Then one time, a sorcerer came to the inn with a hollow bone needle and a bleeding tube. He took so much blood that she toppled over and crashed onto the floor, knocking the needle from her vein, soaking the rushes with crimson.

She woke in the kitchen, the cook standing over her. “Poor little thing. That lump on your forehead is something else. Here, drink this.” He tipped up her head and set a mug of warm mare’s milk to her lips, which she lapped up obediently.

“Orlín is a greedy goat,” the cook said. “Little girls your age ought to grow faster than a summer sequoia, but not you. You’re tiny as a sprout, and you’re going to stay that way if he keeps taking your lifeblood. Take this.” He shoved a heel of bread into her hand. “Eat every bit of it, hear?”

“Hear,” she whispered, and forced the bread into her mouth, even though the lump on her forehead throbbed so hard it was making her tummy squishy.

During the next few months, the cook kept her busy in the kitchen or the smokehouse as much as possible to keep her out of sight. He even sent her to the creek for water or to the market for supplies. He gave her extra mare’s milk and the occasional strip of jerky—all under Orlín’s nose.

The innkeeper still sold her blood, but thanks to the cook, she occasionally skipped a day or two, and she had a little extra food and drink besides. She grew a tiny bit, just enough that her pants barely reached her ankles, and her pinky toe wore a hole in her right shoe.

The flood of White Hairs through their village shrunk to a trickle. Mula grew a little more; her shoes became unwearable, and she could no longer pull her pants over her bony hips. Even though Orlín had made a small fortune selling her blood, he refused to buy her new shoes or new clothes. Instead, he gave her two stained, tattered burlap sacks and told her to make a shift out of them, which she did.

With summer came word that the queen in the west had won, against all odds, and the few surviving sorcerers were trudging home, tails tucked between their legs like whipped mongrels. Mula wasn’t very good at sleeping. So she often lay awake at night wondering about the western queen, marveling that any person in the world could defeat an army led by blood sorcerers with magic stones.

The end of summer brought chilly nights. The White Hairs stopped coming at all, and somehow, Orlín seemed to think this was her fault. He cuffed her more often, tied her nighttime bonds tighter, made her fetch water when the air crackled with cold and the creek iced over—even though she had no shoes and only a burlap shift to wear.

It was going to be the worst winter many of them had ever known, everyone said so. A girl like Mula, with her bare feet and fleshless limbs and a sleeping roll in the back storeroom as far away from the hearth as it could be, might not even survive such a winter.