She grimaced.

“Such a face on such a pretty girl.”

Isabeau froze, then hunched her shoulders more.

“You’l never pass for a boy if you keep walking like that, chouette. ”

Isabeau turned her head slightly. The prostitute smiled at her.

One of her teeth was missing and her cheeks were rouged enough to resemble apples.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Isabeau said as hoarsely as she could. She spit on the ground for good measure and only barely avoided her own foot.

“Better,” the prostitute approved. “But you need to take bigger steps, as if you’re ready to fight anyone who gets in your way.”

“I don’t want to fight,” she protested, alarmed.

“And you won’t have to if everyone thinks you want to.”

“I’m not sure that makes sense.”

She grinned. “Sense doesn’t have a lot to do with being a man.” Her bosom was dangerously close to spil ing right out of her stained corset. Her long skirt was tucked up to her hip, showing stockings with several runs and a sturdy, sensible pair of boots. The contradiction made Isabeau blink. “My name’s Cerise,” the woman introduced herself.

“I’m … Arnaud.”

“Not a bad name,” Cerise said. “But you might do better with something more common, like Alain.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t believe she was spitting and talking to a prostitute. The old Isabeau would have sniffed a lace handkerchief soaked in lavender oil to cover the scents of this place if she’d ridden by in her family carriage. She wouldn’t even have noticed Cerise with her cold-chapped hands and frizzy hair. Isabeau shivered when the wind sliced around the corner.

“You need a coat.”

“You need a coat.”

She shrugged. “I’m al right.” She clamped her back teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter.

“Mmm-hmmm,” Cerise said dryly. “If you fol ow the cart down to the river, that’s where they dump the bodies after executions.” Isabeau swal owed thickly. Cerise patted her shoulder. “It’s better than freezing to death.”

Isabeau wasn’t convinced, but she’d been raised to be polite.

“Thank you,” she replied cautiously.

“If you go now, you might catch it before it’s picked clean.” Isabeau nodded and pul ed her col ar up to cover the back of her neck.

“And cherie?” Cerise cal ed after her. “Stay away from the cafe at the end of the street. It’s not safe for young girls or young boys.”

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it was more heartfelt.

She found herself walking down to the river, even though the thought of robbing a decapitated body made bile rise in the back of her throat. The truth was, she didn’t have a single coin to her name and nothing worth sel ing aside from a scrap of silk from her mother’s favorite gown. It probably wasn’t enough to buy her a meal and she wouldn’t have sold it regardless. It was al she had left of her parents, her home, and her real life.

She spotted the cart a few streets over, wheels creaking as it rumbled down toward the Seine. Most of the shopkeepers didn’t even bother looking up from their work. Children and dogs chased after it singing a song Isabeau had never heard before. It sounded like an old lul aby but the words were obscene. The cart jerked over a broken cobblestone and an arm flopped over the side. Isabeau gagged but somehow kept walking. The rain started to fal fitful y, more like ice pel ets than a gentle spring shower. It was stil winter. She shivered violently, tried to tel herself that her shirt was thick enough to keep her warm, she just had to get used to the cold. She was soft, too accustomed to fireplaces and hot stew and mul ed wine at any hour of the day or night.

The river moved sluggishly, as if it were too cold to do its work as wel . She knew mil wheels would be creaking farther down the flow, in the vil ages. There’d been a wheel just like it near her parents’ country house. Here the river was muddy and ordered with a broken stone wal .

Isabeau wasn’t the only one easing out of the al eys as the cart stopped at the bank. She tried to tel herself to turn around and find herself a hidden rooftop where she could warm her hands in the smoke out of the chimney. Instead, she watched, frozen, as the two men began tossing severed heads into the river. Blood dripped into the dirt under the cart wheels. Bodies were rol ed down into the gray water. There were half a dozen of them. Then the men got back up onto the cattle cart and urged the horse into a walk.

Isabeau leaped over the wal and crept along its broken stones like rotten teeth, keeping low. A head bobbed in the icy water, spinning to grimace at her with a grotesque leer. She stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming. She felt light-headed, as if she wasn’t in her body. She watched herself approach a headless corpse caught on the bank and turn it approach a headless corpse caught on the bank and turn it over. It had been a man once, slender enough that his coat would fit her. It was dark gray and wool, already missing al its buttons. There was only a smal tear in one shoulder and it was relatively free of blood. The scarf he was wearing had sopped most of it up.

She couldn’t think of it. She could only keep moving, like a marionette, aware only of the frigid wind and the way her fingernails were turning blue with cold. The other bodies were being picked over by a gang of young boys and a girl no older than five who kept demanding something shiny. She had to be quick. She yanked and pul ed until the coat was free, tears freezing in her eyelashes. She slipped it on and then ran back into the al eys, stopping only to retch in a dark corner before hauling herself up onto a roof.