It occurred to me, belatedly, that Sid had sensed that sturdy bowl of grief inside me when I told him about Helin. Maybe everything that came after—the flirtation, the silly bargain, the secret—had been to distract me when he saw that he couldn’t take away my sadness.

I thought I heard him call to the guard.

“It is wrong,” I murmured to Sid. I didn’t mean it. I would do anything for a mother, a father. But I said it again, deciding that I would believe it was wrong, for his sake.

16

“NIRRIM, WAKE UP.”

There was urgency in Sid’s voice. I heard footfalls coming down the hall. I got to my feet. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“We’re leaving,” he said.

I was confused. “To go where? A different part of the prison?” Fear rose within me. “Why? What will they do?”

“Nothing. Don’t be afraid. They are letting us go.”

The footfalls came closer.

“That’s not right.” I began to doubt whether I was awake or had somehow slept for nearly a month. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days.”

“Then my sentence isn’t over.”

“Now it is. I promised you a favor.”

A pair of guards unlocked our cells and we were led through the prison’s maze to a dimly lit office that seemed out of place: the size of a large cell, but with a thick rug on the floor, its pattern like interlaced fingers of many colors, and a tiny man behind a desk with a sputtering oil lamp. I wasn’t sure where to rest my eyes. I could feel Sid beside me, taut with energy. Behind the tiny man at the desk, a window glowed silver. It was the moonlight. It was like mercury. It was so strong that I finally believed Sid: it had truly been only three days since the full moon and the festival celebrating its god, one of the few gods this city remembered.

The man at the desk looked through my passport and stamped one of the booklet’s pages with a T for Tybir, the name of the prison. Sid had no documents, which was strange to see. I had never met anyone with no documents. There was, however, a letter that the man behind the desk read several times, looking up occasionally at Sid. Finally, the man scrawled something at the bottom of the page but did not stamp it. He folded the single page along its already creased lines and rose from his seat to hand it carefully to Sid. The man said, “Your—”

“None of that,” Sid said. “My stay here was delightful, I assure you.”