Sin had no idea how to match this.
The Market was winding down, Sin on the ground directing the people unwinding the wires that held up their lanterns and curtains from around the trees.
“Careful with that,” she called up to one of her dancers. “Break a beacon lamp and we’ll never hear the end of it. Coil up the wire: We’ve got to stow all this away.”
She slid her hands to the base of her spine and arched, feeling her back pop and crack a little in a way that said she would be feeling all this tomorrow. She was going to get only a couple of hours’ sleep, and then it would be time to wake the kids and bring them to school.
“Hi,” Mae’s voice said behind her, and Sin straightened her shoulders despite her back hurting. “Haven’t seen you around a lot tonight.”
“Hope your fourth Market was a good one,” Sin said, keeping her voice warm and the fact that Sin herself had been part of more than a hundred Markets implicit.
Mae’s eyebrows rose, obviously taking Sin’s meaning. She always stood a little combatively, short but filling as much space as she could. Currently her arms were crossed and her elbows sticking out.
“It was, thanks,” she said, her voice slightly stiff. Then she uncrossed her arms and reached out, putting one hand on Sin’s arm. Sin looked down at Mae’s hand, very pale on Sin’s skin, her nails painted bright turquoise. “Look, Sin. I don’t want Merris to succeed in setting us at each other’s throats.”
Sin remembered that Mae’s mother was gone, and as far as she could see Mae’s father and brother were out of the picture as well. She was staying with her aunt Edith in London to be near all of them.
“I don’t want that either,” Sin answered slowly, the words sticking in her throat. “I would have welcomed you to the Goblin Market. You know that. But I can’t—I won’t welcome you into my place.”
“I can’t stop trying for it,” Mae said. “This thing, with Celeste’s pearl. I want it.” She swallowed and continued. “But if you get it before me, I swear I’ll do everything I can to help you. You’ll be my leader too.”
Sin couldn’t say Mae would be her leader. She couldn’t even contemplate that happening. But Mae’s hand was gripping her arm tight, and she’d liked Mae from almost the first moment.
“Thanks,” she said awkwardly. “I appreciate that.”
She usually felt energized by the Market, glowing with all the small victories of the night and filled with new purpose. Not tonight. She summoned up a wicked smile for Mae anyway.
“I like the pigtails you’re working tonight,” she told her, and thought of Mae laughing at the book stall with Alan. “Anyone interesting around?”
Mae shrugged. “My pigtails are not the irresistible mantraps you might think.” She let her hand drop from Sin’s arm, but grinned up at her. “It must be kind of awesome. Being—well, you know.”
“No, tell me,” Sin coaxed, amused.
“Well, being completely gorgeous,” Mae said, and went a bit pink. “You could have anyone you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to try.”
Sin thought about the boys at school and the guys on the street who bothered her because they thought black girls were exotic and easy and not to be taken seriously. It wasn’t something she could turn off, not entirely, so it was something she’d learned to use.
She thought about getting up at six in the morning to stand outside in the raw air, mist lying clammy on the grass, and shave her legs using a basin and some cold water. She’d fixed her hair, hung the lanterns, planned the dancers’ performances and costumes, and now the Market was being packed up and all her success was fading away with the morning. She had tried everything she knew, and she had not even been able to charm Alan Ryves.
Not that she cared about that.
“It’s awesome,” she said. “But it’s not easy.”
Mae rubbed at her face, the only sign she’d given to show she might be just as tired as Sin was. “What is?”
“You’ve got a point,” Sin told her, and felt relaxed enough with Mae to give her a sideways hug before she made for her wagon, already thinking of the luxury of crawling in between soft sheets, the kids breathing slow and steady on either side of her.
She found Matthias the piper sitting on her front step, turning his pipe over and over between his hands.
“Sin,” he said, rising gracefully to meet her. “You did well tonight.”
“Thanks.”
“Not your fault you were outdone.”
Sin refused to lose ground in front of a pied piper, so she made herself smile. “You say the sweetest things.”
“She’s a clever girl, that Mae,” Matthias said. “Maybe a bit too clever. You know she’s been murmuring about a possible spy at the Goblin Market.”
Sin made a face. It was just another of Mae’s hundreds of ideas, like that of making profit and loss sheets, or the crazy suggestion she kept floating about inviting necromancers and pied pipers to travel with the Market.
“Maybe she’s looking for an excuse if the magicians seem like they know too much, and someone wonders where they got the information,” Matthias said. “I heard from a little bird that she’s been seen talking to people from the Aventurine Circle.”
The sleepiness cleared from Sin’s mind suddenly. She was very aware of Matthias’s watchful dark eyes, waiting for her reaction, of the cold grass around her ankles, and of the familiar weight of her knives against her back.
“Do you have any proof?”
