I look over at our Official. He still stands at the case nearest the entrance, his full interest seemingly absorbed by whatever is in the display. I look at Xander and try to send him a message without speaking. Please.
For a moment I think he doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to. I feel his fingers tighten around mine and see a hardening in his eyes and a slight clenching of his jaw. But then his expression softens and he nods. “Hurry,” he says, and he lets go and walks toward the Official on the other side of the room.
I have to try, even though I don’t think this tired gray man has any answers for me and the hope I had seems to be slipping away. “I want to know more about the Glorious History of Tana Province.”
A pause. A beat.
The man draws in a breath and begins to speak. “Tana Province has beautiful geography and is also renowned for its farming,” he says, his voice flat.
He doesn’t know. My heart sinks. Back in Oria, Ky told me that the poems Grandfather gave me could be valuable, and also that asking the history of the Province was a way to let the Archivists know you wanted to trade. I’d hoped it would be the same way here. It was stupid of me. Perhaps there are no Archivists in Tana at all, and if there were, they must have better places to be than waiting for closing time in this sad little museum.
The man continues. “Floods sometimes occurred in Tana pre-Society, but that has been controlled for many years now. We are one of the most productive farming Provinces in the Society.”
I don’t look back at Xander. Or the Official. Just at the map in front of me. I tried to trade before and it didn’t work then either. But the first time it was because I couldn’t bring myself to give away the poem Ky and I shared.
Then I notice that the man has stopped speaking. He looks at me directly. “Is there anything else?” he asks.
I should give up. Should smile and turn away to Xander and forget about this, accept that the man knows nothing and move on. But for some reason I think suddenly of one of those last red leaves holding on against the sky. I breathe. It falls.
“Yes,” I say softly.
Grandfather gave me two poems. Ky and I loved the Thomas one, but there were other words, too, and those are the ones that come to me now. I don’t remember all of it, that poem by Tennyson, but one stanza comes back to me clear in my mind as though it were written there all along. Perhaps it was the man’s mention of flooding that brought it back:“For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.”
As I speak the words quietly, the man’s face changes. He becomes clever, alert, alive. I must have remembered correctly. “That’s an interesting poem,” he says. “Not, I think, one of the Hundred.”
“No,” I say. My hands tremble and I dare to hope again. “But still worth something.”
“I’m afraid not,” he says. “Unless you have the original.”
“No,” I say. “It was destroyed.” I destroyed it. I remember that moment at the Restoration site and how the paper fluttered up before it went down to burn.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it sounds as though he is. “What is it you were hoping to trade for?” he asks, a hint of curiosity in his voice.
I point to the Outer Provinces. If I can just get to them, there’s a slim but real chance I can find Ky. “I know they’re taking the Aberrations there,” I say softly. “But I want to know exactly where and how I can get there. A map.”
He shakes his head at me. No.
He can’t tell me? Or he won’t? “I have something else,” I say.
I angle my back so that neither Xander nor the Official can see my hands; I reach into the bag. My fingers brush the foil of the tablets and the hard surface of the compass at the same time and I stop.
Which should I trade?
Suddenly I’m dizzy, confused, remembering the time I had to sort Ky. The steam in the room, the sweat, the ache of the decision pressing against me . . .
Stay clear, I tell myself. I glance over my shoulder at Xander and meet the blue of his eyes for one brief moment before he turns back to the Official. I remember Ky looking down at me from the air-train platform before they took him away and feel again the panic of time running out.
I make up my mind and reach into the bag, pulling out the item for trade. I hold it up just high enough for the man to see, trying to keep my hands from shaking and attempting to convince myself that I can give this up.
He smiles and nods at me. “Yes,” he says. “That is worth something. But what you want would take days—weeks—to arrange.”
“I only have tonight,” I say.
Before I can say anything more, the man takes the offering and leaves my hand empty. “Where are you going next?”
“The music hall,” I say.
“Check under your seat when you leave,” he whispers. “I will do the best I can.” Above us, the lights dim. His eyes do, too, and then, in the flat voice he first used he tells me, “We’re closing. You all need to go.”
Xander leans over during the music. “Did you get what you needed?” he asks, his voice deep and low and his breath brushing my neck. On his other side, the Official stares ahead. He taps his fingers on the armrest of his chair, keeping time to the music.
“I don’t know yet,” I tell him. The Archivist said to look under my seat when I left, not before, but I am still tempted to try earlier. “Thank you for helping me.”
“It’s what I do,” Xander says.
“I know it is,” I say. I remember the gifts he gave me: the painting, the blue tablets neatly rowed in their compartments. Even the compass, I realize, my gift from Ky, was something Xander saved for me once, on that day back in the Borough when they took the artifacts.
“But you don’t know everything about me,” Xander says. A mischievous grin crosses his face.
I glance down at his hand around mine, his thumb brushing across my skin, and then I look back up into his eyes. Though he still smiles there’s something serious about his expression now. “No,” I agree. “I don’t.”
We hold on to each other. The Society’s music plays around and over us, but our thoughts are always our own.
When I stand up, I brush my hand underneath the chair. Something’s there—a folded square of paper—and it comes away easily when I tug on it. Though I want to look now, I slip it into my pocket instead, wondering what I have, what I’ve traded for.