“You knew?” Fear coursed through me. “Why did you pretend you didn’t?”

“My little kithling. I run a business.”

“You’re saying that you stayed silent in order to keep Sid as a customer.”

“No. I have plenty of customers. I turn many away, and dress only those who intrigue me.”

“Do you intend to blackmail me? I have nothing to give you.”

“I know you don’t. That is why I said nothing, and never will. Have you not noticed that most High Kith do not work, and that I do?”

I felt foolish for having thought she was blind to the obvious—that I was Half Kith—because of her assumptions. I had been the one to miss what was in front of my face.

“I work because I enjoy it,” Madame Mere said. “Everyone loves beauty, but what I love more is making it. I like to map out someone’s desires in pattern and cloth. I like to stitch them together. And if some of my kith think it’s strange for me to do it, they overlook my strangeness for the privilege of wearing my clothes. You, my dear, want more than what life has given you. What is so wrong with that? This is what I want, too. It is what everyone wants.”

“So you won’t tell the militia?”

“That would be a very boring outcome to your unusual situation.”

I was not at all reassured. “That doesn’t sound like a good reason to trust you.”

“I disagree. You have been to one of our parties. Surely you saw how, beneath all the finery, everyone is hungry for something different, something new. You, my dear, are exactly that. Why would I give you up?”

“So I am … your entertainment.”

“You are a story whose end would come far too soon in prison.” She busied herself pouring pink tea. “Would you like some? I can’t tell you what the elixir in that vial does, but it’d be best to pour it out if you don’t know. It could make you weep golden tears, or make what you imagine come to life, though usually only for a brief time. My elixir is very benign. It heals. It repairs scars, as you’ve seen. It fills in the cracks left by age.”

I realized that I had never seen a truly elderly looking High Kith. If I had thought about it, I would have assumed it was because I had been to places only young people frequented, but it seemed that no one here needed to look their age.

I refused the tea. The burn would return anyway. This elixir didn’t strike me as healing, but as an addictive respite from the truth. “Did you make the elixir?”

She took a sip from her cup. “No. It is supplied by the Council. There are many varieties. The price is high, but most are willing to pay, through either gold or pledges.”

“Pledges?”

“Yes. Many parents pledge one of their children to the service of the Council, which is always in need of new members. Few people actively want to serve the Lord Protector, though there are always some who enjoy the thrill of being close to the center of power and voluntarily induct themselves into the Keepers Hall.”

“Why is it called that?”

She shrugged delicately. “I suppose because they keep and control the supply of elixirs. And they keep order in the city. They oversee the militia, who are Middling, and appoint members of the Council to be judges. But I don’t really know why the hall is called that. It has always been called that.”

I was startled to hear these words coming from the mouth of a High Kith, uttered in that same blank tone I had heard Morah use, and Annin, and even myself. I had always assumed that only people behind the wall talked like that, and that everyone who lived beyond it had the answers to all our questions, just like they had everything else, even the ability to defy age.

“It is as it is,” said Madame Mere, settling her empty cup in its saucer.

But nothing is as it is. Everything comes from something. There is nothing and no one without a past. I thought about the fortune-telling tree. It had not always been a tree. Once, it had been a sapling that threaded greenly out of the dirt. Once, it had been a seed.

“I don’t believe you,” I told Madame Mere, not because I thought she was lying, but because I wasn’t sure that anyone in Ethin knew the truth.

* * *

Sid looked tired when I returned to the house. She wore a marigold silk dress as she busied herself in the kitchen, taking no care to protect the delicate cloth from the oil she rubbed into a shank of lamb, or the spices she liberally shook all over it, or the fresh red currants she plucked from their frail stems. It was as if she secretly—or not so secretly—wished to ruin the dress. Her face was drawn and unhappy, her eyes avoiding mine.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Upholding my end of our bargain.”

“Oh.” She looked at her oiled hands, at the mess on the table.

“You left the house first,” I pointed out, since she seemed inexplicably dissatisfied with my answer. “Why are you wearing that?”

She looked down at the stained dress. Her mouth curled in distaste. “I thought I should.”

“Why?”

“‘Why?’” she repeated. “You are asking none of the questions I thought you would.”

But I didn’t want to talk about last night. I didn’t want to talk about how the only way I’d been able to sleep was to keep my hands beneath my pillow, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to touch myself, which would only remind me of how I wanted her hands, not mine.

She said, “I am wearing this dress because I thought it would be an appropriate choice when I attempted to use my status to get into the Keepers Hall.”

“It didn’t work,” I guessed, based on her general mood.

“No.” She glanced again at the seasoned meat. “There’s only enough for one.”

Affronted, I said, “I don’t expect you to cook for me.”

“I mean, we will have to share.” She looked up at me. “I thought you weren’t coming back. I found the house empty when I returned. I thought you had left for good.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“But I will.”

“I know you will.”

She got very quiet. “I didn’t like the thought that you had left. I was afraid I had made you go.”

“But I’m here,” I said. “You are here.”