Leni

Leni worked in a bakery near the river and complained, roughly weekly, that she smelled of flour no matter how often she washed. She was a round, quick young woman with flour in the creases of her knuckles that no washing ever got out, and she was one of the small company at the curtained room above a side street who became Sera’s first friends. Zarina, sitting beside her that first night, found she liked the smell; it was warm, like morning.

She seldom stayed past midnight, because she had to be at the ovens before sunrise, and she left a heap of bread on the table behind her like a payment. There was always too much of it, and she was always pushing a piece across to somebody who looked as if they needed comfort. Lopsided loaves, she held, were free.

She was the first to notice that Sera did not add up. When Zarina came back from the Copper Market having paid the first price asked for a pair of brown shoes, Leni turned one over, bent the sole, said she had paid too much — a lot — and could not quite explain how anybody was supposed to know to bargain, only that you should.

On a Thursday that summer she went to the curtained room with bread for Sera, and Sera was not there. It was the first night Sera lied to them about where she had been.