Her words glowed within me. It was selfish, I knew, to be so happy to be her favorite. And it was wrong (I knew this, too), but I couldn’t help thinking that what had happened with Morah could never happen with me. I was Raven’s special girl. When I gazed upon her, I saw the worn face that I loved and the glint of a golden chain at her throat, half hidden by her dress, that reminded me of the moon necklace my mother had worn. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of Raven’s delicate chain, and I would pretend that if only she untucked the necklace from her dress I would see the crescent-moon pendant dangling from it. I would pretend that she was my mother. Raven had always promised to protect me, to care for me, to make certain I wanted for nothing. “I will be back, Ama,” I said, using the word for mother, “I promise.”

Raven’s hand tightened hard on my chin. She forced my face up so that she could stare into my eyes. It hurt my neck and my jaw ached beneath her thumb, but I said nothing because Raven did this only because she cared so much and was scared to lose me. “You call me Ama, but you don’t mean it. How can you mean it, when you can leave me so easily?”

I heard the scrape of Sid’s boot. “Let go of her,” Sid said. “You are hurting her.”

Raven released me, her blue eyes bright with sadness and anger. “What about our project?” she asked me, with a cautious eye on Sid. My heart sank as Raven carefully chose her words to screen their true meaning from Sid. “Even if you care nothing for me, how can you abandon everyone who depends on you?”

It was true. Without me, Raven wouldn’t dare forge passports. She could trace officials’ signatures, perhaps, but she couldn’t remember the tricks of their various and different handwriting the way that I did, the quirks and squiggles that would occur in the longer textual portions of a passport, the sections that described the bearer’s family, background, and appearance.

“You know as well as I do,” Raven said, “that if you leave, lives will be ruined.”

“Lives will be ruined?” Sid’s voice was cool and incredulous. “Because she leaves the Ward for a month? What do you put in your breads and cakes, Nirrim, that the fate and happiness of so many will hang in the balance without them?”

Raven gave me a hard, warning look. Her hand twitched. I swallowed. “When I return,” I said carefully, “I will bake twice as many.”

“Three times,” Raven said, “to make up for lost time.”

“So you’ll let me leave?”