I walk into the cramped musty shop at the end of Bread Lane, nose full of yeast and eyes set on a dingy pink smear in the corner.

“How much for that old thing?”

The greasy woman behind a splintered table eyes me, hooded lids crimped with scorn. “Dame Magda’s finest, t’was. Can’t let it out of my sight fer less’n forty sovereigns.”

“Do you sleep with it, then?” I turn my mud brown eyes to her and make my voice heavy with the dulcet sing-song voice of the Dames up on Grand Street, far from the clouds of flour that waft through the air. With this voice, I can make people believe I’m a maid from one of their houses, high up on the hill below the castle. If I really simper, she might even mistake me for some Lord’s bastard daughter.

She flinches, but I can tell she doesn’t quite buy it. I know what I look like: dark eyes, dark hair, and skin too blotchy to be a Dame’s finer companion. Fit enough to prance behind her lady in the street and carry her shopping. For someone without an eye for goods, my face and my accent are good enough for anyone.

Yet this woman clearly had an eye, or she wouldn’t have a pink frock like this flecked with crystal and frothing lace to set where the slant from the window would catch it. From far away, it looked like a seventy-five sovereign at least.

Can’t be that much, though. Not in a shop like this, so far away from all the other places where one might find a dress or a bolt of fabric. No wonder the woman’s business was failing, I thought. She’d be better off hocking the cracked porcelain and soiled tablecloths down by the docks with the rest of the thieves and fences.

“Whose your pater?” she clucks after a moment.

“Are you hoping it’s someone you know, Madam?” I smile and turn my attention back to the dress. Up close, it looks like a twenty-sovereign dress. The crystals are really broken glass, and the lace at the neck is stained a dull yellow-brown. Could be sweat… or blood.

“Thirty,” I sing-song. “I couldn’t stand to leave it here where someone might find it… I seem to recall a murdered countess who had something just like it. I read it in the papers…”

The shopkeep spat on the ground. Now her eyes were hard. Definitely held onto the dress knowing it was worth something… and knowing couldn’t draw too much attention to it. “Thirty-five.”

“Done.” I hand over the coins and a slight pang of loss hits me. Even now, when I am so close to the vengeance I’ve craved since birth, it’s hard to part with money. I’ll need something to retire on, once the king is dead.

The old woman wraps my dress with waxed paper that doesn’t catch too much flour. I bundle the envelope under my arm and try my best to shield it with my half-cape as I stride up Bread Lane.

All around me, the city wakes up, hungover and sluggish like the Lords and Dames of the Hill even now still lolling in bed at ten-thirty on a weekday. Their king, that glory whore whose good old days are long behind him, likes it that way and pays most of them to throw lavish parties. Sometimes as many as two or three a night. You could say he spends his days carousing… if “days,” started at sundown.

Lazy. Indolent. They and their king need to go.

I turned off Bread Lane onto the causeway. This long stone ribbon winds right through the heart of Amber City. I can start at one end at sunrise and be all the way up the hill by sundown when the slanted orange light seems to make the towers glow.

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I wonder if that’s how the place got its name, or if it was one of the king’s many late wives’ names. He seemed to go for the girls with gems in their names. Queen Amber, Queen Pearl, Queen Opal. I’m sure they had other names to go with those. All the Dames and even the foreign princesses had so many they dragged around like strings of pearls dangling from their sleeves… or a string of maids following behind them on Grand Avenue.

I used to walk in lines like that. Three maids to a Dame on her way up the hill with armfuls of silk and jeweled-soled shoes in fine little packages. Those were wrapped in finer stuff than my wax paper. Some of the nicer shops even wrapped their wares in squares of dyed cotton with beads worked onto the corners.

That was when I thought I could get to the king as a ladies’ maid. I’d follow my Dame everywhere she went and learn the layout of the castle. Try to find a place to hide a knife or a way to slip some poison into the king’s soup…

It didn’t pan out. The Dame I served never went near the castle after her queen died.

I did not understand back then that the Dames of the court arrayed themselves behind a queen. As her maids trailed her, so the Dame trailed the queen to which she was loyal. The ladies of the king’s court even sewed little badges for their queen, which they wore pinned to the thousand-sovereign smocks, needles jabbed deep into the inches-thick brocade some seamstress slaved over. It would have been a nice gesture, I thought, to have someone wear a ribbon with your name stitched on it. To prove their love and loyalty.

Turned out to be a bad idea when your king went through queens like a good pair of shoes. His first wife up and died on him after only a year into the marriage, leaving behind one girl. The next one was sent packing when she was found in bed with one of his brothers. The third one died of old age; this was the one my unlucky Dame chose to swear allegiance to and she was mortified to discover along with the rest of the court that nobody had really known just how old she was when she wed. No wonder she’d gotten no sons for the king--she’d been past menopause for at least five years before the king married her. The fourth wife sent home after she gave him the son he wanted. Number five fell from the highest turret sometime not long after.

Now here we are, ready to celebrate the king’s sixth marriage to the soon-to-be Queen Amethyst. The wedding is only weeks away. Now is my chance to put a real plan into play with all eyes on our king and lucky number six. With all the parties and plays from now until the day, I have plenty of opportunities to get up that hill and get into the house of someone close to the king.

The dress is the first step. I need something fine enough to set me apart from the Dames’ maids. This frock of dubious provenance is good enough to get by the hosts outside the tea houses. It may even get me in the door at the opera, though I’ll have to stand in the pit with the pickpockets and handsy orange girls. In this pink thing with its sharp glass beads and modest neckline, I won’t have to worry about them making much of a pinch on my backside.

I take it to my home down by the printers’ shops. Here, the air smells of new paper and fresh ink, and shivers with the little syllabant sounds of quill tips tapped on glass and scratched gently across parchment. This was where I came when I left the Dame’s service. Print shop apprentice paid worse, but at least here I could read all the party invitations as they were printed. Try to guess the order and time in which the king might choose to attend one.

It was here I discovered the untimely death of a Dame’s daughter. Some girl about my age named Pearl or Opal, or some other name to honor a dead queen, not so very high on the hill. The circumstances were mysterious; some of the girl’s things were missing. It’s where I got the idea to visit the less-fine places in Amber City… places where the city watch wasn’t apt to look for a dead girl’s things to show up.

I’m so glad I have the dress. Whoever washed it before it got to me got most of the blood out. I could work on the rest with some of the lemon juice and egg whites the printers used to bleach out inkblots. Maybe I’ll even take it in a bit around the waist, cut a little patch from the back so my neck shows when I sweep up my hair with pins and clips, you can see a patch of skin in the shape of a V. Whenever men see it, they will think of where else on my body they might find that shape.

Listen, I’m no slut. I love my kingdom too much to let it go to waste on things like who sleeps with whom or whether they were married or not ever at all. The only things I care about are waking up on time, getting paid, and getting home where I can spend my time thinking only of the things that please me. I resent how much of my time I’ve had to waste staying up at night while the noise from the hill carries on into the small hours of the morning. I detest how little I am paid while the king pinches my wages to pay for his parties to which I am not even invited. And I can’t even count the hours I’ve wasted awake at night with an empty stomach, loud laughter and music ringing in my ears, thinking of killing the king who made Amber City this way.

I can do it. I can kill a king.

The dress is the first step, and look how easy it was.