We should really flee. After all, the dauphin will probably have us arrested once he comes to—I daresay robbing the heir to the French throne is a hanging offense? But if I run, I’ll fail in my mission and have no way to protect Ettie from the Tiger. The dauphin didn’t seem very angry to see me, and if I stay, then somewhere in the Tuileries there is a storeroom full of grain that I desperately need.

In the chaos, nobody questions us. We are here for tea with the queen, or so Ettie keeps loudly crying, until the moon-faced servant returns and, sniffing, takes in our stink, a mixture of smoke and gunpowder.

“Not the usual standard,” she says, her voice laden with disappointment.

Ettie sways beside me, and her tears become more pitiable. Moon-Face chides her and snaps her fingers, and two footmen appear at her side.

“This one’s half dead, from the looks of things. Best carry her in,” she says.

So even Ettie gets carried. I, however, prefer to walk.

First there’s a visit to the salle de bains, a large room empty save for a giant mother-of-pearl bathtub set on gold clawed feet. Steam rises from the tub, which is full of peaks of something thick and white. It looks like a huge bowl of well-beaten egg whites, and it smells violently of lavender.

“What’s that?” asks Ettie.

“A tub, to wash yourself in. You can’t meet the queen smelling ripe as a wheel of Camembert!”

We give up our clothes, which Moon-Face threatens to burn, but I refuse to relinquish my satchel of lock-picks, claws, and daggers, which the servants have been eyeing with growing levels of alarm. I only have to bite one person before they let me keep my weapons, and then Ettie and I are unceremoniously herded into the giant tub, which is large enough to drown five people. I am heaved in, weapons and all.

First they soak us in boiling water, to “dislodge the grime.” Then they attack. Four maids dressed in cornflower-blue skirts and armed with brushes haul us up and squirt strange-scented liquids at us. I yelp and shriek, while Ettie for some reason can’t stop giggling. They scrub every inch of me with a brush, until my skin feels raw. Then they get to work on my hair, roughly lathering it with some rose-scented salve that makes me wonder if it’s possible to die of overperfuming. I am just growing used to their fingers rubbing my scalp in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant when they dump a jug of water over my head, leaving me spluttering.

I curse them in back-alley argot.

“I’ve never seen such an ungrateful savage. And you having the honor to be chosen!” scolds Moon-Face.

Next we’re pulled from the water and dried down with soft white linens. The maids yank at my hair with brushes as if they’re trying to pull it all out.

Once considered adequately dried, Ettie’s hair is braided, while mine gets fastened in a coil with my own lock-picks, which they have assumed are hairpins. We’re wrapped in thick quilted robes and given slippers of the softest white leather lined with lamb’s wool—I make a mental note to take them with me when I leave. Then we’re led up a back staircase. Moon-Face unlocks a door and pushes us forward, then closes the door behind us.