Her hand slid away from her face. “I’m sorry. I waited for a long time. I assumed you weren’t coming. It bothered me.” She said her last words slowly, seeming to consider them as she said them.

“Everything is safer for you than it is for me.”

“You’re right. I should have been thinking about that. I was thinking too much about me. About how I was feeling.” She looked down at the piano.

My curiosity got the better of my fading anger. “What are you looking for?”

“A prayer book.”

“There is no such thing as a prayer book.” I studied her to see if she was joking or making this up. “No one worships the gods. They’re not real.”

“There used to be such books. It’s an old book. And hidden, I’ve been told, in this piano.”

“So this is not your piano.”

“No.”

“Is this your house?”

“No.”

“Do you even have the right to be here?”

“No,” she said cheerfully, “which is why I must hurry. I will understand if you wish to leave. I’ll stay here until I find the book.”

But I didn’t want to leave. I planted my hands on my hips. “So you are a thief.”

“I am many things. But for the moment, yes, you’re right. Nirrim … will you be thieves with me?” She went back to inspecting the piano, knocking along its black lacquered wood.

“Have you tried playing the piano?”

She shot me a flat look of mock outrage. “We have already discussed my ability to play—or lack thereof.”

“I mean: Have you struck each key? If a book is hidden inside, maybe it obstructs some part of the piano from playing. See if a note or notes won’t work.”

“Ooh, yes.” She trickled her fingers up the keys, moving from the rumbling low notes.

“Why do you want a prayer book?”

“Information. Do you realize that although your city has libraries in the upper quarters, there are no history books? Why are there no history books?” She danced out the middle notes, shifting her hand so that she struck the notes only with her thumb and little finger, hand stretched. “And there are no books about the gods, even though people refer vaguely to them as having existed, even though there are statues of them in the High quarter.” She hit a key that thudded instead of rang. The note was dead. She smiled at me. “Clever Nirrim.” She reached inside the piano’s body and fiddled with the tuning pins, then seemed to find something. She wrenched at the flat board that held the pins.

“You are going to ruin the instrument.”

“It deserves it,” she said. “It’s in the way of what I want.”