I throw an arm over my head, starting up the ache in my palm. I think Mother’s doing her best for me. But she’s wise to protect herself. Both my parents are. The wound that is Adam’s death has been oozing for nearly twelve years now, and will stay as raw as the day it was inflicted. And I’m the only other person in the world with the power to hurt them just as much.
I need to cache. I can feel the swirl of too many thoughts, too many feelings. I search for the memory of stitching up Grandpapa’s leg. A bad, gaping cut from a broken pane of glass becoming a neatly sewn wound that can heal.
There was something I could fix.
I lift my head. Nita is coming through the door, a long red dress draped over her arms, thin and shimmering, a new pair of earrings dangling from her fingers. For Reddix. From my mother.
Nita shuts the door, takes one look at my face, and says, “What? Did you think it would be one of my old shirts?” I only just keep from sticking out my tongue at her. And then she says, “I heard about the Forum.”
I think our level’s kitchen help must be the most efficient means of communication the city can provide.
“Are you okay, Sam?”
“I’ve been talking to my mother, so not particularly.” I don’t want to think about the Forum. “What happened to the dyers after the supervisors came?”
“Nothing,” Nita says brightly. “I told them I’d seen a goods box stored in there and that the scarf probably fell out. And Mum was so grateful you came today. Grandpapa’s leg will heal so much better now.”
I stare at the star-painted ceiling. Nita shouldn’t lie to one of the Knowing, because I Know exactly what she sounds like when she’s doing it. Just a little too nice. Maybe I don’t want to think about what happened to the dyers, either.
“Don’t look like that, Sam,” Nita says, misinterpreting my misery. She lays the red dress carefully on the bed, then pushes me upright, leads me to the stool at the dressing table, and drops a bottle of kojo oil in my lap. For my hands. “So what are you going to do about it?” she asks, with a nod at the red dress.
“I haven’t decided.”
“Do you like him?”
“I don’t dislike him.” I frown, wincing as I unwind one of the bloody bandages. And then Nita spins the stool until I’m facing the mirror and puts a cheek against mine, smiling at our reflection. I am the brown of the linen fields at the end of the days of light, while Nita is a sunset, all pinks and reds, flushed from running up and down from the kitchens.
“Well,” Nita says, “whatever you decide, I’ll make sure you look extremely lovely and very spoiled while you’re doing it.”
Now I do stick my tongue out. “Fetch my dressing gown, would you, Nita?”
“Fetch it yourself.”
I smile, and she laughs. She’s been refusing to get my dressing gown since I was fourteen. Nita is an expert at manipulating my moods, at distracting me from the memories that hurt. But she is from the Outside, able to partner with any kind of person she likes, do as she likes, as long as doing as she likes means serving the city. She has memories that will fade. Soften. She can be whatever she imagines. I can never be other than I am, because I can never stop remembering who I’ve been. I was born special. Privileged. And I would trade this life for Nita’s in half a heartbeat.
“Here,” I sigh, wincing as I pass her a plate with my fingertips. The kitchens sent down dewdrops for the middle bell refreshment, silvercurrants baked inside the tiniest spirals of sweetened dough. I always pass these delicacies to Nita and her brood of siblings Outside. Smuggling food out of the city is very against our laws. But so is smuggling out myself, and Nita is good at both. She takes the plate with a wrinkled forehead.
“Didn’t you say we need to be more careful?”
“But they’re Nathan’s favorites, aren’t they?”
Nita pops a dewdrop in her mouth, winking at my reflection. Her eyes are so very blue. Such an unusual color. And dewdrops are her favorite as well as her brother’s. I’m halfway through unwrapping the other bandage, thinking of Reddix Physicianson, when the sound of shattering pottery makes me spin on the stool. Nita is on her knees at the edge of the rug, dewdrops rolling across the floor.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
I’m at her side before I Know I’ve moved. She’s choking, spitting, the remains of a dewdrop cupped in her hand. Only what I see is no half-eaten silvercurrant. This is smaller, shriveled, dark like the water bugs we skim from the baths. Bitterblack. Something cold trickles through my chest. And then I shake her.
“Did you bite it?” I yell. “Nita! Did you bite into it at all?”
Nita lets the dewdrop that is not a dewdrop fall to the floor, a move I see reflected from every mirror on every wall and from every angle, like a bad memory. Then she’s on her feet, staggering through shards of plate to the washing table. I think once of Marcus, Reddix’s father, but I Know the timeline of bitterblack poisoning as well as any other physician. If Nita has gotten the juice in her mouth, there’s not one thing any of us can do for her. I run to the table and push her head over the washbasin.
“Put your finger down your throat,” I order. “Now!”
I hold back her hair while she retches, my other hand on her back. When she’s done she wipes her mouth on a sleeve, lifts her streaming eyes to my face. They are wide with terror. “They Know,” she whispers. “Sam, they Know what you’ve done!”
She’s right. No one could mistake a silvercurrant for bitterblack. It was put there. For me. The cold spreading through my chest burns like fire.
“The book!” she says. “Where is the book?”
Hidden. No one could have seen it. I pour water into a glass, spilling half of it. “Rinse your mouth,” I say. “Can you feel your fingers? Do your arms and legs hurt?”
Nita spits in the basin and then sinks to the floor. This time when she looks up, there is a certainty there that freezes me to the core. She grabs my injured hand and pulls me to my knees. I Know there must be pain, but I don’t feel it.
“Sam,” she whispers, “when this is over, you have to get rid of me. Swear it. My family … ” If Nita is caught eating food from the city, even if it’s food that has killed her, Grandpapa; Nathan; her mother, Annis; the children, they will be the ones to pay. “Get rid of me,” she says, “and then … you have to run. They’ll try again, until they get it right. Promise me … you’ll run.”
I can’t think. I can’t even breathe. Only a moment ago I was trying to decide whether partnering with Reddix would save me from Judgment. But Judgment has come now. And it’s fallen on Nita. Her voice is shaking.
“Sam, I swear, I didn’t know. I never thought … they’d hurt you … Not you … ”
The Council? Why wouldn’t they hurt me? And then the first spasm hits, sudden and violent. Nita’s back arches, lifting her from the floor, and I have to wrench away my hand before she breaks it. Memory tugs, and then yanks me down, and for a moment I am six years old, in the corner behind a door, listening to Adam die of bitterblack.