Mula tried to grab her braid, reclaim it, but the woman batted her hand away.

The woman’s forefinger traced her cheek. “My cheek. My sweet little nose. My chin.”

The girl discovered that she couldn’t breathe.

The woman’s forefinger was so soft on her skin and yet somehow like fire as it traced the line of her neck, swirled down her chest, rested between her not-yet-budded breasts. “Mine. All mine. I own you, Mula. I can do whatever I please with you.”

Mula remembered her dream, when she had looked down to discover a gaping nothingness where her belly ought to be. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe she was disappearing for true.

The monster woman yanked her out the door. The girl’s bare feet squelched in the melting snow. “Where are you taking—”

“We’re going to teach you a lesson.”

The monster woman dragged her past the glassmaking shed, across the icy creek, around the waterwheel and miller’s cottage. They stopped in front of a small one-room house with a large porch and two windows. Whoever lived here must be very rich, to afford two windows.

The monster woman knocked.

The door opened, and out stepped the blue-fingered man, the one who had tattooed Mula’s feet. He wore a leather apron with pockets filled with his strange, sharp tools. He wiped his hands on a rag—also stained blue.

“What do you want?” he grumbled.

“This slave,” the monster woman said, shoving Mula forward. “She tried to run away. She needs to be taught a lesson.”

“Oh?” The blue-fingered man grinned through his beard.

Mula tried praying. Please, God, make me disappear for true.

The man vised her shoulder with one hand and dragged her into his house. With the other hand, he lifted a large iron ladle from its place on the mantel. He studied the ladle a moment, admiring it. It gleamed gray in the firelight.

The door slammed shut behind her.

The girl doesn’t remember what happened next.

10

Now

WE’RE all so exhausted that we stumble to our bunks in near silence. Almost everyone is asleep before Guardsman Bruno can blow out the lamps.

One of the army recruits near the door snores loudly, and I’m glad. Maybe it will help me stay awake. Faintly, filtered through stone and mortar, comes the cymbal clash of iron and steel. Perhaps the second years are doing a nighttime training maneuver. No, the direction is all wrong for that. It must be the Guard blacksmith, mending weapons well into the night. Everyone is taking the opportunity to catch up on work while the empress is away.

It means that sneaking around at night would be impossible . . . if I didn’t know every corridor and passage so intimately.

The monastery bells ring twelve times. In an hour, I’ll wake Iván, allowing us plenty of time to make the journey. I have no idea how I’ll keep myself from falling asleep until then. My thighs burn, my shoulders ache, my eyelids are as heavy as millstones, and I want nothing more than to sink into this thin, poking mattress and drift into oblivion.