My heart felt hot and hard with resentment. “I think it must have cost a fortune. I think it’s not fair that the High Kith should have so much beauty when we get so little.”

“Sounds revolutionary of you, Nirrim.”

“The tiles made in the Ward are pretty but … ordinary. They don’t glow. I think someone is purchasing things cheaply from the Ward and … improving them somehow.”

“An interesting idea. Worth investigating. But your thoughts are very different from mine. I am thinking that shade of green light suits you, but I prefer your beauty without it.”

“You are not really thinking that.”

“I am.”

If someone stole her voice, she would still find a way to flirt, even silently, with whomever was nearest.

“I suppose I can’t be believed even when I’m telling the truth,” Sid said. “It’s the liar’s curse.”

As much as she claimed she was a liar, I could not recall, now that I thought about it, an actual lie she had told—which meant she never had, at least not to me … or she had lied, and I didn’t know it yet.

We left the colored lights of the agora, which narrowed to a path carpeted with pink and white petals. Tree branches laden with flowers arched overhead. As we walked, buds opened and bloomed in soft bursts, petals cascading down onto us, floating onto Sid’s shoulders, catching in my hair. The branches instantly grew tight new buds. They, too, flowered open and shed their petals. My sandaled feet sank into the petals up to my ankles. Their fragrance wafted up. More petals came down like snow. “Why,” I asked, “would I fascinate you?”

“I want to know,” Sid said, “how someone who has so little can be so brave.”

I thought about how much I liked the way she walked, her hands in her pockets yet never slouching, her shoulders straight. I thought about how I had liked her leg tangled between mine. Her light weight on me. I thought about how terrified I was of ever admitting any of this. “I am not brave.”

“And yet you are here, with me—and with a forged Middling passport. Don’t think I didn’t notice. Where did you get that?”

She smiled at my silence.

It occurred to me that it was a special person, a gentle one, who allowed another to keep her secrets.

Or it was the sort of person who had secrets of her own.