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learn.”
    Hope flashed through her. “Does that mean you’ll teach me to spy?”
    He smiled. “You’re nothing if not persistent. I may teach you to read.”
    Her heart dropped. What good was reading? That wouldn’t earn her respect or get her a decent job to put coin in her pocket.
    His smile faded and he wrinkled his nose. “I can smell seaweed.”
    “Gwinnie gave me seaweed soap to use in me bath.”
    “Great Earth Jinn.” Master Turk pinched the bridge of his nose. “Seaweed soap is for cleaning the floors. I must have a serious talk with that woman. You’ll have to bathe again with proper soap. No wonder you’re still dirty.”
    “I ain’t.” Melba looked at her hands. “I just got a little bit o’dirt under me fingernails.”
    He angled his head, examining her. “You also have dirt on your ears, around your eyes, beside your nose and at the corners of your mouth. And that’s only the parts of you I can see.” He pointed at her head. “What happened to your hair?”
    “Nothing.” Melba ran her hand over her short hair. It felt the same as usual.
    “It looks as if someone has chewed it off.”
    “I cut it with me knife.”
    He shook his head. “Have you ever looked in a mirror?”
    “What do I need with a mirror?” As long as she could pass for a boy, she didn’t care what she looked like. But as Master Turk’s dark eyes perused her critically, her cheeks warmed with a strange sensation she didn’t understand.
    “I’ll ensure you have a mirror next time you bathe so you can clean your face properly,” he said.
    Melba looked down and picked dirt out from under a fingernail. “If I get clean and smell nice like you, will you let me work for you?”
    When he didn’t answer, she glanced up to find him frowning at her. He cleared his throat. “That won’t be possible.”
    “Then why do you want me to clean up?” She didn’t understand him. If he was going to toss her out, why clean her up first?
    “I need to ask you some questions, Melba. Please sit down.” He pointed to one of the chairs in front of the desk, then seated himself in the other.
    Too many questions was always bad. It usually meant she’d done something wrong. She shrugged, pretending she didn’t care, and plopped into the seat. She slipped the pledge stone from the pocket of her clean trousers and hid it down the side of the chair in case he asked for it back. That way, if he searched her he wouldn’t find it and she could put it back in her pocket afterwards.
    She froze when he leaned forward and pushed his hand down beside her leg to fish out the starlight stone. He dropped the pledge onto her lap. “I’ve been doing this longer than you, Melba. Don’t think you can outwit me with silly tricks a five-year-old would catch.”
    Melba ground her teeth and stared down at the stone. Old Maddox made her run messages day and night, but with him she could get away with stuff. Master Turk might be lenient, but she was starting to wonder if she wanted to work for a master who didn’t miss a trick.
    He leaned back and crossed his legs. Melba trailed her gaze over the engraved silver toecap on his shiny black shoe and the smooth black fabric hugging his knee and muscular thigh. He leaped between the buildings on the skyways so easily. He must have incredibly strong legs.
    “Tell me about yourself, Melba. What are your earliest memories?”
    The strange question snapped her attention back to his face. His expression was unreadable. Maddox always said she had more wits than his other three boys put together, but she couldn’t fathom what Master Turk was up to. She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth.
    The silence in the room stretched, broken only by the ticking of a clock and the shout outside of a passing pie man.
    “Being with old Maddox,” she offered when she couldn’t think of anything better.
    “Before that?”
    “There ain’t no before. I’ve always been with Maddox.”
    “Maddox didn’t birth