The woman’s eyes flicked to the smaller girl beside her, who stepped forward. “She’s Joanna, sir. Or Jo. I’m Barley.” Her Vordanai was good, with only the faintest trace of an accent.

“Jo and Barley.”

“Yes, sir. Jo doesn’t talk.”

Jo gave a passable imitation of a military salute, fist thumping against her chest.

“And what are you doing here?” Winter said.

“What the captain said, sir. We want to join the Girls’ Own.”

“You’re Deslandai. We’re still at war.”

“Pardon, sir, but we’re Vordanai. At least, I am, more than half, and Jo’s grandma didn’t speak a word of Hamveltai. Down where we live, people cheered when they heard the army got whipped.”

Winter paused. Desland did have a substantial minority of Vordanai, mostly in its poorer sections. “We’re not going to be staying in Desland. Sooner or later, we’ll join up with the rest of the army, and I have no idea if we’ll ever be back.”

“Fine with me, sir,” Barley said. “There’s nothing here for us but working the docks and getting spit on by Hamveltai nobs. If you can keep us fed, we’ll follow you wherever you want to go.”

Winter wanted to say no, to tell them that however bad things were on the docks, it was better than facing musket balls and cold steel and the prospect of a shallow grave on some battlefield. But there were soldiers all around, from the Royals and the Girls’ Own both, and in the face of their scrutiny she couldn’t make herself say it.

Who am I, she remembered from the night before, to decide for any of them?

“Jo,” Winter said. “You agree with everything Barley is saying?”

The big woman nodded emphatically and put a hand on her smaller companion’s shoulder.

“Captain Giforte,” Winter said. “Have you got a company that could use these two?”

“I think I can find one, sir,” Abby said, with the hint of a smile in her voice.

“All right, then.” Winter turned to the third woman, who again met her gaze without flinching. “And who are you?”

“Anne-Marie Gertrude di Wallach,” she said. Unlike Barley, she had a heavy Hamveltai accent, rolling her R’s and turning her W’s into V’s.

“You’re not Vordanai.”

“No.”

“So what are you doing here?”

Anne-Marie frowned in concentration. She spoke with the air of someone working through a puzzle; the Vordanai language was clearly something she’d only encountered in a schoolroom. “I want . . . to fight. Fight with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you fight for everyone.” She dug in a hidden pocket of her dress and produced a small, battered book. It was Voulenne’s Rights of Man, the founding tract of the University rebels back in Vordan. “I read . . . papers. Things that come from Vordan. People rule themselves. No more kings. I want to fight for that.”