This was not like the poem in Harvers’s book, where dawn came like a thief. Nothing had been stolen from me. Maybe it never would be.

Sid sighed in her sleep. My eyes got heavy again. I nestled into everything that was mine. I let it cover me like downy feathers and pretended it would always be like this.

* * *

When I woke again, the light had the glow of a late afternoon. Sid slept on.

I remembered my last thought before I slept: the poem from the book I had printed in Harvers’s workshop. I remembered his stamp on a book in a High-Kith library. I thought about this, about the Ward, about the tavern. I thought, reluctantly, about Aden.

I started to slip from the bed.

“No,” Sid moaned, her eyes still shut. “Don’t do that. Why would you do that?”

“I need to go back to the Ward.”

Her eyes opened in alarm.

“Not for good,” I said. “Just to talk to somebody.”

“Which somebody?”

“A printer.”

She frowned in a sleepy pout. “You are abandoning me for a printer?”

“I’ll come back. I won’t be long.”

“May I come with you?”

I thought about Aden. “No.”

She turned her face into the pillow. After a moment, her muffled voice came. “I’m afraid you won’t come back. You’ll change your mind.”

Gently, I said, “I’m not the one planning to leave.”

She nodded into the pillow.

“Go back to sleep,” I said.

“And that’s all right with you, that we can do what we did, and one day soon I’ll leave?”

I wanted to say, I would rather have you for a little time than no time at all.

I will remember you perfectly. My memory will touch your skin, your lips. The memory will hurt, but it will be mine.

She turned, her black eyes no longer sleepy, but searching. “Will you let me do it again?”

That question I could answer easily. “Yes.”

She reached up and pulled me down to her, her mouth nuzzling my throat. “Then go,” she murmured against my skin, “and return soon. I will miss you.”

“It’s only for a few hours.”

“I will miss you the moment you leave.”

She loved exaggeration, loved to flatter. It was her way. Still, my breath caught as though what she had said was real. “Will you?”

“I will be so lonely for you.”

I played along, because it felt so good to believe she meant what she said. “And what shall I do to console you upon my return?”

“You know.”

“Do I?”

Her hand slid up my thigh, and in fact I did not leave her bed, not right away, not for some time.

* * *

It felt wrong to put on my rough, stone-colored dress, to feel it scratch against me in a way that felt like home. Ever since I had come to the High quarter, I had worn fluid silk and cotton as soft as air, and at first it had felt like a costume, but now everything I used to wear felt like one, like I was impersonating someone I used to be.

It was frightening, to realize how far away from my old self I had grown.

Exhilarating.

I pulled off the dress, which I now knew to be fully horrible. I knew it in a way that I couldn’t have known when I wore the dress practically every day. I knew the dress to be dead of any comfort or beauty, and promised myself I would never wear it again.

* * *

Morah smiled at the knife. “It’s nice that you remember your friends.”

“How could I forget?” I said. Annin was exclaiming over all her little treasures, spread across the tavern table.

“People do,” Morah said, “when they find a better life.” She touched the silk shoulder of my cyan dress—not with awe, I thought, or jealousy, but meaningfully, to prove a gentle point.

“I’ll be back for good soon.” My chest clenched with sadness, because when I came back for good, it would be when Sid left Ethin.

“No militia stopped you in that dress,” Morah said. “No one accused you of breaking the sumptuary law.”

“I forged a High-Kith passport,” I said after a moment, and was astonished when she simply nodded.

“But it was a secret,” I said, “that I forge documents.”

“Raven wanted you to believe that Annin and I didn’t know, probably so that you would feel special.”

“Why?” I said, feeling stupid.

“So that she could better keep you. Haven’t you ever wondered why she is called Raven? She collects things, just like the bird. She steals them for her nest.”

“That doesn’t make sense. This is my home. I wouldn’t leave—not for good.”

“She has tricked you into believing this is your home.”

“What is so wrong about her wanting to keep me? If you love someone, you don’t want them to go.”

“I love you,” she said, “and I want you to go.”

Tears pricked my eyes. “Why are you so cruel?”

“Because it’s time.” Morah gnawed her lip. “I wouldn’t have said anything earlier, but now … you have the chance to escape. A good, true chance. You have the right passport. You look High Kith. So become one.”

“I can’t leave you and Annin.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I can’t leave Raven.”

“You must.”

“Where is she?” I held the purse of gold, rubbing the leather with my thumb, feeling the ridges of the coins.

Morah shrugged. “She comes and goes. She always has. Probably she is in the Middling quarter.”

I gave her the gold. “This is for her.”

Morah weighed the purse in her hand, then gave it back. “Keep it.”

“She needs it.”

Morah snorted. “She does not. Do not expect me to help you help her take advantage of you.”

It was a complicated sentence to untangle. “I am not helping her take advantage of me.”

“Find her and give her your gold yourself, if you believe that.”

Uneasily, I realized that I didn’t want to find Raven. I was relieved she was not home, and dreaded what she would say if she saw me dressed so High. She would reprimand me. She would make me feel like a traitor.