When Mina knocked on the door of the basement workroom, there was no answer, so she went into the empty room to wait.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to wait for long. The hair on her arms prickled with warning, and Mina’s breathing became shallow in the cluttered, dimly lit room, its low ceiling pressing down on her. Her eyes swept over the shelves of vials and jars, the stained wooden table, the books piled everywhere, all reminding her of another workroom, and she understood why she felt so ill at ease here.
She went to the table, leaning against it for support as she fought to control her erratic breathing. She couldn’t let the surgeon find her like this, a scared girl with no power. She wasn’t that girl anymore, and this was not her father’s laboratory. The wooden table underneath her trembling hands was made from a lighter wood than the other table. She opened one of the surgeon’s journals and found notes made in her handwriting, messy and slanted, not like her father’s neat, spiky hand—
Mina frowned, blinking at the journals, trying to understand why, for a moment, she had seen her father’s handwriting. Was it simply a trick her mind was playing on her? But no, she saw it again out of the corner of her eye, a piece of loose parchment sticking out from between the journal’s pages. And there, visible on that parchment were two words written in a hand that she could never forget: Well done.
She thought she had ripped the paper in her haste to pull it out of the journal, but it was already torn, a simple half sheet with those two words written on them and nothing more. There was no signature, but Mina knew from the cold sweat on the back of her neck that it had to be from Gregory.
No longer caring how the surgeon would find her, Mina tore through the rest of the papers, looking for some explanation for the note.
I’m going mad, she thought as she flipped through more journals. The room had affected her, stirring up painful memories, and now she was looking for something that wasn’t there.
And then she saw another corner of loose parchment, stuffed under a pile of books, and she knew she wasn’t imagining anything. Mina pulled out the parchment—two sheets of it—and looked down at a half-finished letter in the surgeon’s hand.
She read through it, her fingers clutching the sides of the paper tightly enough to wrinkle them.
The door to the workroom opened, but Mina didn’t move.
“My lady!” the surgeon said in surprise. “Did you need—”
Mina put the letter down and turned to face the surgeon, her earlier, shapeless distress sharpened into a fine point. “When did you first meet the magician Gregory?” she asked calmly.
To the surgeon’s credit, she didn’t flinch or look away. One hand perched on her hip in a show of confidence. “Before I came to Whitespring. He’s the one who encouraged me to apply for this position.”
“He asked you to spy on Lynet?” Her voice was still calm, but her hands were shaking.
The surgeon’s eyes flickered to the letter in Mina’s hands, knowing as well as Mina did that the letter contained, in her own hand, information about Nicholas’s plans to give Lynet the South, with special attention to Lynet’s reaction to this news, her fears and doubts. She took a long breath before answering. “He wanted to know more about her. Nothing … nothing harmful, just her personality, her reactions to … to…”
“To knowing how she was created?”
And now shame forced the surgeon to look away. “I would have told her anyway,” she muttered. “She had a right to know.”
“And what did my father promise you in return for this information?”
“Passage south and a place at the university,” she answered, voice low.
Mina nodded, putting the letter down on the table behind her. She pitied the young woman, in a way. She had been just what her father needed—a stranger, someone with no loyalty to Lynet, who wanted something badly enough to trade seemingly harmless information for it. Mina might have done the same, in her position.
And now she was here looking for a spy of her own, hoping Nadia could lead her to Lynet.
“Where is Lynet?” Mina asked softly.
Nadia shook her head listlessly, still cowed by her admission, and now that her air of defiance had fallen away, Mina noticed how young she was, how uncertain of herself. She couldn’t have been much older than Lynet. “I don’t know,” Nadia said. “I haven’t seen Lynet since the king’s accident.”
Mina took a step closer to her, searching her face for signs that she was lying, but there was only defeat. “She hasn’t come to see you?”
Nadia frowned now, and Mina could see the pieces coming together in her mind. “Is Lynet missing?”
Her confusion seemed genuine enough, and Mina sighed, turning away in disappointment.
“Did something happen?” she pressed, a note of worry in her voice.
Mina laughed dryly. “Do you think I’ll tell you, just for you to send another report to my father?” She picked up the letter, crumpling it in her hand. “Did you ever stop to wonder why he would want this information from you, when he could obtain it himself?”
Nadia shrugged. “He said the king didn’t like him, that it was difficult for him to get to know this girl he thought of as his granddaughter. But is Lynet—”
“I’m sure that’s what he said. But did you believe him?” Mina said, her voice growing louder. “You must be a clever girl, to be a surgeon at your age. Didn’t you wonder why he couldn’t just ask me about her? Or why he wanted to be far away while you were here collecting this information? Didn’t you find any of this slightly suspicious?”
“Of course I did!” Nadia snapped. She seemed surprised by her own outburst, and she looked down at her feet as she continued. “But … but it didn’t matter to me then. I didn’t know her then. I didn’t…”
“You didn’t care. You just wanted your reward. Well, let me tell you the cost of that reward. My father doesn’t think of Lynet as a granddaughter, or even as a person. He only thinks of her as his. He has no regard for human life. Why should he, when he can create it so cheaply? And apparently you don’t either, since you were willing to use her for your own gain, to sacrifice her safety just to get what you wanted.” She was tearing the letter up now, ripping it apart as each word that she directed at Nadia turned inward and pierced her, instead.