Plague in the Mirror by Deborah Noyes

declares, waving a hand, “than dead goats. And if we draw attention, it will only bring the
bechini.”
She waves toward the bedroom. “They’ll rob my master’s heirs and rape me, given the chance.” She looks up, her eyes vacant a moment, sensing May’s question. Cristofana always reels a question from the silence long before May knows to ask it. “The
bechini
are criminals, men condemned to man the oars of galley ships. When they offered to help bury the dead, they were set free. And now they roam like the ravenous wolves that circle the city walls at night, smelling death. Like fools, we threw the gates wide open. There. That is the trunk I want.”
    Cristofana herds the needy kittens away with her foot, holding another key up to the scant light penetrating heavy drapes. The lock makes a satisfying
clunk.
She begins to root through the trunk, twining herself in a beautifully crafted shawl. “They say women are too free now, whores, every one.” She holds up her arm to admire the embroidery. “That society no more knows right from wrong or evil from otherwise. They let a woman wear her hair flowing and her bodice cinched, and they don’t blink when she lifts her skirts to cross the mud. Look at you.” She laughs. “Your legs. Could they see you, this would have shocked and horrified. Today not so much. The wealthy hire in musicians . . . they called me in once to sing . . . they let a woman sing now. When the widows are sick — like the mother of my mistress when her children forsook her — they let their male servants tend to them and touch them, because they have no one else.”
    “You’re the one who should think about what you’re touching,” May says. “For example . . .
that
?” She points at the shawl and the pile of clothing belonging to the dead woman. “It’s contagious, you know, this sickness, horribly. Do you know what
contagious
means?”
    “Afraid?” Cristofana lets one of the kittens sidle up her embroidered arm, where it purrs into her neck. “Do you not think it fate? Our hour of dying?”
    The kitten’s fur is dull, a greasy gray over a thin frame, but it’s too young not to hope. Its eyes brim with it.
    Cristofana offers a velvet cape from the next trunk, her eyes expectant. “You won’t play? Perhaps you see such fine things every day where you come from?”
    “Thank you, no.” May sighs, sick with dread and exasperated. She isn’t about to get into the details of pandemic and public health when Cristofana and her whole generation haven’t even mastered basic hygiene. Irrationally, May almost smiles, imagining her double squaring off against Ms. Bestle in health class.
    Cristofana drapes the cape over her arm and sprays herself with perfume from an ornate bottle. It’s Venetian glass, or at least looks like one of the bottles May almost bought for her mom in the market. The smell seems to inspire Cristofana. All of a sudden she’s twirling in her borrowed garments, in silk and velvet and feathers, humming madly under her breath.
    One of the kittens teeters on Cristofana’s shoulder, its paws kneading at the shawl, and May imagines herself moving in such layers, of the artist considering her in them, which is kind of ridiculous, really. She can’t remember the last time she wore anything but jeans or shorts or a skirt and T. What would a man like that, trained to see beauty, make of her typical wardrobe and her long, wild dirty-blond hair tied back in a scrunchie? Would he even give her a second look? She almost wishes she could get the blue gown back, the one she stole from a clothesline and left abandoned in the alley by the portal.
    He already has,
May thinks — again with that secret smile.
More than one.
    The would-be center of attention is not amused. “It can’t harm you,” Cristofana complains, examining the green velvet cape and flinging it away like a striptease artist. She sets down the kitten before adjusting her remaining layers, leaving her own