7 #3
“Still, on the subject of streets you haven’t a great liking for . . .” She winced. “I’ll need certain items of clothing before long. Would you tolerate a visit to the couturier?”
The prefect’s smile took on a rather glassy quality, but he kept the mask of civility as well as ever.
“Whatever you need.”
“Just what I like to hear,” she said cheerily. “And I promise, sir, I’m not contriving this to embarrass you.”
“I’d never have dreamed it, Miss Rosara.”
“Good gracious, I would. After all, I do believe I’m a criminal.”
Aurelias looked at her sidelong, seeming taken aback by her broaching the subject so readily. Then, a smile broke through his courteous mask.
“Not in the eyes of the law,” he said, “nor mine.”
Ah, you sweet young thing, thought Myria. Fatal error.
It was by far the most diverting way to escape pursuit.
Run for the sewers, and the prefect would be hot on her heels.
Waltz into a purveyor of ladies’ clothing, and she couldn’t keep him within shouting distance.
Myria gathered the necessaries, then turned to the array of ready-made gowns.
It was time she pieced together a better disguise.
Hadria had long ensured that her charges cultivated one or two distinctive features, then emphasized them to the point they’d be the lanky one who ambles everywhere or the foppish one who’s too young to have hair that color. Disguise those hallmarks, and they’d be near-unrecognizable.
For Myria, it’d been her curling butterscotch-gold hair framing a face like a cheerful twelve-year-old’s. Jail had already done most of the work for her. It had thinned her cheeks and hollowed out her eyes, put yellow in her skin and dulled her hair to brown. Even so, she could help nature along.
She’d always dressed in sleek, trim clothes before her master. Now she settled with delight on the most spinsterish abomination she could find: a gray-blue pinstriped gown, too high in the neck to be fashionable, but with a frill too many to be tasteful.
A visit to the artificers’ parlor completed her disguise.
She gave the ladies a whispered tale of a suitor she was anxious to repel.
With a conspiratorial air, they dyed her hair a mousier shade of brown and dressed it to bring out the new angles of her face.
By the close of it, she looked quite the trussed-up schoolmistress.
She left with a cheery wave, ten years older than she’d been that morning.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rosara,” Aurelias said, rising from his seat on the roadside wall. “You’re looking well.”
Right, she thought, now for an innocent excuse to start poking around the jails of Carintheum.
“It’s kind of you to lie, sir,” she answered sweetly. “Fear not. There’s reason behind the crimes against good taste. Shall we walk?”
“Of course,” he said with a glint of amusement, taking her arm and setting off.
“You see, I’ve been considering how I ought to apply myself, now that I’m at liberty,” she went on. “I thought . . . I might best rediscover life by helping others in my predicament. Those who haven’t the benefit of a guide for their first steps back into the world.”
“A fine aim, but I don’t see why . . .” He made a subtle gesture to her attire.
“Plain and virtuous, sir. Is it not mandatory?” she said. “But no, in all sincerity, it’ll mean visiting the more dubious areas of Carintheum. Best not invite attention.”
“I see. I trust that you’ll be cautious.”
“I shan’t need to be cautious. I shall have you with me. You turned that mementori yellow with a look!”
It was a little cruel, but he’d walked himself into that one. Perhaps the man was less innocent than he seemed, though, for there wasn’t a waver in the dissembling smile he gave her.
“Even so, Miss Rosara, I shouldn’t like to cause a public commotion.”
“Oh, indulge me, Prefect. I hunger for excitement!”
“You could step out in front of another phaeton,” he suggested. She grinned. Excellent—the man had a cruel streak under all those manners. By prefecture standards, he was practically good company.
“A tale, then! You were in Hjelvak lately. The things you must’ve seen!”
“Oh, nothing much,” he said serenely. “The polar dark, you know.”
Myria shot him an arch look. He betrayed a smile.
“Truly, Miss Rosara, don’t believe the news scrolls. It was mostly trudging through the tundra and eating stoats.”
“Oh, pish. Even in Halcyon, we heard the stories of Draevund Heath. Or weren’t you there?”
“No, I . . . I was there. Fighting with Prima Gloriana.”
“The . . . Gloriana Valora?” Myria whispered, feigning excitement. “The woman who stopped Mount Ansifar in mid-eruption? Who turned the Celadon Sea to glass to stop the Aeren fleet escaping?”
“No. Different one,” he said, utterly deadpan. She cuffed him lightly on the arm.
“Very well, sir. If you won’t indulge me with stories, I shall find another ladies’ clothier, where I undertake to be no less than seven hours.”
She almost felt the shudder in his bones, before he painted on a sunny smile and gestured to the north.
“You must be hungry, Miss Rosara. Perhaps you’d care for some refreshments?”
“A cunning ruse, sir,” she answered with a twinkling eye. “I’ll take it.”