Just as I was about to fall asleep, the shock of an ice-cold compress on my head startled me fully awake.
Carla sat beside me and smiled when I gasped.
“You had a close call, dearie. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded and then grimaced when a shock seared through my head. I wondered if I would die from that blow after all.
Carla opened a small bottle, put a generous drop on her finger and held it to my lips. I drew back, reluctant.
“Relax, dearie. This will take the pain away in minutes.”
“What is it?”
“Laudanum. Now take it before it slides off my finger.”
She pressed against my mouth until I opened and sucked on her finger.
Any awkwardness I might have endured disappeared at the taste of the most horrid bitterness until Carla handed me a goblet of red wine.
Desperate to make the taste go away, I took a long sip. The bitterness of the laudanum made that drink unspeakably dreadful.
But it worked.
Once I swallowed, the bitterness went away, along with the headache.
“The con man was scum,” Carla said casually, “but he was fairly good at swindling, or he wouldn’t have been able to afford it here. Yet he’s not a thug. I’ve never known him to directly attack anybody.”
She peered at me with her all-knowing, swampy eyes.
“Do you mind if I ask what you did to make him so angry?”
“Nothing. I didn’t like him and I wouldn’t talk to him.”
“That’s it? You barely spoke to me and Filly.”
I hesitated and looked away.
“I didn’t snub you and Filly.”
“So he was friendly when you met him?”
“Oh yes,” I scoffed. “He was very nice and most welcoming.”
“I take it you refused to speak to him?”
I nodded.
“Well,” Carla sniggered. “It sounds like you threw a cog in his wheel. I bet he planned to chat you up until he was close enough to get to your purse. If the con man charmed you into bed, so much the better for him and worse for you.”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
Carla paused and replaced the compress that had already gone lukewarm with another icy one.
I winced when it touched my brow.
“You shouldn’t have paid six months rent with a gold coin. If you had paid the landlady with copper and silver, she wouldn’t have made a fuss.”
“What! How did you know that?”
“Everybody knows.”
“What do you mean by everybody?”
Carla swept her hand around her head.
“Everybody on the street, in the brothels, in the cafés, in the theaters even.”
I stared at her with my mouth open.
Carla looked at me and shrugged.
“What else can you expect, dearie? Here you are, a beautiful girl with a noble face and a goddess figure, yet you’re dressed in country clothes, you leave the house every day with your hair in a braid, with no gloves and no hat. You are never seen with any company. You have no servants, which is obvious when you carry your own chamber pot for ten blocks to dump in the cesspit behind brothel row. Yet you can pay six months rent your first week in town. The landlady said you knew quite well how to haggle with her; yet you always seem so lost. All this is very odd, and word gets out. People have been talking about you for weeks, trying to figure out what your game is.”
“I don’t have a game.”
Carla laughed.
“That much has become apparent. You certainly don’t lack for surprises, you fierce little minx. I promise you’re the most exciting topic of conversation tonight.”
“Already?”
“Absolutely! I wouldn’t be surprised if Filly cuts her evening short, unless her gentleman has an extraordinary time planned for her. Hell, he’d probably cut it short too if he thought he could be in the know.”
I couldn’t say anything. I simply stared at Carla who smiled at me.
“So how did you come to us, dearie? Landlady said you came straight to her boarding house. She doesn’t have a sign out, yet you knew she had rooms.”
I looked away from her, my throat tight.
Carla tilted her head to one side and peered at me.
“Like I said before, dearie, you already had a close call. Do you really want to leave yourself open for another?”
“No.”
“Then it’s time to stop hiding. You can’t be alone here in the Capital City, and survive.”
I opened my mouth to answer Carla, but my throat closed up.
“Talk to me, dearie.”
“Somebody gave me directions to the boarding house, and told me she would have apartments as well.”
“Who?”
I said nothing and shook my head.
Carla sighed.
“Okay. Then why?”
“I heard nobody asked questions around here if I had enough money to pay my way.”
“So you’re a runaway?”
“Sort of. Yes, I suppose I am.”
“You don’t have papers, do you?”
“No.”
“I’ll bet that slime downstairs figured it out too. He must have thought you’d be easy to take by force and that he could get away with it.”
The matter-of-fact tone in Carla’s voice brought home the magnitude of what had almost happened.
I grew dizzy when the blood drained from my face.
“I really can’t thank you enough, Carla! If you hadn’t come along when you did, I can’t bear to think of it.”
“That was not happenstance, darling girl. I’ve been following the con man following you for the last two weeks.”
“Why?” I blurted. “You don’t even know me!”
“And whose fault is that?” asked Carla, and raised her brows.
“Why would you go to that much trouble for somebody who barely spoke to you?”
“I don’t know. One day I saw him trailing you with a more repellent expression than usual. You seemed so alone and vulnerable, I guess I couldn’t mind my business and let some horror happen to you.”
I stared at her until my vision blurred from the tears.
“Carla, I can never repay you for this.”
“You don’t have to, dearie. But you do have to trust me. I want you to tell me who you are and how you came here.”
My life of the past several months flooded through me.
I relived everything from yearning for the Noble Son to my jealousy of the Patron’s Daughter and luring her to the Brute, then selling my heart to the Sorcerer to have this transformation into beauty. But I never foresaw the cost of my former strength as well as the loss of my identity.
I didn’t know who I was anymore, so how could I tell Carla?
I burst into tears.
How could I tell this marvelous, heroic woman everything I had done?
All I could think was that she would despise me, and regret saving my life.
As if she had read my mind, Carla gripped my hand.
“Everybody around here has stories, dearie. Judgment isn’t for people like us. Let the fancy folks who live near the Mayor be that stupid.”
There was so much wisdom in the swampy depths of her green brown eyes. There was nothing but understanding and acceptance in her gaze, freely given before she knew anything about me.
That broke me.
