“I’m sure they got out safely,” Bitterblue said.

“I know they did,” Lovisa snapped. “I told them to get out before I ever set it.”

“They’ll remember that you warned them, their whole lives,” said Bitterblue, who had distinct memories of such moments from her own otherwise muddled childhood, memories of her mother, of attendants, even of her father’s advisers, doing things, saying things, to protect her from her father. “They’ll always be grateful to you.”

“I guess you know everything about my family,” said Lovisa viciously.

Bitterblue bit back on a sharp retort. “I know it’ll hurt your brothers if they never get to see you again, and never get to hear an explanation from your lips,” she said. And then she did something scary: She abandoned Lovisa to her thoughts and decisions, left her alone on the cliff, and climbed into the hills. Because it had started snowing, and the clouds at sea worried her. They were tall and dark and seemed to be growing closer. She thought it wouldn’t hurt to follow the advice of the Lord of Lost Souls; she also wanted Lovisa to have a job to do.

“Where are you going?” Lovisa yelled after her.

“You see those clouds?” she said. “I’m looking for one of the huts that man told us about. My foot is killing me. Do you know anything about feet? I need you to look at my foot.”

Grumbling, Lovisa joined her.

—

It took a great deal of scrambling on and off the path to find any sort of hut. By the time they did, it was snowing hard, sharp flakes whipped their cheeks, and Bitterblue was becoming truly frightened.

They might have found the hut sooner if it were actually a hut, rather than just a wooden door in the side of a hill. The door stuck too; both women had to push it together.

Inside, the walls were made of dirt, reinforced with wooden supports positioned close together. The floor and ceiling were wooden too, and fine, smooth. Posts stood upright all across the room, presumably bracing the ceiling, which held the weight of the hill above. A stack of firewood sat near a stove with a chimney, which surprised Bitterblue so much that she ran outside to find the capped metal pipe that popped out of the hill, perfectly visible once you knew it was there, but otherwise camouflaged among rocks.

More than that, the hut had two mattresses with pillows and blankets, a low table, a lamp full of oil, a small collection of books, plates and cutlery, and food. “Ship food,” Bitterblue said with pleasure, looking through the containers of dried meat and fruits, nuts, and biscuits hard as rock. “Biscuits to dip into tea,” she said, when the next tins produced dried, pungent leaves.

“It’s useless without water,” Lovisa said.