I paused on the cobblestones.

“Why have you stopped?” she asked.

“We’re here.” I crouched by the white wall I had scratched at yesterday. I couldn’t see the red paint anymore.

“A straight answer, Nirrim. As we agreed.”

I ran a hand over the wall. It was perfectly white and smooth. Had I imagined scraping paint off the wall? Had it even happened? I was so confused, and Sid was waiting for an answer that I didn’t want to give. “It’s complicated,” I said.

“Yes or no.”

I wanted to tell her that sometimes you can’t explain one thing without explaining everything. Sometimes an answer is not as easy as yes or no. Sometimes the truth gets lost even as you tell the truth. “Yes,” I said, “but—”

“That’s what I thought.”

Thunder cracked the sky. Rain darted down. It pelted my head, my shoulders. It dropped like pebbles. I knelt before the white wall. I forgot about Aden. Panic grew inside me as I searched for where I had scraped away the white paint. The scratched-off patch was gone.

“Nirrim, what are you doing?”

“It was here.” My voice rose. “The red paint.” I dug at the white wall with my wet nails.

“Stop that,” Sid said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I swear it was here.” The rain fell harder, blurring my vision. “I’m not making it up.”

“I believe you.”

“Lend me your dagger. I’ll show you. The red paint is there.”

“You don’t have to show me.”

I looked up at her. Rain dripped from her eyelashes. It dripped from her full mouth. It had already soaked her thin dress, darkening its hue. I could see clearly the shape of her narrow body, the little dip of her navel, the rigid outline of the dagger and its leather belt beneath the wet silk. She pulled me to my feet. I was so unprepared for that—or maybe she had tugged harder than she intended—that I wobbled on my feet. I swayed too close to her, to her rain-wet mouth. My hand went to her shoulder. I didn’t mean to do it. It was instinct, to steady myself. For a moment, she allowed the touch, then stepped back. My hand skidded down the sodden, rumpled silk of her arm and fell away.

I had regained my balance, but inside I was still unsteady. My fingers were alive, feeling strangely as though they had brushed against something rough that pricked my skin with splinters of pleasure. I tucked my fingers into my hand. The rain helped the feeling go away.

Her eyes narrowed in what looked like caution. She kept a clear distance between us. She wiped water from her face, and said, “If you say you saw it, it was there.”

“You don’t think I imagined it? You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“No. I think the Ward is hiding something.”

28

THE RAIN STOPPED AND THE sun came out again, but gently, so that the white wall glowed like a slick pearl. We retraced our steps to the tavern. Everything seemed new. The alleys smelled as fresh as clay. The sky was clear. Water dripped brightly from the fragrant indi flowers.

“Someone painted over the wall,” Sid said. “Someone who doesn’t want anyone here to know the Ward’s past. When was the Ward built?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have seen all the quarters of Ethin. The Ward is its oldest section. It is the heart of the rest of the city, which has grown around it like rings around the core of a tree. Why was the wall built?”

I thought at least that answer was obvious. “To keep the Half Kith where we belong.”

“But why?”

“It has always been so.”

“There is no such thing,” she said, “as always. But I suppose it doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s best to let people and cities keep their secrets. It takes so long to ferret them out.”

This worried me. She sounded already bored, her voice distant and languid, and she had been in the Ward only one day.

We reached the tavern. I knew that as soon as we walked in there would be exclamations over our appearance. Sid was sunburnt and her dress ruined. She was barely looking at me, so I couldn’t read any clue in her eyes as to how I looked, but I guessed that it couldn’t be good, with my dress stuck to my skin, my sandaled feet dirty and damp.

Before I opened the tavern door, I said, “Will you need help? Getting out of your dress. Because it is wet.” It shouldn’t have felt like a brazen question. I shouldn’t have stumbled over it. I had been employed as her maid and she had complained about a dress’s fastenings, which I had already helped once to undo. I had been paid for a job. I was merely offering to do it.

Her face tightened. “No,” she said, “I won’t.” She opened the door and stepped inside. The tavern’s interior was a soft mouth of darkness against the crisp, pale sunshine. The shadows swallowed her whole.

* * *

Raven wasn’t in the main hall of the tavern, where Annin was serving Middling merchants who had come into the Ward to trade with Half-Kith artisans and had been trapped inside by the rain. I sent myself to the kitchen anyway, since I knew Morah needed my help and Sid had an impenetrable politeness to her that made clear she didn’t want my company.

“You’re behind,” Morah said, trussing a loin to be roasted. “Our mistress said to remind you that you’re not to let the honor of being a ladies’ maid for a few days go to your head. You are to do your chores as you always do, in addition to the new extra work, which means you had better get started on the bread and pies.”

I had already lost so many hours of tavern work. My feet were heavy and sore from walking all over the Ward. If I was required to bake a batch of printed breads for Raven to sell beyond the wall, as well as to prepare desserts for the tavern, I would be awake late and exhausted the next morning. I had better get started. I stuffed my ragged, damp hair under a cap, tied on an apron, and washed my hands. I bustled into the pantry, fetching canisters of flour and yeast.

“Look at you,” Morah said as I measured flour into a bowl.

“I know.” I was embarrassed by my appearance, though not because Morah would care. I wished, for a moment, that I could look impressive the way Sid did, even when she was wearing a Middling man’s clothes. Especially, somehow, then. I touched the Elysium feather above my heart. “I must looked like a drowned rat.”