The streets below are quiet, the low, slanting sun making the shadows long, blocking out patches of bright light, leaving others in a shrouded dim. Jin’s house is one of the old buildings, and even dry and untended it’s pretty up here, white stone arches mimicking the curve and flow of the fern forest I’ve just been hiking through. Shaping stone like this is a skill we’ve forgotten. Jin doesn’t spend much time in his roof garden, especially in the last, hot days of full sun. He’s old, with no wife, no children he can remember or identify. That, and his nearness to the wall, and the privacy created by the Archives, makes this roof a good one to jump into. Not to mention that the old man is nearly deaf.
I lower my pack to my feet, its tether snaking down around my leg, and for the first time feel my pulse begin to slow. I’m not caught. I’m not going to be flogged. At least not today. I reach for my falling braids, seven or eight of them out of their pins and brushing the bare skin of my waist. I’ve taken the tail end of my tunic and tucked it back through my collar in a way that makes my mother frown, but it’s cooler like this, and useful when the foliage is dense. Extra fabric snags. I re-braid and pin, braid and pin, fast, getting them as neat as I can. I have to get home before my mother sees my empty bed. Sometimes I think she knows when I’ve been out, deep down, but appearing at least somewhat presentable helps her keep up the sham.
Did you have a good resting, Nadia? she’ll say to me, even though my tunic will be wrinkled where it was pulled through my collar and I’ll have dirt on my knees that wasn’t there when the curtains closed. You’ve brought the water? Thank you …
And I’ll say nothing, because I never do, and she’ll say nothing about the yellow apple on the table, an apple she would know didn’t come from our stores if she’d bothered to count. But once in a while her brow will crease, as if she’s unsure. Confused. Maybe she is. I’m not sure how many Forgettings my mother has lived through. She wears her book on twine, heavy around her neck, but I know she doesn’t remember me. Not really.
“Have a good resting, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter?”
I snatch up my tethered pack, my last hairpin lost to the grasses. That voice was not my mother’s. It was deep and very male, coming from the shaded shadows beyond the arches, beneath the covered corner of Jin’s garden. I step back, glancing once at the place I’ve hidden the pole. I’ll never get the ladder back in time. The roof is too high to jump from and the voice is between me and the stairs to the street. Correction: Today is the day I’m caught. I feel sweat on my neck, and not from the sun.
The shadows in the corner shift, reshape, become a person, and then the person steps into the light. Not Jonathan, or any other member of the Council. It’s Gray. The glassblower’s son. Of all people. He’s taller since we finished our time in the Learning Center, the weeks of sunlight leaving deep gold in the dark brown of his hair. But that smile he wears is the same. “Cheeky” is what his own mother might call him. I just call him a zopa, a word my mother sometimes uses, though not if she thinks I can hear.
Gray hooks a thumb on the lower end of the book strap that crosses his chest, waiting for me to do something. I think what I would say if I were a normal person. Hey. Or maybe, How long have you been on this roof? Or, Why, exactly, are you on this roof? Which way did you take to sneak up here during the resting? Does your hair really grow all wild and curly like that?
He just stands there, grinning at me. I wish I’d listened to Mother and never tucked up the end of my tunic. But it’s much more important to know what else Gray the Glassblower’s son has seen. I break my ban against frivolous conversation and say, “What are you doing here?”
The grin widens. “Nadia speaks. I’m impressed. What else have you learned to do since school?”
Zopa, I think. He seems to think this is funny. I don’t. I notice he hasn’t answered my question. I decide not to answer his.
“So,” he says, “come up to Jin’s often?”
I can’t tell if he’s teasing me or threatening me. The quiet stretches out long, waiting for my explanation, until I say, “I’ve come to request from Jin, that’s all. We need signs.”
“True. The Forgetting is coming. We could all use a few more labels, I guess. Probably worth a flogging to get them an hour before the leaving bell, ten weeks ahead of time. No, I agree with you, Nadia. Plan ahead. Avoid that last-minute rush.”
Sarcasm. Perfect. I think of the only other time I’ve spoken actual words to the glassblower’s son. He was at least a third of a meter shorter then, in the learning room, and we were meant to be self-exploring the seeds for planting. Gray was self-exploring the art of teasing me. I ignored him through two bells, the same way I ignored everyone, until finally he tugged on the cord of my book, worn hanging from my belt in those days. I looked him in the eye and said one word: “Stop.” And then he grabbed my book and opened it. My book. I’d have rather found him peeking through the door of the latrine. I slapped his face, hard, and then I slapped it again. Gray left me alone after that, and I’ve carried my book in a pack ever since. I doubt the same strategy is going to work here. But the memory has done me good; it’s reminded me of my temper, which always helps me speak. And I need to know what he’s seen. This time I look him in the face.
“You must have an urgent need for signs yourself,” I observe, “since you seem to be taking the same risk.”
“Well spotted, Dyer’s daughter.” He moves across the garden to sit on the low stone wall that runs along the edge, crosses one ankle over the other, and leans back, relaxed. There’s a two-story drop behind him. “But I came straight here. You took the long way around to Jin’s, didn’t you? The really long way.”
Question answered. He’s seen everything. Whatever this game is, I’m done playing. “I’ll be long gone before you can get Jonathan here,” I say. Jonathan might not be easily found, since he was just wandering the streets.
“I’m sure I can find someone who would be interested.”
“I’ll deny it. It will be your word against mine.”
“And you don’t have one thing in that pack, or in your house, that has come from over the wall?”
The apples. I can feel the weight of them alongside my book. And there are the plant cuttings. They’ll have to be gotten rid of. Quick. Plus the crystals in my resting room. I won’t be able to do it. Not in time. Something inside me tightens, and I realize just how much I did not want today to be my day. Gray gets up and crosses the garden grasses, his trademark smirk for once not present. He stands right over me.
“Tell me how many times you’ve been over the wall.”
I watch the empty sky beyond his shoulder.
“Tell me, or I bring them.”
I put my gaze on his. “Once.”
“Liar.”
The word feels like he’s finally slapped me back. One clear bell rings out over the city. The first of the day, for waking. Mother will check my bed soon. I have to go. We both have to go. “What do you want?”
“I’m glad you asked. I want you to take me with you.”
Where? I think. But that smile is back, and I realize he means over the wall. He wants me, Nadia, to take him, Gray, over the wall. This strikes me as the single most stupid thing I’ve heard in a lifetime of stupid things. “No.”
“Yes.”
I glare at him.