She checked the windows to make sure Southside dust wasn’t getting through the cloth screen and mixing with the flour—which always happened anyway, but it was best to limit just how much dust got in the bread—and then she set to kneading dough. She hummed a kneading sort of tune to herself. The tune gave shape to what she did, and held the whole of it together.

Kaile stopped humming and kneading when a shrill, piercing, horrible noise stabbed through the kitchen air. She covered her ears with both hands.

Now I have dough in my ears, she noticed. I wonder if I’ll be able to get it all out.

“Wake up, everybody!” the Snotfish shouted. His name was Cob, but the name did not suit him nearly so well as Snotfish. “Inspection Daaaaaaay, Inspection Daaaaaaaaay . . .” He marched through the kitchen and blew another note into his tin whistle. The sound made it through Kaile’s hands, and through the bread dough, and into her ears. It was even more painful than the first note.

Snotfish’s whistle was his very favorite thing, and it had been ever since Kaile had given it to him in a moment of foolish generosity. It used to be hers. Now her little brother tried to play marching tunes with it, because the Guard used marching tunes to get used to their gearworked legs. He wanted to join the Guard when he grew old enough—if he ever did, if he managed to live so long before Mother and Father baked him into a pie to be done with him.

Kaile took her doughy hands from her ears and prepared to say wrathful and scathing things. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but she took in a very big breath to make sure she would have enough air to say it with.

Her father was faster. He tore into the kitchen through the public room door and tried to snatch the whistle away. The Snotfish resisted, and the whistle spun out of his hands and into the oven fire.

Everyone started shouting at once.

The Snotfish ran to the oven with a shrill, wordless cry, ready to dive inside and rescue his precious whistle. Father grabbed the boy’s arm to keep him from burning himself. Mother called down curses on the both of them.

Kaile took the longest kitchen tongs and tried to fish out the whistle. It was far inside. She felt the fine hairs burn on her forearms. A horrible, acrid, metallic smell began to fill the kitchen.

The shouting subsided. It was silent in the room by the time Kaile pulled out a ruined lump of tin.

She looked at it sadly. She should have kept it. She shouldn’t have given it to the Snotfish. He never learned to play it properly, and now it would never play again.