Chapter 2

The Dinner

Once a year the old guard of Sapling held a dinner they refused to call a ceremony. Daira went because Nia asked, and because the room still had the only decent bread in the city.

There were six place settings and one extra chair. The extra chair was for the secret. Years ago, the sealed envelopes had needed a shared recipe. Six people each kept one piece. If all six pieces were destroyed, nobody could print a coin from nothing. If one person kept a piece in a pocket, the whole city was a photocopier with better lighting.

They had burned the pieces. They had smashed the laptops with a seriousness usually reserved for weddings. A woman named Hess still told the story as if the bread were part of the lock.

"I watched the last page curl," Hess said. "I slept that night."

"You can sleep now too," Daira said. "We do not use the recipe."

Hess looked wounded, which in this room was a kind of toast.

The door opened. A person in a wig and a borrowed apron came in carrying a tray of rolls. The wig was the color of a caution sign. The name tag said AUNT. The voice under it was Fred's.

"Family recipe," he said.

Nia closed her eyes.

Fred set the tray down and, with the other hand, tried to slide a napkin into the apron. The napkin was blank. He did not know that yet. He had heard there was a secret at the dinner, and he had dressed as a relative because relatives are allowed to touch things.

"The napkins are for crumbs," Daira said.

"LGTM," Fred said, which was not an answer.

The cat arrived without a proposal. It was the office cat, grey, employed by nobody, paid in whatever fell. It stepped onto the napkin, turned once, and sat. Fred's hand stopped under it. The cat looked at him as if he were a comment.

"If the cat ate the secret, the cat can print money," Fred whispered.

"The secret was a recipe we retired," Daira said. "The new envelopes do not need it. You can keep a napkin. You can keep six. You will still have a napkin."

Hess was not ready to let the dinner become ordinary. "People should remember the fear. The fear was the point. If they forget, they will get sloppy."

"People remember the wigs," Nia said. "The fear they outsource."

On the Timeline, halfway through the soup, Few posted two photos side by side. One was the smashed laptops from a decade ago. The other was older than that: Daira, before ze transitioned, standing in a doorway with a different haircut and a name the form no longer used. The caption said the city was built on secrets, and if the person in charge could edit a life, three words in a rulebook were nothing.

He did not mention that the dinner's job had ended. Endings do not travel. A photo does.

Hess had seen it. She put her spoon down, which in that room was how you asked permission to be clumsy.

"People are talking about your change," she said. "The sex one. Not the coin. Few is telling them you used to be a man, so the header is a costume."

Fred brightened, which was the wrong weather. "Right. So some days man, some days woman? For the meme? I can work with a toggle. Adoption loves a toggle."

Nia looked at him the way she looked at a proposal that had not read the page.

Daira buttered a roll. The butter was the interesting part of the moment, and ze let it be.

"I transitioned," ze said. "That is past tense. It is one edit, already merged. I am not a switch on a wall. The name in the header is the name. Ze, hir. You can read it every morning and it will say the same thing."

"So the old picture is fake?" Fred said.

"The old picture is old," Daira said. "I was that person. Then I changed sex, the way a city changes a bad rule and does not keep both versions in the shop. Few wants a before-and-after because a before-and-after is content. My life is not a slider. The coin is not a slider either. One, then the other. Not both at once."

Hess nodded, a small nod, the kind you give when you have been afraid of saying the word and the word turned out to be ordinary. "I did not know if we were allowed to say it at the table."

"You can say it," Daira said. "You cannot camp on it. The comments closed. Pass the salt."

Fred opened his mouth, found nothing that would mint, and passed the salt.

Daira did not post. Ze passed him a roll anyway.

"Eat," ze said. "The apron is clean. The cat is not a mint."

Fred looked at the cat. The cat was asleep, which is the only audit most animals pass.

"So I don't get the recipe."

"There is no recipe to get."

"Then what am I dressed for?"

"Bread," Nia said.

They ate. Hess told the burning story once more, smaller this time, the way a song gets sung when the people who needed it have already gone home. Outside, the lamps of Sapling came on. The extra chair stayed empty. The secret was not in it. The secret was that the chair could stay empty and the shops would still open in the morning, each coin still one coin, no aunt required.