Untouched, she'd said she was. It wasn't true.
She knew him. He was older, not much older, but he knew a lot more. All the good things. How to steal without getting caught. Where to scrounge for food. Where, and who, to stay away from.
She didn't trust him, not yet, but she was beginning to. Out of necessity if for no other reason. It was hard to be on your own in foreign lands, only a few months after crossing the sea. Everyone among them—the thieves, the gutter-scroungers, the whores, the homeless—had their own network of allies; it was a vast underground of complicated relationships. She was the outsider, the truly nameless one.
He brought her some bread.
"Come here," he said, in the common tongue, but accented. He was smart, he spoke many languages. Dark-skinned and wiry, he had eyes that missed very little.
She shook her head, on alert.
"You can't hold out and fit in with us," he said. "You're nothing. I thought you already learned that lesson."
"I'm not nothing," she said, angered. She tucked the bread away in a side pocket of her tunic.
He was at her side then, lithe like a snake, and she had let her guard down, Needle was not within reach and no one would care if she screamed. No one would come. There was not much to struggle against. He was too strong, and it was humiliating. It seemed less humiliating to submit in those next few moments.
She cursed him in her head. I could never be nothing.
He was done quickly, and got off her, and she rolled away, grabbing at her clothes, but not giving in to emotion just yet, not until he was gone. He would not see that from her. It meant less, that way.
He stood over her a moment, as if about to say something, then shrugged and left.
She flattened her back against the wall and dug out the bit of bread, consuming it voraciously to fuel her strength. She ate furiously in the dark, swallowing so fast it burned in her chest and stomach like pure fire.
She didn't succumb to sleep that night, and in the morning, she struck out for new lands.