Raven’s hand tightened hard on my chin. She forced my face up so that she could stare into my eyes. It hurt my neck and my jaw ached beneath her thumb, but I said nothing because Raven did this only because she cared so much and was scared to lose me. “You call me Ama, but you don’t mean it. How can you mean it, when you can leave me so easily?”

I heard the scrape of Sid’s boot. “Let go of her,” Sid said. “You are hurting her.”

Raven released me, her blue eyes bright with sadness and anger. “What about our project?” she asked me, with a cautious eye on Sid. My heart sank as Raven carefully chose her words to screen their true meaning from Sid. “Even if you care nothing for me, how can you abandon everyone who depends on you?”

It was true. Without me, Raven wouldn’t dare forge passports. She could trace officials’ signatures, perhaps, but she couldn’t remember the tricks of their various and different handwriting the way that I did, the quirks and squiggles that would occur in the longer textual portions of a passport, the sections that described the bearer’s family, background, and appearance.

“You know as well as I do,” Raven said, “that if you leave, lives will be ruined.”

“Lives will be ruined?” Sid’s voice was cool and incredulous. “Because she leaves the Ward for a month? What do you put in your breads and cakes, Nirrim, that the fate and happiness of so many will hang in the balance without them?”

Raven gave me a hard, warning look. Her hand twitched. I swallowed. “When I return,” I said carefully, “I will bake twice as many.”

“Three times,” Raven said, “to make up for lost time.”

“So you’ll let me leave?”

“I didn’t say that. Leave me? Oh, my girl.” Raven’s tears returned. She wiped them from her cheeks with the hem of her apron. “You are cruel.”

“Nonsense.” Sid’s voice was crisp. “Nothing can be so dire that a baker can’t leave her place of employment for a month without people languishing.”

“You don’t understand,” I told Sid.

Raven gave me a satisfied smile. Her smile warmed me. It made me feel less nervous. I was still capable of winning her approval, even if I was selfish enough to leave her alone with the task of helping the Half Kith who needed to leave the Ward. “Yes,” she told Sid, “you don’t know what it’s like to scrape by. To make do with so little. You don’t know what it is like to have a business to run, how hard I work for my girls. These hands.” She lifted one. It was gnarled and soft. “I work them to the very bone. With my best girl gone, what will I do?”

Sid rolled her eyes.

Her contempt made me angry. Whatever her life had been like, she had been so spoiled. A mother, a father, a trunk of luxurious clothes, a seemingly endless supply of gold. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend Raven’s situation. “Give Raven my earnings,” I told her.

Sid didn’t like that. “We didn’t discuss payment.”

“Well, now I come at a price.”

“Fine,” Sid said. “Service rendered deserves fair pay. But I have hired you, not your mistress.”

“It’s one and the same. I would give everything to Raven anyway.”

Raven gave me a tiny, proud smile. Sid looked furious. Her eyes were black fire. She reached inside her jacket, pulled a small leather purse from an inner pocket, and handed it to Raven. I could see the rich luster of gold peeking from the purse when Raven opened it. Her face grew peaceful for a moment, then almost instantly tight and worried again. “That’s all?” she said. “For a whole month?”

“I’ll give you twice that,” Sid said. “You’ll receive the second half upon her return to the tavern.”

“Oh, I know how it will be,” Raven muttered to me. “She will turn you against me. You will never come home. I know this woman’s ways. I see what she wants. She will keep you for herself.”

“I will do no such thing.” Sid sounded disgusted.

“One day I will be gone,” Raven said to me, “and you will remember this. You never forget anything. You will remember how I begged and you abandoned me.”

“Oh, please,” Sid said.

“You’re heartless,” I told her.

“Thank the gods I am.” She offered more gold. “Here. For your pains.”

Raven took the money and folded her hand quickly around it, probably because the offer shamed her even though she needed it. “Well.” Raven gave me a brave little smile. “I suppose I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“It’s only for a little while,” I promised.

Raven nodded slowly to herself, but she looked so much older, with a quiver to her chin. She got to her feet unsteadily, patted my cheek, and shuffled from the room. When she had gone, Sid took one look at my face and said impatiently, “For gods’ sake. It’s not like she is going to die without you.”

“It’s hard for her to give me up. She loves me.”

“She sold you,” Sid snapped. I said nothing in reply, because it was clear that she didn’t understand, and didn’t want to.

* * *

“I am so jealous,” Annin said. She had burst into my room telling me that she wanted to help me pack, then looked at my clothes and told me that if I took them with me she would kill me, they were so impoverished of any beauty, any joy, any life.

“I wear them every day,” I said.

“Not one day more! You can’t wear this in the High quarter. You would look like a stillborn mouse. Like a sick wren. Like an old woman! Like Sirah the rain-sayer. Please, Nirrim. For my sake. Promise that you will wear gorgeous clothes and think of me. Your mistress will give them to you. She is so kind.”

“Is she?” I wondered out loud, remembering how cold she had been to Raven.

“Of course! Look.” From her pocket Annin pulled the pink lace scarf I had seen earlier in Sid’s trunk.

“Oh,” I said.

“Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

Sid barely knew Annin, yet she had given a gift perfectly suited to please her. I felt an unpleasant, jealous twinge. I looked into Annin’s eager, pretty face. “You can’t wear it,” I told her. “It’s High.”