Sophia could hardly believe that she was inside the palace.
Back at the House of the Unclaimed, it had seemed like a magical place; another world that the likes of her could only hope to set foot in if they found themselves indentured to the right nobles through some special skill.
Now, she was there, thanks to little more than the willingness to fool those who wanted to believe in her, and the courage to actually try.
Sophia couldn't help a note of amazement at that, and at the space around her.
It was beautiful, it was elegant, and it was about as far from the orphanage as any building could hope to be.
Instead of cramped conditions, there were high ceilings and spacious rooms that seemed to have been designed more as displays of opulence than simply as places to live.
There were soft chairs and chaises carved in the elaborate style that had come in from across the water, thick carpets from the water looms of the Merchant States, and even a few worked silver statuettes from further off, in the lands where it was said that men had never even heard of the Masked Goddess.
This palace was everything Sophia had ever wanted.
No, not everything. This was a beautiful place to be, but it wasn't enough to simply get here.
Sophia had to find a way to stay. She'd come here in the hopes that there would be a way to find a life among the nobles. A way to be safe.
Sophia didn't feel very safe right then. There were paintings on the walls of beautiful women and strong-looking men, probably representing different facets of the kingdom's noble lines.
Right then, Sophia probably looked like one of the women, but she felt as though that façade was as thin as one of the canvases, easy to tear through and likely to fall away at any moment.
"Focus," she told herself, trying to act the way she thought a foreign noblewoman would on arriving in the palace.
She walked through the crowds of people there, smiling beneath her half mask and nodding, pausing to admire paintings and sculptures.
There were nobles there—other nobles, Sophia corrected herself—standing in groups and laughing amongst themselves as they waited for the ball to begin.
She saw a group of young women of perhaps her age, all wearing dresses that had probably taken someone weeks of work to produce. One, resplendent in a gossamer blue gown that seemed designed to show off her figure, was complaining to the others from beneath the ivory oval of her mask.
"I sent my servant there, and you'll never guess what happened. Someone had taken my dress. My dress!"
Sophia held her breath, feeling certain that at any moment, the girl would turn and see her; would spot the dress she was wearing and denounce her as not just a fraud but a thief.
Sophia guessed that this was "Milady D'Angelica," as the dressmaker had called her.
"I never even got to see my dress," the girl continued, and Sophia dared to breathe a sigh of relief. "I had to settle for one the dressmaker had ready for some burgher's daughter."
One of the others, whose mask formed an elaborate bird's beak, laughed. "At least that means there will be less riffraff in here."
The others laughed along with her, and the girl who had been complaining about her dress nodded.
"Come on," she said. "It will be time for the dancing soon, and I want my makeup just so, if some handsome young man happens to unmask me. Perhaps one of the dowager's sons will want to kiss me."
"Angelica, you are daring," one of the others said.
Sophia hadn't thought of that. She'd come here with some half-formed thought of being able to fit in at court and marry some rich man, but she hadn't thought enough to consider what she would do if she had to take her mask off.
Presumably, somewhere in between her coming to the party and living happily ever after, someone would want to see her face?
So she followed them, trying not to make it look too obvious as she went, pausing to look at the statuary there.
"Ah, you're admiring the latest Hollenbroek," a fat man said.
"I think it's awful," Sophia said, with the slight fleck of an accent she'd picked out to let the nobles forgive any of her mistakes. "Excuse me, though, I still need to do my makeup for the ball."
"Then perhaps we can dance later," he suggested. "If you have your dance card…"
"My dance card?" Sophia asked, puzzled. She couldn't see the man frown beneath his mask, but she could feel his confusion. "Yes, of course. I don't seem to have it with me at the moment."
She walked away swiftly even though she knew it was rude. It was better than being found out because she didn't know the rules that these people had. Besides, the noble girls were almost out of sight.
Sophia followed them to a small antechamber, glancing inside to see a girl perhaps a couple of years older than she wearing the gray of an indentured servant, standing there surrounded by mirrors and brushes while the girls sat themselves on high-backed chairs in front of her.
The servant had dark hair that fell short of her shoulders, and features that might have been pretty if she'd been allowed to use any of the tools of her trade on herself. As it was, she mostly looked overworked.
"Well then," the first noble girl snapped. "What are you waiting for?"
"If my lady would care to remove her mask?" the girl suggested.
The noblewoman did it with bad grace, muttering something about rude servants, while the others did the same.
They set their masks beside them, like upturned faces, but Sophia was more interested in watching their real features.
Some of them were good-looking, some plainer featured but still with the smooth skin that came from expensive lotions and the confidence that came from knowing they could buy half the city if they wanted.
Probably only Milady D'Angelica was truly beautiful, though, with features that could have come from one of the paintings adorning the walls, and an air of sharp superiority that said she knew exactly how beautiful she was.
"Get on with it," she said. "And be careful. I've had a very trying day today."
Presumably not as trying as that of a servant having to wait on her, or as someone risking her freedom trying to sneak into the festivities.
Still, Sophia didn't say anything. Instead, she watched as the serving girl started work with powders and paints, subtly transforming the features of each of the nobles she worked on.
"Work faster!" one of them snapped. "Honestly, these indentured girls are so lazy."
"That's not all they are," another replied. "Did you hear that Henine Watsworth caught one in bed with her fiancé? No morals, any of them."
"And the way they look," Angelica added. "You can see the coarseness of their features. I don't know why we bother to mark them as what they are. You can spot it a mile away anyway."
They didn't seem to care that the servant was standing right there, or that she couldn't talk back because of her position. Sophia hated that cruelty. In fact—
"Excuse me, my lady," a passing servant asked. "But are you lost?"
It took Sophia a moment to remember that they might mean her. "No, no, I'm fine."
"Then would you care to go in for your makeup? I'm sure that another chair could be found."
The last thing Sophia wanted was to have to sit in there with the others, unmasked, where she was sure that someone would guess what she was. Or, more precisely, what she wasn't.
Sophia heard a snippet of the woman's thoughts, and it didn't do anything to reassure her.
"Do you think I need such things?" Sophia demanded in her haughtiest voice. "More to the point, do you think I want to be trapped in there with such chatter? Already, I can feel one of my headaches beginning. Go and fetch me water, girl. Go."
It felt as though she was playing a role in moments like that, the sharpness of it serving like the spikes of a thorn bush to keep people from getting too close. The servant hurried off, and so did Sophia. She couldn't stand out in the open like that.
Instead, she found a nook where she could hide, pretending to look at the paintings there, listening all the while for the moment when the room beyond would be empty.
Sophia didn't even want to risk the servant seeing her. As the nobles had said, it was too easy to spot one of the indentured.
So she listened with her ears, and with her mind, waiting for the moment when it was quiet, then slipped back into the room with all the caution of a thief.
Sophia seated herself in front of the mirrors there, removing her mask and considering the vast array of pigments and powders there.
She realized in that moment that she had no real idea of what to do. She knew what makeup was, she'd even seen a few women wearing it, but it had not been something allowed in the orphanage.
The masked sisters would probably have beaten her even for asking about it. Why decorate the face when their goddess had hidden hers from the world? To them, only whores wore such things.
Even so, Sophia tried. She focused on what she thought the women in the paintings had looked like, and grabbed for the most likely-looking powders. It took her less than a minute to realize her mistake, as she went from looking like herself to some kind of demented clown, fit only for the least subtle of street theater.
"Hello?"
Sophia spun at the sound of the servant's voice, realized what she must look like, and grabbed for her mask. To her surprise, the servant was faster, catching her hand and gently pulling it away.
"No, no, don't do that. It will make things worse. Let me see, my lady…"
"It will be fine," Sophia said, standing. It was only as she did so that she realized that she'd let her faint trace of an accent slip. She'd fallen back into her normal voice, and even she could hear how rough and uncultured that sounded compared to the nobles.
"Who are you?" the servant asked. She moved to look at Sophia. "Wait, I know you, don't I?"
"No, no, you're mistaken," Sophia managed. She should have pulled away then. She should have knocked the servant over and run. She didn't, though.
"Yes I do," the girl said. "You're Sophia. I remember you and your sister from the House of the Unclaimed. I'm Cora. I was only a couple of years older than you both, remember?"
Sophia started to shake her head, but the truth was that she did remember the other girl, and at that point, it seemed that there was no point in denying it.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I remember."
"But what are you doing here?" Cora asked. "Come on, sit down. There must be a story in all of this."
Sophia had expected her to call for guards there and then, so she sat down almost as much from surprise as anything else. While she sat there, Cora started to wipe away the makeup from her face with expert hands.
Sophia told her what had happened. She told her about running away with her sister, and about sleeping rough in the city.
She told her about parting from Kate to try to find happiness and safety in the ways that seemed to make most sense to them.
"And you're here because you think you can walk in and find a place at court?" Cora asked. Sophia waited for the other girl to tell her how stupid it was. "It might work, I suppose, if you were able to get the right people to become your friends, or more than friends. If you could persuade some nobleman to take you as his mistress… or his wife."
She laughed at that, as though it were preposterous, but for Sophia, that was the one option that seemed to make the most sense.
It was the one option that left her safe. The truth was, though, that she would do what she had to do. She would become some noble's hanger-on, or friend, or courtesan, if that was what it took.
"So you don't think it's stupid?" Sophia asked. "You don't think it's an evil thing to try to do?"
"Evil?" Cora countered. "Evil is the fact that they can take us and sell us like chattel, with no real chance to ever repay the debts they say we owe. Evil is the part where noble girls get to treat me like nothing, even though all they do is stand around, waiting for the right husband. You do what you have to do to survive, Sophia. So long as it doesn't actually hurt someone else, do it and don't think twice. I wish I'd had the bravery to do what you're doing."
Sophia didn't feel very brave right then. "You didn't answer me about it being stupid. I mean, if one person guesses and hands me in—"
"It won't be me," Cora promised her. "And yes, it could be stupid, but only if you do it badly. The fact that you're here says you've been thinking about some of it, but have you thought it through? Who are you meant to be?"
"I thought I'd be a girl from the Merchant States," Sophia said, falling into the trace of an accent she'd chosen. "Here…"
The truth was that she hadn't thought of a reason.
"Being from across the water is good," Cora said. "Even the accent is close enough to fool most people. Say that you're here because of the wars. Your father was a minor noble from Meinhalt; it's a town from in the old League. I've heard people talking about the battles there wiping it out, so no one will be able to check. It will also explain why you don't have anything with you."
Sophia of Meinhalt. It sounded good.
"Thank you," Sophia said. "I would never—how do you know all this?"
Cora smiled. "People forget I'm there while I'm working on them. They talk, and I listen. Talking of which, sit there, and I'll… well, not make you beautiful, you're beautiful already, but make you what they expect."
Sophia sat, and the other girl started to work, picking out foundation and rouge, eye shadow and lip color.
"How much do you know about the etiquette here?" Cora asked. "Do you know who people are?"
"I don't know enough," Sophia admitted.
"Before, a fat man asked me for my dance card, and I don't even know what that is. He started talking about someone called Hollenbroek, and I think I did the right thing, but I'm not sure."
"Hollenbroek is an artist," Cora explained. "Your dance card is a scrap of bone or ivory or slate to write the names of promised dance partners on. And if there's a fat man asking about both, the odds are it's Percy d'Auge. Avoid him, he's a penniless lecher."
She went on about the others there, the nobles and their families, the dowager and her two sons, Prince Rupert and Prince Sebastian.
"Prince Rupert stands to inherit," she said. "He's… well, everything you expect a prince to be: dashing, handsome, arrogant, useless. Sebastian is different, they say. He's quieter. But you don't need to worry about them. You need some minor nobleman, Phillipe van Anter, perhaps."
As Cora went on, it became increasingly obvious to Sophia that she could never remember all of it. When she said as much, Cora shook her head.
"Don't worry. Being from across the water, no one will expect you to know all of it. In fact, it would be suspicious if you did. There, I think you're almost ready."
Sophia looked at herself in the mirror. It was her, and yet somehow also not her. It was certainly a more beautiful version of her than anything she could have imagined.
It was impossibly far from what she'd have been able to do for herself.
"One more thing," Cora said. "I like the boots, but we both know what lies underneath. Take them off, and I'll disguise your mark. No one will know."
Sophia took her boots and stockings off, revealing the mark on her calf. Cora rubbed thick foundation over the spot, blending it in until it disappeared completely.
"There," she said. "Now, if you seduce some minor nobleman, you won't have to keep your boots on in bed."
"Thank you," Sophia said, hugging her.
"Thank you so much for doing this."
Cora smiled. "I'm lucky. I have a job I'm actually good at, in a place I don't mind too much. But if I can help another like me, I will. And who knows? Maybe, once you're a wealthy noblewoman, you'll need a maid who knows how to make you look your best."
Sophia nodded; she wouldn't forget this. She stood in front of the mirrors, feeling now as if she were some old-fashioned knight, armored for battle.
When she put on her mask, it was like pulling down her visor.
She was ready for battle.