“Did you ever get your doll?” she asks, concern coloring her blue-gray eyes.
“No,” I say. “My family had no money for luxuries like dolls and toys.”
The child nods in solemn understanding. “I was poor, too. My mommy and daddy died. Miss Fagin bought my doll so I wouldn’t be so lonely.” She bows her head.
I knew it. My mentor has a type for those she recruits: young kids—usually girls—orphans between eight and twelve years old. Any older, they’re hard to train and they soon go their own way. Any younger and they don’t understand what’s expected of them.
Fagin’s crews are a collection of broken souls. She chooses those with the weight of the world on their young shoulders—extreme poverty, homelessness, and trauma—because life can only get better from there.
Glancing around the nearby tables, ensuring no one can eavesdrop, I give this little one a glimpse of my sorrow. “I’m an orphan, too. My papa died when I was eight years old. My maman died soon after. I know how it feels to lose your world,” I pause, then lay a hand gently on her small one. She lets me keep it there. “Fagin gives us a family so we never have to be alone.”
She nods. Her shoulders slump and she wipes tears away with the back of her tiny hand.
“Does she have a name?” I ask, gesturing to the doll.
“Miss Fagin said her name is Isabella and I must take very good care of her.”
“She is well-named. In French, Belle means beautiful. My name is Clémence. What’s yours?”
“Anna,” she replies.
“Enchanté, Anna.”
She purses her lips and her eyes narrow slightly, which makes me laugh. “It’s French. It means, I am pleased to meet you.”
“I don’t know how to speak that way,” she replies.
“I can teach you, if you like.”
Another noncommittal shrug. “Nobody talks like that where I’m from.”
“And where is that, ma chere?”
“Chicago.”
“That’s in America, yes?”
Again, she furrows her eyebrows. “It used to be. I don’t know where it is now.” She pauses, lifts her nose in the air and inhales. Anna leans forward to look around me. I follow her gaze right to the food at a nearby table.
“Hungry?”
She nods, wide-eyed, and I hear her stomach rumble.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Moments later, I return with two bowls of hot, savory stew and thick slices of crusty bread with butter. She digs in without hesitation. We sit with the bowls nestled on our laps, napkins tucked under our chins like bibs.
“You dress like a boy,” Anna says, talking with her mouth full. She nods at my clothes.
Back on the ship, I changed into my usual post-mission monochrome uniform: black T-shirt, leather trousers, and hunting boots. A small messenger bag containing the carefully wrapped Florentine Diamond is slung across my body.
“These clothes are very comfortable. Sometimes I have to wear long gowns when I work, much like Isabella’s. Those clothes are a bitschhh... um, are very hard to move or run in.” Fagin will kill me if I teach this kid to swear. “On my last job, I was disguised as a boy.”
“Did you have to run a lot?”
“Yep. I was chased by three men, and I didn’t want them to catch me.”
“Were you faster than they were?” Anna peeks up at me through thick, dark eyelashes and smiles.
“I was faster,” I whisper back, returning her conspiratorial grin. “They didn’t stand a chance.”
She giggles, a deliciously light-hearted sound. “I’m faster than a lot of boys, too,” she says. “They don’t believe it until I beat them. Some of them get mad.”
“If you work with Fagin, you must be fast and smart and strong. I can help you with that, too.”
“I’m sure there are many things Clémence can teach you, Anna,” a woman’s voice says from above us. It’s Fagin gazing down on us over the bannister from several steps up the grand staircase. “She’s one of my best students.”
Fagin has a runner’s build; long, lithe, and strong. Her movements are so graceful—as she descends the remaining stairs, it seems she floats on air.
“I expected you upstairs twenty minutes ago,” Fagin says. To other observers, her comment might seem casual, almost aloof, but I’ve known her since I was Anna’s age. The comment—delivered with rigid posture and a steely gaze—is anything but casual.
“She was hungry,” I say by way of explanation.
“Diondra is her induction guide. She was supposed to get the child something to eat.” She shifts her attention to the girl. “It looks as though you were deposited on this bench instead, eh, my sweet?”
Anna’s eyes instantly go wide. The spoon she holds slips and clanks against her bowl. “I don’t want to get her in trouble, Miss Fagin. She said she’d be right back.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Fagin gestures toward some teenage girls a few feet away. Two of them jump up from their table. “Go sit with Nelle and Angeline. When you’ve finished your dinner, they’ll take you to your room. I’ll say goodnight in a little while.”
Fagin turns to the girls and gives them more direction as Anna clutches my hand.
“You’ll be fine, ma petit,” I reassure her with a kiss on the forehead. “We take care of each other here. They’ll get you settled.”
Anna swallows hard and gives the two new girls a thorough once-over before releasing my hand. One girl carries her bowl to the table, the other picks up the small valise deposited next to the bench. Anna tucks her doll into the crook of her arm. “I want Clémence to say good night to me, too.”
“Of course,” I say, “I’ll come as soon as I can.”
Satisfied, Anna joins the other girls at the table. Fagin loops her arm through mine and guides me up the staircase.
“Where did you find her?” I ask, as we pick our way through clusters of people congregating on the second mezzanine. Some are socializing, others are making deals in hushed voices.
