Fanny’s brother Caleb, a card sharp who ran a spieler ofvingt-et-unin rooms nearby, called out to Mary, “Good take today?”
“Aye,” she called back noncommittally. To the Castle men, anything more might sound smug.
Still, Jake’s eyes had latched on to us, his face sour, his mouth twisted. Two years ago, our ring was clearing three times what the men were from dead lurking and dragging luggage off cabs, and Amelia had taken the inn’s upper stories for our own. Jake had been the one who’d resented it most, throwing a brick through our goods room window one night when he was in his cups. Amelia had a word with Silas Pike, who ran the Vine Street fences that received most of our take, and from then on Jake only growled; he didn’t bite.
I pulled open the door. As we stepped inside, the warmth of the room and the tang of ale from the taps came at us in a wave.
I started up the stairs to the goods room, while Mary, with nothing in her pockets, stayed below to have a pint. I pushed open the door to find Amelia seated at the desk, recording the day’s take in her neat hand, with the bottle of ink and an open ledger before her. Nell was loading boxes of goods into the dumbwaiter, which would be lowered to the ground floor, where the goods would be retrieved by one of Pike’s henchmen. For secrecy, this occurred on different nights each week.
Before the drawn curtains stood other thieves—Josie and Bea, Fanny and her new jenny, Cathy—in various states of undress, having doffed their thieving garb. Here in this room, the danger that kept us keenly watching our backs dropped away. Wordlessly, I turned so Nell could undo the buttons at my nape.
“How are you?” I murmured over my shoulder.
Nell’s fingers paused, and I felt a stab of regret. I was never sure if I should ask, in case I recalled her grief at a moment when she wasn’t thinking on it. Mary’s mother, Rose, had been Nell’s cousin and dear friend, and Rose’s murder had hit her hard.
Nell’s fingers restarted on my buttons. “Some days I can’t stop thinking about her.”
The cool air chilled my shoulder blades. “Sorry.”
“Mary all right?”
“Perfect.”
Nell’s hands continued down my back as I watched Cathy roll the long stem of a silver hatpin between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes fixed on its sparkle in the lamplight. My mouth twitched in sympathy. We’d all felt longings like that when we started, some fancying the pretty trinkets, others hoping someday to be the sort of woman who could wear one in public without anyone wondering if she’d stolen it.
Well, we all want things, I thought.
I’d never longed to keep the items I stole, even the pretty ones. They were just fripperies that turned into money for necessities—the extra rent so Sarah could stay in my room without having to work for Amelia, food, tea, a full scuttle of coal, warm clothes, boots because Sarah’s feet grew a size every six months, a rag rug for warmth, a new feather pillow. Between my take from thieving and wages I’d earned, I had some money put by, a collection of coins in a small pouch under a floorboard in my room, a decoy for a larger pouch hidden in yet another compartment beneath the first. But no matter how heavy those pouches, my fears were heavier. Sarah depended on me, and we had no one else. What would happen if I got sick for a spell? If, God forbid, I was caught? Or if she needed a doctor for weeks on end, like when she had whooping cough? When Ma lay dying, our money had dwindled until we’d scrounged for halfpennies. I took to visiting the butcher at day’s end for scraps, and Sarah fixed her eyes on the pavement to avoid seeing the bread loaves in the bakery windows. I never wanted to return to that. No, I wanted enough money that I needn’t worry ever again, though I wasn’t sure if there was such an amount.
Nell’s hands finished unbuttoning and shifted the fabric over my shoulders, and I shimmied out of the dress.
“Cor, look at the filigree work,” Josie said, eyeing the hatpin Cathy held. “That bit o’ peridot is gorgeous, ain’t it?”
“Aye,” Cathy agreed, setting it on the table with reluctant fingers.
Amelia paused in her writing and her mouth tightened; some of the girls tried her patience. Her gaze shifted to me. “Ready?”
“Yes.” I laid the dress on the table, like a corpse in a casket, and Bea’s hands slid below the hand-sized false pocket into the large thieving one.
“Four sets of gloves, fine kid,” she said as she withdrew them, and Amelia noted it. “Satin ribbons, six. And ...” Bea’s eyebrows rose as she examined the coins. “And two pounds, ten?”
“The clerk’s pocket.” I grinned and laid the back of my hand theatrically to my forehead. “He was overcome with distress over Mary. Easy mark as he pushed by me.”
Bea laughed.
“Hmm,” Josie said, leaning over with a sly look. “Anything else worth grabbin’ in his pocket?”
“Ach,” I replied with a shrug. “’Twas too small, couldn’t find it.”
Josie threw back her head, giving her bright laugh, and continued chuckling as she headed downstairs. Fanny and Cathy grinned as they followed, but Bea’s face was pinched as she left the room. Clear as day, there was something amiss between Josie and Bea. I looked to see if Amelia had caught it, but she was writing down my poke. Well, it wasn’t for me to say anything. Amelia turned up the wick on the lamp and slid the ledger toward me so I could put my initials beside each item for tallying at month’s end. I handed back the pen, wondering how many times I’d scribbledKJon these pages in the last few years.
I stepped into my own dress, and Nell buttoned me and slipped away as I sat to put on my boots. Knowing Amelia would ask about my afternoon, I took my time fastening them.
Amelia was giving one final look over the goods book. The corners of her mouth were tucked in concentration; her left forefinger slid down the side of the page as her right hand made quick notations in the margins.
Fourteen years ago, when I was six and Sarah wasn’t even born, Patty Wirth, on her deathbed, had passed the ring to Amelia Lyle, her niece, who had only improved it. She made sure her thieves knew how to read and do simple ciphering, how to add grace to their walks, soften their expressions, and tuck their vowels up their noses when the occasion required. Now, over a dozen of us lived in rooms near the inn, paid for by the ring. Amelia was a good mistress, practical and unexcitable, who gave us a fair cut, so even after paying for our board and other necessities, most of us earned a nice amount each month.
Amelia blotted her last few handwritten lines, closed the ledger, and stowed it on the shelf, then gestured for me to take the chair across the large wooden desk. From a cupboard concealed in the wall’s panels, she took out a bottle of wine, poured a crimson inch into two glasses, and set one in front of me.
