“I don’t? And what do you think you are, half-one? I felt what you were trying to do to me. Tell me, Nirrim: What do you think I can do to you?”

I stood, ready to run from the room. He smiled, and the strength left my body. I slumped to the floor, banging my face against the chair as I went down. It clattered on top of me as I lay, and he stood to look down upon me, the hem of his red robe brushing the skin of my arm. I willed myself to move. I couldn’t even twitch my fingers.

“I am being a good god,” he said. “I haven’t stolen your sight, for example.”

Though my eyes were open, they went suddenly blind. I cried out. The bird answered my call. I heard its wings rustle.

Nothing was as dark as this. Not night, not the orphanage baby box, not even when I closed my eyes and light shone through my eyelids. The world looked entirely black and empty.

The fabric of his robe skimmed over me. I heard him walk around my prone body, pausing by my head. He could do anything to me. He could crush my face beneath his heel. He could do worse.

“Or I could steal your breath.”

And it was suddenly gone. I strained for air. My heart panicked. I felt myself choking, dying, paralyzed and alone in the airless black.

“That’s the fragile human in you,” he said, and air came rushing back into my lungs. I sucked it in, my breath a horrible keening rasp.

“God of thieves,” I said.

“Yes, little one.”

“Let me up,” I begged.

“No.”

“Give me back my sight.”

“No.”

“Please, let me go. I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” His voice was ripe with amusement. “Such a dangerous word. I haven’t even yet caused you pain. I can slowly steal the blood from your body. The warmth from your skin. The tongue from your mouth. All the water within you, so that you desiccate into a tortured husk.”

“There must be something I can do,” I sobbed. “Something I can give you.”

“There is,” he said. “It happens to be the one thing that even I cannot steal.”

“What? Tell me.”

“You will lie there, and you will listen, and when I am done I will make you a bargain, my child.”

One should never bargain with a god. But I did not know that then.

“Should you accept,” he said, “you will leave here just as you were when I met you, save for one thing. Am I not merciful?”

“And if I say no? Will you murder me?”

His silence was thoughtful. “To whom do you belong?”

To Sid, I thought. Then I buried the thought, terrified that he might steal it from me.

“Perhaps you don’t know,” he mused. “Who bore you?”

I blinked against the blindness. I wished I could see his face. I had no idea what his expression was as he stared down at me. “I have no parents.”

“Of course you do.”

“I was abandoned,” I said. “I am an orphan.”

“If I give you to the god of death, there will be nothing left for me to steal. And to be honest, I am in trouble enough with my brethren without tempting their wrath by killing one of their favorites, whosesoever you are.”

“Are there more gods hidden in this city? Where are they?”

“Gone,” he said.

“But you are here.”

“As punishment.”

“For what?”

“I killed my brother.”

“Why?”

“Nirrim, why did you wish to read my book?”

“Because I need to know what happened here.”

“Why?”

“So I understand why things are the way they are.”

“Why?”

I struggled to move my dead muscles. I strained to see. Yet, although blind to his expression, I sensed his curiosity, and sensed that this curiosity kept him, at least for now, from being cruel. It was hopeless to believe he would truly strike a bargain with me and let me go unharmed, but at least I could breathe; at least my life wasn’t slowly dwindling out of me as it had been a moment ago, my lungs burning with pain. So I answered honestly: “I want to know where magic comes from. I want to know why the Half Kith are walled off from the rest of the city, and anything can be taken from them at any time.” Like me right now, I thought, at the mercy of the god of thieves. “If I know, I can change things.”

“How?” His voice was thoughtful.

“I will explain the city’s history to the Half Kith so that we can seize the source of magic.”

“Will you be believed?”

Slowly, I said, “I don’t know.”

“Revolution is a messy matter, and those who rebel may find themselves crushed under rebellion’s wheels. I was. Ethin is as it is. I warn you—against my own best interests, I might add—to leave it that way.”

I wanted to shake my head, but couldn’t.

“No?” he said. “Then hear my bargain. I will tell you your city’s history, and mine. But if you wish to leave this library with what you have learned, you must tithe something precious unto me.”

At the word tithe, my skin crawled. “Will I be able to live without it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What is it?”

“Your heart.”

I blinked rapidly against the darkness. “Impossible. I can’t live without a heart.”

“Not that lump of muscle beating in your chest. I mean what humans mean when they say heart: your delectable mix of worry and awe and love. I mean what makes you you.”

“Why?”

“It is useful to me. With it, I may leave this wretched island, you wretched people. I have been cast out of the pantheon, Nirrim, for my sin. But I know of a god who would welcome me home, would help reinstate me among my kin, for the gift of a god-blooded human’s heart.”

“Me, god-blooded?”

“You.”

“You mean … I am a god’s child? Are we called the Half Kith because we are half-gods?”

He laughed. “The ignorant arrogance! Once, yes, the Half Kith were, before they were walled off and forgot their own powers. But that was long ago, and their god-blood has thinned since the gods forsook this island, and half-gods had children with pure mortals, and their children did the same. Now the Ward holds mostly ordinary humans. There are no true half-gods now, though the blood runs strong in you.”