“Every horse should have a name.”

“Call her what you like,” said the Hawk. She snatched up a fist-sized rock and began hammering a stake into the tent’s corner flap.

Anji studied the mare’s brown coat, noting the flattened hairs where the Hawk had cinched the saddle too tight. Her overgrown mane shone inky black where it wasn’t matted with road dust. She whickered and bobbed her head, one eye rolling toward the level plains opposite the mountains.

Kaia and Libby, Anji’s only friends in the laundry, loved a good scandal. They’d all hardly been introduced before the pair had begun gossiping about the girl Anji had replaced. Raven-haired and sulky, the girl had a habit of staring out of windows at the city beyond the castle walls, at the streets the servants were forbidden to walk. A diligent but quiet worker, she’d kept to herself, hardly interested in making friends or causing a fuss. One night, however, she’d slipped into the laundresses’ sleeping quarters well after Matron had ordered them all to douse their lamps. She’d thought, apparently, that she’d gotten away with being out past curfew, but Matron had been awake and waiting for her. The girl had been locked in the castle dungeons for a week, then demoted to cleaning garderobes and toilets. They later found out, through the endless chain of castle gossip, that the girl had been out with a guard she’d met, carousing in upper Happerdam.

The escapade had caused quite the stir at first, but apart from Kaia and Libby, the other laundresses had developed a habit of falling silent whenever the subject had come up. Before long, even Kaia and Libby had let the gossip die. But Anji had spent many restless nights thinking about the girl. All she’d wanted was a night to herself, away from the castle’s confines. The servants were an embarrassment, something to be hidden away from local gentry and visiting nobles, but the girl had simply not wanted to be a thing ill-used and ill-kept, even for one night. She’d been a trapped, tamed thing, at the behest of those who thought her less than deserving of freedom.

“Molli,” she said, patting at the mare’s back. “How about Molli? You like that one, girl?”

Molli only inched forward to get at a fresh bundle of yellow grass.

“Poor girl,” Anji said, “stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a mean old woman.”

The Hawk snorted at her back, but said nothing.