“Gotta lunks for smalls,” the girl said to Lift, nodding. “But gotta snaps too. Biga stone, that one, and eyes is swords. Don’t lika smalls, but gotta lunks for them. Real nogginin, that.”

“Maybe for outsida cares?” Lift said. “Lika the outsida, they gotta light for her, ifn she given lunks for smalls?”

“Maybe,” the girl said. “Maybe that right. But it might be nogginin, but it’s wrack too. I say that. Real wrack.”

“Thanks,” Lift said. “Here.” She gave the girl her handkerchief, as promised. In trade for the information.

The girl wrapped it around her head and gave Lift a gap-toothed grin. People liked trading information in Tashikk. It was kind of their thing.

The grimy little girl paused. “That lighta above, the lunks from the sky. I heard loudin about it. That was you, outsida, eh?”

“Yeah.”

The girl turned as if to leave, but then reconsidered and put a hand on Lift’s arm.

“You,” the girl said to Lift. “Outsida?”

“Yeah.”

“You listenin’?”

“I’m listenin’.”

“People, they don’t listen.” She smiled at Lift again, then finally scuttled away.

Lift settled back on her haunches in the alleyway across from some communal ovens—a vast, hollowed-out cavern in the wall with huge chimneys cut upward. They burned the rockbud husks from the farms, and anyone could come cook in the central ovens there. They couldn’t have fires in their own places. From what Lift had heard, early in the city’s life they’d had a fire blaze through the various slums and kill tons of people.

In the alleys you didn’t see smoke trails, only the occasional pinprick of spherelight. It was supposed to be the Weeping, and most spheres had gone dun. Only those who had spheres out, by luck, during that unexpected highstorm a few days ago would have light.

“Mistress,” Wyndle said, “that was the strangest conversation I’ve ever heard, and I once grew an entire garden for some keenspren.”

“Seemed normal to me. Just a kid on the street.”

“But the way you talked!” Wyndle said.

“What way?”

“With all those odd words and terms. How did you know what to say?”

“It just felt right,” Lift said. “Words is words. Anyway, she said that we could get food at the Tashi’s Light Orphanage. Same as the other one we talked to.”

“Then why haven’t we gone there?” Wyndle asked.

“Nobody likes the woman who runs it. They don’t trust her; say that she’s starvin’ mean. That she only gives away food in the first place because she wants to look good for the officials that watch the place.”

“To turn your phrase back at you, mistress, food is food.”

“Yeah,” Lift said. “It’s just … what’s the challenge of eating a lunch someone gives you?”

“I’m certain you will survive the indignity, mistress.”