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cruel.”
    I avoided her eyes, crossing to my sister with the child.
    Rahvey gazed up at me, and beneath the exhaustion and hesitation, I thought I saw a flicker of something else, a faint but desperate hope.
    â€œShe looks like you,” I said, finding an unexpected smile.
    Rahvey took the baby with trembling hands, moving it to her breast. The crying stopped abruptly. My sister tipped her head back a fraction and closed her eyes.
    â€œThree daughters only,” Florihn intoned. “Blessing. Trial. Curse. The fourth is unseemly.”
    â€œFlorihn?” Rahvey said, gazing at the infant now.
    â€œLook what you are doing to her!” said Florihn, seizing my arm and turning me round. “You don’t live here, Anglet. You don’t belong here.”
    Anger flashed in my eyes, and she let go of my arm as if it were hot, but then her face closed, hardened.
    â€œWe will give the child up,” she said. “That is the end of the matter.”
    â€œFlorihn?” said Rahvey.
    The midwife turned to her reluctantly, her expression softening. “What do you need, hon?” she asked, sugar sweet.
    â€œMaybe,” Rahvey began, like a woman inching out over a narrow bridge, “if we explained to Sinchon and the elders that we could raise her, maybe they would listen.”
    â€œNo,” said Florihn, so quick and hard that Rahvey winced, and the midwife had to rebuild her look of simpering benevolence before she could proceed. “I am the elders’ representative here. I speak to and for them. We cannot allow our traditions, the beliefs handed down to us from our grandparents and their parents before them, to be trodden underfoot when they do not suit our wishes.”
    â€œThe world changes, Florihn,” I said, amazed at my own audacity. “The things we assume will last forever go away like the Beacon.”
    â€œThat is the city,” said Florihn. “That is not us. The Lani must stand by their ways. No mother can have four daughters.”
    â€œPerhaps Vestris would help?” said Rahvey. “She’s rich, connected—”
    â€œDo you see her here?” snapped Florihn. “Your precious sister has not come to see you for how long now?”
    Rahvey said nothing.
    â€œYou should forget her as she has forgotten you and the place where she grew up,” said Florihn.
    I bristled at this, but kept my mouth shut.
    Rahvey, meanwhile, seemed to crumple inwardly and, as she began to weep in silence, nodded.
    â€œBut she is still your daughter—,” I began.
    â€œThe matter is closed,” said Florihn. “I suggest you leave us to our ways, Anglet. You aren’t Lani anymore.”
    â€œ What? ” I exclaimed. She had said it like it had been on the tip of her tongue for years and she had waited for the necessary anger to say it aloud. The accusation awoke a new boldness in me. “Look at me!” I said, sticking out my arms. “Lani through and through. Like the people I have worked with every day since I left the Drowning.”
    â€œSteeplejacks!” Florihn sneered. “What kind of work is that for a Lani?”
    â€œCommon,” I replied.
    â€œUrchin work,” she shot back. “City work.”
    â€œCompared to what?” I returned, fury sweeping away my usual diffidence. “Growing a few onions on the edge of a swamp? Mending pots and pans? Peddling folk crafts to people who think they’re quaint? Panning for gold in a river of filth?”
    â€œI will not defend our customs—our heritage—to a … a kolek !”
    Even in her rage, she had to steel herself to say the word. A kolek is a type of root vegetable. Its skin is brown, but the flesh within is white.
    If she had not been three times my age, I would have hit her.
    She saw me flinch and a flicker of cruel satisfaction went through her face, spurring her on. “But you are not even a kolek,” she said.