Orphaned at age ten when her mother died from consumption, Catherine “Cat” Kirkham has spent most of her life scrabbling to keep herself and her younger sister off the streets. From early on, that meant selling her body, but she was lucky enough to land at The Gun brothel not long after it fell into the hands of Rosie Wilkes. There she could at least guarantee a roof over her and her sister Queenie’s heads and protection from the worst of her Johns’ abuse. But Cat knows better than most that nothing comes for free, and if she had fantastical notions of keeping Queenie from “the world’s oldest profession,” those withered long ago.