“Then don’t stand in my way.”
He nodded stiffly, relenting, but I thought I saw something solidify in his resolve. He lifted his chin and turned to Patrick. “I’ll help to find the Scribbler,” he said. “But I won’t drug them.”
Patrick had his arms crossed. He was watching Theodore with barely veiled hatred. “That’s where you draw the line, is it?”
“It is.”
The look he gave Theo was withering. “Not with the decimation of Kenton Hill, then? Or with the death of Nina’s kin? Druggin’ one of your fellows is what turns your stomach?”
Theo bristled.
“I’ll do it,” I said, empty of feeling. “I’ll drug the Scribbler. I can talk circles around them as good as Theo.”
“You’re too recognizable,” Patrick said warily, like he could sense I was close to combustion. “They’ll know your face.”
“I don’t see another option,” I argued, crossing my arms over my chest.
“A-hem,” Tamir coughed. “Pardon. But I have many decorative garments, and quite a few wigs. We can make the lady quite undetectable, I swear to you.” He covered his heart with his hand and bowed his head. “It would be my honor.”
“I’ll bet,” John offered, eyeing Tamir’s robe dubiously. “Don’t think dressin’ her like a whore is gonna help the girl blend in, Tammy.”
Tamir frowned. “My outfits are of the finest quality, sir. She would not look out of place.”
I could feel Patrick’s stare. “Nina—”
“You won’t be alone,” Theo said. “I’ll accompany you.”
There was little else to be said. Patrick looked on the precipice of arguing, but instead, he lanced me with cold eyes and said nothing.
John clapped his hands together and said, “Ain’t nothin’ else for it.” Theo stood straighter than he had since we’d left Kenton Hill.
“Then it’s settled,” I said, something violent climbing my throat. “I’ll drug the Scribbler.”
The following evening, I was dressed in the kind of garb any Artisan in Belavere City would balk at, but not here in Morland, where the constraints of society were loosened after dusk.
Tamir had encased me in an emerald dress with ruffled off-shoulder sleeves, a corset that constricted my rib cage, and skirt that pleated elegantly at my hip bone, then fell to the floor. The bust line was more daring than anything I’d ever worn, and when I glanced in the mirror, I blushed. My hips and backside were too accentuated. My cleavage was, quite frankly, indecent. I tried to stuff it back into the garment.
But Tamir slapped at my hands. “You are a woman!” he told me. “You cannot be faulted for being exquisite.”
“It’s distracting. I don’t want to beogled, I want to go unnoticed.”
“You ask for the moon,” he tsked, standing back to admire his work. “You cannot hide loveliness. Better to use it.” He winked. “Fools are blinded by jewels, you know, and you will be a diamond!”
I wore an unassuming chestnut wig that stopped at my shoulders, heavily shadowed eyelids, ruby-red lips, a powder that concealed my freckles, and a precisely drawn beauty spot on my cheek.
I felt like a trussed-up doll.
“You will devour them,” Tamir delighted, then sent me into the stairwell.
Patrick exited his own room at the same time, dressed in simple wear, and was struck dumb at the sight of me.
His eyes stuck first to my face, painted in what I considered to be a grotesque amount of rouge and haloed by hair not my own, and I thought he was taken by the strangeness of it.
But then his eyes traveled over the rest of me. Down the valley of my breasts, to the hills of my hips, and he said nothing. His hand seemed melded to the doorknob, as though it kept him upright.
I could hardly stand the heat of it. Blood rushed up and pulsed beneath my skin.
I cleared my throat. “Tamir said they all dress like this in the night quarter. The Artisan women, that is. I’ll blend in.”
