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gone.”
    Sinchon’s face set, but he said no more and left.
    The inner room was just big enough for a bed and a stove, and the latter had been loaded with coal. It was stiflingly hot, and the air was vinegar sour with sweat. The midwife, kneeling between Rahvey’s splayed legs, shot me a look as I came in and snapped, “Close the door! You’re letting the cold in.”
    There was no cold, but I did as she asked.
    At the head of the bed, Rahvey looked surprisingly placid, but when her eyes flicked to mine, her face fell instantly.
    I was not the sister she had been waiting for. I never was.
    â€œPass me that towel,” said Florihn, the midwife. I squatted beside her, but kept my eyes on the wall. “About time you were having one of these yourself,” the woman added.
    I had seen her around the camps for years, coming and going with bloodstained napkins and buckets of water. She lost no more babies than was usual, and had birthed me seventeen years ago, but I had never taken to her. I suppose I imagined the midwife’s disappointed announcement of what I was when I had first emerged bawling from my mother. Another girl. I could not, of course, actually remember the moment, but I was sure it had happened, and a small and spiteful part of me hated her for it.
    And there was one thing more: My mother had not survived my birth. She had heard me cry, I was told, had held me for a while, but she had lost too much blood, and nothing Florihn had been able to do could save her.
    Third daughter, a curse.
    So, yes, though the idea made my stomach writhe with the injustice of it, when I looked at Florihn, I could not stifle a pang of guilt.
    â€œAny word from Vestris?” asked Rahvey.
    Our idolized elder sister.
    My heart skipped a beat at the thought of seeing her.
    â€œWe sent to her,” said Florihn, not looking up, “but haven’t heard back yet.”
    â€œShe’ll come,” said Rahvey, lying back. “For the naming, if not before. She’ll come.”
    It was a statement not of hope, but of faith.
    I was not so sure. Vestris was twenty-five, eight years my senior, which was enough to mean that we had barely grown up together at all, though my earliest memories were of her—not Rahvey, and certainly not my devoted but illiterate father—reading to me. She had found work at an ambassador’s residence while I was still small. There she had attracted the interest of men far beyond our family’s caste or social station. Our mother had been, I was told, a beautiful woman, and while both Rahvey and I had inherited something of her looks, it was Vestris who drew people’s eyes. In my childish recollections, our eldest sister had been a figure of exquisite and mysterious appeal, and as her social setting improved, so did the wealth of her clothes. She was a society lady now, and her appearance in the Drowning was greeted with the kind of reverent excitement people normally reserved for comets. Rahvey worshipped her.
    â€œLook at this,” said Florihn to me, pointing between Rahvey’s legs. I forced myself to look, though I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.
    â€œIs that right?” I managed.
    Florihn gave me a smug smile and seemed to wait on purpose, as if driving home my ignorance. “I guess books don’t teach you everything,” she said.
    The learning my eldest sister had passed on to me had always been something of a local joke, especially considering what I had opted to do with my life.
    Florihn was giving me an inquisitorial stare, and eventually I shrugged.
    â€œYes, it’s fine,” she said at last. “But there’ll be no baby today.”
    â€œI came because I thought it was happening now. ”
    Rahvey said nothing, but gave me a defiant look.
    â€œThis is a time for family,” said Florihn piously. “You’d know that if you spent more time here.”
    I blinked. They didn’t