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filth covering his face. “Princess.”
    He knows who I am? I thought anxiously. Princesses could be captured and held for ransom. Whereas girls who were crazy and running around outdoors in their nightgowns but were otherwise unremarkable . . .
    I didn’t know much about it, but I guessed that they wouldn’t exactly be safe either.
    And then the younger boy leaned in closer, and I had trouble remembering what I’d been thinking.
    â€œHere, give me some of that blood, and we’ll make it look like you just ran to the house next door,” the younger boy said.
    He didn’t wait for me to agree. He just ran his grubby hand along the bottom of my foot. This made me realize that there were perhaps several small pieces of glass still in the foot, that his touch drove even deeper, bringing out more streams of blood.
    â€œOw—” I only started to scream; I was already choking it back when right-side boy clapped his hand over her mouth.
    â€œSee?” the younger boy said, lightly pressing his hand down onto the packed dirt beside my feet.
    He left a smear of blood on the ground, then a second and a third slash of blood leading back out of the alleyway. He disappeared around the corner of the neighboring house. In no time at all, he appeared at the opposite end of the alley, clearly having circled the neighbor’s house.
    I was still sitting there stunned. I realized I’d just missed my opportunity to run away when there was only one boy holding on to me.
    But . . . he was right about the blood, I thought dazedly. Maybe I was a little dizzy because I’d lost so much of it. How could I avoid leaving a trail?
    How was I going to avoid it now? Even with the fake trail of blood leading the wrong way, it wasn’t like I was safe and hidden right now.
    â€œNo one saw me,” the younger beggar boy bragged to the older one. “And no one’s come out of the prison house yet.”
    Prison house? I thought.
    â€œThen we’ll try the rug, not hide her in the rain barrel,” the older boy said.
    He turned and pulled down a curling sheet of . . . well, it was some sort of cloth, wasn’t it? Or, it once might have been cloth, before it got so threadbare and filthy that now it could really only be categorized as garbage.
    â€œClimb in,” the younger boy said. “Quick!”
    I didn’t move. Did they mean me ? Did they mean I should have anything to do with that filthy, rotten, stinking shred of garbage? Was I supposed to touch it? Be wrapped in it?
    It was bad enough just sitting three feet away from it. Even at that distance I could catch its reek of rotted fish or pus-filled sores or maybe just the world’s stinkiest feet.
    â€œDesmia?” I heard Madame Bisset call from around the other side of the house.
    Hands shoved me toward the rotting rug, and I didn’t resist, not even when the two boys curved the two sides of it around me.
    â€œYou’ve got to lie down flat!” the older boy hissed, and I heard the urgency in his voice, the fear.
    They’re probably risking their lives, hiding me , I thought, and that made it easier for me to straighten out my legs and let the boys press the filthy, stinking rug tighter against my face.
    And then they hoisted me in the air. I could guess from the tilt of the rug that each of them had one end balanced on his shoulder—the bigger boy at the front, the smaller one behind.
    â€œMaybe we’ll make it safely away,” the older boy murmured.
    Just then a voice cried behind them: “Stop!”
    It was Madame Bisset.

9
    I froze. I held my breath, which had the bonus effect of keeping the reek of the filthy rug out of my nostrils. But it made it so that my hearing seemed to go in and out. It was already muffled enough by the layers of rug wrapped around me.
    â€œYes, mistress?”
    Wasn’t that the older boy’s voice? But it carried such a tone