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Dark. Our one dark year out of every thousand, this Deep Dark will be the first since the War of the Burning Land. I have found myself tending to our gardens more lately, not just my charges in the Dome, but also Jey’s house garden, and even the sad flower beds near the street. Maybe it’s because everyone else is doing something. The rest of the world is busy harvesting, storing, drying, salting. Making candles. Going over the boilers and pipe joints and valves and turbines. His Holiness the Salt Throne—highest priest of the Temple of Rasus and more powerful, some say, than the Empress herself—has decreed that the Deep Dark is a test from the gods to determine our worthiness. That everyone is to work together as sisters and brothers to endure the coming night.
    Everyone except me, of course. I press my hands to the crumbly dirt, press myself to the living ground. My skin tingles from head to foot. As the Deep Dark approaches, my blood is changing. The scars on my back have started to burn, and my lungs are so ravenous, I feel as though I could inhale all the mist in Caldaras City and send it hissing back into Mol’s Mouth like the scalding steam from a burst pipe. I am afraid of what I will become.
    ARE REDWINGS REAL? the headline of the Bulletin shouts at me again as I dig my fingers into the ashy soil.
    I don’t know, I tell it. Was it a redwing who melted bricks and mortar with her passion? Was it a redwing who elicited such fear and panic in that alleyway? Was it a redwing whose cursed existence drew Corvin Blake into the fight that almost killed him?
    Was that really me?
    The bonescorch orchis has exposed me, and I hate it. I have never hated anything green and meek in my life, yet if I found myself face-to-face with that plant, I would rip it out by its traitorous roots. But the orchis is being kept at the Copper Palace in preparation for its unveiling, and I must remain on Saltball Street in preparation for nothing but my eventual trip to the Eternal Garden. If that’s where redwings go.
    â€œThere you are.”
    Jey pokes her head around the side of the house. I pat the dirt from my hands onto my old trousers. My sister float-dances over to me and sits on the edge of a raptor-poop–encrusted rock like an Other princess alighting on an alabaster throne. Warm light from the kitchen window illuminates several strands of her dark hair that have escaped their bobby pins and lounge against her cheeks.
    She tips her head back and rests a beatific gaze on the grime-covered buildings across the street. Even with an identical face, I don’t think I could ever look that soppy.
    She sighs. “You will never guess—”
    â€œYour young man,” I say wearily. What is this new one’s name again?
    She turns to me, smiles. “Did I tell you he’s been selected to introduce Master Fibbori himself at his upcoming lecture on root vegetables at the college? Bonner knows so much about root vegetables!”
    This she says completely straight-faced. Jey in a nutshell.
    â€œHe certainly seems to have many talents,” I say. Jey’s young men always have amazing talents, according to her. Wine tasting, art appreciation, philosophy. Introducing lecturers. “Speaking of root vegetables,” I say, “these poor snaproots are begging for a quick death.”
    â€œOh, snaproots! Never mind them!” She kicks at some wire fencing. “Listen,” she says in a low voice, “I need your help. Tomorrow. You see, I’m going to meet Bonner in secret.”
    I cross my arms. “So Papa doesn’t approve of him.”
    She looks away. “He did at first. But Papa can be so judgmental. You know how he is.” Her eyes reflect the light from the kitchen window. “He thinks Bonner is too concerned with religion.” She turns back to me, dreamy-eyed again. “Isn’t that silly? Bonner’s just very devoted to the Temple.