I start to shake my head. During the first couple of months, I’d lived in terror of my mother killing herself in order to spare me the torture of continuing to obey the Premier. She had become so listless, so damaged by the sight of my suffering. I’d fallen to my knees during our second visit, sobbing like I was still a little girl, and begged her to stay alive. Told her that if she died, I would too. I forced her to promise me to live. So she had lived on, month after month.

Sometimes I wonder whether I’ve done a terrible thing to her, making her stay alive.

I nod at her hands. “Your wounds have healed faster than I’d thought they would.”

She nods and looks down, turning her now-scarred fingers this way and that. “The headman for the prison team I worked for took me off my shift early, after the Premier sent word halfway through the month that you’d been doing well.” Her words turn careful as her eyes dart back to me. “I spent two weeks in the hospital there, doing nothing but listening to stories coming back from prisoners of war along the outer Karensan states.”

I am careful not to react to my mother’s words, careful to keep my mind calm so that even at this distance from the palace, I don’t potentially alert Constantine to what I’m thinking. But my heart skips a beat.

This is the other reason my mother has decided to keep living. This is something that Constantine didn’t anticipate. Few others in Cardinia move around as much as my mother, from prison district to mayor’s estate in the span of a month. With each new place she’s brought to, she listens. She searches for information that might be useful to me.

She is spying.

“I’m grateful you had those stories to listen to while you healed,” I answer her, my fingers moving casually.

“They were nothing but rumors.” My mother shrugs. “Just a few skirmishes and protests from citizens in Tanapeg. A few of the ones arrested were sent to the prison district I worked in. The mayor has put them to work on her estate.”

Just a few skirmishes and protests. It is a careful phrasing. As she says it, she turns to give me a pointed, sidelong look, and I know immediately what my mother is really trying to tell me.

The mayor has put them to work on her estate. And I remember what the mayor said to me when I first arrived. She’s stronger than she should be after such a long captivity. Maybe we’re treating our prisoners right, after all.

Did my mother heal quickly because of the mayor’s help? And if so … why would the mayor help her? The thought is so wild that I’m afraid to follow it. What else is the mayor helping?

“Oh?” I answer calmly, waiting for more. “I didn’t think they had much to protest, now that they’re under the Federation’s fold.”