I understood, then, why she had had Aden make a heliograph for her, the one I lost the night I was arrested. She continued, “Eventually, we will move to the High quarter. We shall live like queens!”

“No,” I said.

Her nails dug into my hand. “I’m sure I didn’t hear you. Speak again, Nirrim, with the respect due to your loving ama.”

“No. I won’t forge any more passports for you. You don’t care about me any more than you do about Morah and Annin. I’m just more useful to you.” Her nails drew blood. I tugged my hand away.

“You have me all figured out, do you?” she said. “Then tell me, girl. If you won’t forge for me, what good are you? I’ll denounce you to the militia. It will break my poor old heart, but your selfish ways force me to do it. You are a criminal. It was your hand that forged those documents. Do you think the Council will be pleased to learn that someone has disrupted the most important law that governs this country, the strict lines that keep our kiths in place? The Council will relish your punishment. They will torture you until you show them exactly what I will tell them you can do: copy perfectly. They will break every bone but the ones in your hand so that you can show them how you sign their names with the exact flourish. They will cut out your tongue yet leave your eyes so that you may see the stamps you will need to copy. They will discover my truths in your performed skills, and they will tithe you until you are whittled down to the bone, dear one, and you will weep at your lost chance to be with me.”

“You won’t do that.”

She smiled. “Will I not? We know each other quite well, after these many years. One way or the other, I always win, and you always lose.”

“There is nothing you can accuse me of that doesn’t also implicate you. I will drag you down with me.”

She waved an annoyed hand. “You have no proof.”

“I will tell the militia about your heliograph.”

She lost her smile. “What heliograph?”

“The one still in the lapel of the coat taken from me in prison.” I was bluffing—I had no solid knowledge of where the original heliograph was, but I remembered how anxious she had been about its loss.

“You found it in the cistern. You gave it back to me.”

“I gave you a different heliograph, which, if you look closely, will show that you weren’t wearing the same beaded earrings you wore on the day you requested the one that was lost from Aden. Once the militia finds the original heliograph in the coat, it will be proof that you sought a passport even if it’s no proof you were involved in forging them. You’ll be punished.”

Rage snaked across her face. “You are a wicked, deceitful girl.”

“Then don’t cross me, or I will cross you. I am not who I was. You expect that as soon as you threaten me, I will do what you want. No more.”

“It’s true,” she said after a careful pause. “You are not who you were. But tell me, my lamb: Who are you, really? Little Nirrim, come from nowhere. Another orphan left to dirty herself in the box. No one special. But I know where you come from. I know just how special you are.”

My heart kicked against my ribs. “What do you mean?”

“You have changed, I can see that. But would the girl I raised truly betray her kin? No, she would do anything for her family. I suppose I won’t denounce you, even if you deserve it. After all, you are my own flesh and blood.”

I stared.

“I named you,” she said. “I pinned your name to your swaddling clothes. I placed you in the orphanage box.”

“You … are my mother?”

“Such a little lamb! So eager for mother’s milk! Me, your mother? Wouldn’t you love it if it were true. Your mother is dead, girl, and you killed her.”

“You must tell me what you mean.”

“Oh, must I? Do I have something you want now? Let’s make a bargain, my lostling. I will tell you the beginning of a story, and you will tell its end.” She withdrew the gold necklace that had been tucked into her dress. From its frail chain dangled a crescent moon carved from a pale jewel that shone even though no light was near, even though the windows had darkened.

My bones felt tightly knit, my arms crossed over my chest as though I were again in the baby box, my body swaddled, the scrap of paper that must have been pinned to me while I slept quivering under my breath. Babies see badly at first, their vision blurry. They can see only what is right in front of them. I remembered that necklace wavering in and out of focus when my mother nursed me.

“Where did you get that?” I demanded.

“From my younger sister, my joy. You look like her, though she was far more beautiful. She never recovered after she gave birth to you. You drained the life from her. Yet she made me promise to take care of you, and so I did.”

Shock settled over me like a heavy cloth. “You abandoned me.”

“Oh, come. It’s not as if I exposed you to the elements to starve. I left you in good care at the orphanage. They fed and clothed you. I kept my promise. And I continued to keep it. I was informed on your progress through the years. When the headmistress said you had a gift for writing and art, I knew I had been right when I named you after a cloud that predicts good fortune. You certainly made mine! I came to the orphanage to reclaim you. I took you in. Now I am giving you everything you could ask for. And what do you do? You spurn me. Me, your aunt, your only living relation, who has always taken care of you.”

My eyes stung. “You let me believe that I was alone. That I had no one.”

“You had me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Did you deserve it? Wouldn’t my sister be alive today, had you not come tearing out of her, killing her with your greedy little life? If she hadn’t given birth to you, she would still be mine.”

“It is not my fault I have no mother. You have been punishing me for my own loss.”

“I warned her,” Raven said, looking not at me, but into the past. “I told her she would regret her dalliance. But no. She would have her way. If people would only listen to me, everyone would be better off.”

“Who was he? Who was my father?”

“Nirrim, it is time to uphold your bargain. You have some moral horror, it seems, at helping me build my business. But won’t you, dear girl, do it for your family, now that you know who I am?”