He must have seen how raw her hands had become, working as she did at the sink each day, and one morning, when the guards were still milling about in the yard, he pressed his tin of salve into her hand. It was small enough for her to slip inside her shoe, and she was able to rub a little of it into her hands at lunch, and the relief was immediate and lasting.

The salve helped with Stella’s burns, too, and though Nina was fairly certain it was a simple concoction of beeswax and rosemary-scented oil, with no special healing properties or analgesic ingredients, it soothed her hands, and it comforted her soul, and it let her believe, if only fleetingly, that her tomorrow might be better than her yesterday.

THE SALVE LASTED a month. When it ran out, the pain in Nina’s hands was so unbearable that she was driven, within days, to the unthinkable. Thievery.

The cooks kept an empty can on the floor by the range, and when they had drippings that were too burned or rancid to use again, they poured them into the can and let the fat solidify. When it was full they sent it over to the foundry, where it was used, Stella told her, for greasing machinery.

The empty salve tin held so little, barely an ounce. It would make no difference to anyone. It was only an ounce of inedible fat.

She was able to scoop out what she needed without anyone noticing, but then, before she could put the tin back in her shoe, one of the guards walked past, and she must have noticed the glint of metal in Nina’s hand. Perhaps she thought that Nina was trying to steal a knife.

The woman snatched the tin from Nina. Opened it and frowned at the contents. And then she dropped it in her pocket and hurried off, and Nina counted herself lucky that her punishment had amounted to nothing more than the loss of her little tin.

Her reprieve lasted only minutes.

“Sie will dich in ihrem oben Zimmer sehen,” the woman said when she returned, and Nina knew, even before she’d finished deciphering the words, that she was being taken to see Oberaufseherin Klap.

Her stomach heaving at the prospect of the punishment to come, Nina followed the guard upstairs and along a darkened corridor to the oberaufseherin’s sitting room.

Klap was dozing in an easy chair, her right leg propped up on a footstool, and when they came to stand at the open door she startled, her mouth thinning, her eyes glassy with pain. Likely she’d been self-medicating with whatever liquor was provided to the guards.