She glanced at me as we walked. I liked having an excuse to meet her gaze.

“I want my hands free,” she said. She made a face, as if a parasol in her hand would be a burden, and even the idea were an itchy cloth irritating her skin. She spoke as if she were a worker who used her hands all the time. It was true that her hands didn’t look like a lady’s hands. She wore no rings. Her nails were cut to the quick. Little scars marked the fingers. A long, narrow scar crossed the back of her right hand.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“This? Fighting a tiger.”

“I’d like a real answer.”

“A lovelorn girl who just couldn’t let me go.”

“Sid.”

“A duel to the death. I won, of course.”

“Is it possible for you to tell any story in which you’re not the hero?”

“So you would like a boring lie?”

“I’d like the truth.”

“No,” she said cheerfully, “I don’t think you actually do.” She ran a hand along the white wall as we walked toward the artisan workshops. “So the whole Ward is painted white? Show me the spot you found, with the colored paint beneath.”

I shook my head. “Later. I don’t want anyone to see us do it. Everyone is staring at you.”

She lifted her brows. “And you.”

I had never before had so many eyes on me. I tried to do my usual trick of pretending everyone on the streets had forgotten me, but I found that I couldn’t, maybe because I couldn’t forget myself. I felt too aware of my body: the sun in my face; the narrow distance between Sid and me; the swish of her dress; the scuff of my sandals; the prickle down the back of my neck as I realized that it wasn’t just that people were staring at Sid, at her strange beauty, or at me, the little shadow walking beside her. It was her and me, together, that captured their attention. Gazes darted from her face to mine.

I showed Sid the workshops of the makers in the Ward. She appreciatively examined each item, praising the maker, but I could tell from the slight furrow between her brows that she was disappointed, that the carved jewelry box with its cunning secret compartment held no real interest for her, that the pink blown-glass vase that she claimed was gorgeous was in fact useless. Although she flattered every artisan, who seemed to grow a little taller with Sid’s expressed admiration, I knew she hadn’t found what she’d hoped.

I worried that she wasn’t easy to please, despite whatever words she might say to the contrary.

I worried that I was too attuned to what she wanted.