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“I don’t think you’re wicked,” I said quietly,the space as surely as a limb

“If I were not, someone would have come for me, in all that tiiven a gold

en ball and told to go off and play I would have been kept close to the trunk of my mother’s body, and wrapped in her tail, the way I wrapped my ball” She turned her head away from me

“If I were not, the ghosts would not have taken me”

“But you’ve done nothing wrong Your mother left you to the mercy of a ball— wrong We are not wicked, we’re not!” I curled ers into my palms Oubliette only shook her head

“How did you escape, finally?”

But she sealed up her h the shredded walls, and long gray fingers curled around her neck, around my waist They pried us from our beds, plied us into clothes of paper threaded with dirty string, pleaded silently with us to eat what they had brought: handfuls of aventurine and garnet We sucked them down—they were hard and chewy all at once Our teeth split their skin, and they tasted like licorice, licorice and beets The saer food and pushed us down that long corridor which led to the machine, which led to the Mint

The workday had begun

I tried to keep close to her, but it was impossible in the press of so many children I could not see where she went, the one head floating shorn and strange a the others Little voices rose and fell, paper trousers rustled—it was a little like school, save that ere all so afraid, so afraid The Pra-Ita did not speak to us, but placed our hands where they wanted theers as they meant us to move

I was stationed at the edge of the great, arching thing Already it huh it were itself alive It was Vhummim herself, to my surprise, who cradled ether we reached for shroud-covered baskets Her diaainst my back as we drew back the shrouds, and her wheat-stalk ar that she auze were the tangled li at nothing

“It was better for you,” she wheezed, wretched and worrying, “I told you it was To work, and not to be minted”

“You ht voems down

Vhummim’s eyes creased with embarrassment “We didn’t notice,” she whispered, “asted to nothing We didn’t notice, for a long time Our markets were so busy—we could not cease trade because of a few ruined districts Or even round And even after, we kept up our old and silver no longer shone for us, no longer wared away froe her! “It ht What does a ghost treasure? That which lives, that which is hot and hard There is nothing more valuable than bodies, and we trade now in bone, we trade in it and oes to the new Asaad, where you first entered the city, and it buys pale shadows of e used to love: apple cores and broken stone and skin with noand thick It is called dhheiba, this new money, and we prize it as we once prized silver, as we once prized the taste of topaz I as flow to the Asaad, and sowork”

I stared at the child whose arm flopped out of the basket, white and cold It was a boy, with yellow hair and green eyes His neck was bruised, as though he had been seized by long, inexorable fingers which squeezed and squeezed

“See?” said Vhummim “We spare you this task, at least”