“The god of games,” Sid said.

The god of games: never spiteful, never faithful, slippery and cunning and sweet, with a liar’s heart and a knack for knowing exactly what you want and are willing to lose, so that she can take it all from you. The god who never loses a wager, who as good as steals, who won the moon from the sky and the god of ghosts’ mirror and the god of war’s heart.

Sid closed the book. I stopped reciting. “I can recite the whole book,” I said, “from beginning to end.”

“I believe you can,” Sid said. “Had you read this book before I took it from the piano?”

“No.”

“Maybe you already knew about the gods, far more than you pretended.”

“No.”

“Maybe you are lying to me.”

“No,” I said. “Give me your letter.”

“My letter?”

“The one you just wrote.”

“It is in my language. You won’t be able to understand it.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Looking reluctant, she lifted the letter from the desk. It was a single sheet of paper, barely a letter at all, more like a note. It floated in her hand, a white bird’s wing, as she returned to me. I took it from her, though her fingers held the page tightly. I glanced at it, then folded it shut. Looking at the image of the page in my mind, I pronounced as best I could the foreign words, grateful that the script of her language looked almost like mine. The syllables I spoke were melodic. Sound cascaded from my lips. I understood none of it.

She winced.

I stopped, and said, “What?”

“You’re pronouncing it all wrong.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said, and was silent.

She tugged a hand roughly through her short hair. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m acting like pronunciation is why I don’t like to hear you speak the words I wrote. That’s not fair. You do remember all the words. You remember their exact order. You remember where to breathe, and for just how long, where the punctuation is. But that letter was never meant to be read.”

“I don’t understand its meaning.”

“I know. It’s just—” She winced again. “It’s hard to hear you say it.”

“But you see.”

“Yes, Nirrim, I see. Your memory is perfect. But I have heard of this before: people who can remember the page of a book as though it were imprinted on the mind.”

My hand that held the folded page lowered.

“Nirrim, what exactly do you want me to do with you?”

The question hung in the air, soft and dense and dangerous.

I swallowed. Does a coward always have to be a coward? Was it so wrong to want something, whether I deserved it or not? I said, “I want you to stay in the city for a month.”

“Why?”