“You read quickly.” Sid came to join me at the edge of the bed. The bell of her sleeve brushed my bare arm. A shiver traveled up the back of my neck.

I edged away. “I’m not really reading.” I returned the book to her. “It was the god of discovery.”

If she was bothered by my shifting away from her, she didn’t show it. She said, “I wonder what it takes to kill a god.”

“There are no gods.”

“What if there were, and they were all killed? Or what if there were, and they all fled?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in them, either.”

“I was raised to consider all possibilities.”

“Because your parents believe in gods?”

Now she looked uncomfortable. “It has more to do with strategy.”

“What do you mean?”

“People can refuse to see a possibility. Maybe they don’t want it. Maybe it never occurs to them, or is even awful to them. But people make bad choices when they don’t know the full range of choices. People come to wrong conclusions if they don’t understand all the possible questions.”

“Are your parents scholars?” I asked. Sid’s eyes widened in amusement, so I tried again. “Merchants?”

“Well, they certainly wanted to sell me.” Sid rubbed the back of her neck and tugged absently at the fastening at the back of her dress. “Don’t take what I said about strategy too close to heart. Being open to all possibilities has a flaw, too.”

“What flaw?”

“It can make you doubt what you know.” Then she imitated someone else’s voice, someone who spoke in a too-elegant way. “But how can you be sure, Sidarine, if you’ve never so much as looked at a man? How can you know, when you’ve never even kissed one?”

She said it steadily. Her face was unchanging, her expression perfectly even. Her long hands lay folded across her knee, the lines of her arms so poised, so ladylike, that I could see a different version of Sid than the one who had rummaged through the piano and made me jump off a balcony.

I said, “Sidarine is a pretty name.”

She pinched her silk sleeve. “It’s like this dress.” Then she cut a mock-menacing look in my direction. “Don’t ever use that name, or our friendship is over.”

Friendship? Was that what this was? I felt a sudden, hard determination to be unfazed by Sid, who so clearly enjoyed fazing everyone. I want to see your face, she had said in the prison, the next time that I shock you.

“Turn around,” I said.