Thornfruit

1 The Girl in the Market

TEN YEARS AGO

WHEN EV was three years old, a wave had crashed into the cliffs of Laalvur. As the flood waters had drained from the lower city back into the ocean, they’d left a giant dead medusa speared on the splintered wreckage of the harbor. The monster’s carcass had lethal tentacles as long as three men lying end to end. It had taken six people to lift its massive bell.

It was a horrible story—medusas killed people, and so did waves—and Papa always made it worse by saying words like oozing and gelatinous. But Ev still wished she’d been there to heave it off the ground and throw its corpse back into the ocean. Or maybe she could have saved someone from drowning. The heroes in her favorite books were always doing things like that.

Ev was twelve now and her life hadn’t offered much in the way of adventure, but she remained hopeful. She zigzagged down the narrow street after her father and their cart, ignoring the slap and clatter of donkey hooves, wooden wheels, and leather sandals against the stone and straining to hear the water instead. A whole ocean of it, her father had promised. But the harbor was still another steep turn or two beneath them on the path, and Ev couldn’t see that far down.

Papa said sometimes the sky and the stones of the city were so red that they made the ocean look red, too. Ev had been to Laalvur before, but she could only conjure a vague memory of orange-brown cliffs pierced by dark doorways and people everywhere, even on ladders between the street levels. Her best friend Ajee didn’t believe her when she said she’d seen the city. She’d sworn up and down she was telling the truth, but she hadn’t come back with any good stories.

“Did you see a shark? Or a medusa? Or a wave?”

Ev hadn’t.

Ajee said it was dumb to want to be like people in books when Ajee and Ev were just going to live in the village of Orzatvur their whole lives, where there were no sea monsters and no princesses to save.

It didn’t matter what he thought. He wasn’t here. Now she was old enough to help bring their cart to the market, and she’d walked all the way from the farm with Papa. Her dog Tez had tried to follow her, and some of her cats, too, but she’d shooed them all away at Papa’s orders. She had to do what he said if she wanted to come back every week. Then she’d finally see something exciting enough to impress Ajee.

When they arrived at the lowest level of the city, Ev could hear and smell the ocean before she saw it. Even when they pushed their way from the thronged street into the open market—where everyone was unloading carts of ripe cheeses and fruits, vendors were already calling out their wares in singsong chants, and there were pack animals jostling and squawking chickens in cages—the smell of fish and salt was in every breath, and the water lapping at the city’s edge was a rhythm beneath the noise.

There weren’t many open spaces in the lower city, squeezed between the cliffs and the water as it was. Laalvur was named after the old god Laal, who’d supposedly laid his body down to make the Dayward side of the world. The cliffs were his right hand, with four rock fingers reaching into the sea and a long stretch of the city curving along the low, marshy coastline like a thumb.

Ev and her father set up their cart to sell fruit in the market, a cove between Laal’s middle and ring fingers, which were called Arish and Denan. The inlet and the neighborhood that clung to the cliffs like algae were both called Arishdenan.

Arishdenan held the second largest harbor in Laalvur, after Hahim. Small boats were docked all along the sunny length of Arish and the shaded length of Denan, so the inner harbor bristled with masts. The docks and decks of the harbor and the market had been rebuilt in Ev’s lifetime, since the wave nine years ago. The wood already creaked with weathering from salt and sunshine, but the boats bobbing next to it were painted blue and yellow. Fresh, brilliant colors in defiance of the fearsome sea, with lyrical names to match. From where she stood next to her father, Ev could see a small vessel called Her Heart as Constant as the Sun. 

The sun was indeed constant and fierce, scattering gold reflections on the water and striping the red cliffs with shadows. The water near the city was dark and brownish, not the brilliant red reflection of legend, but even that struck Ev as strange and beautiful. From far back, sheltered between the pillars of Arish and Denan, Ev could only see a slice of sky and ocean, and still, she’d never seen anything grander.

Farther out to sea, there were ships anchored in the water. Ajee had better believe her this time.

“It must go on forever,” she breathed.

“It’s nothing but salt and poison,” Papa said. He’d unloaded half the cart while she’d been staring. “Except for the islands, but those have their own dangers.”

“It’s not poison.” Ev was too old to fall for that. The medusas were poisonous, but not the water itself.

“It is if you can’t swim.”

Papa had been all over the world, from his home in Adappyr, where it was so hot that everyone had to live in an underground city, all the way to Estva, where it was dark all the time and people built walls out of ice. He used to work on a ship. He’d been as close to the islands as anyone ever got. Ev loved his stories. She’d never been anywhere at all.

“Don’t wander off,” her father warned. “Or I won’t bring you with me next time.”

Ev heard people speaking Laalvuri, Adpri, Hapiri, and languages she didn’t recognize, and she saw pale-skinned Nalitzvans and Day tribeswomen in robes, but hardly anyone stopped to buy something. The vendors called out the same chants over and over, and a priest of the Balance gave a loud, droning sermon about how the good, civilized people of Laalvur must root out superstition and let go of their false fears of magic. It is the Year 764 of the Balance, he was saying. The time has come to embrace the truth. No one was paying attention to him. Sometimes pamphlet-sellers strode through, crying out the latest news and rumors. Her father haggled with a customer over the price of melons and berries.

Food odors thickened the hot, still air. Why did anyone eat fish? Ev didn’t care if priests said that eating the flesh of animals was part of God’s Balance. It smelled gross.

Ev should’ve brought her book. Papa didn’t like her bringing books everywhere because they were so expensive, but if he didn’t want Ev to read them, then he should stop buying them for her.

She was in the middle of a series called The Sunrise Chronicles. All the books took place in a magical world where the sun moved across the sky, and Day and Night were times instead of places. In this strange world, people could stand in one place and see the sun at one hour and the stars in darkness the next. Ev had never seen the stars. The only darkness she knew existed in windowless rooms, a luxury manufactured by humans. The sky over Laalvur was always red-gold, and the sun hung in the same low spot all the time. The idea that the sun could disappear—that the whole sky could turn black—enchanted and chilled her. What a changeable, chaotic world that would be.

More importantly, at the exact location of Ev’s bookmark, the evil Regent had just locked his niece, Aurora, in a tower for speaking against him, and now it was up to the hero, a clever and dashing wanderer named Vesper, to save her.

Vesper was secretly a prince from another land. Ev knew because she’d read the six-novel series twice already, mostly by the green glow of lamplight in her dark bedroom, hours into the shift of the Honeycreeper when she ought to be asleep. She’d be happily on her way to a third reread if only Papa had let her bring volume two.

Ev sighed and sat down on the stones to sweat in the shade of the cart. She slouched. Her mother would be horrified.

That was when Ev saw the girl.

She thought it was a girl, anyway. It was definitely a kid, a little younger than her and a lot smaller, crouching under one of the other carts. Rags the color of mud. Long tangled hair the color of—well, Papa should stop complaining about how often he had to haul water because his spoiled daughter loved bathing so much.

Ev froze. It wasn’t just that she’d been caught staring. The other girl was round-eyed with terror. Trails of sweat cut through the filth on her skin. She was staying so still that she was trembling with the effort of it. Tez had been like that, before Ev had coaxed him out from under the bush where she’d found him.

Ev put a finger to her lips, and then, when her father wasn’t looking, she reached into the cart and stole a handful of thornfruit. Their hard, brown rinds pricked her palm.

She lobbed one—carefully, casually—under the cart, so that it rolled to a stop within the girl’s reach. The girl stared. First at the fruit on the ground, and then at Ev.

Ev caught her eye, and then plucked a thornfruit out of her hand and held it up to demonstrate. She dug into the rind with her thumbnails until it split and popped open, revealing its sweet red insides. She pinched the fruit from its casing and ate it.

The other girl’s hand snapped out from the folds of her clothing. She snatched the thornfruit from the ground. She brought it so close to her face that her eyes crossed when she looked at it, and she squeezed it until it was nearly flat between her fingers. Satisfied with her examination, she imitated Ev’s demonstration, peeling off the outside and dropping it. Then she popped the red part into her mouth and swallowed it.

It was weird, and funny, but Ev didn’t want to scare the girl by laughing. Instead, she tossed her another one. It landed a little closer to Ev than the first.

The girl crept forward, still trying to stay hidden under the cart. But she accepted the gift.

Her hand was so thin. Under all the dirt, her face was thin, too. She must be an orphan. She must not have a home. Ev’s chest went tight. What had happened to this girl? Who had let it happen? Why hadn’t someone protected her?

The priest of the Balance had said something about this in his sermon. He’d told a terrible story of families abandoning their own children on the Temple steps, if the parents feared the child was Unbalanced. Some people dreaded that word and preferred to say touched. The priest stressed that the Temple would, of course, take care of any children found on its threshold, as the sacred Balance required and as the Temple had always done, but that such action was not necessary—there was no such thing as magic.

Was that why this girl was alone in the market? Had her family abandoned her because they thought she had magic? And if her family had abandoned her, why wasn’t she in the Temple Street orphanage?

Ev didn’t know if magic was real. The priest had said, “The good people of Laalvur do not live in the grip of superstitious fear.” According to him, Laalvuri were not the barbarians across the sea in Nalitzva, who slaughtered all those suspected of magic. The people of Laalvur—proper, decent folk—welcomed all kinds. Some children were strange. Madness was part of the Balance, too.

The priest had said all that, so it must be true, but still Ev couldn’t imagine her parents abandoning her, or any parents willingly leaving their child on the Temple steps, no matter how strange.

But she knew from living on the farm that people sometimes left litters of kittens in sacks on the side of the road. Cruelty was part of the Balance.

But so was kindness.

Ev held out her hand with half a dozen thornfruit in it. The girl reached out, but her arm was too short. She would have to crawl out from under the cart. In the shadows, her eyes were wide and dark. She shook her head minutely and pulled back, drawing her baggy tunic around her.

Ev pushed herself to her knees and leaned forward.

It was just enough movement to get her father’s attention. He immediately saw the girl and Ev’s outstretched red hand, and snapped, “Ev!”

The girl darted out, knocking into both carts, spilling and splattering a fall of ripe fruit all over the stone. Another merchant, seeing split melons and crushed berries on the ground, yelled “Thief!”

Ev stood up and shouted, “She didn’t steal anything!” She’d never shouted that loud in her life. But no one was listening, and Ev’s father grabbed her shoulder and kept her from running into the fray.

The girl had spindly legs but she was nimble. She wove between the carts, colliding with crates of produce and people alike. A man caught her with one hand. She yelped and stabbed her sharp little elbow into his stomach. He let go.

Then she was off again. Ev wanted to run after her and help her, but her father was still holding her back, and the girl was too far away now. Instead, Ev bit her lip while she watched.

The girl might run down the length of the harbor. From there, she could head around the narrow point of Arish into the next V-shaped inlet, Hahimarish, or she could take the switchbacked path up into the higher levels of Arishdenan and the hills of the city beyond. Either might be enough distance for the merchants to give up on following her. She’d caused some chaos, but she hadn’t actually stolen anything, and she was just a girl.

She did head for the upper city, but not the way Ev expected. The girl ran deeper into the market. Then she scrambled up the steep wall to the next street. She moved like a spider, side to side, using her hands and her bare feet to hold onto the rough stone.

A man latched on to her ankle. She kicked him off.

Ev’s mouth dropped open. The girl was so small and the man’s grasp had been so solid. Ev knew how hard it was to get free of someone’s hand, since the boys at school grabbed her all the time. You had to wrench free right at the weak point of their grip, where their thumbs met their other fingers, or else it didn’t work.

The girl hadn’t done that. And her kick hadn’t even connected with his face. The man had grabbed her, she’d jerked her leg, and his hand had just opened. Almost like he’d been shocked by the feel of her skin.

The girl kept scrambling up the red cliff face of Arish. Why was she going up? How was she going to get away?

Laalvur was cut into the cliffs, with one street that zigzagged from the top of each cliff to the bottom. Some sections of the path had shortcuts—stairs cut into the stone, when the grade wasn’t too steep, or ladders when it was. The cliff faces of Arish and Denan were connected by a network of wood and rope bridges, crisscrossing Ev’s view of the sky.

The girl pulled herself up to the street. A few men from the market had run after her, taking the long way around. They might have caught her, except there was a ladder directly in front of her. She jumped on it and started to climb. The men followed. She grabbed the top rung and stomped on the face of the man behind her.

Barefoot, and so small, she couldn’t have done much damage. But the man was surprised. His foot slipped, knocking into the man behind him, and all three of them went down in a pile.

There was a lot of shouting. The girl dodged everyone in her path. This time, she was running toward Arish Point, rather than into the V of Arishdenan. Ev twisted to watch her.

They were going to catch her. Someone had to do something. The girl was so far away now, but maybe if Ev ran, she could still get there in time. Ev just had to get free of her father’s grip. She stepped forward, and he spoke.

“Evreyet.”

Her full name came so often at the end of sentences like stop bringing animals into the house, Evreyet or stop climbing trees in your nice clothes, Evreyet that her parents no longer needed to say anything but her name. Papa and Mama said “Evreyet,” and Ev heard, Don’t sneak out of school with Ajee, Evreyet. Don’t read novels all shift after we send you to bed, Evreyet. Don’t start fights, Evreyet.

Her parents had said that last one plenty of times and it wasn’t even true. Ev never started fights. She only finished them.

While Ev’s father was holding her back, the girl from the market scurried up a second ladder.

Ev’s nails were biting into her palms. The girl shouldn’t have gone up. The street was narrow and crowded, but now she’d made a scene. She couldn’t hide. She was trapped. Any second now, someone was going to catch her. The men from the market were still pulling each other up from the ground, dusting themselves off, but they were shouting at people in the street to stop her.

Above Ev, a bridge was creaking. The girl had dashed to the middle of it.

People waited for her on either side. The bridges were sturdy but small, meant for one person to cross at a time. But no one needed to step onto the bridge to catch her. She had nowhere to go.

The girl clambered to the top of the wooden railing, gripping it with her bare feet, holding her arms wide for balance. Then she raised her arms above her head, placed her palms flat against each other, and dove.

Her tiny form sailed down, slicing into the air between the two cliffs, and cut smoothly into the water.

The ocean resumed its calm sway to and fro.

Ev’s heart rattled against her ribcage. She bit her lip. The girl didn’t come up for air.

What if it really is poison? Ev thought, and then forced the thought away. That wasn’t true. There weren’t any medusas in Arishdenan inlet. They lived in farthest depths of the sea.

Behind Ev, the market returned to business. People righted their overturned crates and carts. The men who’d chased her began to make their way back down to the lower city. People grumbled, but life had to go on. There was work to be done.

“She’ll be alright,” Papa said, and patted Ev’s shoulder. “You, on the other hand, have a mess to clean up.”

Ev nodded but didn’t look at him. Nothing broke the surface of the water. It was only when her father tapped her on the shoulder that she came back to herself. Ev glanced down at her hand, hanging limp at her side, her palm sticky with the pulp of crushed red fruit.

* * *

Half a shift dripped by, four hours heavy with the odors of the market and the ocean. Ev waited patiently while customers came by and inspected their cart, lifting the melons to see how ripe they were and picking through the thornfruit. She counted their coins afterward.

When no one was buying anything from her, Ev watched the painted boats bob in the harbor. It had been too long now, and the girl wasn’t going to burst through the glassy surface of the water. Ev was disappointed not to see her again. She nurtured a secret hope that the girl had slipped away unseen. The alternative was too awful to contemplate.

Ev had seen animals die at the farm. And all her grandparents were gone—Mama’s parents had both died when she was little, and Papa’s parents had died before she was born. She knew about death. But she’d never seen a person die. She shuddered.

The low chatter of the market crescendoed into chaos and then went silent. A group of guards in grey uniforms forced their way into the crowd, pausing to interrogate people. The crowd split in two suddenly, as if answering an unheard order.

A woman strode into view. Ev’s first impression was a swishing whirl of fabric. The woman was wearing the same type of loose trousers and long tunic as Ev, but the similarities ended there.

Ev’s clothes were sewn from plain blue cotton. There was a little scroll of pink-and-green floral embroidery decorating the sleeves and the open V of her collar, because Mama always wanted everything to be beautiful and she was willing to spend hours hunched over her needle and thread to make that happen. The rest of Ev’s tunic was simple. It fell straight from her shoulders, short-sleeved and knee-length so as not to get in her way. Like the rest of her, it was damp with sweat. She’d wiped thornfruit pulp on the thigh of her trousers earlier, right under where her tunic had a split seam at the side to allow her to move freely.

Ev didn’t usually spend any time thinking about what she was wearing, but just being in the woman’s presence made her feel scruffy.

Ev had never seen anyone wear so much fabric—she didn’t even know what kind it was. Not cotton. Not even the finest wool. It whispered and glinted in layers of lavender, shot through with strands of silver. The woman’s tunic went all the way down to her ankles, flaring out like a dress, and its bottom edge swung with a heavy band of embroidery. The cuffs of her trousers, barely even visible underneath her tunic, had matching embroidery. Ev thought of her mother’s painstaking work and wondered how many shifts had gone into these clothes. To wear something so luxurious down into the harbor, this woman must be very, very rich.

She must be a member of the Council of Nine that ruled the city. The Council had a representative from each of the nine richest Houses in the city. Of these, there were four Great Houses and five Lesser, and the wealthy scions of the Great Houses lived in mansions up on the tips of Laal’s fingers.

Which of the Great Houses would have guards with grey uniforms? Mama would know. Papa, fiercely suspicious of Laalvur’s rulers and upper class, considered it a waste of time to talk of such details. But Ev knew the names of the four Great Houses despite him: Solor, Katav, Garatsin, and Varenx.

Varenx House was the only one ruled by a pale-skinned woman of Nalitzvan descent. A legendary beauty.

Was the woman really Iriyat ha-Varensi?

How could she be anyone else?

She moved smoothly through the market. Her guards—clearly, the guards belonged to her—held the crowd back. She stopped occasionally to speak to someone, and when her brief conversation ended, she walked forward unimpeded. Even if she’d been dressed in rags, she would still have been commanding—enchanting, even. It was more than her stride, and more than the cleared path in front of her. She seemed to own even the empty air around herself, changing it with her presence.

The woman was covered from head to toe. Ev’s mother had told her that this was the latest fashion among wealthy women, supposedly for modesty and protection of their delicate skin. Ev recalled her mother gushing about how Iriyat ha-Varensi had started the trend herself, with her devotion to charitable work at the Temple of the Balance. She helped care for the orphans who were left at the door.

Iriyat ha-Varensi might be religious, but there was nothing modest about the wealth on display in this woman’s outfit. All that cloth, and so much of it embroidered so delicately. The woman had even covered her hair and her face, leaving only a strip for her eyes.

When Mama talked about fashions, Papa liked to say that rich people covered their faces so no one could recognize them when they were committing crimes. After taking in the sight of this woman, Ev didn’t think that was very likely. She would never forget this.

The woman had eyes the color of an ash plume on the horizon. A warning in smoke from the distant peak of Adap. A dangerous grey.

“Excuse me, young man,” she said, and the fall of fabric over her face fluttered as she tilted her head at Ev.

Ev stiffened. “I’m not a boy.” Ever since she’d cut off all her hair—braiding and washing it was such a waste of time and boys were always grabbing it in fights—people made this mistake. Usually, when she corrected them, they frowned in disapproval. No one seemed to care that the first snip of the scissors had made Ev lighter and happier.

Iriyat examined Ev again, and then Ev’s father. Ev bit her lip, acutely aware of their difference. Ev had grown up on a farm an hour’s walk from the city, but she took after her Adpri father instead of her Laalvuri mother, so sometimes people treated her like she didn’t belong.

Laalvur was a port city that welcomed everyone. Only sometimes it didn’t feel very welcoming. When Iriyat looked at Ev and her father, was she thinking the same things that the Orzatvur village school kids said to Ev? They say Adappyr’s a paradise, and the only people who leave are the ones who get kicked out. The criminals. I bet your father’s a murderer!

But Iriyat’s gaze softened. She held up a hand in apology to Ev, then touched it to her heart. Unlike the rest of her, her hands were bare. Her pale skin surprised Ev. Not only because that color, faint peach-pink like the inside of an unripe melon, was rare in Laalvur, but also because it made no sense. Whether Iriyat was covering herself for modesty or sun protection, she ought to include her hands. Where were her gloves?

No other part of her was exposed. She was even wearing leather boots. Her tunic had long, tight sleeves, and the fabric at her neck went right up to her chin. An imposing silver collar ringed her neck. All those layers with all that jewelry on top. Ev was hot and tired in her own clothes, built to be practical in the heat.

Iriyat ha-Varensi showed no sign of discomfort. It was only Ev who was sweating, burning under the gaze of those eyes. Iriyat was no taller than her, but Ev felt as if the woman towered over her. She’d breathe easier if Papa came over. He was taller than everyone.

“I hope you can help me. I’m looking for a girl,” she said. “A tiny little one. Black hair. About nine years old. She might be dressed in rags, the poor thing. I had word that she was here earlier this shift, causing trouble.”

What was her connection to the girl? Did she want to help her? That would make sense. Someone should help her.

Ev’s father came to stand behind Ev. He put a hand on her shoulder. Ev didn’t look up at his face, but she guessed he was scowling.

Iriyat wasn’t intimidated. “Oh,” she said. She had a beautiful laugh. Her jewelry jangled. “You must think me very rude. I’m so sorry not to have introduced myself. Iriyat ha-Varensi,” she said, as if it were funny to have to state her own name. Her voice was not unkind.

No wonder the whole market had stopped for her. Ev tried to keep her eyes from widening. It was like meeting a real-life queen. She could have been in a character in one of Ev’s novels, or one of the goddesses from the old religion. Varenx House had been founded two hundred years ago by Nalitzvan aristocrats who’d fled religious persecution in their home and established themselves as cloth merchants in Laalvur. Iriyat had come to power at the age of eighteen, after suffering the tragic deaths of both her parents in the wave that hit the city when Ev was three.

None of that impressed Papa. “I know who you are.”

Mama would be mortified to hear that he spoke to Iriyat ha-Varensi like that, but Papa was from Adappyr, where no one was richer or more powerful or more important than anyone else. He did not like rich people, and he was not afraid.

Mama always said that was because he had no sense.

Iriyat inclined her head. To Ev’s amazement, she unpinned one side of her veil and moved it away from her face.

Revealing her face made her even more imposing. She wore a pleading expression that matched her huge, sad eyes as well as her clothes. Age had hardly touched her smooth, unmarked skin and full lips. “Can you tell me anything of the girl?”

“There was a girl,” Papa said. “Looked like she hadn’t had enough to eat.”

Iriyat’s lovely face crumpled, and she touched her hand to her heart again. “Poor thing,” she said. “She’s an orphan, you see. I took her in, but she’s a curious creature, given to wild flights of imagination. Sometimes she likes to run away. I doubt she’s been able to find much to eat in the past few triads. Can you tell me where she went?”

Papa tilted his head toward the water, and Iriyat’s eyes went wide.

“She jumped,” Ev volunteered, dissatisfied with her father’s silence. He didn’t seem to like Iriyat, but she looked so sad and worried. “From all the way up there.” Ev pointed to the bridge above them. “I watched for a long time, but I never saw her come up. Do you think she’s okay? Does she know how to swim?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Iriyat, even paler than usual.

“What exactly,” Papa said, “does a girl like that do in your household?”

“Oh,” Iriyat said. “I know she probably looked terribly ragged when you saw her. I’ve tried my best to keep her fed and clothed since she’s been in my care but she’s—” Iriyat paused, searching for a word. “Difficult.”

“But you want her back,” Obin observed.

“She’s in my care,” Iriyat said, and there was a hard edge in her voice.

She didn’t seem to like being questioned. Ev wished her father would be more cooperative. He was treating Iriyat like she’d done something wrong. All Iriyat wanted was to help the girl, which was what Ev wanted, too.

The slight change in Iriyat’s tone had no effect on Ev’s father. Obin remained stonily silent.

“I’m sorry to keep you from your affairs. I’ll take my leave,” Iriyat said, and she reached out toward Obin with one slender, bare hand.

She obviously expected him to clasp her hand in his. He didn’t.

Ev stared at her father, mortified. She turned back to Iriyat and said, “What if we see her again?”

Iriyat took a shuddering breath, straightened her shoulders, and smoothed her unwrinkled skirts to calm herself. Then she pulled her veil over her face again, pinning it to the cloth that covered her hair. “Please send word to Varenx House if you do.”

Ev nodded, too stunned by the possibility of visiting Varenx House to say anything at all. That girl would get the help she needed, and more. The house sat at the tip of Dar, the lowest of the four fingers, but it was still high above the city. Situated at the tip like that, anyone in the house would be able to see for ages. All that ocean. It must be so beautiful.

The Great Houses sat like glittering gems at the tip of each point, with their thin red stone towers catching the light. Or at least that was what Mama said. Ev had been disappointed that the houses had been so far away early this shift when she and Papa had arrived, and now they were too low down in the harbor to get a good view. But she’d been invited to see one up close! Maybe even to go inside! All she had to do was catch sight of the girl.

Mama said the Great Houses were all dug deep into the cliffs, with their lower floors hollowed into the rock. The richest of the houses, Solor, had more floors than anybody knew, and the lowest ones were all vaults filled with treasure.

Iriyat ha-Varensi left in a bloom of silvery lavender skirts. She parted the crowds just as she had before, and Ev’s father watched her go out of sight before swearing, “Smoke and fire.”

Papa had grown up with the smoking peak of Adap looming over his home, and he always swore like that. Mama scolded him when he did it in front of Ev. Once, he’d even said smoke and fucking fire while Ev was standing right there. But at least he hadn’t said it in front of Iriyat ha-Varensi.

“You were so rude to her, Papa,” Ev said with quiet horror. She crossed her arms over her chest. They’d met a famous person, an important person, and Papa had been even grouchier with her than he was with everybody else. And she’d been so beautiful, and so sad. “We should’ve helped her more. She was upset.”

“If she was so sad about that girl, why wasn’t she treating her better?” Papa said. “That girl was desperate to get away from something.”

“She said the girl was an orphan! The girl ran away!” In fact, Iriyat had said she’d taken the girl in—meaning the girl must have run from Varenx House. But why would she do that?

“People say all kinds of things,” Papa said. “Doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth.”

“But how can you know if somebody is lying?”

Papa shrugged.

“So you might be wrong,” Ev said. Iriyat had been on the verge of tears. She had a reputation for helping orphans. Why wouldn’t the girl want to go back to Varenx House, where she wouldn’t have to hide under carts and eat thornfruit off the ground? “She could be telling the truth.”

He shrugged again. Ev spent the rest of the shift carefully scanning the harbor, the market, the streets. She did not see the girl again.

2 Little Ghost

THE PRESENT

THERE WERE TWO secrets in Varenx House, and Alizhan was one of them.

She didn’t have to stay hidden away in a locked room upstairs. She could hover at the edges of Iriyat’s parties, dressed as a serving girl, perfectly visible. Anyone who wanted to look at her could look at her.

Most people didn’t want to.

It was the secret that made them look away, although none of them knew that. People glanced at Alizhan, gathered a vague impression of small-fragile-feminine-delicate and long black hair, and then just as they were on the verge of musing pretty little girl and setting her aside as harmless, something about her jarred their thoughts in a different direction: what’s wrong with her?

Some people averted their eyes, and some people covered their reaction, but everyone thought it. Alizhan was accustomed to it.

People were unsettled by the way she carried herself. She fidgeted and trembled in company, or she held herself apart from people, stone-still. She never looked into people’s eyes when she spoke to them—or if she did look into their eyes, it overwhelmed them. She talked far too much or not at all. She answered questions that no one had asked.

Alizhan knew all of these things because people were always thinking them so loudly and clearly. She also knew that Yiran, the other person in the kitchen right now, was concentrating hard on pitting olives so she could pretend Alizhan wasn’t in the room with her. A slimy curl of resentment was winding through Yiran’s thoughts: Why was Alizhan even in the kitchen, if she wasn’t going to help? Why did Iriyat let that horrid little monster lurk around the house? And why was Iriyat always talking to Alizhan and spending time with her? Iriyat never paid any attention to Yiran, and Yiran was actually useful. Yiran was prettier, too. And nobody got chills when Yiran walked by them.

Yiran’s knife missed an olive and chopped into the wood of the cutting board.

That was the secret. That was why people didn’t like be around Alizhan. Even if they didn’t know that Alizhan could feel their feelings, they could sense a strangeness about her. Iriyat had been trying to teach her to behave properly for years. Look into people’s eyes, but not too much. Smile, but only at the right time. Ask questions, but only boring questions that you already know the answer to. Talk, but only about the right things. Determining the right time to smile or the right thing to say meant distinguishing a person’s inside—their thoughts and feelings—from their outside, the words they spoke aloud and the way they moved their face and body.

People’s outsides were not always the same as their insides. Alizhan had trouble telling the difference.

For instance, right now she wanted to say to Yiran, “I’m not useless. Iriyat keeps me around because I tell her what her political rivals are thinking.” But Alizhan wasn’t allowed to say that, because that would be telling the secret. And Yiran hadn’t said that Alizhan was useless out loud. She’d only thought it.

At least, Alizhan was pretty sure she hadn’t said it.

Instead of saying anything, Alizhan walked over to Yiran’s cutting board, plucked a pitted black olive out of the pile, and ate it. It was a fierce burst of flavor, bitter and briny, against her tongue. She chewed, swallowed, and took another. 

Yiran buzzed with anger. But she didn’t reach out and slap Alizhan’s wrist for stealing and slowing down her work. She pulled her arms in close and edged away.

Once, a long time ago, Yiran had tried to be friendly. It had happened when Alizhan had botched an escape after spying on one of the Council members. She’d stumbled home to Varenx House with a twisted ankle, bloody knees, and scraped palms. Yiran had seen her come in and been moved to sympathy. She’d never liked Alizhan, but up until that moment, she’d always felt a twinge of guilt about it—Alizhan couldn’t help being the way she was. Some people were just born wrong.

Yiran had insisted on patching Alizhan up. She’d learned the hard way that contact with Alizhan’s skin meant instant pain and a splitting headache for both parties at the very least. That time, it hadn’t been the very least. Alizhan had blacked out. She knew from Yiran’s memory—she always tried to keep the incident away from her thoughts, the way she might distastefully pinch a soiled rag—that Yiran had vomited and then passed out.

A shift or two later, when she next saw Yiran, Alizhan had informed Yiran that she was lucky she hadn’t drowned in her own vomit, because it was true. Also, Iriyat was always telling Alizhan to be friendlier. Alizhan thought it was nice that Yiran hadn’t died.

Yiran had hissed, “Get away from me, you monster.”

She no longer felt guilty about disliking Alizhan.

Yiran had been quick to tell all the other Varenx House servants, too. Not that they’d needed any encouragement to stay away from Alizhan. Alizhan could always feel the fear and revulsion crawling through them. They called her “crazy girl” or “little ghost,” as if saying her name would bring them bad luck.

Alizhan wondered sometimes if, as the “little ghost,” she was destined to end up like the other ghost. There were two secrets in Varenx House, and he was the other one. No one ever spoke about the other ghost, but she knew sometimes Yiran or one of the other maids had to go up to that room with a bowl of soup. It wasn’t really a ghost, of course, but everyone was just as terrified as if it were. Alizhan could feel him every time she passed by one upstairs bedroom. A terrible jumble of anger and confused memories hissed out of that room at all times. It was sickeningly strong. She could feel it through the walls and the locked door. Alizhan avoided the big ghost as much as all the other servants avoided the little ghost.

Neither of them was really a ghost, but they might as well have been. Ghosts were incorporeal. Untouchable.

Is that what happened to him? Is that how he became a ghost—never being touched? Alizhan could be touched. But only by Iriyat.

Iriyat was blank. The only quiet thing in the cacophony of the world. It was a strange kind of comfort, that blankness, since it meant Alizhan could never feel if Iriyat liked her. Iriyat said that was how the world worked for everyone else, that they never knew anything for sure about other people. She said that was what trust meant. Trusting Iriyat was worth any amount of uncertainty—when Iriyat touched her, Alizhan felt only the warm skin of her hands.

When Alizhan was a child, Iriyat used to hold her in her lap and stroke her hair. If Alizhan behaved, controlled herself, did what Iriyat asked, sometimes Iriyat would hug her. Alizhan was nineteen now. Those touches had become rare gifts, as if in growing older, she could shed loneliness in the same way she’d outgrown her old clothes.

According to Iriyat, Alizhan was the only one of her kind. The only person touched with this particular madness. Sometimes it was a relief to know that no one else ever had to live this way.

Other times it was not.

Whether she was passing through the halls of Varenx House or Arishdenan market, the yearning pulse of the world thrummed in Alizhan’s mind: friends greeted each other with handshakes and cheek kisses, children jumped into their parents’ embraces, and lovers longed for each other’s bodies. Everyone wanted to be touched somehow. In that one way, at least, she was no different. It must be nice to live in a world full of blank people, where anyone could touch anyone else.

But Alizhan lived in this world, and Iriyat was all she had.

So when Iriyat said I need your help, Alizhan said yes. Even if the next sentence was I need you to come to a party. 

It was Alizhan’s least favorite kind of work. Being in a crowd of people was dizzying. All those thoughts and feelings made her tremble and sweat. She could stand it for a few minutes at a time.

The trick was to focus on one person in order to shut out all the others. Alizhan had learned this as a child, during one of her many ill-fated attempts to run away.

Back then, she’d been convinced that somewhere out there in the chaos of Laalvur, her real family was waiting for her. They regretted abandoning her at the orphanage. They wanted her to come home. If she could only get to the city, she’d find them. Her real family would be able to touch her.

Alizhan knew better now. There was no family waiting for her. They didn’t want her. They never had.

But one of her attempts to run away had led her to the Laalvur market, and that was where she’d met the thornfruit girl, who called herself Ev and who warmed with affection every time she saw Alizhan.

No one else ever felt like that because of Alizhan.

It was worth all the sickness and the exhaustion that Alizhan suffered in the middle of the market crowds to bask in Ev’s kindness for a few fleeting moments. Alizhan went back to see her again and again. They never spoke, because Alizhan could never stay, but she knew that warmth radiating from Ev meant that Ev liked seeing her, too—a strange, novel feeling. Ev didn’t even know Alizhan’s name. She thought of Alizhan as “the thief,” or sometimes “my thief,” but she never stopped Alizhan from palming a handful of fruit.

Alizhan would rather be a thief than a ghost.

She could never stay long, but she never regretted going to see Ev, even at times when she had to dash into an alley and collapse afterward.

Those moments with Ev had taught Alizhan more about how to move through the world than long years of training with Iriyat ever had.

It was thanks to Ev, now, that Alizhan could take a deep breath and do what Iriyat wanted. She plunked Yiran’s bowl of pitted olives onto a tray and went out into the party.

* * *

As the head of Varenx House, Iriyat spent a lot of time throwing parties for other wealthy and powerful Laalvuri. Alizhan was familiar with not just the heads of the other three Great Houses—Mar ha-Solora, Sideran ha-Katavi, and Ezatur ha-Garatsina—but their families, friends, servants, business associates, and lovers. She knew all the members of the Council of Nine, all the wealthiest merchants, and all the most powerful priests.

It was easier to memorize and recite years’ worth of past Council votes, trade deals, and secret affairs than to be in a room with all of them at once.

None of them knew who she was. Perhaps they remembered her face—that pitiful, strange servant girl Iriyat insisted on keeping, from some sense of charity. But as she wove between groups of people carrying trays full of foods to nibble or glasses of sweet yellow wine, people took note of what she was offering, and nothing else.

Although once, three years ago, Iriyat had hosted the Prince of Nalitzva, a young man called Ilyr. He’d sailed all the way across the sea to come visit the Dayward coast, and Iriyat, being of Nalitzvan ancestry, had offered him her hospitality. Alizhan had certainly not expected him to notice her, let alone be nice to her. But when Ilyr had first arrived, he’d been so anxious at the first gathering that he’d been in physical pain. When he’d ducked around a corner early in the party, Alizhan had found herself sneaking after him, tray of glasses in hand.

“Are you all right?”

“I… don’t know,” he’d said, shaping his syllables with the deliberate precision of a foreign speaker. “Can I have some wine?”

She’d offered him the tray, and he’d taken a glass and said, “Thank you.” After a gulp, he’d added, “And thank you for asking,” so quietly and with such genuine gratitude that Alizhan still remembered him fondly. She’d never told anyone about the incident, not even Iriyat.

Was it reassuring to know that even a prince could panic? Or was it depressing? Either way, Alizhan had been pleased to discover that sometimes, wealthy and powerful people were nice to servants.

Nobody at the present party would thank her so gratefully.

Staying steady required Alizhan to focus on a single person. She switched her attention from one person to another after a few minutes, scanning the room for anything of interest. Iriyat always wanted to know what people thought of her—did her parties impress them? what did they think of her work with the orphanage?—but she collected information of all kinds, even things that Alizhan found inconsequential, like Sideran thinks the Prince of Nalitzva is very handsome.

Sideran, head of Katav House, was a beautiful woman, according to Iriyat. She was tall and slender and dressed in a teal tunic and trousers, with her black hair in a long braid down her back. Sideran didn’t thank Alizhan for offering her a glass of wine because she was far too busy talking at Ezatur, the head of Garatsin House, to notice Alizhan.

Normally, beautiful women were only invited to Iriyat’s parties if there was no conceivable way to exclude them. But Sideran, in addition to being the head of one of the four Great Houses and thus difficult to exclude, had a flaw that Iriyat found useful: she never stopped talking. She’d spent her life surrounded by people who’d never dream of interrupting her or telling her no. A stream of complaints flowed constantly from her mouth. She rarely said anything that wasn’t about herself, unless it was to disparage someone else. Her company was so unpleasant that Iriyat, possessed of social graces, instantly seemed radiantly beautiful by comparison.

Alizhan found Sideran tolerable. Because she always said everything that was on her mind, she was a much quieter presence than many of the other guests, who both talked out loud and also kept up a private running commentary in their heads. It didn’t bother Alizhan that the contents of Sideran’s mind weren’t particularly interesting. She was straightforward, and that kind of simplicity was rare at Iriyat’s parties.

Sideran’s conversation partner, portly and bearded Ezatur ha-Garatsina, had spent most of the conversation contemplating ways to exit it without upsetting her. He wanted to use his time more profitably. Ezatur was always thinking about money. He had two daughters, and he wanted desperately to marry them off. It was his fondest hope that Mar ha-Solora, head of the wealthiest of the four Great Houses, would accept one of his daughters. Every time he came to one of Iriyat’s parties, he always wanted to trap Mar into a conversation about marriage and get him to change his mind on the subject.

Alizhan, who had access to Mar’s thoughts, found that supremely unlikely.

Mar ha-Solora was Alizhan’s favorite party guest. He had an organized mind. He was a clever and serious man, always considering trade deals and political alliances. He also disliked parties, which immediately won him Alizhan’s sympathies. Mar always wanted to put in the briefest possible appearance, or to find a dark corner where he could drink alone. Alizhan always did everything in her power to help him achieve these goals, although he’d never asked for help, and she didn’t have much in the way of power.

Iriyat seemed to like Mar despite their occasional political differences, although with Iriyat, it was always hard to tell. Alizhan knew for certain that Mar adored Iriyat. He thought she was sweet and innocent. She had just enough intellect to make her company enjoyable. He took any excuse to come over. In a moment of distraction after a few glasses of wine, Mar had once thought those would fit perfectly in my hands while his gaze had drifted toward Iriyat’s breasts, a detail that Alizhan had dutifully shared and that Iriyat found endlessly entertaining. After every social event, Alizhan was now required to report whether Mar had spent any time appreciating Iriyat’s figure.

The answer was always yes.

It pained Alizhan a little to give these reports, since she’d formed a kind of secret solidarity with Mar. Lots of people thought Iriyat was beautiful, or wanted to sleep with her. No one else exercised Mar’s subtlety on the subject. But subtlety was no protection against Alizhan, and her loyalty was, first and foremost, to Iriyat.

Besides, if Alizhan ever felt conflicted about Mar, it helped to remember what else she knew about him. Mar found Iriyat’s religious inclinations less tedious than other people’s. Indeed, tolerating Iriyat’s displays of faith made him feel magnanimous. The poor little thing couldn’t help it, he thought; the tragedy of her parents’ early death had marked her so strongly. Mar had never really thought of Iriyat as a rival. He didn’t think she was smart enough.

Iriyat never corrected his assumption.

From the way Yiran and the other servants tittered when Mar was in the house, he was probably good-looking himself. Whatever that meant. Alizhan could never tell what anyone looked like. She could see perfectly fine, but faces eluded her. Most people had two eyes and a mouth and a nose. Why was everyone so concerned with minute differences? Alizhan’s inability to describe anyone’s physical appearance frustrated Iriyat. Even when Alizhan saw faces in other people’s thoughts, she couldn’t distinguish them. It was a bad quality in a thief of secrets.

Alizhan could tell that Mar had brown skin and black hair, but so did she and most everyone else in Laalvur. He was tall and broad-shouldered and a great deal bigger than her, but that was true of most everyone else in Laalvur, and probably the rest of the world. So she didn’t know what Mar ha-Solora looked like in any useful sense.

At this moment, Mar and Iriyat were standing on the balcony together, taking in the view of the sea and the golden sky. It was early in the party for the two of them to be alone together. Iriyat usually waited until after the meal to engage Mar, if he was still present.

Alizhan padded across the thick patterned carpets and the smooth red tile floor, trying not to step on any trailing hems as she did so. When she reached the other side of the room, she didn’t immediately step over the threshold onto the balcony. Her slippers were on a rack by the door downstairs, a long way from this salon, and Iriyat would scold her if she went out on the balcony barefoot. Alizhan trooped down to get them, then swung by the kitchen to pick up a fresh tray of wine glasses. Having good manners was exhausting.

“Wine?” Alizhan said, approaching Iriyat and Mar.

Iriyat nodded and accepted a glass, her long fingers curling around its stem. “Mar?” she prompted.

He was unusually distracted. Take it, he thought to himself, grabbing for a glass. Keep her talking until the boy gets out.

Alizhan started, making some of the glasses clink together and slosh their contents. She had to steady the tray before it all went crashing to the floor.

What boy? Keep Iriyat talking? What did that mean?

For Alizhan, a person’s present thoughts and feelings were as obvious as the bells announcing the shift change from all the towers in Laalvur. She didn’t always understand what she sensed, and sometimes perceiving someone’s inner state was more like smelling odors or touching textures than hearing speech or seeing images. Not all thoughts were words. Some people—and some thoughts—were louder and clearer than others. With very few exceptions, people couldn’t hide their current mental and emotional state from her.

Skimming the surface of someone’s mind was effortless, but digging into the depths required more concentration. Iriyat was always encouraging her to practice this skill, since it was hard to catch people thinking of their most guarded secrets while chatting at a party. If Alizhan wanted to be a good thief, she couldn’t be satisfied with snatching whatever had been left out on the windowsill. She had to learn to pick the lock on the door and sneak inside to find the real valuables.

Alizhan followed the thread of worry in Mar’s thoughts. At the center of a web of suspicions, there was a boy—wiry, short-haired, rough—and his story. It started with an orphanage. Not the one in Temple Street where Alizhan had been abandoned as a baby, which Iriyat funded and frequently visited. The boy insisted there was another, secret orphanage, where the priests sent all the children who were too malformed and Unbalanced for the house in Temple Street. Mar had no proof that such a place existed, and no one else could confirm the boy’s wild story. The boy, Kasrik, said this second, secret orphanage also belonged to Iriyat. Kasrik said he’d been held captive and tortured there before his escape. Mar didn’t believe it—the poor, addled boy also claimed he could read minds—but the boy was eager to investigate, and it struck Mar as an opportunity to solve another nagging question.

A boy who claims he can read minds. That detail, nothing more than superstition for Mar, rang out like a bell for Alizhan. She sucked in a breath and nearly came back to herself. No, no, she wasn’t finished yet. She had to focus. She delved back into Mar’s mind.

Kasrik had obviously been mistreated by someone. Mar would find out who was responsible and take care of it. And, in doing so, he’d clear Iriyat’s name of any ugly rumors Kasrik might have spread. If this got out, even in just a few of the most salacious and untrustworthy pamphlets that circulated the city, it would be damaging. Iriyat was a lovely, kind person who didn’t deserve any more suffering. Her life had been marked by tragedy, and instead of letting it ruin her, she channeled all her efforts into helping others. She did so much good for the city, and Mar respected her work and valued their relationship. She’d never be his intellectual equal, but she had wit. Iriyat was a gift indeed. But she didn’t possess the ruthlessness necessary to protect her own reputation from these rumors, so Mar would do it for her.

Mar had explained all of this to the young man, but Kasrik was difficult to reason with and dead certain Iriyat was responsible. Concerned that Kasrik would take matters into his own hands without guidance, Mar had given him a task. It was a bit of misdirection, unrelated to the boy’s wild and horrifying allegations, but it would keep Kasrik busy and lay things to rest.

Mar had asked Kasrik to sneak into Iriyat’s library and steal volume eleven of A Natural History of the World. He’d warned Kasrik that the book might be in Iriyat’s study instead. That was the source of his interest in what would otherwise be a dull volume listing the quakes, waves, and eruptions of two centuries ago. Mar had seen this very book lying open on Iriyat’s desk on two separate occasions in past months. Iriyat wasn’t a slow reader. Could she really be so interested in natural history that she’d reread the same volume within a matter of months? Mar didn’t think so. The book must be a cover for some other text.

A small part of him wanted it to be a journal. To his knowledge, Iriyat had never taken any lovers. Why was that? Was it religion alone? Or did she have some secret reason for abstaining? She must know by now that she could have Mar if she wanted him. He’d never said as much to her, but she was no fool. Women, in his experience, were attuned to such things.

It would probably come to nothing. Perhaps the book was exactly what it seemed. But Mar was curious, and Kasrik was eager to find evidence, and the theft would be simple enough. Mar would have Kasrik return the book after a triad or two, hardly any time at all, and no harm would be done.

When Alizhan came back to herself, Iriyat was removing the tray of glasses from her hands. “You look a little ill,” Iriyat said, caressing Alizhan’s cheek. Iriyat was as soothingly blank as always. A rivulet of sweat ran down the back of Alizhan’s neck. Her heart drummed against her ribs. “Perhaps you should go sit down. One of the other girls can take over for you.”

Behind Iriyat, Mar felt tight with concern.

Alizhan had other things to think about: the boy, the book, the library. He was there now. Stealing the book. Reading minds. She turned on her heel, still wearing her slippers, and ran.

* * *

Positioned in the center of the house and built without windows to protect the books from the elements, the library was a grand space lit only by the greenish glow of lamplight. Candles and books were a dangerous mixture, and Iriyat was wealthy enough to get her light by other means. Shelves of leather-bound books, some handwritten and some in more modern print, lined every wall. There was a large, round table in the middle of the room and two upholstered chairs in opposite corners.

The room shivered with the eerie quiet of a place that had just been disturbed but now lay vacant. Books were strewn across the floor. A few had fallen open, spreading their white pages in the gloom. Alizhan knelt, closed them, and turned them over to check their spines: fourteen volumes of A Natural History of the World. Volume eleven was missing.

Sloppy, amateur work. Alizhan rarely stole tangible objects, but when she did, she strove to leave no traces.

If neither the thief nor the eleventh volume was here, then she had to check the study. A small wooden door tucked into the corner of the library connected the two rooms. Alizhan pulled it open as silently as possible, then slipped inside and found herself surprised.

It wasn’t possible for people to sneak up on her. She could feel them coming, thinking about their families, their plans, their ailments, their desires, their next crushingly witty retorts. Even through walls, Alizhan could feel if other people were near her.

Except if those people were blank.

Before she’d been slapped with the sight of this person—this boy, Kasrik—Alizhan had thought Iriyat was the only blank person in the world. But she felt nothing from Kasrik. And yet he was indisputably there. He was skinny, with the too-long limbs of adolescence and black hair sticking up from his head in wild tufts.

She could read neither his thoughts nor his expression. Alizhan didn’t usually feel her faceblindness so keenly. Reading faces, as opposed to minds, had always struck her as a primitive, inferior practice. But now that the book of Kasrik’s thoughts was closed to her and her only option was to decipher his face, she found herself illiterate. Stranded in a foreign land.

What was Kasrik thinking? Had he seen her? He hadn’t moved. The book was open on the desk under his hands, and he was reading it, his fingers tracing across the lines of text.

If Alizhan couldn’t feel Kasrik, could he not feel her, either? She hovered in the doorway and held her breath. He must be able to hear her heart beating. How could he not know she was there?

There was nothing unusual about the book. Volume eleven looked like its fourteen siblings, bound in brown leather with black printing-press letters marching in formation across thin, cream-colored paper. It wasn’t even a one-of-a-kind manuscript, but a printed book with many other duplicates in the world. How important could it be?

Kasrik was on the opposite side of the desk from her. She could leap forward, wrench the book from his hands, and run back into the library. He might chase her. He had longer legs than she did. But she had the advantage of knowing the house.

He exhaled, slammed the book shut, and looked up.

From the length of his stare alone, Alizhan would wager that Kasrik was as surprised by her presence as she’d been by his. More evidence that he was like her. She darted forward, put both hands on the book, and tugged.

Kasrik let go. “You’re one of us,” he said. “Why are you working for her?”

Alizhan couldn’t make him understand all that Iriyat meant to her, so she said nothing. She clutched the book to her chest and backed toward the door.

But one of us. What did that mean?

“I can’t let you take that,” Kasrik said. He vaulted over Iriyat’s desk and suddenly Alizhan was up against the wall and his hands were on the book. Very close to her hands. Her stomach churned with anticipation. If they touched, would it hurt?

“Mar’s playing you,” she said. “He doesn’t think this book has anything to do with your story.”

“I know,” Kasrik said. People usually protested more. But Kasrik must already have known what Mar thought. “He’s lying to himself. Iriyat’s playing you.” He pulled, and Alizhan clung to the book. “She hurts us and has us killed. You’re a traitor if you keep working for her.”

A traitor? Who exactly was Alizhan betraying? She hadn’t known there was anyone else like her in the world until a few moments ago. And how did Kasrik know she was like him? Was Alizhan blank, too?

Her whole life, Iriyat had let Alizhan believe she was alone. And yet here was Kasrik, saying us. Alizhan wasn’t alone. She was just like Kasrik.

Kasrik, who could read minds. Kasrik, who was blank.

Was it possible? Was blankness how people like her—people like her—recognized each other? Even the possibility was a punch to the gut.

“Iriyat is one of us,” Alizhan said. She didn’t mean to say anything. The words and the thought were simultaneous.

Kasrik was almost as shocked as she was. “Wha—”

Alizhan had to know what was in the book. She jerked it out of his grasp, slid to the side, and dashed into the library. Her jaw slammed into the floor a second later as Kasrik tackled her and she went sprawling into the pile of Natural History volumes. The pain rattled her bones. But there was no skull-splitting bombardment of thoughts and feelings. It was sharp and startling and new: a normal kind of physical pain, the pain of being hit and trapped between the corners and spines of books and the bony weight of a human body.

There was no time to reflect on the novelty of touching a stranger and remaining conscious.

Alizhan clutched the book beneath herself and tried to crawl forward and buck him off. He held fast. She could feel him reaching to the side, and an instant later, something heavy hit the back of her head.

* * *

Light hurt. Air hurt. Existing hurt. Alizhan was in bed. She kept her eyes shut. What had happened? How had she gotten here? It felt like her bed. She couldn’t remember coming to her room.

Where had she been last shift?

“You got hit on the head.” Iriyat’s voice.

Of course. There was someone sitting on Alizhan’s bed, and everyone else would have been thinking loudly.

She was safe, in that case. Alizhan exhaled, and Iriyat stroked her fingers through Alizhan’s hair. The gentle pressure of fingers playing over her scalp was a comfort so simple, pure, and rare that Alizhan would’ve let herself get hit on the head much sooner if she’d known this could be her reward.

“What happened?” Alizhan remembered standing in the kitchen with Yiran and stealing an olive. If Yiran had been preparing food, there must have been a party. Alizhan opened her eyes and looked at Iriyat, who was still dressed for a party in purple silk and heaps of jewelry. Had she not slept?

“You went after a thief,” Iriyat said. Between her thumb and her forefinger, she rolled a sprig of tiny purple flowers back and forth. Lavender shadebloom, one of Iriyat’s own breeds. Behind the blond crown of Iriyat’s bent head, a mottled burst of green leaves—six towering potted plants—dominated Alizhan’s bedroom. All the Great Houses had fabulous gardens, signals of wealth and taste, but only Iriyat took such a passionate interest in hers.

“And the thief hit me on the head,” Alizhan guessed. The void in her memory scared her. She’d never forgotten anything so completely. “I’m sorry. He must have gotten away.”

“Shh,” Iriyat said. “You’re hurt. I’m sorry he hurt you. One of the guards heard a noise in the library and found you on the floor. He says he thinks you were only out for a moment or two, but it was long enough for the thief to get away. I had the guards bring you here. I’m afraid the stress of being touched caused you to pass out, and then I let you sleep. The shift of the Honeycreeper just started.”

Iriyat’s parties always took place near the end of the Lyrebird shift, which meant Alizhan had slept through the shift of the Rosefinch. Eight hours.

A thief could get a long way in eight hours.

Still. Shouldn’t Alizhan be able to recall what had happened an hour or two before she’d been hit on the head? The time in between being in the kitchen with Yiran and getting attacked? Not knowing was an itch in her mind. She’d never catch the thief if she couldn’t remember him.

Something Iriyat had said nagged at her. I had the guards bring you here. None of the guards liked to touch Alizhan. The feeling was mutual. Iriyat was a small woman, but Alizhan was even smaller. Iriyat could have carried her. That would have been safer and easier, since Iriyat was blank.

Blank. Yes. That was important. But why?

Iriyat had said they’d found Alizhan in the library. From these details, Alizhan began to trace the outline. There’d been a boy and a book and a fight. He’d said something. What had he said? Why couldn’t she remember?

“You look like you’re concentrating,” Iriyat said. “Take your time. You need your rest. I don’t want you to exhaust yourself.”

Alizhan didn’t want rest. She wanted to remember. She wanted to catch the person who’d left this dark hole in her memory. Her body could still feel the sharp points of his elbows and knees from when he’d tackled her. Alizhan searched for something more useful. A name. “Kasrik, I think?”

“Kasrik,” Iriyat murmured. “He hit you on the head with volume fifteen of A Natural History of the World. An index to the whole series, a list of every known quake, wave, and eruption and their dates—quite a thick book.”

The incident came back to her in pieces. Another detail leapt to the surface. “He was working for Mar.”

Iriyat sighed. “Of course he was. You know Mar’s never had any sense when it comes to me. He probably thinks this is a great game. I will tell him that I do not appreciate him hiring street urchins to break into my home and attack my staff. All for an inconsequential book.”

“I’ll get it back,” Alizhan promised.

“When you’re feeling better,” Iriyat said. “You should rest first.”

Alizhan had broken into Solor House before to spy on Mar’s business dealings or his mistresses. The house sat at the tip of Hahim. It was a challenge, scaling the Nightward side of the cliff and then climbing up to the second story balcony, but she could do it. It wouldn’t be any different than the other times.

Except—

“Iriyat,” Alizhan said, a detail suddenly coming back to her. “Kasrik. I think he was like me.”

Iriyat’s hand stopped moving through her hair for a moment, and then resumed its steady pattern, stroking from the crown of her head on down. “That vicious, conniving rat? No, my little shade-blooming flower, he wasn’t anything like you at all.”

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