Free When Demons Walk by Patricia Briggs

door to welcome her in,” snapped the Reeve, and the servant responded to his tone and jumped to do his bidding.
    â€œHellfire,” swore Kerim. “If she sees you, she’ll recognize you when you reappear as a woman. My mother haseyes that would rival a cat’s for sharpness.” He wheeled rapidly to the fireplace that all but spanned one of the inner walls and pressed a carving. A panel of wood on the wall next to the fireplace slid silently inwards and rolled neatly behind the panel next to it, revealing a passageway.
    â€œAh,” commented Sham, tongue in cheek. “The fireplace secret-passageway; how original.”
    â€œAs the passage floor is mopped every other week, I would hardly call it ‘secret,” ’ replied the Reeve sardonically. “It will, however, allow you to avoid meeting my mother in the halls. Talbot, get her outfitted, cleaned up and back here as soon as you can.”
    Sham bowed to the Reeve and then followed Talbot into the passageway, sliding the door in place behind her.
    Â 
    â€œW E NEED TO get ye clothes befitting a mistress of the Reeve,” commented Talbot.
    â€œOf course,” replied Sham in a casual tone without reducing the speed of her walk.
    â€œLord Kerim told me to take ye t’home. My wife can find something for ye to wear until a seamstress can whip something up.” He cleared his throat. “He also thought we ought to take a week and ah . . . work on your court manners.”
    â€œWouldn’t do to have the Reeve’s mistress tagging valuable statuettes?” ask Sham in court-clear Cybellian as she stopped and looked at Talbot. “I should think not, my good man. Must not tarnish Lord Kerim’s reputation with this little farce.”
    â€œWell now,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “I suspect that clothing might be all we have to worry about.”
    She nodded and started off again. After a mile or so Talbot cleared his throat. “Ah, lassie, there is no place in Purgatory that carries the sorts of silks and velvet that ye need.”
    She sent him a sly grin. “Don’t bet on it. If there is something that people will buy, Purgatory sells it.”
    He laughed and followed her deeper into Purgatory.
    Â 
    â€œT HE PROBLEM WE face—” she explained as she led him through the debris-covered floor of a small, abandoned shop near the waterfront, “—is that a mistress of a high court official must always wear clothes built by a known dressmaker. Most of them wouldn’t let someone dressed like me through the door. If we managed to find one that would, it’d be the talk of the town by morning.”
    She stooped and pulled up a section of loose floorboard out of the way, leaving a narrow opening into a crawlspace that the original owner of the building had used for storage. She had several such storage areas here and there around Purgatory and she was careful never to sleep near any of them. She had found she lost less of her belongings if she didn’t keep them with her.
    â€œYou’re too big to fit in here, Talbot. Wait just a moment.”
    Sham slipped through the crack with the ease of long practice and slithered through the narrow crawlway until she came to the hollow that someone else had widened into a fair-sized space underneath the next building over. No one mopped the floor twice weekly here, and the dust made her eyes water.
    She called a magelight and found the large wooden crate that held most of her clothing. Lifting the lid, she sorted through the costumes she had stored there until she came to a bundle carefully wrapped in an old sheet to protect it from the dust. As an afterthought, she also took her second-best thieving clothes and added them to her bundle.
    In darkness again she crawled back out the small passage. She put the floorboard back and scuffed around with her feet until the dust by the loose floorboard was no more