Moonlight and Ashes by Sophie Masson

street thief. Two of them grabbed me, while the third policeman picked up the parcel and took a statement from my stepsisters.
    As I was dragged away, I could feel the girls’ eyes on me. Now they and their mother had exactly what they’d always wanted – to be rid of me – and I was the fool who’d made the noose for her own neck. Odette was right, my father would certainly disown me when he heard what I was alleged to have done. The last shred of his protection would be gone.
    I tried to tell myself that things could have been worse; that they could know the actual truth, that I could have been dragged off not by the police but by the Mancers – that it was better to be thought of as a thief than a witch. But it was cold comfort because I knew that my desperatestory had only bought me a little time. I’d have to answer the policeman’s questions, and even if I made things up – which I had to – sooner or later they would come to realise I was lying. And then what was to happen to me?

The police station was crowded and noisy, and stank of old cabbage soup and old socks. My captors handed me over to a sergeant who wrote down my name – or at least the name my stepsisters had given, Ashes – which I did not challenge, not wanting to attract any more attention to myself, and the charge: stealing. Then I was marched down to the women’s holding cell, which was full of women of every age. Most seemed unfussed at being there: a big group played cards, one or two paced around, a couple of inmates huddled in corners, their heads in their hands, while the rest chatted or dozed.
    I was nervous at first. Many of these women looked pretty tough – the sort whose eye you really wouldn’t want to catch – but I soon realised that no-one was interested in me. They all had their own problems and many seemed to know each other. As I sat quietly listening to their conversations, I learned that most of them were pickpockets, card sharps or brawlers who had been picked up duringthe night-fair. Even though this was clearly only the minor league of the underworld, it felt strange to have suddenly been thrust into the company of those who thought nothing of the law. Servant I might have been, disregarded and oppressed, but though the work was backbreaking, it was still respectable. Now I had fallen far beyond even the humblest servant. I was a common thief, like so many of the others here, and I could never claw my way back up, no matter what happened. My throat thickened with the bitterness of it and I could feel foolish tears starting. But I blinked them fiercely away and tried to concentrate on working out what I must say when it came time for my interview before the magistrate.
    But it was hard for I was quite out of ideas and after a time I gave up, listening instead to the others’ conversation, pricking up my ears when I heard mention of the Prince. But it was just gossip about the ‘mysterious girl’, nothing more illuminating than what the servants had been saying.
    By and by dinner came – tin bowls filled with thin, greasy cabbage soup and hunks of dry, dusty black bread. It looked disgusting but I was hungry. I was just starting on the bread, having gobbled down the soup, when suddenly there was a yell and one of the card players, a big woman with a face like a cracked old boot, launched herself at a figure in the corner, punching and kicking her. Someone told me that she had tried to sneak the big woman’s bread when she wasn’t looking. The whole cell was in uproar, enjoying the fight.
    I don’t know why I did it – everything should have warned me not to. And the big woman was in the right,after all. But the sound of that baying crowd – and the sight of that woman’s huge fists and feet smashing into the helpless thief, who was about half her size, and who had rolled into a ball to try to escape the blows – aroused a