Page 74 of The Isles of the Gods
We find a likely stall, and it doesn’t take us long to pick out two worn but respectable shirts and pairs of trousers. Withany luck Keegan and Leander won’t leave the inn again until the ambassador sends the Queensguard for them, but if they must, they’ll blend into a crowd well enough. They’ll still have to wear their own boots, stiff with salt as they are. I suppose we’re lucky Keegan didn’t know enough about surviving at sea to take them off.
“What do you think?” Leander asks, pulling on a newsie cap and striking a pose. “Does it hide my dashing good looks?”
It suits him. Of course it does.
“What?” he asks, adjusting the brim. “What’s that look? Do I have dirt on my face? Do Ineeddirt on my face?”
“Just…” I refuse to give him the satisfaction of drawing anything more from me than he already has—and a part of me knows this has to be bravado. The relief of making it to land can only carry us so far. Like me, he must have a nervous twist in his gut that won’t go away.
So instead I turn away to hunt through the racks of clothes, yanking the hangers along as I look for something in my size.
“Selly.” He’s right there in my ear, somehow close again. “I really don’t want you to stomp on my foot, but I think you need to look at the dresses.”
My hands go still. “Not my style, rich boy.”
“Sure, but when you move away from the docks, do you want to look like a sailor? Everyone keeps warning us against that. The embassy is in a wealthy part of town, and the women around here are mostly wearing skirts, if they’re dressed in clothes that are worth anything. We don’t want you to draw attention. We want you to walk up to the front door without looking out of place.”
He’s right. I haven’t worn a dress in years, though. Kyriloves—loved—them, but they were never my style. She’d try to talk me into them, holding hers up to me and angling our grubby little looking glass to show me my reflection, and I’d bat her efforts away.
Now I’d dress head to toe in lace and frills if I could push away the ache in my chest and have her here with us.
The girl running the stall senses it’s the perfect moment to pounce. “Looking for something special?” she asks, popping up beside me seemingly from nowhere. Her skin and hair are a rich mahogany, her intricate nest of braids coiled fashionably atop her head, her smile friendly.
Then, of all people, I hear Rensa in my head.
Take some advice. Listen to someone who knows more than you for once.
“I’ve got about eight dollars,” I say. “I need the best kind of dress that can buy.”
She looks me up and down, thoughtful. “And a pair of shoes?” she ventures.
I swallow. “And a pair of shoes.”
She smiles. “I’m going to send you to my sister, Hallie. She’s got a little place that does dresses you wouldn’t believe.” She produces a stub of a pencil and draws us a map on a scrap of paper as she speaks. “It’s in an underground arcade with the most beautiful lights. There’s a place that does cakes, a jeweler, the cutest little nightclub, and she’s at the end. Tell her I sent you—she’ll turn you into an eight-dollar dream.”
She spins the map to show me—her sister’s shop isn’t far, but it’s farther in from the docks.
“I’m taking you back to the inn,” I tell Leander after we’ve thanked her and walked away.
“What?” he protests. “No, I’m coming dress shopping.”
“We can’t afford one for you, too,” I reply, steering him through the market, toward the square.
He snorts. “Good as I would look, I want to help you—”
“I don’t need witnesses, thank you.”
“I should get a better look around the city,” he tries.
“You should drop anchor at the inn and stay there. It’s what I should have done with you in the first place. It’s what I’mgoingto do with you now.”
He huffs, but he lets me walk him back the way we came. We part with another twenty-five cents to pick up a paper from a newsie at the end of the night market, and Leander flips through it as we walk. He tears out a sheet that’s nothing but an advertisement, then hands the rest to me to stuff into the bag of clothes I’m carrying.
“What are you doing?” I ask, pressing through the crowd and craning my neck to see.
His nimble fingers are folding it, turning it, folding it again. Then he offers it to me, taking the bag of shirts and trousers as he sets it on my palm.
It’s a little paper boat, lines crisp, sails set.
