THE RAIN STOPPED AND THE sun came out again, but gently, so that the white wall glowed like a slick pearl. We retraced our steps to the tavern. Everything seemed new. The alleys smelled as fresh as clay. The sky was clear. Water dripped brightly from the fragrant indi flowers.

“Someone painted over the wall,” Sid said. “Someone who doesn’t want anyone here to know the Ward’s past. When was the Ward built?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have seen all the quarters of Ethin. The Ward is its oldest section. It is the heart of the rest of the city, which has grown around it like rings around the core of a tree. Why was the wall built?”

I thought at least that answer was obvious. “To keep the Half Kith where we belong.”

“But why?”

“It has always been so.”

“There is no such thing,” she said, “as always. But I suppose it doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s best to let people and cities keep their secrets. It takes so long to ferret them out.”

This worried me. She sounded already bored, her voice distant and languid, and she had been in the Ward only one day.

We reached the tavern. I knew that as soon as we walked in there would be exclamations over our appearance. Sid was sunburnt and her dress ruined. She was barely looking at me, so I couldn’t read any clue in her eyes as to how I looked, but I guessed that it couldn’t be good, with my dress stuck to my skin, my sandaled feet dirty and damp.

Before I opened the tavern door, I said, “Will you need help? Getting out of your dress. Because it is wet.” It shouldn’t have felt like a brazen question. I shouldn’t have stumbled over it. I had been employed as her maid and she had complained about a dress’s fastenings, which I had already helped once to undo. I had been paid for a job. I was merely offering to do it.

Her face tightened. “No,” she said, “I won’t.” She opened the door and stepped inside. The tavern’s interior was a soft mouth of darkness against the crisp, pale sunshine. The shadows swallowed her whole.

Raven wasn’t in the main hall of the tavern, where Annin was serving Middling merchants who had come into the Ward to trade with Half-Kith artisans and had been trapped inside by the rain. I sent myself to the kitchen anyway, since I knew Morah needed my help and Sid had an impenetrable politeness to her that made clear she didn’t want my company.