Dyeawan decided then she liked him. He was kind, and he reminded her of a boy she’d known years ago in the streets. He’d even been plump like Tahei. She and that boy, Fedo, were friends, inseparable for weeks, until Aegins took him. They didn’t get her because he led them away. Fedo could barely run, but he ran his heart out that day to save her.

A day later she returned to his workshop with two sweet cakes wrapped in cheesecloth. Tahei couldn’t believe his eyes, certain she must’ve stolen them. But it had been easy, easier than she could’ve imagined. Dyeawan had gone to the head commissary cook, who turned out to be a blind old man named Makai. She’d prepared an elaborate story about why she needed the ingredients to make the cakes, telling herself she’d acquire the knowledge to actually bake them on her own.

“You’re the one who slides because she lost her legs?” he’d asked her.

“No,” she’d answered, earnestly. “I have my legs. They’re still there. They just don’t listen to me anymore.”

“And what do you need?”

She told him, but before Dyeawan could recite her prepared speech and accompanying story, Makai simply asked her what she wanted to bake. When she told him that, he said, even shorter, for her to come back in an hour.

Dyeawan didn’t understand at first, not even when she did as she was told, returning at the appointed time to find him offering her the freshly baked treats.

“But, why—” she began to protest, mostly out of confusion.

“Our kind takes care of one another here,” he said. “You need only ask. And remember.”

That sat heavily with her for a long time, until she was able to gift Tahei the cakes. He was overjoyed, and told her that now it was he who owed her.

She decided to save that favor for later.

It’s Friday afternoon and Dyeawan is elated when the bells summon her to Tahei’s workshop on the builders level. She glides herself there in minutes, barely even slowed by the detour up the ramps between levels that adjoin every staircase. (She’s far from the only one in the Cadre who has lost the use of their legs, though Dyeawan has yet to see another use a tender as intricate as hers. She’s wondered whether her conveyance is simply a new design or was designed specifically for her.)