8.

     Kitty stared at the documents she'd thieved, assessing the paper quality and the fineness of the hand, and wishing like spit that she could decipher it. Being an unlettered, unregistered unruhe had its occasional disadvantages. Still, she found the writing to be graceful yet surprisingly devoid of ornament, and the schematics were clear enough. She traced the line o f a spring as though she could reason out the meaning of the machine through a kind of tactile osmosis. Not that Kitty could ever begin assemblage, nor comprehend what the device could possibly do once constructed, but the images appeared well drafted: clean and precise. The paper was thick and soft – and unsoiled, or had been until her thorough examination. There was great wealth written in these pages, of that she was certain. If she were able to read, this dreadful mistake might have been mitigated, a laughable misunderstanding. For Deadmen do laugh.
     But as matters stood, Kitty could not avoid this foreseeably unpleasant existence. With a modicum of regret, she folded away the plans. She was still ensconced in her haunt in the upper clerestory of Kilford Station; she'd dared not descend into the crowds for the Taker must surely be hunting her. He'd have noticed his missing billfold by now, she reasoned. So she was as good as dead. With no recourse, with no sanctuary, she was trapped above the station. She'd've had to scatter moments after the discovery of her mistake if she'd any hope of seeking the shelter of the Tiere. They would not welcome this burden. Kitty considered herself well and truly severed, as one would cut off an infected limb.
     Oh they would grieve – Corva perhaps the least, despite the blood between them; Corva had always been practical. – But Kitty would not consider bringing her dangers upon them. Even if she dared in desperation to seek out her sister, she would be a ghost in Corva's eyes. No, she must suffer her trespasses alone.
     Only now conscious of tears threatening to dampen and stain her dress and create incongruous, light smudges on her veil of anonymity; threatening to mark her as someone to whom life had taken an interest in subjecting to its smallest indignities, Kitty stifled the sobs; for she would not allow pity and desperation to reduce her very self, in all thought and action, to her immediate, though dire, circumstances. Kitty slowly uncurled, commanding her muscles individually to relax before allowing herself to stand. She tucked the purloined wallet into her most intimate garments, not daring to leave it secreted in the metal box hidden under a particularly large rock in one of unnumbered, unremarkable rubble mounds scattered between the ceilings of Kilford. She had to find a better hiding place; but first, her stomach gently insisted, she had to eat.
     Kitty carefully made her way below, invisible to the masses eddying and swirling through the station. They moved beneath her, alone and oblivious to their solitude, as one mistakes company in a crowd of unknown, unnoticed strangers. All of these people, Kitty marveled, acting merely as decoration for the individual’s hurried commute, each anonymous as the drops of rain spattering in an unsteady staccato against the leaded glass panes, so intent on their own destinations that they hadn’t spare enough mind to perceive the person next to them, and certainly not the slight, grubby girl scurrying through places they had no notion to think she’d even be. It still surprised Kitty, the things people didn’t see.
     Her descent lead through doors marked “Restricted Access” and “Authorized Personnel Only”, down straight ladders affixed to walls and masked by columns, and twisting staircases hidden in the gaps between the interior and the exterior of Kilford Station’s heavy cut stone face, until she slipped in with the ‘Habitants on their ways in their worlds. As one of the many, Kitty left Kilford and lost herself in the shadow-clothed back-alleys of respectability. It was time to become someone else for a while.