“How can you not know?” She seemed genuinely surprised, which I could understand, given how much she cared about what she wore. It was evident in the expertly fitted quality of her trousers and her sleeveless tunic with its short collar, the fabric thin enough for the heat and so exquisitely sewn that you could not see the seams. They were men’s clothes, though far simpler than the embroidered, jewel-toned clothes that the High brothers in the market had worn. “Clothes are important,” she said.

“To you.”

“But not to you?”

I thought about it. “They’re important to you because you have so many choices,” I said finally, “and what you wear shows what you want. They hide your body, but they also show yourself. I don’t have much choice. It doesn’t really matter whether I wear beige or brown or gray. They are shades of the same thing. There is no meaning to whether I wear a dress or trousers, beyond whatever is most comfortable for work. It’s different for me.”

“It’s not just about how I look. It’s how I feel.”

“Isn’t how you look part of how you feel?”

She glanced at the sea. “Yes.”

“I can’t go to the party dressed like this, can I?”

“You can. You should wear whatever you want.”

“I don’t know what I want. Even if I did, I could die for wearing it. If I wear this and get caught as Half Kith, I’ll be punished for having a forged document and going beyond the wall.”

“As I said, people here think you’re playing a game. That your clothes are a costume. A joke.”

Her hesitancy, though, made me guess at something else. “But tonight it would be odd. They would stare.”

“Yes.”

“Would that embarrass you?”

“No.”

“I have a Middling passport. I could dress as Middling, and go as your servant.”

“You’re not my servant.”

“Aren’t I?”

“No.” Slowly, she said, “I don’t like that option.”

“I don’t have any good options. I could wear a High dress, and if my passport is checked and I’m believed to be Middling, I’ll be punished for breaking the sumptuary law. I don’t know what would happen to a Middling for that. And if my passport doesn’t pass muster and it’s found to be forged, then we’re right back where we were before, with me imprisoned and executed.”

“No one checks passports at parties. It would spoil the mood.”

“Then maybe it’s best for me to wear High-Kith clothes, if you think I’d blend in.”

She widened incredulous eyes.

“What?” I said.

“The idea of you blending in.”

“You think my manners won’t match how I’m dressed, and I’ll be classed anyway?”

“No.”

I was growing angry. “Or that nothing I wore could ever make me look as good as you?”