A thought came so slowly that it reminded me of Annin building a tower out of playing cards: the precision and care, the light touch, the slight shake of her hand lowering a card into place.

The Elysium closed its eyes and sighed. It grew heavy with sleep.

I could keep the bird, I thought, if I left the Ward. If I forged a passport for myself. If I went beyond the wall, beyond the city.

Fear flooded me. I couldn’t kill the bird. But I also couldn’t leave behind everything I knew.

I slipped the embroidered bread bag from my pocket.

I clamped the sleeping bird’s wings to its body, and thrust it into the sack.

When I was certain that no one was passing in the alley below, I climbed down a gutter pipe, the jerking, squawking bag swaying from my wrist by its drawstring.

Moonlight painted the street. The alley was a quiet, bright river.

I walked until I spotted a pair of soldiers. Dread pulsed inside me, but I couldn’t keep the bird and I couldn’t kill it. It must be returned. I had to hope that the militia would be so distracted by the Elysium that they wouldn’t think to link me to the soldier’s broken body—which, after all, would surely look like a mere accident, especially with the fallen gutter pipe.

“Here,” I said to the soldiers, holding out the bag. I remembered Helin holding out the apple and asking to be my friend.

One of them, staring, took the jolting bag. “Is that the Elysium?”

The other soldier seized my arm.

“But I’m turning it in.” Panic darted up my throat. “To be brought back to its owner.”

The soldier dragged my other arm behind me.

“It’s unharmed!” I said.

I was arrested anyway.

11

THEY CAN TAKE ANYTHING from you.

You hear stories of surgeries, of how a slice of liver had been taken, or a kidney. Surgeries allowed doctors who worked for the Council to heal the High-Kith sick.

Sirah’s missing eye.

Once I saw a woman whose eyelashes had been clipped to the lids. The lashes, I knew, would be crafted into fake ones for a lady to wear.

The pain of a lopped finger.

Sometimes it seemed that the tithe was not about physical pain or weakness or even shame, but fear. I was afraid that a judge might discover something I hadn’t known I couldn’t lose. Maybe I wouldn’t recognize it as valuable until it was stripped from me.

For resisting arrest (“But I didn’t resist”) and defiance before a judge (“I am not defiant. I was helping”), I was sentenced to a month in prison. For daring to touch High-Kith property, I must pay a tithe of blood, one vial to be drained each day of my prison sentence.