“I have sheet tin under me most days,” the girl explained. “I grease the bottom with renderings from the bins behind the eating houses.”

Evie nodded, just enough as not to upset her already throbbing skull. “Smart girl. What’s your name?”

“Dyeawan.”

“That’s not a Crachian name.”

Dyeawan shook her head, but offered no more than that on the subject.

“All right, then. I’m Evie. What did they arrest a little thing like you for?”

“Begging.”

“Is that right? I thought no one begged for food here.”

“Well, I didn’t have the chance to do it for long, did I?”

There was no trace of bitterness in her voice. In fact, there was playfulness, the kind that only a child can keep in such a dark place.

Evie couldn’t help but smile.

Dyeawan smiled back, and even through the grime streaking her face, through the shadows banished to the corner there with her, that smile shined.

“Why did they put you here?” Dyeawan asked her as they both dozed upon the bare and stained cell floor.

“I don’t think it was the drinking,” Evie mused. “I drink every night. It might’ve been the fight I maintain I did not start in the tavern, although that happens just as often. Of course, this was the first time I was still there when the Aegins arrived.”

“So they arrested you for fighting?”

Evie thought about it sincerely for a moment. “No. They let most of the folk in the brawl go.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I… vaguely recall squatting and relieving myself on the boot of one of the Aegins.”

Dyeawan laughed.

“While singing,” Evie added.

The girl laughed harder.

“That would do it, then,” she said.

“No,” Evie said seriously, and something in her tone put an end to Dyeawan’s laughter. “No… it wasn’t until they asked me if I had a home to go to and I told them I didn’t. That’s when they arrested me. When they found out I was a vagrant.”

For the first time sadness crept into Dyeawan’s small voice. “They didn’t even bother to ask me.”

Evie reached up and stroked the stringy tendrils of the girl’s hair.

“You’ll be all right, little slider,” she assured the younger woman, trying to make her voice motherly without really knowing what that sounded like.

“You don’t look like you belong here,” the girl said, surprising Evie. “Not really. And it almost sounds like… like you wanted the Aegins to come.”

Evie stared at Dyeawan oddly in the half dark.

“What an odd thing to say.”

The younger girl shrugged. “I notice things other people don’t see sometimes. That’s all.”

Evie nodded thoughtfully. “It appears you do.”