“Flattery just means that I like you.”

“You don’t know me,” I said. “You are playing a game, and it is with me.”

There was a mortified silence. “I didn’t mean to. It was silent here before you came. That’s no excuse, I know. Should I be quiet? I can be. It will be hard.”

“No.” Like him, I didn’t want the frightening silence of the prison. His voice was supple and clever. It hid the corridor’s empty echo. It meant I wasn’t alone.

“Will you tell me your name?” he asked. “I have given you mine.”

He hadn’t, not really, but: “Nirrim,” I said.

“Nirrim,” he repeated. “No last name?”

I was confused. “What is a last name?”

“True, they are not used in Ethin. But you seem different from other people here, so I thought maybe you were different in other ways, too.”

I didn’t want to ask how he found me different. I didn’t like that he knew that I was. I had tried so hard, since what had happened to Helin, not to be different. I said, “I have never heard of a last name.”

“In other places, in some countries, people have last names.”

“What other places?”

“Do you want me to tell you about them?”

I felt ashamed that I knew so little of anything outside the Ward, and that a Middling knew so much more than I did of the world. He wasn’t even High Kith. “No,” I said.

“All right,” he said easily. “Nirrim.” His voice grew conspiratorial. “What did you do to be here?”

It was my turn to be silent. I remembered the militiaman falling to the pavement below. I remembered the exact cadence of his cry.

“Is it that bad?” Sid said.

“No,” I said immediately. “It’s not that bad.”

“I believe you.”

“I am not a bad person.”

“Nirrim.” There was surprise in Sid’s voice. I had spoken loudly, with enough vehemence that I wanted to clap a hand over my mouth. Slowly, he said, “I never thought you were a bad person.”

My good girl, Raven sometimes called me, and I was always so proud, and thought that maybe if I was good enough, she would adopt me as her true daughter.

Sid said, “Never mind, if you don’t want to say.”

“I stole a bird.”

“A bird?” I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but imagined his brows lifting.

“Not stole. Not really. I found it. I gave it back.” I explained as best as I could.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said.

“You should. You’re a thief yourself.”

“I’m not.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. “I was accused of theft.”

His tone made me doubt he was completely innocent. “What did you really do?”

“Are you easily shocked?”

“I don’t know.”

He was amused. “Will you tell me if I shock you?”