Unfortunately, he was right. She was too hungry to produce any awesomeness, which meant being a regular child beggar. She didn’t move though, not yet.

People, they don’t listen. Did Lift listen? She did usually, didn’t she? Why did the little urchin girl care, anyway?

Hands in pockets, Lift rose and picked her way through the crowded slot street, dodging the occasional hand that tried to swat or punch her. People here did something strange—they kept their spheres in rows, strung on long strings, even if they put them in pouches. And all the money she saw had holes in the bottoms of the glass spheres, so you could do that. What if you had to count out exact change? Would you unstring the whole starvin’ bunch, then string them up again?

At least they used spheres. People farther toward the west, they just used chips of gemstone, sometimes embedded in hunks of glass, sometimes not. Starvin’ easy to lose, those were.

People got so mad when she lost spheres. They were strange about money. Far too concerned with something that you couldn’t eat—though Lift figured that was probably the point of using spheres instead of something rational, like bags of food. If you actually traded food, everyone would eat up all their money and then where would society be?

The Tashi’s Light Orphanage was a corner building, cut into a place where two streets met. The main face pointed onto the large thoroughfare of the immigrant quarter, and was painted bright orange. The other side faced a particularly wide alleyway mouth that had some rows of seats cut into the sides, making a half circle, like some kind of theater—though it was broken in the center for the alleyway. That strung out into the distance, but it didn’t look quite as derelict as some others. Some of the shanties even had doors, and the belching that echoed from within the alley sounded almost refined.

She’d been told by the urchins not to approach from the street side, which was for officials and real people. Urchins were to approach from the alleyway side, so Lift neared the stone benches of the little amphitheater—where some old people in shiquas were sitting—and knocked on the door. A section of the stone above it was carved and painted gold and red, though she couldn’t read the letters.

A youth pulled open the door. He had a flat, wide face, like Lift had learned to associate with people who weren’t born quite the same as other folk. He looked her over, then pointed at the benches. “Sit there,” he said. “Food comes later.”

“How much later?” Lift said, hands on hips.

“Why? You got appointments?” the young man asked, then smiled. “Sit there. Food comes later.”