“Calm yourself,” Brum snapped. Nina flinched and pressed her hand over her mouth, but she felt like laughing. Jarl Brum, the great protector. But he only liked his women weak and wailing when it was convenient for him. The prison sector had been breached before and Jarl Brum had been made a fool. He didn’t intend to let that happen again.

“You can’t leave us defenseless,” Hanne said. “Give me a gun.”

Brum hesitated. “Hanne—”

“You can abide by propriety or put a weapon in my hand and let me defend myself.”

“Do you even know how to use a revolver?”

With a sure hand, Hanne spun the barrel to make sure it was loaded. “You taught me well.”

“Years ago.”

“I didn’t forget.”

Brum’s expression was troubled, but all he said was, “Be careful.” He and his men vanished through the gate.

Two guards remained on the battlements, but they had their attention turned outward, rifles raised and pointed at whoever might seek to breach the ringwall.

“Go,” said Hanne. “But be quick.”

Nina hurried across the courtyard past the kennels and the wolves, who stared at her silently despite the commotion. She had never regretted her heavy skirts more. Maybe that’s why Fjerdans like to keep their women swimming in wool, she considered, slipping inside the building Hanne had marked on her map of the sector. So they can’t get away too fast.

She tried to keep Hanne’s map in her head as she sped down a long corridor. She glimpsed a huge dining room on the right, beneath a pyramid-shaped skylight. There were long mess hall tables and an immense tapestry hung on the back wall, woven in blue, red, and purple. Her footsteps faltered as her mind caught up to what she’d seen. That tapestry that covered nearly the entirety of the wall—it was made out of scraps of kefta. Blue for Etherealki, a smattering of purple for Materialki, and row after row of red for Corporalki, her order. The Order of the Living and the Dead. They were trophies taken from fallen Grisha. Nina felt sick. She wanted to set the damn thing on fire. Instead she pushed her anger aside and made her feet move. Vengeance would come, retribution for Brum and his minions. But not until she saw this mission through.

Up the stairs—the newel posts capped by snarling wolves—then down another gloomy hallway. She counted the doors: third on the left. This should be Jarl Brum’s office. She grasped the handle of the door and jammed in the key she’d taken from Brum’s key ring that morning.

Nina hurried inside. It was an elegant room, though windowless. The mantel was crowded with medals, awards, and souvenirs that made Nina’s heart hurt—spent bullet cartridges, what might have been a child’s jawbone, a dagger with a woman’s name engraved on the handle in Ravkan: Sofiya Baranova.