“I am surprised you ever returned,” my father says dryly.
“The longer I stayed, the more eerie everything seemed. No one had any knowledge of the country’s history. If I said, Why do you have a Lord Protector who rules over the city and country? they looked at me blankly.” I describe how the people I encountered in those first few weeks thought I was an appealing novelty, a rich, fair-haired traveler from afar, which suggested that travelers had arrived on that island before. Yet no one could tell me when, and there was no evidence of any immigrant population. “Any question about the past made a Herrath sleepy-eyed. It is as it is, they would answer, which makes me suspect that it was not that sailors in those waters all went down in wrecks but that the cobwebby forgetfulness that clung to Herrath began to cling to them, too, and they never returned home. Or maybe the Herrath vaguely knew that travelers existed but they had come so long ago, maybe generations ago, that the memory of them was lost in a murky past. In that country, there was no such thing as a history book. The concept of history seemed foreign to them. Things felt strange—even the constant pleasure-seeking of the people I first met there struck me as odd. How did the wealthy fund their parties, pay for their elaborate clothes? Then I explored the city further, and saw the wall.” I explain the strata of Herrath society, how it was ordered into three strict classes—High Kith, Middling, and Half Kith, the word kith meaning something like “kind” or “sort.” The Half Kith were imprisoned behind a wall, their labor exploited by the noble class. The whole of society depended on making the Half Kith as drab as possible, as though forcing them to live in the very center of town, behind an enormous wall they could never pass, eating food without salt or spice, dressing in grays and browns every day, would make them forget they were human. The Middling class served the interests of the High Kith, acting as their servants and militia, helping to suppress the lowest class, who would pay with their lives if they ever tried to go beyond their wall—or would pay with blood, drained in vials, or hair sewn into wigs for High-Kith ladies, or organs for surgeries to improve the health of High Kith. The Half Kith, depending on the crime, could even find themselves Un-Kith: cast out of the city and forced to work in the sugar fields.
My father’s tight, jaw-hardened expression has nothing to do with me anymore. I say, “It was a … quieter kind of exploitation than the imperial conquest of Herran. It was not like what happened to you.”
“You can never really understand what happened to me.”
I will always sit outside my parents’ experience of the two Valorian-Herrani wars. “I am no judge of it. How can I be, when you are so loath to discuss it?”
Softly, he says, “I do not want you to understand it.”
“I am not complaining.”
“Sid, you are.”
“I like my soft life.”
“It was an ugly time. I have no words for it.”
“Good thing, then, that you have Amma, who understands you perfectly, with no words at all.”
The line of his mouth erodes, his expression going inward with sudden sorrow, and I feel like a sullen ass. Then a sharp sorrow of my own slits its edge along my belly. I remember my mother’s frail face, her gray cheeks, her blue-tinged fingers. My mother’s illness feels impossible. In my mind, she is immortal. “Etta,” I say, wanting to push past this horrible moment I have created, “the Herrath share our gods.”
He leans back in his chair. Surprise wipes his face clean. “They believe in the hundred?”
“Believe? Not quite. But they know the full pantheon. Sometimes their gods are called by other names—our god of souls is their god of love. The Herrath are not religious, though. To them, the gods are a quaint tale for children.” He takes a breath, as though to speak, but in the end says nothing, studying my face. He knows I am not a believer. I do my duty to the gods because he would harass me otherwise, with his gentle yet insistent disapproval, and because it makes me feel more Herrani, despite my looks. “Etta, I did not imagine that my report would be quite this uninspiring. I encountered a people who share our gods. And can work magic. I did good work as Herran’s spy. Amma—”
“Don’t trouble your mother with this. Let her rest.”
“How can you act as if I just described how the Herrath sift their flour and sweep their streets? Is it not useful to us, that we know of a land where magic exists?”
He cups his hands and spreads them wide, as though scattering seeds, or letting fall a thousand useless, invisible things. It is the Herrani gesture of skepticism.
I say, “How can you doubt me?”
“Sweet child, you are not known for your honesty.” When I protest, he says, “It is not that you are a liar, only that you are devious with your words and sometimes you prize your own amusement above all else and can say things you do not mean, for the fun of it.”
Fair enough. But I press on. “At first I didn’t believe it, either. I thought it was science, or sleight of hand. Then I met someone, a Half Kith. She had an eerily perfect memory.” I envision how Nirrim glanced at a letter in my hand, in my language, even though she could not understand it, and then recited my letter to me by heart, her accent heavy, the mispronunciations many, but each word correct, a sharp nail that drove into me. I had never meant for her to read the letter. Nirrim, I must leave you. It is too hard to want you, and know that you do not see me.
My father makes a noncommittal noise. “Some are born with such a gift. They can recite a poem they glanced at once, years ago. This is not magic.”
“She made me remember something I had forgotten. Her blood did it to me.”
“Her blood.”
“I drank it.”
His eyes widen.
“Just a drop,” I say.
“Describe this woman.”
She was Half Kith, I explain. An orphan who worked against the rules of her society to provide her people with forged passports that lied about their kith, gave them a chance to escape. “She reminded me of you, Etta.” I describe her serious manner, her goodness, how starved she was for love, so much so that she could not, at first, question her devotion to Raven, the woman who raised her—and used her. How resilient Nirrim was, and brave, to risk punishment—even death—for her actions, with no expectation of reward.
My father’s expression becomes knowing. “I see. One of your conquests, was she?”
“No.”
“I can tell that you liked her.”
Heat rises in my cheeks.
“Sid, it is always the same with you. Such feelings are precious, yet you treat women as though they are interchangeable, and one will do as easily as the other.”
“That is not true. Not with her.”
“As soon as a new one catches your eye, she is all you can think about, until you get what you want.”
He is not wrong, usually, but … “I am good to them.” How many of them said so, their lips parted beneath mine?
“You break their hearts.”
Would Etta chastise me if I were a man? Resentfully, I say, “I will do what I will.”
His expression closes. “I am not interested in your seductions, or this story of magic. I wish you would stop playing with people, Sidarine. You certainly will not play with me. You will describe the country you saw, their military assets, their customs and trade, and then we will attend the state dinner, where you will stand in your mother’s place and greet our guests.”