It heals. It repairs scars, as you’ve seen. It fills in the cracks left by age.”
I realized that I had never seen a truly elderly looking High Kith. If I had thought about it, I would have assumed it was because I had been to places only young people frequented, but it seemed that no one here needed to look their age.
I refused the tea. The burn would return anyway. This elixir didn’t strike me as healing, but as an addictive respite from the truth. “Did you make the elixir?”
She took a sip from her cup. “No. It is supplied by the Council. There are many varieties. The price is high, but most are willing to pay, through either gold or pledges.”
“Pledges?”
“Yes. Many parents pledge one of their children to the service of the Council, which is always in need of new members. Few people actively want to serve the Lord Protector, though there are always some who enjoy the thrill of being close to the center of power and voluntarily induct themselves into the Keepers Hall.”
“Why is it called that?”
She shrugged delicately. “I suppose because they keep and control the supply of elixirs. And they keep order in the city. They oversee the militia, who are Middling, and appoint members of the Council to be judges. But I don’t really know why the hall is called that. It has always been called that.”
I was startled to hear these words coming from the mouth of a High Kith, uttered in that same blank tone I had heard Morah use, and Annin, and even myself. I had always assumed that only people behind the wall talked like that, and that everyone who lived beyond it had the answers to all our questions, just like they had everything else, even the ability to defy age.
“It is as it is,” said Madame Mere, settling her empty cup in its saucer.
But nothing is as it is. Everything comes from something. There is nothing and no one without a past. I thought about the fortune-telling tree. It had not always been a tree. Once, it had been a sapling that threaded greenly out of the dirt. Once, it had been a seed.
“I don’t believe you,” I told Madame Mere, not because I thought she was lying, but because I wasn’t sure that anyone in Ethin knew the truth.
Sid looked tired when I returned to the house. She wore a marigold silk dress as she busied herself in the kitchen, taking no care to protect the delicate cloth from the oil she rubbed into a shank of lamb, or the spices she liberally shook all over it, or the fresh red currants she plucked from their frail stems. It was as if she secretly—or not so secretly—wished to ruin the dress. Her face was drawn and unhappy, her eyes avoiding mine.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Upholding my end of our bargain.”
“Oh.” She looked at her oiled hands, at the mess on the table.
“You left the house first,” I pointed out, since she seemed inexplicably dissatisfied with my answer. “Why are you wearing that?”
She looked down at the stained dress. Her mouth curled in distaste. “I thought I should.”
“Why?”
“‘Why?’” she repeated. “You are asking none of the questions I thought you would.”
But I didn’t want to talk about last night. I didn’t want to talk about how the only way I’d been able to sleep was to keep my hands beneath my pillow, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to touch myself, which would only remind me of how I wanted her hands, not mine.
She said, “I am wearing this dress because I thought it would be an appropriate choice when I attempted to use my status to get into the Keepers Hall.”
“It didn’t work,” I guessed, based on her general mood.
“No.” She glanced again at the seasoned meat. “There’s only enough for one.”
Affronted, I said, “I don’t expect you to cook for me.”
“I mean, we will have to share.” She looked up at me. “I thought you weren’t coming back. I found the house empty when I returned. I thought you had left for good.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“But I will.”
“I know you will.”
She got very quiet. “I didn’t like the thought that you had left. I was afraid I had made you go.”
“But I’m here,” I said. “You are here.”
“For now.”
“Everything is for now,” I said, and didn’t know how to explain to her the feeling I had always lived with, which was as old as the memory of the cold orphanage box: that anything could be taken from me at any time. I said, “We want the same thing.”
“Do we?”
“We want answers,” I said, because it was true but also because I wanted to turn the conversation to the reason we were in this house together to begin with, and away from last night and her rejection, which she seemed to be trying to explain, with an awkwardness unlike herself, and which I didn’t feel needed any more explanation. Things were clear. She would regret taking me to bed. She was trying to explain that anything between us would bring me pain, because she was not someone who stayed. That she cared about me, which I could see, plain on her worried face, and which was a bitter comfort. I didn’t want her to worry. I put my hand on her oiled and bloodied one, the grit of the spices and salt like sand against my skin. “I haven’t changed my mind,” I said. She looked at me, and I faltered, because I didn’t want last night to happen all over again, to ask for what she didn’t want to give, or to think about how her wet mouth had skimmed my neck. I said, my voice clear, “I haven’t changed my mind about our plan.”
She nodded. “All right.”
“And I have some information for you.”
She lifted a brow. She looked more like herself. “Do you?”
“Doesn’t it embarrass you to find that a lowly underling has discovered something a queen’s spy hasn’t?”
“You are not a lowly underling.”
“Dodging the question as always, I see, which must mean that I am right.”
“You are wrong. I am not embarrassed.” Sid turned her hand, which lay beneath mine, and held my fingers. “I am impressed. But not surprised.”
“Why aren’t you surprised?”
“You’re resourceful. Strong.”
“Resourceful…,” I said. “Maybe. Strong?” I shook my head. “Sometimes I miss the wall. I miss being behind it.” I knew it wasn’t safe there, but it was my home. Even an unsafe home can feel safe.
“But you’re not behind it,” Sid said. “You’re here. You are at risk, so much more than I am, yet you keep risking yourself. I wish you could see yourself like I see you.”
“How do you see me?”
“You’re like those flowers that grow along the walls. The indi flowers. The ones that freeze and come back to life. They dig themselves into any little crack.”
“They’re destructive.”
“Yes. And beautiful.”
I slid my hand from hers. I didn’t like how warm her words made me, and how they felt, again, like bitter comfort, like the wound and the balm at the same time. She was trying to console me after she had rejected me, which was the very thing I had done with Aden the first time I broke things off with him: told him he was handsome, he was resourceful and talented and as good at capturing hearts as he was at catching people’s images on a tin plate. So many girls in the Ward loved him. He just wasn’t right for me.
“Your scar is back.” She lifted a finger to touch my burn, but then didn’t. “Where did you get that? You never said. You didn’t have it when we first met.”
“An accident,” I said. “Let me tell you what I discovered today.”
“I am not the only one who dodges,” she said, but she didn’t press, only listened to what the dressmaker had told me.
“We need to infiltrate the Council,” Sid said.
“You have used your status in so many ways. To get us out of prison. To live here and get invited to High-Kith parties. To get dresses made. Why can’t you be invited into the Keepers Hall?”
She shook her head. “The fact that I’m close to the Herrani queen will, in this case, make them only more unwilling to give me access to a place that might house what seems to be a state secret. And I can’t sneak inside, because I look like one of the very few foreigners who have been to this island. Nor do I have the right documents. Councilmembers have an extra page in their High-Kith passports that has a special Council stamp to show their status.”
“I could sneak in. I look High Herrath.”
“No. I don’t want to risk you. And we’d still have a problem regarding the documents.”
“Well,” I said, “not really.”
She gave me a narrow look. “Would the person who forged your Middling passport be able to get you access to a Council stamp?”
“That person,” I said, “is me.”
“You,” she said.
I explained how I used my skill at memory to forge passports. She stared. “Surprised?” I said.
“Yes, at how blind I’ve been. Why haven’t you told me this before?”
“I didn’t trust you.”
“And now you do?”
I thought about last night. How worried she had been a moment ago that I had left for good. Her flat dismissal of the idea of me sneaking into the Keepers Hall. “I trust that you wouldn’t denounce me to the militia. I trust that you don’t want me to get hurt.”
“I don’t,” she said. “You can’t. It would hurt me if you got hurt.”
“You are kinder than I have sometimes thought you to be.”
“Ah, yes. You did accuse me once of being heartless.” She studied me, then said slowly, “Is your forging … connected at all to Raven? She was entirely too anxious about losing you for a month. There was all that talk about a project you were working on. Was this it? I thought she was just being manipulative. That she was making excuses to control you and keep you by her side.”
“She isn’t manipulative. She was worried about how many people would have to wait for a passport because I was leaving the tavern. You’re right: we work together to give forged passports to people who need them. She has a good heart. She has helped so many people. Aden has, too.”
“Oh.” Her face closed. “Right. Your young man.”
“If you knew how much good Raven does—and Aden, too—you wouldn’t be so cold about them.”
“You might have decided that I’m kind enough to trust with your secret, Nirrim, and I suppose I am, but don’t expect me to warm suddenly toward your handsome young sweetheart.”
“I could forge a document that would let me into the Keepers Hall,” I said, “if I could see a councilmember’s authentic passport.”
“No,” she said flatly, “because then you’ll want to use it.”
“I recall you promising adventure.”
“I don’t want you to endanger yourself.”
“It’s too late for that.”
Sid persuaded me that we didn’t have to go into the hall, necessarily, to learn how the Council made that elixir, but that we could continue to attend parties to collect clues from the High Kith, as I had with the vial that contained the elixir. “And the Council is hosting a parade in two weeks’ time,” she said.
Two weeks. I thought about how short a month is, how little time I had with Sid, how quickly it would run out.
The parties—at least at first—showed us nothing but excess. A masked ball where, at the stroke of midnight, dancers ate their lovers’ sugar masks while I looked awkwardly on, Sid standing stiffly beside me, her own mask still on her inscrutable face. Probably at least in part to make no matter of how people around us were licking each other’s sugared lips, Sid busied herself as a pickpocket, filching a High-Kith passport from someone’s pocket and slipping it to me. I paged through it quickly, committing each part of it to memory. Sid then returned the booklet to its owner, who thought he had dropped it, with a slight bow. Later, at her house, I carved a block of wood to re-create a High-Kith stamp, taking care that it would make the exact impression on paper as the stamp I had seen. Sid brought me dyes and scraps of leather. I cut the heliograph from my Middling passport and set it into my new High-Kith one. I didn’t have the right stamp that would let me into the Keepers Hall, but having a High-Kith passport was a start.
The new passport gave me a sense of security, though Sid was right: no one at the parties demanded to see my documents. It was enough that I was with Sid, and dressed the right way. The High Kith were focused on their own pleasure, and certain no one could or would dare infiltrate their quarter.
There was a fountain party in a home where water gushed up out of the floor at unexpected moments in unexpected spots, catching glamorously dressed people, soaking their clothes to visible skin. Sometimes I saw furniture or decor that had been made in the Ward, which made me miss it. Once I found an entire library filled with books that bore, on their spines, a mark that showed that they had been made by Harvers, and I felt homesick for his workshop and the smell of ink-damp paper.
Every so often I looked at the trinkets I had saved for Morah and Annin: the knife, the boxed cat, the jewels. I missed Morah’s stern care and Annin’s sweetness, and I wished I could tell them everything that was happening. But the pile of gold and silver I had set aside for Raven made me feel an uncomfortable relief to be away from her. Her love could so easily sour. I never knew when I would anger her. In the tavern, I’d had to watch her as closely as I watched the militia, for fear of doing something wrong. I found that I did not miss her, that I avoided thinking about her. This made me feel guilty, and reminded me of all that she had done for me, and how ungrateful I was. Then I did miss her, and remembered her voice calling me lamb and my girl.
Sid took me to an outdoor party that had an intricate flowering labyrinth all too easy for me to solve, since I mapped its turns and blind ends in my mind and never made the same mistake twice. When I claimed the prize at the center—a simple gold bangle on a pedestal—a trapdoor opened beneath me, dumping me into a vat of pleasure dust. I sputtered, trying to get the dust out of my mouth, but the voluptuous, wild taste clung to my tongue. The dust glittered on my skin even after Sid helped me out of the trap. Partygoers laughed, and laughed harder as she brushed me off and dust got on her skin. Then her black eyes widened and got very glossy, and I knew dust had gotten in her mouth, too.
That night was hard, with me feeling enchantingly free, enamored with everything, each slight touch an intense caress, laughter liquid in my throat even as Sid dragged us both into a fountain that washed us clean but couldn’t rinse the bright taste from my mouth.
“You’re beautiful,” I told her. The fountains’ jets bubbled around us.
“You’re foxed,” she said.
“You stare at me sometimes, too. I see you sneaking glances.” Later, when I was sober, the memory of this made me cringe.
“I don’t.”
“You are lying. You’re a liar. You told me that you were one. But!” A new thought occurred to me. “If a liar says she is a liar and she is really and truly a liar then she has just told the truth. Which makes her not a liar. Or not always a liar.”
“Please,” said Sid, “keep drinking the water. It will clear your head.”
She sounded so distraught that I did what she said until my whole body felt like lead and I wanted to crawl home.
“I’m so sorry,” I said later, when I was cold and the world had stopped gleaming.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t yourself.”
“You swallowed some.”
“Yes.” She sighed.
“You were normal.”
“I didn’t feel normal.”
“You were able to act like you were.”
“Maybe I’m getting better,” she said, “at controlling myself.”
I shuddered all the way home. I began to despise the parties, how they lured me with their beauty and then left me feeling sick with it, as though I had gorged myself. I was ready, with or without Sid’s help, to find a councilmember’s passport to forge access to the Keepers Hall, when finally one party was different from the rest, because I saw someone I recognized, someone who had taken something from me and owed me an explanation.