“Leoni,” said Adrik, “we have a mission. We can’t compromise it.”
“Both of you be quiet,” Leoni said. “I won’t be pulled this way or that because you say so.” She closed her eyes, turned her face to the winter sun. After a long while, she said, “I told you I almost died as a child, but I never told you it was from drinking poisoned well water. The zowa healer who helped me perished in order to save my life. She died pulling the poison from my body.” Leoni opened her eyes, a sad smile on her lips. “Like I told you, poisons are tricky work. So now I wear two jewels.” She touched her hands to the golden stones woven into the twists of her hair on the left. “Topaz for strength, for my mother who gave me life and raised me to be a fighter.” She turned her head slightly and light caught on the three purple gems in her twists on the right. “Amethyst for Aditi Hilli, the Fabrikator who returned my life to me when I was careless and might have lost it.”
“Hilli?” said Adrik. “You were related?”
“No. I took her family name, and I swore I would honor her sacrifice, that I would make something of the life she gave to me.” She bobbed her chin toward the factory. “If we’re not here for the girls on that ward, then what are we doing here?”
Adrik sighed. “You do know this is my command. We don’t put things to a vote.”
Leoni smiled, that brilliant, thousand-sunrise smile. Adrik sucked in a breath as if he’d taken a blow to the gut. “I know,” she said. “But I also know you fought beside Alina Starkov. You got your arm torn off by a shadow demon and kept fighting. You didn’t come to this country to play it safe, Adrik.”
“Leoni,” Nina said. “Have you ever had Kerch waffles?”
Leoni’s brows rose. “I have not.”
“Well, I’m going to make you a stack so tall you have to climb over it.”
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I can’t. Not even a little bit. But I’m very good at convincing people to cook for me.”
Adrik yanked his pinned sleeve into place. “The two of you are impossible. And guilty of insubordination.”
Leoni only smiled wider. “We’re splendid, and you know it.”
“Fine,” Adrik huffed. “Since you’re both so determined to compromise our mission, just how are we going to transport a bunch of infants and pregnant women out of this tragedy of a town and get them to a port in the middle of the night?”
Nina looked up at the mountain, at the factory road lolling like a long, greedy tongue, at the guardhouse at its base—the first line of security for the soldiers working above. She remembered the lessons she’d learned in Ketterdam, when she’d run not with soldiers bound by honor but with liars, thugs, and thieves. Always hit where the mark isn’t looking.
“Easy,” she said. “We do it in the middle of the day. And we make sure they see us coming.”
Nina wasn’t at all sure that Hanne would show up to their next lesson—either because the Wellmother might forbid it or because she didn’t want to speak to Nina again. But she decided to go to the classroom anyway.
On the way, she stopped by the kitchens for fresh scraps and went to the woods to set out another plate for Trassel. Nina took a moment to gather her thoughts, grateful for the quiet of the trees, breathing in the scent of sap, the cold air still fresh with fallen snow. She could admit her foray into the factory had been a catastrophe, but that didn’t change what was happening on the mountain or the opportunity she’d been given. She felt like she was at the start of something bigger than the horrors on that hilltop, that there was more she was meant to do.
“But what?” she murmured.
“Enke Jandersdat?”
Nina nearly leapt into the nearest branch. A young woman was standing at the edge of the trees, hands tugging nervously at the skirts of her pale blue pinafore. It took Nina a long moment to realize she’d seen the novitiate before—dressed as a Fjerdan soldier on the banks of the river. Had she heard Nina speak Ravkan?
“Yes?” Nina said.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“A bit of excitement is good for me,” Nina said, as if she hadn’t recently jumped out of a window and fled down a mountain for her life. The girl had blond hair and skin the color of a new peach. She didn’t seem wary at all, just nervous.
“I wanted to thank you and the Zemeni traders for not saying anything about … what you saw by the river. Even after what happened to Grette.”
Grette … She must mean the girl who had died from exposure to the water.
“It was enough of a tragedy,” Nina said.
The girl shivered, as if death had come too close. “Her mother came to collect her body. It was terrible. But if her family knew how she got those injuries? The shame—”
“I understand,” said Nina, then ventured, “Will you ride out again?”
“Of course not,” said the girl earnestly, almost pleadingly. “Never again.”
Nina believed her.
“Tell me,” Nina said, “was it Hanne’s idea to steal the uniforms?” Hanne was essential to Nina’s plan. The more she understood her, the better. And she could admit she was curious too.
The girl worried her lower lip. “I … She …”
“I won’t tell the Wellmother. If I spoke up now, she would wonder why I’d held my tongue for so long. It would do no one any good.”
The thought seemed to put the girl at ease. “Hanne … Hanne takes risks she shouldn’t.” A small smile tugged at her lips. “But it can be hard not to want to follow.”
“Do you ride out with her often?”
“Only when she lets us.”
“A great deal to chance for a bit of freedom.”
“It’s not just that,” said the girl. “Hanne … Sometimes people send to the convent for help, and the Wellmother will not grant them aid—for good and proper reasons, of course.”
“Of course. What kind of people?”
“Families who can’t afford an extra pair of hands when someone falls sick.” The girl’s cheeks flushed. “Unmarried women who have … gotten themselves into trouble.”
“And Hanne goes to them?” Nina asked, surprised. That wild, wiry girl with a rifle on her back and a dagger at her hip? It was hard to imagine.
“Oh yes,” said the girl. “She has a gift for it. She’s nursed more than one hopeless case back from the brink and even helped deliver babies—one that got all turned around in her mother’s belly.”
She’s a Healer, Nina realized. She’s using her power and she doesn’t even know it. She remembered Hanne saying of the other novitiates, It’s a game to them. A childish bit of dress-up, a chance to be daring. Nina had thought she understood, but she hadn’t really.
“If you’d told on us,” the girl said, “Hanne would have had to stop. The Wellmother—”
“I won’t say a word,” said Nina. “I don’t believe Djel could frown upon such kindness.”
“No,” said the girl thoughtfully. “I don’t either.”
“I’m sorry about your friend Grette.”
“Me too.” The girl plucked a cluster of pine needles from a branch. “Sometimes … I think G?fvalle doesn’t want us here.”
“The convent?”