Whatever magic this earthwender possesses is inaccessible to her now. Part of me thinks I might understand the frustration of knowing what you’re capable of and never being able to embrace it. But I recognize the lie for what it is.

I chose to restrain myself at the Company for the chance at something more. These shamanborn had no such choice. I haven’t known their suffering. I haven’t shared their loss.

I nod at her bruising face. “I’m fine. You should take care of your own injuries first.”

She ignores me, her hands brisk and efficient as they move from my arms to my torso and then my legs. I immediately stiffen, and she makes a small knowing sound.

“I’ll need you to lower your pants,” she says.

I’m not used to having anyone else tend to my injuries, and I don’t know where to look as I untie the laces of my pants and push them down to my knees. I grimace at the sight of my thighs. The bruises are nearly black, haloed by billowing red and purple discoloration.

She applies a thin paste I recognize as one meant to accelerate healing. I study the lines that form between her eyebrows and wonder at her age. She looks young. Maybe fourteen? Does she have family in the prison? Parents?

“Did that oaf with the eyebrow tattoos do that to you?” I ask as she places her weight on her left leg and winces. “I should have broken his arms altogether.”

“You’re the one who injured his hands?” A smile steals over the corners of her mouth.

“I’m sorry you had to tend him.”

She shrugs, and the smile fades into practiced indifference again. She wraps my thighs in clean bandages so the paste doesn’t stain my pants and then reaches inside her basket again. “Are you in pain at all?”

“No.” I tug my pants back up over my drawers. I have a high pain tolerance. With daily doses from both the Company and Kendara, my relationship with pain is long and complicated.

She pauses, as if to ensure I won’t change my mind, and then puts away the vial of pain reliever she’d withdrawn from her basket. From the courtyard come the sounds of drakes. There aren’t many, maybe two. Too few to be an arriving prisoner. I can only assume the shaman who hurt Saengo continues to elude capture. He cannot be allowed to escape.

I add hunting him down to my list, even though it all feels so impossible. And yet, the fact that Saengo is alive is proof enough that I need to reconsider what impossible means.

That’s something else I’ll have to deal with in the near future—what I did to her.

But first I have to make sure I have a future at all.