“I like it,” I said. They looked at me in surprise. I gathered a large towel and a bar of soap from Raven’s store. My chest buzzed with annoyance. Ever since Annin had said beautiful, something had been pinching at my heart. I didn’t know who deserved my anger more: Annin and Morah for making such a fuss over something that had nothing to do with them, or me for being so affected by a simple word.

Annin and Morah seemed to feel my annoyance. They fell silent, but their silence was annoyed, too, because they could see no reason for me to be angry.

But I could see a reason, and was relieved that they didn’t.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded as soon as I shut the door to Sid’s room behind me. Her back was to me. She sat at a small table, writing what was perhaps a letter in her language. The page was covered with unfamiliar script. “We were supposed to meet in the Middling quarter.”

She set aside her pen but didn’t turn around. “This is better.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see where you come from.” She turned around. Her gaze flickered over me. “You’re dripping,” she said, “from the bath.”

I ignored this. “I don’t know where I come from.”

Her attention, which seemed to have drifted, returned. “What do you mean?”

“I was newly born when I was left outside the orphanage in the baby box. I don’t know who left me there.”

“Baby box?”

“Yes, the metal box for unwanted ones. There are two boxes, actually, one on either side of the wall, so that anyone of any kith can leave a baby there.”

Her face was fierce in the lamplight, her black eyes almost feral. “That is barbaric.”

“Don’t worry. There are holes for a baby to breathe, and a matron checks the box every hour, except at night.”

“How comforting.”

“The Council says it is the best way to protect unwanted babies.”

“If the Council says so, I suppose it must be true.”

I thought her sarcasm was unfair. “If parents had no way to abandon babies in secret, they might murder them.”

“So you were raised thinking that if you hadn’t been left in a metal box, your mother would have murdered you? That if Raven hadn’t taken you in, you would have lived in the orphanage forever?”

“Not forever. When I turned eighteen, if I didn’t show promise as an artisan, and wasn’t apprenticed to a shopkeeper, I would have become Un-Kith and taken outside the city.”

Sid’s mouth was flat. “You say this as if it is nothing to you.”

“I am lucky. I owe so much to Raven.”