It occurred to me that all the rules that mandated we live behind the wall had one purpose: to make the Half Kith forget how to wish for things. We had been taught not to want more than we had. I realized that wanting is a kind of power even if you don’t get what you want. Wanting illuminates everything you need, and how the world has failed you.

I wanted Harvers to remember. It was one thing for him—and everyone else in the Ward—to talk as if someone had emptied their minds of the past, had scooped it out like flesh from a fruit. It was another, even more sinister thing that no one seemed to question what had been taken.

Harvers frowned. I felt his hand grow warm beneath mine.

He said, finally, “One of my ancestors was commissioned by him to print a book.”

“What kind of book?”

“A story of the first Lord Protector’s life. It is passed from one Lord Protector to the next. It is housed in the Keepers Hall.”

Harvers looked exhausted.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tire you.”

He patted my cheek. “I am always glad to see you. And look at you now! So fine, so High. Radiant. You are a credit to the Ward, my child.”

I did feel radiant. I remembered the warmth of Sid’s body against mine, her murmur as she asked me to stay, the quirk of her smug smile when I finally dragged myself out of bed and into clothes. I liked the thought that all these memories burned inside me like a flame and glowed through me.

Into Harvers’s dry, cracked, ink-stained hands I placed a pot of skin cream whipped as thick as butter and scented with jasmine. When he lifted the lid and looked uncertain, I explained how the cream would soften his skin. He tried it, smoothing it over his rough hands. His expression grew faraway. “Is this what it’s like in the High quarter?”

Everything rough made smooth. “Yes.”

“You shouldn’t have come back.” He placed the lid back on the pot. “I haven’t been good to you.”

“What do you mean?” He had always been quietly benevolent, never minding when I read books not fit for my kith. It was because of him that I had learned that kindness sometimes means to do nothing, to make no mention of what is obvious, such as me sneaking glances at his printed pages. It can be a kindness to let a secret remain a secret. I had learned so much from his print shop, from books that gave me words I might never have heard in the Ward, that showed drawings of instruments I had never heard played, constellations the High Kith had named, with stories to explain them, which for the Half Kith were merely random stars, bright and distant and meaningless.