“My brother told me it was my own fault. He is on the Council, you know. He always warns me to never taste strange blood. But he thought it wouldn’t do anything to me.”

“Why not?” I said. “What did it do to you?”

“Because you were Middling. But you are actually High! That shouldn’t work either. Oh, this is so confusing.”

Sid said, “You’re not answering her questions.”

“Don’t glare at me. I can fight, too, you know. I was trained with a sword, on my family estate outside the city, where the sugarcane grows. I would cut the cane down with my little sword like so, and like so, and all the other High-Kith boys trembled at my grace, and the Un-Kith in the field couldn’t even look at me, I was like a tiny god.”

“But what did the blood do?” I said. “You acted so strangely afterward, like you were made of stone.”

“It made me remember,” he said.

“Remember what?” Sid asked.

“I will not tell you, rude boy. It was my memory. But I had forgotten it, until this one’s dirty blood ruined everything. I did not want to remember it. She made me remember it.” He sank to the floor, crying into his hands. “Oh, where is my brother? Why can’t councilmen come to parties? This is a horrible party. I have no more dust and the floating was too short and you mean ones are making me sad and I have no way of getting dow-ow-n.” His last word ended on a sob.

“He’s right, you know,” Sid said. “We’re stuck on the ceiling until the elixir wears off, and honestly I don’t know what will happen when it does.”

“Will we fall?” I asked.

“I want to float!” wailed the blue-haired man.

“Usually these parties don’t end dangerously,” Sid said.

“Usually?” I repeated.

She crouched down next to the weeping man and pinched his ear.

“Ow!”

“Pay attention. Stop crying. Answer her questions.”

He wiped away his tears. “It was not a normal memory. It was like I was there again. The smells. The tastes. Everything was so real, so now. Please don’t make me say what it was.”

“All right,” I said, though Sid cut a disapproving look my way.

“The memory hurt,” he said.

A sick feeling had been growing inside me. I turned over his earlier words in my mind. “You said that Middling blood doesn’t work, and neither does High-Kith blood. You’re taking it from the tithes, aren’t you? From Half-Kith prisoners. What does Half-Kith blood do? How does it work?”

“Maybe three drops was too much,” he said.

A realization seized me. I looked at Sid. “The elixir isn’t pink tea. It’s watered-down blood.”

44