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remembered her rehearsed dialect and subdued graces after they’d been pounded into her head for years, but she held her tongue. Becky
didn’t deserve abuse for her show of concern.
    Arista glanced over at the girl who had become her friend. She flitted about the room, seemingly wrapped up in her own thoughts. Becky might have been pretty once, but now she walked with her
head down and turned away from anyone who might look too closely. From the left, she appeared normal; but on the right, her skin was misshapen and lumpy from her temple to her chin.
    The deep burns had not been tended to properly, and as the skin healed, that whole side of her face had been left horribly disfigured. No one but Arista knew the circumstances behind the injury.
After two years of teaching Arista the finer graces, Becky had reluctantly told Arista the story.
    Becky had worked as a lady’s maid for a family in Piccadilly. Becky and the lord of the house had had a disagreement over her young charge’s future husband, and he had beaten her. As
she lay on the floor cowering from him, he had taken a candelabra and tipped the hot wax over her face. There were smaller, matching scars on her arms where she’d tried to protect herself
from the burning wax, but her sleeves usually hid those.
    Her employer had then turned her out with nothing. Arista wanted to gut the bastard, but Becky refused to name who had done it.
    “Yes, I remembered everything you taught me.”
    Becky beamed as she shook out the black silk dress and carefully hung it away, to be brushed down later for the next time it would be needed.
    Arista exhaled, her first real breath without the constraint of the corset, and pulled a ratty, stained chemise over her head, followed by a plain brown shirt. It had grown threadbare in several
spots, but Becky’s nimble fingers had patched the holes as if they were never there. Not that it mattered. Arista always wore the shirt under an even darker brown coat that hid it, and her
shape, effectively.
    Black wool trousers covered her legs, rough and familiar. She strapped her knife to the outside of her thigh, in plain view now for anyone thinking of trying his luck. She slipped bare feet into
an old pair of Nic’s boots that now fit her perfectly.
    “I’ll be back by morning.” Arista grabbed her wool cap off a peg that was wedged into the cracked wall and clicked the lock to their room open.
    Before she left the room, her glance slid to the crude charcoal drawing on the boards lining the far wall. Nic had made it for her when she was barely eleven. They were supposed to be picking
pockets at the market, but instead, Nic had wanted to show her something. They’d spent an entire day at the docks watching the ships arrive and depart.
    There had been a ship there unloading goods from India. She recognized the same smells that used to come from Nalia’s tea. A man in a turban and clothes unlike anything she’d ever
seen before stepped off the ship, and when he reached the dock Arista saw a monkey perched on his shoulder. A real, live monkey. He must have seen her staring, because he smiled and approached
them.
    “A pence to carry your bags, sir?” Nic asked.
    Instead, the man handed them each a shilling and told them both stories while the monkey wound around his head and chattered as if he, too, were telling tales.
    It had been the best day of her life, that afternoon on the docks.
    When the ship finally emptied, the man bowed and thanked them for their time. She had never met anyone so kind, except for Nalia. Arista watched him walk away, his words still conjuring vivid
images in her head.
    “I
will
go there someday,” she told Nic.
    When they returned that evening, Nic had drawn the ship and a crude monkey on the wall, so she could see it from her pallet on the floor. Every night before she closed her eyes she imagined
herself on board that ship, sailing far away from this life.
    Except six years later, they were still