“Not for good,” I said. “Just to talk to somebody.”

“Which somebody?”

“A printer.”

She frowned in a sleepy pout. “You are abandoning me for a printer?”

“I’ll come back. I won’t be long.”

“May I come with you?”

I thought about Aden. “No.”

She turned her face into the pillow. After a moment, her muffled voice came. “I’m afraid you won’t come back. You’ll change your mind.”

Gently, I said, “I’m not the one planning to leave.”

She nodded into the pillow.

“Go back to sleep,” I said.

“And that’s all right with you, that we can do what we did, and one day soon I’ll leave?”

I wanted to say, I would rather have you for a little time than no time at all.

I will remember you perfectly. My memory will touch your skin, your lips. The memory will hurt, but it will be mine.

She turned, her black eyes no longer sleepy, but searching. “Will you let me do it again?”

That question I could answer easily. “Yes.”

She reached up and pulled me down to her, her mouth nuzzling my throat. “Then go,” she murmured against my skin, “and return soon. I will miss you.”

“It’s only for a few hours.”

“I will miss you the moment you leave.”

She loved exaggeration, loved to flatter. It was her way. Still, my breath caught as though what she had said was real. “Will you?”

“I will be so lonely for you.”

I played along, because it felt so good to believe she meant what she said. “And what shall I do to console you upon my return?”

“You know.”

“Do I?”

Her hand slid up my thigh, and in fact I did not leave her bed, not right away, not for some time.

It felt wrong to put on my rough, stone-colored dress, to feel it scratch against me in a way that felt like home. Ever since I had come to the High quarter, I had worn fluid silk and cotton as soft as air, and at first it had felt like a costume, but now everything I used to wear felt like one, like I was impersonating someone I used to be.

It was frightening, to realize how far away from my old self I had grown.

Exhilarating.

I pulled off the dress, which I now knew to be fully horrible. I knew it in a way that I couldn’t have known when I wore the dress practically every day. I knew the dress to be dead of any comfort or beauty, and promised myself I would never wear it again.

Morah smiled at the knife. “It’s nice that you remember your friends.”

“How could I forget?” I said. Annin was exclaiming over all her little treasures, spread across the tavern table.