Abby shook her head. “I don’t like it. Do you have any idea what they’d do to a girl like her if they found out who she really is?”

“Yes,” Winter said, “I do. But if de Ferre has us try to storm the walls . . .” She frowned. “You don’t think she’d do it?”

“She’ll do it. She’d jump at the chance.” Abby’s brow furrowed. “I’m just not sure we should ask her to.”

“If she knows the risks . . .”

Winter paused. It doesn’t work like that. Rankers don’t get to assess the risks and decide if something’s worth doing. We point, and they go. Working out whether it’s worth it is our job. It wasn’t so long ago that she’d been marching in the ranks herself, but it was easy to forget how it felt.

“I think,” she began again, “that this is the best chance we have of preventing a massacre.”

“You may be right.” Abby grimaced. “What happens if it works? What then?”

“Let’s worry about that once we get there. Can you find Anne-Marie for me?”

“Yes, sir.” Abby stood, saluted, and left. Winter stared after her, trying to fight a sick feeling in her stomach.

Anne-Marie, when she arrived, was as excited as Abby had predicted. She seemed to have suffered nothing in the march or the subsequent battle that a few nights’ rest hadn’t been able to cure. Her uniform bore signs of recent, careful patching, and her blond hair, cut short when she’d joined, was just getting long enough to curl at the ends. She saluted and stood at attention, practically vibrating with the effort.

“Sit down,” Winter said. “How much did Abby tell you?”

“Only that you specifically requested me for a special mission, sir.” Anne-Marie’s Vordanai was much improved, though her Hamveltai accent remained strong. She sat cross-legged, and daintily picked a stray bit of mud off her boot.

“Something like that. I need you to do a bit of playacting.”

Anne-Marie blinked. “Sir?”

“We need to give the Hamveltai in there”—Winter gestured in the general direction of the fortress—“the impression that we’re about to come in and slaughter them all. Unfortunately, Janus has been making a point of being correct toward Hamveltai prisoners, so he doesn’t have the right kind of reputation to be convincing. I thought one of their own—an escaped refugee, perhaps—might go a long way toward spreading the news of our new commander.”

“You want me to go into the fortress?” Anne-Marie said. “And . . . convince them?”

“Yes, in a nutshell.” Winter shook her head, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s a hell of a thing to ask, I know. But you’re Deslandai, you know the language, and you’re . . .” She waved a hand vaguely.

“Sir?” Anne-Marie said again.