9. Through the Damsels' Den

27th of Nima, Continued

An incendiary round hit the parapet I was scrambling over, sending mortar and brick dust flying into my face. I wiped it off, spat grit out of my mouth, and kept going, losing my stockings to hot tar, tearing a gaping hole in my new skirt while scooting over a metal-clad parapet, cutting my hands when I fell on a broken roofing tile. 

Every muscle in my legs had set itself on fire and my chest felt like I had torn my lungs out with a hot bristle-brush, but Arramy wouldn't let me stop. There was no resting, no pausing for breath, only running through ripples of heat, slowly cooking ourselves under the unforgiving sun. 

After the sixth building, I had seriously begun to wonder if getting shot might not be a relief when we jogged through someone's rooftop paradiza, and the sound of heavy drums and festival music began drifting on the wind, coming in bits and snatches but growing steadily louder with every step we took. 

"Is there a parade?" I gasped, following Arramy between lines of laundry, weakly batting damp sheets out of my way in his wake. 

Arramy didn't answer. He just lifted me onto the top of the four-foot parapet bordering the paradiza, swung himself up and over, dropped the extra meter to the roof on the other side, and reached up to help me down. 

I had stopped yelling at him for doing that. My feet were burnt and blistered by tar, and any moment spent not stepping on them felt like heaven. 

That wasn't what had me hesitating. 

"Get down here!" Arramy growled. 

I shoved off, trusting him to catch me like he already had several times. 

"We're running out of roof," I gasped as he lowered me to my feet. I shook a thumb at the very obvious end of the buildings ahead of us. Beyond the next rowhouse there was empty space and a five-story plummet to what had to be North-South Street. "It's gone..." I got out between my ragged attempts to breathe. The height of the parapet we had just come over gave us a short break from being shot at, and I sagged forward, bending double to brace my hands on my shaking knees. 

"What did you think was going to happen?" Arramy muttered. Then, instead of setting off across yet another scorching expanse of tar-and-tile, he headed for the roof access – a funny little shack with a rickety wooden door. 

Hating and envying how he didn't seem winded at all, I made a face at his back. Then I bade my aching feet to start shuffling and stumbled after him like a little bobble-toy on a string.

Arramy kicked the access door open, and then we were in a dark stairwell, spiraling downward as fast as we could, skipping steps, trying to reach the bottom before the Coventry men behind us reached the shack. 

We didn't. A gunshot rang out, ricocheting off the railing just ahead of us before we had even gotten to the next floor down. There were three more floors to go.

Arramy swore, grabbed my arm, shoved me closer to the outside curve of the stairwell, then half-carried me along beside him when my knees buckled beneath me. 

"You might as well surrender now," a male voice sang above us. "There's no way out. This place is already surrounded." 

I faltered, but Arramy just gripped my arm tighter and moved faster. 

We reached the fourth-floor landing and discovered a door. Arramy paused to try the doorpull, found it locked, and kept going, thundering around the next curve, dragging me with him until we hit the third-floor landing. That door was unlocked, and Arramy instantly pushed me through and slammed it shut behind us. He locked it. 

I glanced down. The floor was made of smooth, cool marble. It felt lovely on my ruined feet. I was actually sad to leave it when Arramy grabbed my hand and set off again. 

We were in some sort of salon, with gaudy velvet round couches arranged down the center of the room, and tasteless artwork on the walls. A man in a silk high-brim hat and a bright green dinner jacket came walking in as we went rushing out, and his startled, "Aye, watch where yer goin!" followed us out into a ridiculously over-gilded red-lacquered hallway.

We passed a couple locked in feverish embrace against the wall, and then a trio of underdressed women who all gave Arramy a lingering once-over, and it finally dawned on me what sort of an establishment we were running through. 

I might have blushed, but there was something about the three girls that caught my eye. One of them had bright, iridescent pink hair. No one could have natural hair that perfect or that color. It had to be a wig. Where there was one wig in a place like this, there were probably more. Perhaps we could find some and disguise ourselves.

Arramy must have been thinking the same thing, because when he reached the end of the hallway, he didn't keep going down the stairs that led to the second floor. He turned left, and headed for another, smaller hallway at the end of a stretch of balcony. We rounded the corner, and he began checking doors. The first two had a little red tab in the turn-dial above the latch. He skipped those. The third had a white tab, and he went inside, dragging me in with him. 

The room obviously belonged to one of the damsels. There was a bed in the corner with fluffy satin pillows all over it, and a few rather skimpy outfits on forms in the wardrobe. She must have been out finding a customer, though, because she wasn't there to defend her things as Arramy began pulling drawers out of her dressing table, pawing through her belongings, searching for anything useful. 

I bit my lip. I knew how it felt to lose something I needed and couldn't easily replace, but we had to get out of this mess. Maybe I could repay her somehow. I clung grimly to that thought and started looking for a pair of shoes. Instead I found what seemed to be her only everyday skirt – which made me hate myself as I stepped behind her dressing screen and stripped off the grey striped sateen NaVarre had given me. The girl's skirt was a bit too big, and an odd orange color, with deep flounces that needed a sponging and sagged even with a petticoat, but it would have to do. I stole her lounging slippers next. They were slightly better than nothing, and they hid my tar-splotched toes. 

The Coventry had just spent the better part of an hour taking aim at my cloak. I undid the togs that held the hood to the cape, then tied the hood – and its hidden contents – around my waist beneath the borrowed skirt. I left the cape on the bed, along with some of the money NaVarre had put in my reticule. Maybe that would help ease the loss of her clothes.

Arramy found a silky red wig on a stand in the wardrobe and handed it to me, then nodded toward the dressing table. He had set out the girl's scant collection of cosmetics. "Fix your hair and change your face," he said gruffly, moving to stand by the door, cracking it open and peering out into the hallway. 

I sighed. Take, take, take. I sat down and started working. I wrapped my hair into a tight knot at the back of my head and pinned on the wig. Then I changed the size and shape of my mouth with the girl's lip color, used her kohl stick to angle my brows and fill them in, then lined my lashes and dabbed on some of her rouge. When I was done I looked like a desperate cry for help, but at least I didn't look so much like me. 

Arramy glanced at me and raised an eyebrow, a ghost of a grin teasing his face as I stood up. Then he turned back to check the hallway. 

My gaze was drawn to his head. Of the two of us, he was actually the more recognizable, with his height and that striking hair. Maybe there was something we could use —

There was no warning. One moment we were about to walk out of the room like normal people, and the next Arramy yanked the door open and threw himself into the hallway, slamming his weight into the low center of a man who had been standing directly outside, his momentum carrying them both across the width of the corridor and up against the opposite wall. 

The Coventry man wasn't small by any means, but Arramy had surprise on his side, and he fought dirty. He didn't let the agent gather himself and return blows, he hit fast and hard, plowing his fists into the man's ribs over and over until something audibly snapped. Then he came up and grabbed the man's thick thatch of hair, using it as a handhold as he smashed the man's skull into the wall. Once. Twice. Three times

I clapped my hands over my mouth as Arramy let go and the man's limp bulk slid down the wall, leaving a bright smear of scarlet on the flowery wallpaper. He hadn't even had a chance to get in a single punch. 

Arramy took a step back, his chest heaving. 

No one came out to see what was going on. All the doors along the hallway remained firmly shut. In fact, everything had gone absolutely quiet, as if whoever was in those occupied rooms was holding their breath, hoping they could avoid getting involved if they stayed still and hid. There would be no help. We were on our own, and we had to leave. It wouldn't be long before the other agents figured out one was missing.

"Wait," I blurted into the silence. "His hat. He had a hat." I looked around, spying the man's drab-brown round-top a few feet from where Arramy had tackled him. I bent and picked it up, dusting it off and pushing out a dent in the crown. 

Arramy went still, his gaze following the hat as I held it out. Slowly, he took it, his jaw tensing slightly as his eyes flew to mine. His throat bobbed, a flicker of some unreadable emotion ghosting across his face. Then he dipped his head and put the thing on, pulling the brim down low.

Several pairs of footsteps sounded on the floor below, male voices getting louder, fists pounding on doors. Our weird little reprieve was officially over. Arramy opened the nearest unoccupied room, muscled the unconscious Coventry man inside for some unfortunate damsel to find, flipped the tab to red, shut the door, and held out his hand. 

I linked my arm through his, and then we strolled around the corner like we were just another couple on our way to the card tables.

I had no idea where that came from. Some other person was using my body, some girl who stole things and acted like she hadn't watched a man beat another person senseless in five seconds. A girl who strode right past a bunch of men who were actively hunting for her and smiled right at one of them. I even gave him a wink. I wasn't that girl. I didn't even recognize her, but she did it. She pulled off. She had to, so she just... did.

We almost made it all the way through the front doors, too. 

Arramy was reaching for the door handle, and like an idiot I was beginning to actually believe that maybe, maybe, we might be able to walk out alive, when a shout echoed through the room, bouncing eerily off the polished marble walls of the lobby and running through my veins like molten lead: "'Ey! That's Imson's hat! Ey! I've got 'em! I've got 'em!"