Potosí stretches out before us, but not in the distant way it does when viewed from the villa. We are not so high up that we cannot smell the acrid woodsmoke rising into the air or the cloying sweetness of cheap perfume or the tang of meat cooking over open flames, juices dripping onto coals. There are no orange blossoms here to mask the life of the city. No high-born lies to cover up a messy, beautiful, chaotic truth.

Rosalita takes a swig of wine straight from the bottle. I watch as her throat bobs with the motion of swallowing. When she’s done, she wipes her lips with the back of her arm. I’ve spent the better part of the week hating everyone and everything around me, but now, I can’t help but smile.

“Doña Esmeralda would have you over her knee if she saw you drinking like that,” I say as I accept the bottle Rosalita offers me.

“What she doesn’t know won’t scandalize her,” Rosalita says, stretching her legs out and rolling her ankles, her bare feet pale against the darkened tiles of the roof. “I trust you won’t tell her.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” I swirl the wine around in the bottle, the red liquid sloshing up the sides. I wonder if it would taste less sour if I were in a better mood.

Rosalita sighs, wiggling her toes. “I don’t like the thought of you wandering the streets alone, Ana.”

“I’m not alone. I have you.”

She rolls her eyes. Deservedly so. “You have me now. But what good will that do you when you’re walking home? The villa’s a long way off and in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a rampaging madman on the loose.”

“Rampaging madmen are welcome to take a stab at me.” The wine burns all the way down as I knock back a generous mouthful. “Slaying them might put me in a better mood.”

Rosalita snorts. “Still … promise me you’ll be careful?”

“I’m always careful.”

She levels me with a very pointed look, eyebrow arched, lips pursed in a disbelieving little smirk.

“Okay, fine,” I sigh. “I am rarely careful. But for you, I will try.”

“Thank you. That’s all I ask.”

A breeze lifts the hem of her skirt, making the light material flutter in the wind. Leaves skitter through the gutters, chittering against one another. Something drifts through the air, a pale speck of who knows what, lifted up from the ground below.

A feather. White. Probably from some doomed chickens slaughtered in the yard for last night’s supper. It lands on Rosalita’s head, looking for all the world like an ornament she chose to put in exactly that spot. Such is her radiance. It can elevate even the humblest of chicken detritus.