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As you pass the stairs, you get your hood up, over your head but not quite near your eyes, for fear of the cowl entering into the envelope of the Hide-Eyes spell. Only when the time comes to actually cast will you pull it down all the way, as at that point the glamor will break anyway. Entering back into the common room, you take some solace in that your approach is screened from much of the room … though some of custom does notice you. Though it simply could not be helped, your stomach starts to sink once again. Plainly, they are taking note of your change of outfit, but that too could not be helped. With the possibility of a threat being in such close quarters, there was no way that you couldn’t arm yourself – and really, the only way to hide the wand comfortably was with the cloak, as garish as it might be. Anyway, if you are apparently a prostitute, then some more colorful dress is probably expected, right?
While you can understand how someone would get the idea that an unchaperoned, unwed woman looking to rent a room would be … looking for work, it still galls you that the witless whoremonger just went and assumed that you were for sale with barely even a look. You didn’t even have a chance to say anything! Do you really look that much like a prostitute that someone would just jump to a conclusion like that? Sure, you suppose you look odd enough, considering your height, but women in that line of work are usually a bit poxy and homely as well, aren’t they? Oh, Maker’s Mercy – does he think you look homely? Do you look homely? You’ve always thought that you might be a bit plain, but … you don’t really have much to go on as a reference, as the last eight years you have been wearing a mask amongst a population of mostly masked people, some with disfiguring conditions. Complicating things further is that barely any of those are women. You see mothers and daughters and wives out on the streets walking back and forth to the burying grounds – and on very rare occasions, one has cause to speak to you, like the woman that mistook you for an Animal Control Leper – but that … you don’t exactly look like them. Different, sure. Paler, certainly. But worse? You didn’t really think so, not by much. Then again, you have been getting a lot of odd looks when you have been going around without a mask. There was that lingering customer at the Dry Goods that kept looking at you, and there was the way that Bertrada was staring at you too during your fittings. All of them would know more about such things than you would.
You push these thoughts to the side for now – though as you do, it occurs to you that your plans to present yourself as a the daughter of a wealthy Subject if you look so uncanny. You approach the counter, once again feeling the eyes of the room behind you running up and down your back as your hair stands on end.
“Pray excuse me, but I was hoping that I could get some water for the washbasin.”
