Mrs. Amina roared with laughter.
Alizeh went silent, heat rising up her neck. She did notknow why the woman laughed at her.
“Can you read, child?”
Alizeh looked up without meaning to, registering the familiar, fearful gasp before she’d even locked eyes with the woman. Mrs. Amina stepped back, lost her smile.
“Yes,” said Alizeh. “I can read.”
“Then you must try to forget.”
Alizeh started. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t be daft.” Mrs. Amina’s eyes narrowed. “No one wants a servant who can read. You ruin your own prospects with that tongue. Where did you say you were from?”
Alizeh had frozen solid.
She couldn’t tell whether this woman was being cruel or kind. It was the first time anyone had suggested her intelligence might present a problem to the position, and Alizeh wondered then whether it wasn’t true: perhaps ithadbeen her head, too full as it was, that kept landing her in the street. Perhaps, if she was careful, she might finally manage to keep a position for longer than a few weeks. No doubt she could feign stupidity in exchange for safety.
“I’m from the north, ma’am,” she’d said quietly.
“Your accent isn’t northern.”
Alizeh nearly admitted aloud that she’d been raised in relative isolation, that she’d learned to speak as her tutors had taught her; but then she remembered herself, remembered her station, and said nothing.
“As I suspected,” Mrs. Amina had said into the silence. “Rid yourself of that ridiculous accent. You sound like an idiot, pretending to be some kind of toff. Better yet, saynothing at all. If you can manage that, you may prove useful to me. I’ve heard your kind don’t tire out so easily, and I expect your work to satisfy such rumors, else I’ll not scruple to toss you back into the street. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You may have your skin of water.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Alizeh curtsied, turned to go.
“Oh—and one more thing—”
Alizeh turned back. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Get yourself a snoda as soon as possible. I never want to see your face again.”
Two
ALIZEH HAD ONLY JUST PULLED open the door to her closet when she felt it, felthimas if she’d pushed her arms through the sleeves of a winter coat. She hesitated, heart pounding, and stood framed in the doorway.
Foolish.
Alizeh shook her head to clear it. She was imagining things, and no surprise: she was in desperate need of sleep. After sweeping the hearth, she’d had to scrub clean her sooty hands and face, too, and it had all taken much longer than she’d hoped; her weary mind could hardly be held responsible for its delirious thoughts at this hour.
With a sigh, Alizeh dipped a single foot into the inky depths of her room, feeling blindly for the match and candle she kept always near the door. Mrs. Amina had not allowed Alizeh a second taper to carry upstairs in the evenings, for she could neither fathom the indulgence nor the possibility that the girl might still be working long after the gas lamps had been extinguished. Even so, the housekeeper’s lack of imagination did nothing to alter the facts as they were: this high up in so large an estate it was near impossible for distant light to penetrate. Save the occasional slant of the moon through a mingy corridor window, the attic presented opaque in the night; black as tar.
Were it not for the glimmer of the night sky to help her navigate the many flights to her closet, Alizeh might not have found her way, for she experienced a fear so paralyzing in the company of perfect darkness that, when faced with such a fate, she held an illogical preference for death.
Her single candle quickly found, the sought after match was promptly struck, a tear of air and the wick lit. A warm glow illuminated a sphere in the center of her room, and for the first time that day, Alizeh relaxed.
Quietly she pulled closed the closet door behind her, stepping fully into a room hardly big enough to hold her cot.
Just so, she loved it.
She’d scrubbed the filthy closet until her knuckles had bled, until her knees had throbbed. In these ancient, beautiful estates, most everything was once built to perfection, and buried under layers of mold, cobwebs, and caked-on grime, Alizeh had discovered elegant herringbone floors, solid wood beams in the ceiling. When she’d finished with it, the room positively gleamed.
