There are forty-nine Inheritances:

The Spice. The Eye. The Salt. The Wound. The Mold. The Acceleration. The Breeze. The Assimilation.

The Comb. The Solvent. The Cloak. The Illumination. The Tooth. The Link. The Squeeze. The Assertion.

The Lightness. The Paleness. The Hunger. The Blood. The Bone. The Indulgence. The Warning. The Waiting.

The Silence. The Density. The Switch. The Fury. The Peace. The Rust. The Greed. The Crumbling.

The Journal. The Pull. The Propulsion. The Gilding. The Corona. The Messenger. The Spin. The Lock.

And of course, the most important of all, the Compass. I wondered how she was doing. She had gone out to get the new Inheritor of the Chill, who was reportedly in the clinic right now due to some self-inflected injuries (yeah right). But South hadn't been allowed back in yet. Maybe there had been some sort of struggle, and the two of them had gotten hurt. I grimly hoped she was still alive. Maybe I shouldn't hope that South was alive, but she had certainly been nothing but nice to me. If she got killed, she really didn't deserve it.

I voiced my worries to my friend. "Do you think..."

Harriet turned sharply towards me. "That South kicked the bucket? No. They'd never let that happen."

Harriet Bloem is the Heiress of the Greed, which means she can assign abstract value to things. Sometimes it's also called the Gilding, but this is confusing since there's another Inheritance called the Gilding. Anyway, her Inheritance is dampened in Inheritor's Valley, but she can still make the prize of a game of marbles feel like it means something. I never understood it or how it worked, but the Greed didn't need to be understood in order to work. It generated demand where there was supply. That's all. Harriet herself wasn't gorgeous or particularly smart or funny or anything, but everyone still tried to be her friend anyway. I'm not even sure she considered me her friend, but I really hoped she did. I didn't like displeasing her. I liked her. A lot. I often found myself wishing she was more conventionally attractive, or that I was straight or something.

My name is Aaron Stroph, the Heir of the Assimilation. I don't understand that one either, but it means I can continue patterns along a surface. So long as something, or a block of something, is repeated three times, I can continue it. I'm not very smart, but I try to use it in subtle ways. It's not as literal as some of the Inheritances are. For example, even dampened, I can use linear time as a surface, and my repeating pattern can be Harriet Bloem looking at me. Three days in a row, when she wakes up in the morning, her dorm is across from mine, and we step out at the same time. This has continued for years now, and we've built up a friendship. I don't know if she knows the cause, but she knows I'm not trying to get into her pants, and that's good enough for her.

Everyone has tasks here. If we didn't work, our tiny society would collapse. So we pitch in where we can. Harriet and I folded launndry, making sure to keep everyone's things together. I pulled a mysterious shirt out of the dryer. "Ever seen this one before?" Pink, with a white heart in the middle. It's small.

"No." She said. "It must be the new girl, the new Chill."

I nodded. "Wonder how she's doing."

"Tried to kill herself, but the guards stopped her. That's what I heard."

"I would understand if that was the case, I guess." I folded the shirt, and placed it in a new pile.

"But?" She knew what I wanted to say better than I did, sometimes. Maybe she was subconsciously guiding my actions. I wasn't sure she could do that, and she probably didn't know either. The thought that she encouraged my words didn't make me mad, though. I liked her.

"But I'm not sure I trust that information. Where'd you get it from?" I asked.

"It's official." She was referring to, of course, the news that came on over our radios, the stuff procured specially for us by the Inheritance Department, the tiny branch of the national guard that dealt with us. This is also where all the armed guards and stuff came from. Her tone made it clear she didn't believe what our radio told us. How could she? She was sane.