It screamed. It tried to snatch at people surrounding it, but the crowd lopped off the many hands and struck at the creature’s throat. Bright red spilled from its mouth and wounds, but it was not normal blood. It flowed like liquid flame, striped with pink, edged with orange.

The god’s blood poured onto the black-and-white pavement, and the creature’s screams faded to a whimper.

No one, said the girl by my side, has ever killed a god before.

When the fire-blood slowed to a trickle and then stopped, the crowd fled. The agora was empty now, save for the enormous mutilated carcass.

No one except the girl and I was there to see a duskwing, its cool gray feathers stammering at its sides, dip its beak in the blood.

It shifted before our eyes, wings painted with sudden scarlet. Its stubby, thin tail bloomed into long, soft, curling pink feathers. Its eyes winked like bright emerald chips.

That is the Elysium, I said.

She nodded. The gods’ bird, she said, and fell silent as it took flight, its scalloped-edged wings illuminated by the sun. It ribboned through the sky, dipping and weaving through the hot blue.

Tell me, the girl said. Do I grow up happy?

It seemed wrong to lie and cruel to tell the truth. I said, Not everyone needs to be happy.

Her firm mouth flattened to a line. She said, Yes, they do.

I was going to say that she was a child and so could not possibly understand how the world gets in the way of happiness. I was going to say that hoping to be happy is a kind of greed. It should be enough to feel safe.

But as I started to speak, I realized that I no longer believed this.

It did not matter, however, what I thought or wanted to say, because I was pulled abruptly from the dream.

A hand yanked me awake, ripping the hair from my head.

21

I CRIED OUT, REACHING UP to grab a strong wrist and firm fingers, trying to slacken the hold on my hair.

“Finally awake, are you.” Raven released me.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasped. I felt sick with guilt. I had been caught. She had seen me somehow, going through the wall’s gate. She knew—

“Where is it?”

My trembling hands tried to smooth my hair. I glanced up at the ceiling where my passport nestled in the crack alongside a beam. “I—I—” I tried to scrape together the right words to tell Raven the truth but in a way she would accept. Of course she was upset. I had betrayed her, I had touched her things without asking …

“Speak, damn the gods.” Strands of my black hair trailed from her lifted hand. “Where is the heliograph?”

All the words I had been trying to find floated away. “Do you mean … my heliograph?”

“My heliograph, you stupid girl.”