I could sell it all, she thought, rolling the smooth glass back and forth in her palm. This alone could get me enough Rhoda to fund a trip up north. She squeezed the vials, the cork stoppers digging into her skin. She could slip out. There were no bars on the window. Strangling the Hawk in her sleep had lost its appeal, but she could still try to escape. All she needed lay in wait in this room: the Rail in her hand, and her coin and dagger. Both in the blue bag locked in the closet.

Anji bent over the chair’s armrest and dug at the wood with her filthy nails. Along the grain at the edge she could make out a sliver the length of her middle finger, long and sharp and surprisingly stout. Tongue between her teeth, she peeled off the wooden shard, then rose from the chair and crossed the room to the closet and knelt down. She jammed the makeshift lockpick into the keyhole and set to work.

She had no idea what she was doing.

Prisoners had mounted daring escapes in the stories she’d read as a girl using this method, though they’d had metal tools and she had only a bit of wood. She tried to imagine the inside of the lock, where the little stick was, but she didn’t know if she was any closer to getting the door unlocked than she was to ruining the mechanism altogether. She cursed, her hands sweating, and rattled the doorknob in frustration.

The slap of leather on wood reverberated through the room. Anji twisted as the Hawk murmured and shifted on the bed. The journal the woman had been keeping had fallen onto the floorboards. Anji dropped her makeshift lockpick and crept to the little book, hazarding a glance at Kit. Still asleep. Anji settled herself to the floor, legs crossed, and opened to a random page.

Kit’s writing was so small and densely packed Anji could barely make any of it out in the low light. She hunched over, faced the pages toward the window, straining her eyes to see the minute words. She flipped through a few more pages to find more of the same tight scrawl covering every bit of paper.

A hand grabbed her wrist.

“What are you doing?”

Anji yelped and dropped the book. She wrenched away, but Kit’s grip loosed in an instant. The woman shot up from the bed, swaying a little on her feet. . She blinked and took the room in. “Where—?” she said, rubbing at her eyes. Her knees buckled as she stepped toward the window and Anji sprang to her feet, one hand held out.