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Then seeing him again – it seemed odd.”
    Ma blinked the glass out of her eye and dropped it among the other debris. “Sounds like a copper, all right. That’s it, then, that house is blown. I’m not risking it. Hell and the devil, what a waste. I thought that might be the one. You never know what you’re going to find in a place like that. Enough to retire on, maybe.” She looked Evvie over and sniffed, shaking her head. “Dunno how he spotted you. You look all soap and Sunday in that getup. And with your talents – you do something stupid?”
    “Not as I can think, Ma.” She picked up the pistol. “Where’d this come from?”
    “Never you mind, and put it down.” Ma eyed her, and Eveline, feeling it, looked up enquiringly. “You sure you didn’t make a botch of it?” Ma said, taking out her cheroot and pointing it at Eveline. “I worry about you, Evvie Duchen. You’re getting too full of yourself. And that’s...”
    “‘The fastest way to a fall.’ Yes, Ma. I know.”
    “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, missy. You get caught, I can’t help you. You want to get transported, die of the flux halfway to hellangone and be thrown over the side for fishes’ dinners, hmm?”
    “No, Ma.” Eveline said, her voice small. The thought of transportation was one of the few things that really frightened her, and Ma knew it.
    “Well, then. You’re to stay indoors for a week. You can do some mending and such, and make yourself useful. And see if you can get some letters into Saffie’s head. Now get out of the maid’s rig, ’fore it gets all over muck. And brush that mud off and put it on Lazy Lou.”
    “Yes, Ma.”
    “I’ll check.”
    “Yes, Ma.”
    “Then come down and tell me the rest.”
    Evvie slouched upstairs, scowling. What was the point in talking about the house she’d been checking over, since now they’d not be robbing the place? But Ma always wanted to know everything. Or maybe it was Grey-Coat she wanted to know about, but there was so little to tell.
    “I dunno, Lou, what’s she want?” Evvie said, getting out of her dress and apron and fitting it over Lazy Lou, the brass and copper mannequin who stood in Ma’s room, staring blind-eyed out of the filthy, rag-curtained window. Lou chimed faintly, as she always did when dressed or undressed. She was a clever creation. She had jointed limbs that all folded inside each other so you could pack her into a box no bigger than a travelling-bag, and was supposed to be able to move about, but as long as Evvie had been working for Ma, Lou had been no more than a clotheshorse. Ma was forever picking up mechanical bits and pieces and fadgetting with them, trying to make them work, then she’d get bored before they complied. The cellar was piled with the things.
    Eveline’s mother had liked mechanisms too. But hers were stranger. They had sung and whispered and shivered the air, and she had never seen anything like them anywhere else.
    She shook off the memory. Mama was gone, like Papa, like Charlotte. The cossetted happy little girl she’d been was gone too. Eveline looked back on her former self with something like exasperation. She wouldn’t have lasted a minute on the streets – the only thing Uncle James and Aiden between them had done for her was start the process of turning that trusting, stupid child into someone who could duck and thieve and manipulate... and survive. Sparrow-Girl, that was what Ma called her – and that was what sparrows did, survive around the edges of things.
    Eveline brushed the mud off the skirt, doing a thorough job despite her sulk. After all, she might be the next one to wear it – although not for at least a week. Mending! She scowled. She could stitch all right, but sewing bored her silly. Vengefully, she spent a few moments poking about Ma’s room, careful to put everything back where she found it. The fascinating clutter was a right old jumble, but Ma could spot anything missing in the blink of an