“There are no travelers.”

“There is one now.” She ignored Raven’s stare and Annin’s. “We have nothing like the Ward where I come from. I would like to see more of it before I leave this island.” Sid opened her purse and withdrew a handful of gold coins. She let them slide from her palm onto the table.

“Nirrim will do whatever you need,” Raven said. “Won’t you, my girl?”

* * *

“How do you know her?” Annin said in a hushed voice as she walked with me toward the kitchen, where a bath lay in an adjoining room.

“Know who?” Morah glanced up from her mortar and pestle as she continued to grind spices.

“The lady.”

“Why is she here?” Morah said. “High Kith never come to the Ward.”

“But she is not really High,” Annin said, then scrambled as if she had said something offensive for which she could get in trouble. “I mean, she is different. But in her country she must be whatever they call High.”

“Maybe she’s faking,” Morah said. “How do we know she is High where she comes from? Just because she acts like it doesn’t mean she is. How do we even know she is a traveler? There have been only Herrath people on the island of Herrath. Travelers only exist in stories.”

“She doesn’t look Herrath,” Annin said. “She looks like no one I have ever seen.”

Morah sniffed. “That much is true.”

“She is so elegant. Did you see her dress? I would die to wear something like that. She is beautiful.”

“She would be,” Morah agreed, “if her hair weren’t so short.”

“I suppose that’s the fashion where she comes from, but it is a pity. Such a pretty color!”

“What’s wrong with short hair?” I said. “I have short hair.”

“Not that short,” Annin said.

“You would grow yours if Raven let you,” Morah said.

“It looks like she paid a tithe!” Annin said.

“It looks like a boy’s,” Morah said.

“I like it,” I said. They looked at me in surprise. I gathered a large towel and a bar of soap from Raven’s store. My chest buzzed with annoyance. Ever since Annin had said beautiful, something had been pinching at my heart. I didn’t know who deserved my anger more: Annin and Morah for making such a fuss over something that had nothing to do with them, or me for being so affected by a simple word.

Annin and Morah seemed to feel my annoyance. They fell silent, but their silence was annoyed, too, because they could see no reason for me to be angry.

But I could see a reason, and was relieved that they didn’t.

* * *

“What are you doing here?” I demanded as soon as I shut the door to Sid’s room behind me. Her back was to me. She sat at a small table, writing what was perhaps a letter in her language. The page was covered with unfamiliar script. “We were supposed to meet in the Middling quarter.”

She set aside her pen but didn’t turn around. “This is better.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see where you come from.” She turned around. Her gaze flickered over me. “You’re dripping,” she said, “from the bath.”

I ignored this. “I don’t know where I come from.”

Her attention, which seemed to have drifted, returned. “What do you mean?”

“I was newly born when I was left outside the orphanage in the baby box. I don’t know who left me there.”

“Baby box?”

“Yes, the metal box for unwanted ones. There are two boxes, actually, one on either side of the wall, so that anyone of any kith can leave a baby there.”

Her face was fierce in the lamplight, her black eyes almost feral. “That is barbaric.”

“Don’t worry. There are holes for a baby to breathe, and a matron checks the box every hour, except at night.”

“How comforting.”

“The Council says it is the best way to protect unwanted babies.”

“If the Council says so, I suppose it must be true.”

I thought her sarcasm was unfair. “If parents had no way to abandon babies in secret, they might murder them.”

“So you were raised thinking that if you hadn’t been left in a metal box, your mother would have murdered you? That if Raven hadn’t taken you in, you would have lived in the orphanage forever?”

“Not forever. When I turned eighteen, if I didn’t show promise as an artisan, and wasn’t apprenticed to a shopkeeper, I would have become Un-Kith and taken outside the city.”

Sid’s mouth was flat. “You say this as if it is nothing to you.”

“I am lucky. I owe so much to Raven.”

She stared at me. Then she shook her head in helpless dislike—which bothered me, since I had done nothing to earn it. I said, “Are you thinking that I am even farther beneath you than you’d assumed?”

“I am thinking that your life has been very different from mine,” she said, which was a politer way of saying yes. Then she said, “I could help you find out where you come from.”

I shook my head. “Impossible.”

“I’m good at finding things out. I want to do something for you. Tell me what I can do.”

I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to choose yet how she would reward me for helping her. I had lived with so little choice behind the wall that it was as if I had never left the baby box. I liked that there was something undecided. I liked that Sid hadn’t yet made me decide.

“Start by explaining what a ladies’ maid is supposed to do,” I said. “I have no idea.”

She cocked a flirtatious brow. “You could always help take off my clothes.”

I flinched, startled by her daring. But it was just a joke, one made for the pleasure of seeing me squirm. She laughed. “I don’t need you to do anything. I asked for you to be my ladies’ maid so that we could talk in private. Though, to be honest, dresses are a pain. All those fastenings in the back.”

“I have never seen you in one before now. You don’t look like yourself.”

She glanced down at her deeply red dress. “Too much fabric. Too flowy. But it’s fine.”