“You have me all figured out, do you?” she said. “Then tell me, girl. If you won’t forge for me, what good are you? I’ll denounce you to the militia. It will break my poor old heart, but your selfish ways force me to do it. You are a criminal. It was your hand that forged those documents. Do you think the Council will be pleased to learn that someone has disrupted the most important law that governs this country, the strict lines that keep our kiths in place? The Council will relish your punishment. They will torture you until you show them exactly what I will tell them you can do: copy perfectly. They will break every bone but the ones in your hand so that you can show them how you sign their names with the exact flourish. They will cut out your tongue yet leave your eyes so that you may see the stamps you will need to copy. They will discover my truths in your performed skills, and they will tithe you until you are whittled down to the bone, dear one, and you will weep at your lost chance to be with me.”

“You won’t do that.”

She smiled. “Will I not? We know each other quite well, after these many years. One way or the other, I always win, and you always lose.”

“There is nothing you can accuse me of that doesn’t also implicate you. I will drag you down with me.”

She waved an annoyed hand. “You have no proof.”

“I will tell the militia about your heliograph.”

She lost her smile. “What heliograph?”

“The one still in the lapel of the coat taken from me in prison.” I was bluffing—I had no solid knowledge of where the original heliograph was, but I remembered how anxious she had been about its loss.

“You found it in the cistern. You gave it back to me.”

“I gave you a different heliograph, which, if you look closely, will show that you weren’t wearing the same beaded earrings you wore on the day you requested the one that was lost from Aden. Once the militia finds the original heliograph in the coat, it will be proof that you sought a passport even if it’s no proof you were involved in forging them. You’ll be punished.”

Rage snaked across her face. “You are a wicked, deceitful girl.”

“Then don’t cross me, or I will cross you. I am not who I was. You expect that as soon as you threaten me, I will do what you want. No more.”

“It’s true,” she said after a careful pause. “You are not who you were. But tell me, my lamb: Who are you, really? Little Nirrim, come from nowhere. Another orphan left to dirty herself in the box. No one special. But I know where you come from. I know just how special you are.”