Page 73 of Ship of Smoke and Steel

“From our point of view, does it matter?”

Meroe nods. “It does. We still don’t know what Zarun is after. He and the other officers are already on the top of the heap here. Is he just defending himself against the Butcher? Or is there another step?”

“The Captain.” I grimace. “If he’s ambitious, that’s the only place left for him to go.”

“We don’t know how the Captain was chosen. What happens if he dies or steps down.” Meroe spreads her hands. “It’s possible is all I’m saying.”

“There’s too much nobody wants to talk about.” I frown. “The Scholar seemed friendly. Maybe we can pin him down. And the Butcher…” I sigh. “We may have to kill her, whatever Zarun is planning. He’s right about how she feels about me. Every time she tries to hurt me and fails, it makes her look worse. She can’t back out now, not without making herself a laughingstock to her own people.”

Meroe looks pained at the thought, which sends a needle of guilt through my chest. She may have been raised under a threat of murder, but she’s not as comfortable with violence as she pretends. My princess.

“There might be another way out, but right now I can’t see it,” I say. “Keep your eyes open.”

“If Zarun’s driving you two at one another, it doesn’t seem likely.” Meroe shakes her head, and looks down at the package. “Let’s see what he got you.”

I’m honestly a little afraid to look, but I untie the string and unfold the linen wrapping. Inside is … a dress, I suppose. It’s a dark blue-green, with overlapping folds and fringes of fine lace. Small silver charms click against one another as I lift it up. Underneath, Feoptera has thoughtfully included a hand mirror, an elaborately gold-inlaid thing that would be worth a small fortune on its own.

“It’s … elaborate,” Meroe says.

“I’d say ‘ridiculous,’” I mutter, looking at it. A kizen is one thing, but this?

“Try it on,” Meroe says.

I pick the dress up, struggling to figure out how the separate parts go together. I can’t even tell which is supposed to be the inside and which the outside, much less how they’re connected. I look up at the sound of a sputter, and find Meroe hiding her smile with both hands.

“Sorry,” she says. “Just the look on your face.”

I roll my eyes. “I suppose you know all about it.”

“I think I can manage,” she says. “The style isn’t that far from what we wear in Nimar.” She gets up, leaning on her cane, and takes the dress out of my hands. “Come on, strip off, and I’ll see what I can do.”

There was not a lot of room for modesty in my upbringing. Tori and I cleaned ourselves in public fountains, changed clothes in back alleys, and splashed naked in the cisterns in the summer heat with the other street children until the guards ran us off. While the servants I hired have struggled to mold her into a proper young woman, there was no one minding me. In theory, therefore, taking off my clothes and letting Meroe dress me should be no great affair.

In practice, I feel her eyes on me like a shaft of sunlight, warming my skin wherever it touches. I shuck out of my trousers and pull my tunic over my head. Then, with a glance at the straps and stays of the dress, I undo my chest wrap as well. I keep my eyes resolutely on Meroe’s sleeping mat.

Is she staring at me? What if she is? What if she isn’t? I feel my face flushing.

The featherlight touch of her hand on my back makes me jump, heart pounding. She flinches away.

“Sorry,” she says. “Are my fingers cold?”

I give a lying nod. When she touches me again, I only shiver a little. Her fingers are wonderfully warm, in fact. She pushes my hair aside and traces the line of blue marks around my back and onto my flank.

“I forgot how far these went,” she says, softly.

I don’t know what to say. I want to tell her it’s all right, that she saved my life. I want her to keep touching me, so badly that my skin practically tingles at the prospect.

Instead, she returns to the business at hand, and with some reluctance I pose as she instructs. Raise my arms, lower my arms, step into one skirt, and buckle another around my waist. Breathe in as she cinches up some ties, stand tremblingly still as she fusses with small knots at my collar, her breath hot on my neck. Finally, she steps back, looks me over, and raises an eyebrow.

“Well?” I say.

She picks up the mirror.

Feoptera, to her credit, has done her best. The dress flares out from the waist down, but above that it shoves and prods my stubbornly uncurved body into something like a proper woman’s shape, with a high bodice that gathers every available ounce of flesh to create the illusion I have breasts. The lace spills from the cuffs and the neckline, the silver charms gleam, and the layers of skirts swish against one another as I turn. It’s a beautiful dress, and yet …

“I look ridiculous,” I say flatly.

“You look ridiculous,” Meroe says. “Because it’s not you. It’s like someone tried to put a fancy ball gown on a … a tiger.”