“They won’t.”

“Because they’ll check the roster for your name?” I said it with sarcasm.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Who are you, that you think yourself so important?”

He was quiet. When he spoke, I thought he would remind me that if we were not in prison, I would be punished for speaking so rudely to an upper kith. But he said only, “I will wake you if they come back.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Go to sleep, Nirrim. I’ll stay awake. They won’t come back, and if they do they will do nothing to you. And I will wake you anyway, so that you’ll see that they will do nothing to you.”

“You will?”

“Yes.”

My mind didn’t believe him, but my body did, or at least it was so weary that it was already giving in to his promise. My head lowered to my folded arms. I dreamed, before I fell into true sleep, that I was still talking with Sid, but couldn’t hear what we were saying even as we said it.

12

I WOKE SUCKING IN AIR, choking on it. I sat up from the stone floor in terror.

“Nirrim?”

I heard a rustle from Sid’s cell and his steps as he approached his bars. The footfalls were light. They sounded as if they could be mine. He was likely close in size to me. I didn’t know why, but that thought soothed me.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Bad dream?”

I said, “I must have turned onto my side in my sleep.”

I heard a soft, tapping sound: maybe his fingers rippling against the bars. “And that gives you nightmares, to sleep on your side?”

It had been that way ever since I had woken up next to Helin’s body. “I try not to. Sometimes it happens anyway.”

I thought he might press me to answer his question—he was pushy—but said only, “I was wondering whether to wake you.”

“Did I talk in my sleep?”

“You did mention how attractive I am. How very handsome.”

“Liar.” I felt myself flush. “I can’t even see you.”

“Ah, but you know. Intuitively.” Then there was a shifting, impatient sound, and he said, “Ignore me, please. Sometimes I can’t help but tease, and you are very teasable. You said nothing. But you were … sad. The sounds you made.”

I folded my arms around my knees. I couldn’t remember the nightmare, but could guess at what it had been. Her cold cheek. Rigid flesh.

“Are you embarrassed?” he said. “Don’t be. Think of me as the perfect stranger. You can say anything, do as you please. We are not likely to meet again outside this prison.”

“Because you live beyond the wall and I live behind it.”

“I suppose, yes, that is true. Also, I plan to leave this island before long.”

“Really?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I like it here. The city is beautiful. Glittery. As if a god skimmed a great hand over the bright sea to collect its colored reflections of the sun, then tossed it over Ethin. And the parties! So decadent. I especially love this silver-pink wine that makes you tell your true desires. I don’t know what I like better: watching people drink it or drinking it myself.”

I had never heard of such a wine. Was he making this up? Not wanting to reveal my ignorance about life beyond the wall, I said, “You don’t seem like someone who has a problem saying what’s on your mind.”

“Is that how I seem?”

“You talk a lot.”

“I lie a lot, too. Fair warning.”

“So why would you let yourself drink this wine at parties? Aren’t you worried people will hear your truths?”

“Oh, I drink that wine only when I am alone.”

“So you just get drunk and talk to yourself?”

“I am excellent company.”

“If it’s so nice here,” I said, “why do you want to leave?”

“To sail the next ship. See the next land.”

“Bed the next lady?”

“How do you know me so well after so brief a time?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Nirrim. Are you rolling your eyes at me in the darkness?”

Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of anything, I said, “I didn’t know that Middlings could leave the country.”

“I am no Middling.”

My silence sounded loud.

“I have shocked you again.” He was delighted.

“But your clothes.”

“I want to see your face,” he said, “the next time I shock you.”

“Your clothes,” I insisted, “are Middling.”

“Do you realize how strange it is, that the country of Herrath has laws about who can wear what kind of clothes? That your kith and clothes must match? Kith is such an odd little word. It seems like people use it to mean clan or neighbors or family or class. The militia who arrested me called me Middling, too. Not I, I said. I just happen to like this jacket’s style. They didn’t believe me. Not at first.”

“You’re High Kith?” My voice squeaked on the last word.

“No.”

He was enjoying himself so much that I almost wanted to tell him I had just killed a man and he might be next in line.

He said, “What do you think I am?”

I remembered how, earlier, he had used the word next. The next ship. The next land. “You … are a traveler?”

“I like how you say that word. It makes me sound so exotic.”

“But there are no travelers.” I had never even used that word before, I was sure of it. I knew it only from books.

“There are now,” he said. “That is the unusual thing about Herrath. It’s a small island, true, but my people have been seafarers for generations. Why was Herrath on no map? How is it that we discovered it only earlier this year? It is not even so far from the mainland.”

“I don’t know.” I rubbed my arms. I felt shivery, not just from cold but from my own ignorance. I didn’t know anything about a mainland. There was so much I had never seen. The rest of this city, beyond the wall. The beaches, the sugarcane fields. But other countries? A whole world? The vastness of all there was to know made me feel small.