“No.” She was angry now, too.

“Then what is it?”

Her words came in a sudden rush. “You’re hard to look away from. I can’t look away from you. I don’t know how anyone could.”

This wasn’t flirtation. The words had none of her usual ease. She sounded agitated. She sounded unlike herself.

I touched the burn on my cheek. It didn’t hurt anymore, at least not on the skin. I pushed my ragged hair behind my ears. I felt hollowed out, like one of the pale blue eggs on Sid’s plate. She saw the gesture, and frowned, and started to say something, but I spoke over her. “What do you think?”

She roughed up her hair. “I think this conversation makes me uncomfortable.”

“I want to know what you think I should do.”

“High clothes would be the safest choice for you. That doesn’t mean it is the best one.”

“I want to feel safe tonight.”

She slid a card from a trouser pocket and passed it to me. The front showed a symbol I had already seen her display: the face of a man with closed eyes and a mark on his brow. The back of the card had a map drawn in Sid’s hand. “If you go to the dressmaker’s shop marked on that little map, Madame Mere will see to it that you’re taken care of. Get whatever you like. This won’t be the last function we attend, so you will need an entire wardrobe. While you are choosing what you want, I’ll see if I can enter the Keepers Hall and find out why one of their members might be night gardening.”

I gave the card back to her.

“But you need this,” she said.

“I remember the map.”

“You’ll need this insignia.” She placed a finger on the sleeping face. “So the dressmaker can be assured I will cover any costs.”

“What is that image, exactly?”

Sid shifted uncomfortably. She glanced again at the sea. The harbor was in sight, its ships a cluster of toothpick masts and tiny scraps of sails. “I took the card from the queen of Herran.”

“You stole it?”

“Sort of.”

“Sid, are you looking at the harbor for your ship?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you planning on running up high bills on a false line of credit associated with your country’s queen and then setting sail as soon as the truth catches up with you?”

“No! I just like to look at my ship. I like to know that it’s there. My crew better be, too, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, they would pay, trust me.”

Exasperated at her deliberate misinterpretation of my words, I said, “Did you steal this house?”

“I am a thief only of hearts.”

“We agreed. We agreed about the bragging.”

“That wasn’t bragging. That was true.”