Lynet nearly said, “I know,” before stopping herself.
“Here, give me your hand.” Nadia started applying the greenish ointment to Lynet’s wounded palm. Lynet pretended to fiddle with the silver bracelet around her wrist, but she also watched from beneath her eyelashes as Nadia rubbed ointment on her skin with the same delicacy as when she turned the pages of her books.
“What is that?” Lynet said, wrinkling her nose at the ointment.
“Comfrey.”
“It smells terrible.”
Nadia laughed, a husky exhalation that seemed to take her by surprise. Lynet didn’t think she’d ever heard Nadia laugh before.
Nadia replaced the ointment on its shelf, and then paused, her back to Lynet. “May I freely ask you something?” she said.
Lynet shrugged. “I suppose.”
Nadia came to stand at the other side of the table, opposite Lynet, and looked her directly in the eye. “Why have you been following me?”
Lynet gaped at her. She was ready to lie and deny it, but she knew her stunned face must have already given her away. What should she do? What would Mina do in her position? The answer, of course, was that Mina would never be in this position in the first place.
When Lynet opened her mouth, the truth slipped out: “Because you were wearing trousers.”
There was a confused pause, and then another burst of laughter escaped from Nadia, and she covered her mouth with her hand. Lynet started laughing too, and she felt the same thrill as when she was climbing, her heart fluttering at the unpredictability of each step she took.
“Is that really why?” Nadia said, shaking her head in amazement.
“That’s how it started, but—wait, how long have you known?”
Nadia looked up at the ceiling as she tried to remember. “I think … the day I first noticed you, I was pulling a tooth.…”
“So you’ve known all along.” Lynet groaned. She covered her face with her hands before the smell of the comfrey made her drop them again. Still, she wasn’t ready to look Nadia in the eye again, so she stared down at the floor and asked, “You … you weren’t angry about it, were you?”
She peeked up in time to see Nadia lean forward, her braid falling over her shoulder as she rested her forearms on the table. “Not … angry, exactly. But once I found out you were the princess, I was so worried that I would slip up in some way while you were watching, and then you’d tell your father and I’d be dismissed.” She shrugged, wearing a rueful smile. “But I couldn’t exactly ask you to stop, could I?”
Lynet frowned, considering the truth of this. If Nadia had come to her and asked her to stop, would she have been angry, or asked her father to throw the surgeon out of the castle? Of course Lynet wouldn’t have, but Nadia had no way of knowing that.
“Even if you’re not angry with me, I’m still sorry,” Lynet said, not just to appease her, but because she meant it. Lynet rested her arms on the table surface across from her, mimicking her pose. “It’s an old habit of mine since childhood, following people, seeing how they spend their days.”
“That’s an odd habit, isn’t it?”
Lynet shrugged. “When I was little, I would see other children at court running around and playing, and I wanted to join them, but my father—I wasn’t allowed to play with them, in case I got hurt.” She stared down at the table. Lynet could feel the words spilling out of her, but she made no effort to stop them. This workroom seemed a world apart from Whitespring, and so any secrets she told here would be buried under snow and earth.
“And then they never stayed for long, anyway,” she continued. “People never stay for long at Whitespring. So I started to follow them around, watching from a distance, hiding so no one would see me. It was the only game I had, and this way I didn’t have to worry about growing too attached to any of the other children my age before they left. And then I just … never stopped. I started following other people too, but all they do is sit around and gossip and complain about each other, so it’s not very exciting, not like you—” She stopped herself too late and her head snapped up, her face growing warm, but Nadia didn’t react to her unintended confession. She just kept watching, waiting for Lynet to finish.
“I … I don’t think I ever considered how invasive it must be to feel like you’re being spied on. I’m truly sorry.” She forced herself not to look away, hoping that Nadia would reward her with a smile, but instead, Nadia’s face seemed to fall, a dark look in her eyes before they darted away.
After a short but uncomfortable silence, Nadia said, “I wouldn’t have asked you to stop, anyway. I became a little—” She broke off and looked down at the table.
Lynet leaned forward. “What?”
Nadia shook her head, but then her lips curled in a slow smile and she answered, “I was going to say ‘flattered.’ I’ve been traveling through the North for almost a year, trying to help people when I can … and during that year, so many people have dismissed me or laughed at me for wanting to practice medicine.” Her voice was light, but she started tracing the lines and whorls on the table, her nails scraping against the wood. “They think girls are too softhearted to witness any suffering, that I’ll be scared off. They think I’m just playing at being a surgeon. But you … no matter what I was doing, whether I was letting blood or pulling a tooth or even amputating a foot this morning…” Her hands stopped moving and she looked across the table at Lynet. There was something heavy, almost expectant, in the force of her gaze that made Lynet lean back again, taking her arms off the table. “You never turned away,” she finished. “And so I always felt like a true surgeon in your eyes.”
Lynet retraced all the steps she had taken following Nadia, now imagining them from the other girl’s point of view. All this time, Lynet had been trying to understand her from a distance, while Nadia had been purposefully showing Lynet exactly who she was.
She offered Nadia a shy smile, never breaking her gaze. “I’m glad I fell out of that tree,” she said quietly.
Nadia laughed again, more freely this time, and Lynet laughed too, dispelling the serious air that had come over them.
Lynet liked to see Nadia smile, to hear her laugh. When Nadia smiled, her whole face softened, like clouds giving way to the sun. But Lynet also liked the stoic, focused surgeon that she had watched from windows—so different from this smiling girl, but still such an essential part of her. And the fact that the two were the same, that the girl and the surgeon could exist freely in the same person, was to Lynet the very meaning of possibility—of freedom.