I gave the card back to her.

“But you need this,” she said.

“I remember the map.”

“You’ll need this insignia.” She placed a finger on the sleeping face. “So the dressmaker can be assured I will cover any costs.”

“What is that image, exactly?”

Sid shifted uncomfortably. She glanced again at the sea. The harbor was in sight, its ships a cluster of toothpick masts and tiny scraps of sails. “I took the card from the queen of Herran.”

“You stole it?”

“Sort of.”

“Sid, are you looking at the harbor for your ship?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you planning on running up high bills on a false line of credit associated with your country’s queen and then setting sail as soon as the truth catches up with you?”

“No! I just like to look at my ship. I like to know that it’s there. My crew better be, too, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, they would pay, trust me.”

Exasperated at her deliberate misinterpretation of my words, I said, “Did you steal this house?”

“I am a thief only of hearts.”

“We agreed. We agreed about the bragging.”

“That wasn’t bragging. That was true.”

I took the yellow pot and poured all of its coffee out over the balcony.

“That was cruel, Nirrim.”

“Answer at least some of my questions.”

“Listen.” She turned serious. “I always pay my debts. I have plenty of money. My family is swimming in it. That card … gets me some necessary respect. Should I have the card? Debatable. Should I use it? Definitely not, and doing so will definitely catch up with me. But money isn’t enough here. You know that. Class matters. Gold isn’t going to get us into that party tonight. Prestige will. My association with the queen will.”

“You said you work for her.”

“Worked.”

“What did you do?”

“If I tell you, will you trust me, and stop thinking that I’m a horrible person out to cheat people of their honest work?”

“How will I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You will have to trust me.”

“You are asking me to trust you in order to trust you.”

“I am asking you to trust yourself. To believe in your instincts. Do you think I am a horrible person?”

I looked at Sid: her skin was amber in the sunlight, her few freckles stark, her eyes worried in a way I had never seen before. It meant something to her, I realized: what I thought of her. I looked at the breakfast, at all the sweet things she hadn’t touched, which she had cooked or fetched while I was sleeping, and which must have been for me alone. “No,” I said. “I think you have a good heart.”

“Well, we don’t have to go that far.”

“Tell me what you did for her,” I said, “and I’ll believe you. For now.”

“I thought I wanted you to trust me, but I confess that now I am enchanted by this new, suspicious side of you. It makes me feel like I had better live up to your expectations of me or I will be in really big trouble.”

“Sid.”

“Nirrim, I was her spy.”

I stared.

“Why is that so surprising?” she said. “Kings and queens have spies. It is common knowledge. How else does one run a country?”

“I don’t think spies admit they are spies.”

“Ex-spy.”

“I don’t think spies reveal the identity of their spymasters.”

“Well, really, who else would it be? The king is too noble. The queen, however, is perfectly willing to get her hands dirty. Everyone knows she is the mastermind of the monarchy. It’s an open secret. Really, the queen wants her people and foreign dignitaries to know exactly what she is. It makes them wary of her.”

“You told me you ran her errands.”

“Which in a way is very true. And it so happened that on one of those errands, I heard rumors about a magical island. I decided to do a bit of research in the archives. I found accounts dating back hundreds of years that described this region of the sea as notorious for the disappearance of ships. It seemed worth investigating.”

“So you sailed to an area known for shipwrecks.”

“Yes.”

“After you quit working for the queen.”

“To be honest, one does not exactly quit being her spy.”

“And stole an insignia that represents her authority.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how this is going to end well for you.”

“What fun would it be,” she said, “if you could?”

36

MADAME MERE WAS CLASSICALLY HIGH Herrath, her eyes storm gray, her black hair woven into a mass of intertwined braids. Streaks of pink locks dipped in and out of the black. She was perhaps twenty years older than me; her eyes delicately wrinkled at the corners when she smiled. Her silk sapphire sheath was deceptively simple—Annin would have wept over the beauty of its careful lines—and served as a contrast for the elaborate, spangled wings made of wire and tulle that arched from her back. Butterflies blinked their iridescent pink-spotted wings open and closed as they fluttered around her and settled in her hair, on her shoulders. They exhaled a floral perfume as they passed. I reached out. A butterfly flew right through my fingers.

“An illusion.” Madame Mere smiled at my astonishment. The wall behind her was stacked with oblong bolts of wound fabric categorized according to color and pattern. A glass pot of chilled pink tea sat behind her on an ornate table made from ebony, a wood harvested by Un-Kith in the tropics of this island, or so I had read in Harvers’s books. “Please tell me you are not going to the duchess’s masked ball as a Half Kith,” she said. “That is so last year.”

I handed her Sid’s card. The dressmaker’s expression turned sly. “I see. And shall I be outfitting you for Lady Sidarine’s pleasure?”

“What is that symbol on the card?”

“The insignia of the royal family of Herran.”

I was relieved to learn that Sid had been telling the truth. “What is her connection to that family?”