A woman knocked on the door of our place one afternoon in the brief window between when I got home from my shift on the factory line and when I’d cleaned up enough to go to Dirva’s to see my godson. She was young. She was a shaper just starting her training. She had no control, no decorum, nothing but burning curiosity. I winced when she looked at me. She made me nervous; there was a chance she’d see me for what I was and add another rumor about me to the pile. What little reputation I had could not have survived the blow, and there was the chance that Nisa’s friend’s patience would finally run out. I was afraid I’d land us on the street. I never could build walls, and I never could block, but by then I knew shapers. I knew we are an arrogant bunch, and that resistance of our gifts draws attention. It was painful and nerve-wracking, but the smart thing to do was let her read me.

“You are nervous,” she said.

“You are a shaper,” I said.

She smiled. She handed me a slip of paper. “My mentor requests your presence.” I waited until she left to read the note. All that was written was an address, a familiar one: Shayma Hepzah’Brahim’s house.

I pulled Dirva aside after dinner. “This is your matchmaker’s address, yes?”

He looked at the address and frowned. He switched to Vahnan. Sorcha heard the switch and looked over, eyebrows slightly raised. Dirva often spoke Vahnan in front of him. Even three years after the move to Rabatha, even while raising a child together, Sorcha and Dirva rarely spoke directly to one another. Neither spoke to me about the other. The weight of Dirva’s secrets, the fact that Sorcha himself was one of those secrets, pushed them apart. “Did something happen?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Have you heard anything about me on the street?”

“Nothing new. Nothing good.”

“Nothing about the gift? Or why I was in Alamadour?”

“Word on the street is you were in Alamadour for him,” he said, nodding discreetly at Sorcha.

“Then why does a shaper want to see me?”

Dirva shrugged. He sighed and rubbed a hand through his beard. “She’s met you. She knows what you are. They all know what you are, and what I am. They keep the secrets.”

“Then why does she want to see me?”

“I don’t know. They won’t tell me any more than they would tell you. I’m passing, too.”