“Well, yes, that is what everyone thought at first, but the militia said they found strands of black hair stuck in fresh paint on the walls near where he fell. The hair didn’t match his. The militia think maybe it wasn’t an accident. Soldiers have been poking around, asking questions.”

I felt queasy but thought about how Sid would act in this situation. “Good luck to them.” I forced myself to shrug. “Lots of people in the Ward have black hair. I do.”

“So you do,” she agreed, but absently. Her face scrunched in sudden discomfort. She rubbed a hand over her taut belly, which showed the little bulge of a kicking foot. “Another baby. My gods. And here I am with five children already. I keep having one right after the other, just like the Council wants.” It was strange, perhaps, that the City Council encouraged the Half Kith to bear many children when overcrowding in the Ward might be a concern. Then again, the Council had ways of keeping the population in check. There were the vanishings. And arrests. Since so many people who went into the prison never returned, we could only assume they were dead or had become Un-Kith.

Rinah must have been thinking of similar things. Her discomfort and frustration slipped into worry.

“Do you not want the baby?” I asked, then felt horrible for asking a question that might have no good answer.

I remembered waking up inside the ventilated box outside the orphanage for unwanted babies. It was black with pinpricks of light. The box was cold. Maybe there had been an ice wind. I think there must have been, but I can’t know for sure because I had been placed in the box while asleep and so had seen nothing of the outside world or the person who had taken me to the orphanage. I was newly born. I had known only the warmth of arms and the human-scented stillness of the indoors. The cold was new and frightening. I had been swaddled in a blanket, but my legs had kicked it undone. I wailed. I flung my hands out for the softness that I loved, the familiar scent, her voice. But there was nothing to touch. Her face was fuzzy in my mind. For years after that moment in the box I would wonder why I couldn’t remember my mother’s face well, until I learned that babies are not able to see clearly. But as I cried in the box I thought about her vague face, her floating ribbons of black hair, her thin sweet milk, a golden necklace dangling a crescent moon that swung gently when she leaned over to take me in her arms. The box smelled. Urine soaked my legs—hot, then clammily cold.

Rinah’s expression grew tender and sad. “Yes,” she said, “I want the baby.”