Chapter 3

Eldia's capital rumbled with the kind of eagerness Ymir never envied. Mothers with hips jutting out to the side, load bearing behemoths, gossiped as they scanned the streets. Children coursed through the crowds, weaving their way through ambling legs like field mice navigating around stalks of corn. Squeals that made Ymir's ovaries shrivel up inside her swarmed the air around the thief, pushing her further on edge than she already was. Ymir lamented her keen hearing; what she would've given to have cotton to plug her ears with just then.

Careful to keep the grubby, sticky hands of the rambunctious toddlers far away from her garments, Ymir pushed further through the thick of the bodies, aiming for the outskirts where navigating would be far easier. Less feathers to ruffle, that way. Ymir's shoulder smacked hard against a man walking in the other direction.

"Watch it!" he snapped, upper lip curling in a revolted snarl. He started down the length of his nose at her, aristocratic features swallowed whole and muddled by the girth packing his frame. Ymir mumbled an apology under her breath as the man harrumphed and sauntered away.

Without his coin purse, of course.

She fondled the fabric expertly, counting the coins while managing to retain enough fabric between them to keep the metal from clinking. Based on the size and shape, she'd pilfered a handful of silver coins and three gold ones. Not her greatest plunder, but it would do. Ymir transferred the coins into the thinner pouches stitched into the lining of her shirt and jacket before discarding the empty coin purse on the road. She could sell it, yet she never bothered. Ymir knew it was more trouble than it was worth, to carry evidence on her person. Better to let the rich think they dropped their bag somewhere and a gangly cluster of too-thin orphans gouged the coins right out of it there in the street. Which wouldn't be all that far off, Ymir thought.

Had she any humor, perhaps she would've chuckled at that.

Ymir made it to the edge of the crowd and ducked out of sight. She scurried like a rat through the backstreets and byways, keeping the din of the commotion to her left at all times. She found a brick wall and began to pace its length, finding the fourteenth brick from the corner of the alley. Digging her fingers into the mortar she pried it out, slowly, careful not to disturb the mortar too much. Inside the cavity behind the brick was a thin shirt she'd been saving for the occasion, tightly folded to prevent wrinkles. Ymir extracted the parcel and quickly donned the shirt, stripping topless right there in the alley. She wasn't worried about wandering eyes. No one with their head screwed on tight ventured over here, at any rate.

The shirt she picked was the result of tireless hours of skimming pockets and floating coins. She was going to do this job right, so a cut to her pay and a gnawing in her gut are sacrifices Ymir was more than prepared to make. It was a rich blue, the dyes high quality and the blouse's stitching near-impeccable. The best she could obtain with her disposition, at least. She'd lost valuable coins bribing the shopkeep to entertain her business when she looked so blatantly out of place in that boutique.

Ymir slipped the blouse on and threw her old shirt into the wall cubby, wriggling the brick into place after that. She kept her jacket for the time being, only now she zipped it up to hide her shirt. At a glance she was no different. The thief resumed walking, slipping out the alley and crossing streets. Passerbys grew more frequent, onlookers more common. Ymir spilled back out into the open and this time cut straight across to the other side of the crowd like a salmon jutting upstream.

She visited caches one by one, trading her beat up shoe for a thin slipper there; the other slipper a block down. A carefully placed box behind a dumpster and a wall of rotting bags of trash held the long skirt she'd snatched right off a noble's laundryline (a move too risky to repeat after that). Her pants went into the box and Ymir dropped her jacket into it as well, taking only a few coins and sliding them into the lining of her undergarments. She didn't foresee being robbed–but just in case, it was better to have coin than skin when depraved people came looking for pay.

She licked the pad of her thumb and scrubbed her eyebrows smooth, forcing the individual follicles to bend in unison; pinched the meat of her cheeks to encourage the blood to circulate and blush the flesh beneath her freckles; ran a quick tongue over her teeth, probing for anything in her smile, pulling back the muscle after a moment's scrutiny.

Good enough.

Ymir made one last stop–a gutter in which she'd stashed a necklace–before she skirted the crowd again, taking her time to find the kinds of people she needed to tail. Weeks of thieving from rich bigots in the capital had taught Ymir what sorts of behaviors to embellish herself with, and which to discard. She slicked her shoulders back–but not stiffly so–and shortened her gait, as if she no longer had anywhere of import to be. She meandered, taking in the sights, marveling at all things glamorous and gold–like she appreciated finery in good taste, not like she envied it–and kept her hands demurely clasped together before her to hide the mottled cuticles and brittle nails she could not fix overnight.

Ymir bled into a modest cluster of finely dressed individuals ducking into a cafe. She spent a second studying them, hunting for their group dynamic, before plastering a tight smile onto her lips and staring down the one who seemed most out of sorts, most eager to please. She molded like clay, filling that hollow cave inside her with a false persona: a member of the gentry confident enough to be slightly more at ease than the weakest link, but humble enough not to deter the ones who truly felt they belonged. Ymir became an entirely new person, inserting herself like a woman these rich good-for-nothings had known all their lives and simply hadn't been properly introduced to yet.

Ymir made fake conversation, letting the expectations of the others fill the gaps she couldn't quite reach. I notice you've selected papafer dye for your blouse; an uncommon taste, to be sure. Did you know those dyes were once chemicals for the coderoin trade?

But of course. My father was a primary investor in the farms after their seizure by the state.

Oh, Mr. Muller–why, he never mentioned he had such a fine daughter.

A dainty laugh, tucked behind her hand. He never said otherwise, either.

You've got me there! Such a slippery one, that man. A chorus of chuckles.

Their group had finally selected seats near the cafe's large windows when the conversation turned towards matters of import. "If Muller has kept you hidden all this time, you must not have seen Her Majesty yet, no?"

Ymir dipped her head cordially towards the woman who spoke. "I lament to say I have yet to be introduced."

Here the women flourished: "Oh! Then you must join us this afternoon. Her Majesty is hosting an intimate banquet for those in her finer circle."

A chorus of agreement spread along the table, and Ymir let her character trail with it, imagining the daughter she'd created to be eager to finally make her appearance. She could see small hints of shared sentiments in the way the women exchanged glances the second they thought Ymir had closed her eyes to savor her tea, or the way their smiles failed to catch the sunlight hovering in the gloom. Ymir knew precious little of this place, but she'd been thieving long enough to know the intricacies of the coderoin business–a widespread drug on the darker corners up until recent years, when the manufacturer vanished. Attempts to replicate the product were widespread and grossly unsuccessful. The entire chain of production went under until a shrewd businessman, Mr. Muller (of Muller and Co.) invested copious amounts of his personal funds into researching how the papafer leaves used in the coderoin tablets could be repurposed.

When he landed on fabric dyes–rich colors unlike anything formerly seen in terms of its vibrancy–his company expanded overnight into a textile monopoly, rendering him one of the nouveau rich per the commendation he received by the new queen. Where she applauded his actions as proof of successful restructuring for Eldia, the very nobles of old at her table began to stew in their ire, searching for a way to force the new noble onto the outs–or better yet, out entirely.

What better way to do so than through the secret daughter so clearly past her age to debut? But of course she never could have–Ymir's character would have turned of age when Muller was nothing more than a savvy merchant.

After pretending to hesitate, Ymir's eagerness began to show, the sparkle of a girl who is dangled further riches. A working class daughter who doesn't know when to quit, when to take her fair share and return back to her designated class. "Would you tell me more about this banquet?"

Wolflike smiles crawled out from behind the petal-pink lips of her audience. For she was putting on a show, and her unwise purveyors were eating her act whole. "Certainly," they gleamed, and then their secrets were all hers. Stolen, right from their heavy chests and into her hollow heart.

Ymir did not go to the banquet, obviously. Nor did she wait until its conclusion: by then there would be too many expectant nobles looking for a daughter that didn't exist, and by the time they realized they'd been made a fool of, it would be too late. So instead Ymir spent her time dipping in and out of venues, socializing with different circles of the rich and ridiculous, expanding her fable's persona and absorbing the clueless' misguided slips of information.

The banquet will be held in the lower court.

Her Majesty enjoys private tea before banquets, so I've heard.

The princess? No, she won't be there. I suspect the queen will pass the babe off to her nanny after the christening.

When I was your age–or perhaps it was before that–when the former King Fritz was christened, it was a regal affair. So much attention to detail! But of course Queen Historia could not afford that sort of commotion for the princess. Instead, we're to watch the babe in the same sphere as the public, with a modest dinner afterwards. Ah–but of course these details bore you. You asked about the food, did you not? Now, during the last banquet…

Ymir yanked her necklace off, irritated. She'd heard enough from the silver-spooned masses to last a lifetime. At any rate, she'd learned all she needed to. So the thief retraced her path in reverse, replacing new finery with firm old attire that could carry her fast and without fail. Motion once again unrestricted, she made her way through the district she'd come to know like her own body. She recognized it as hers, knew that she resided within it, yet still at times it felt alien to her. All she needed was one reminder of how different, how apart from the masses she truly was, and suddenly Eldia was foreign to her again. All she needed was one ragged remark, one flashback to the night of dirt and the day of rebirth, and suddenly she was buried again, sole member of the living dead.

Ymir slipped into the castle the same way anyone who does not belong: the servant's entrance. She, like every other hand that held up the riches piled in the queen's lap, would invariably always be viewed as subhuman. As inconsequential. You should be thankful, the stonework sneered, to have built me.

Now scrub your blood and tears from my sides.

Gutted once more, she became another hand at work in the sea of servants, filling herself to the brim with the guise of a temporary helper brought in to alleviate the additional work a banquet would bring. She was led to a laundry chute, where she slipped out the back before attempting to break free of the lower ring of rooms.

When she was caught by one of the upper maids, Ymir accepted three switches to the back of the hand and declared she was of the kitchens. She repeated the process, accepting work only to shirk out of it, giving fake names and imaginary supervisors until she'd learned enough of the layout to return to the chutes. There she found the dirty stacks of maid's uniforms, the cleanest of which she made off with light fingers. A quick change and a dozen minutes later and she'd made it further into the compound than ever before, situating herself as a duster in a room that overlooked the gardens. Perfect for her scheme. She took special care to wipe the motes of dust and grime from the crooks of each bookshelf in the study, using her bright red hand to get herself used to the sting from the still hissing switch marks.

Half an hour of quiet; she strode unhurriedly towards the door to the study and silently closed it. Once that was done she was a flurry of silent motion again: the maid's apron, ripped to shreds and fixed instead in thin strips wrapped around her palms, knees, and elbows. Ymir yanked the dress over her head–she'd picked a larger size for this exact reason–and unrolled the legs of her pants now that she didn't need to hide their presence. Satisfied, she moved to the window to open it.

It didn't budge.

She cursed under her breath, and prodded the metal latch. A thin screech testifying to the window's disuse pierced her eardrums, leaving Ymir to immediately freeze and wait to see if anyone would enter the room. After a minute she stepped back, scowling, and began to think. Quiet, she decided. She needed something to retain the quiet. If not the window itself, then–

Ymir picked the dress up from where she'd discarded it on the floor and wedged the cloth tightly under the door, careful to keep the black hem of the skirt facing the hallway. If anyone passed by, it would look only as if the light was off inside.

Ymir then, with all the ease of a practiced intruder, heaved the window open in one go.

A/N: Ymir and Historia meeting next chapter! Much love to my readers. Let me know what you think so far?

Also–to Traitor of All Traitors: while I do welcome constructive criticism on any/all of my works, I don't care for the tone. Especially since, despite berating me to elaborate, you've failed to specify what you feel I ought to expand on.