Nanna’s friend might bring us the occasional bit of food or a loaf of stale bread or scraps of fabric for Marina to sew into clothes for Babet, though Marta Gayer doesn’t like to be acknowledged by Cerels in public. We pass each other like strangers, though the woman winks at Marina as she walks past and Marina gives her a secret smile. Behind us, she disappears through the narrow door. She’ll be going to see Nanna to have her fortune read in the tea leaves. Back in the old days, she and Nanna worked in the same milliner’s shop, trimming ladies’ hats with ostrich feathers and silk. Marta Gayer has still got that kind of work, for Travester clients, but not Nanna.

In the good old days, as Nanna likes to remind us, we were friends and neighbours with Travesters. It’s hard to believe – Cerels and Travesters, friends? Yes, Nanna nods when she tells us the stories, friends and neighbours. That was before I was born. Before the Director took over Ursa and started his campaign against the Cerels.

“Life’s not too bad,” Marina murmurs, “when you have at least one good friend.” She starts humming a tune under her breath.

Is she talking about Marta Gayer? She’s only “friends” with us now because of Nanna’s readings. “Why do the Travesters hate us?” I ask suddenly. It’s easy to know why we hate them, but it’s hard to think about it the other way round.

My sister stops humming, her dark brown eyes growing serious. She takes so long, I don’t think she’s going to answer. “You’ve heard the rumours, I suppose, about the Director’s parents?”

“Yes. And?”

It’s whispered that the Director’s parents were killed by a group of bandit Cerels. It’s whispered that his hatred of the Cerel peoples was instilled in him from birth by his grandparents, who raised him in the mountains of Ar. Could you brainwash a child like that, so that he’d spend the rest of his life seeking revenge? It makes me think of my own parents … what would I be prepared to do to avenge their suffering? The answer pops into my head straightaway and helps me understand something about the Director.

“Well,” says Marina, “maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s just that we are outsiders.” Her gaze surveys the street ahead, yet her sight seems to look inwards. “When I was small, there was this Travester girl at the school who hated me …”

Cerel children once went to school. Marina had had a taste of it before Cerels were banned from the schools. “This girl, I don’t know why, took against me. I had to sit in front of her in the classroom – we each had our own little desk with a lid that opened up where we put our books–”