Lovisa surveyed the kitchen. The long row of cabinets that stretched along the upper wall was tilted at a funny angle and the strip of wood that formed the base seemed to have come disattached. A bin in a corner was full of the fragments of plates, bowls, and glassware.

“Hava did that?” she said, impressed.

“I don’t even know how she managed it,” said Davvi, “unless she carries a crowbar hidden inside her clothes.”

Lovisa glanced around the kitchen and saw two or three implements that could double as an improvised crowbar, for an imaginative woman with personality problems. “I’ll go check out the storehouse,” she said.

—

She was not experienced in sneaking across yards in daylight, and she didn’t have Hava’s advantages. But she was a quick learner. Aiming for the barn, Lovisa slipped from tree to tree, diving behind a fallen trunk once as a guard strode by.

A moment later, peeking out from a corner of the barn, Lovisa assessed the storehouse. Unlike the house that was perched on the cliff, one whole side composed practically of glass, the storehouse, like the barn, was set back from the cliff and had few windows.

Inside, it resembled a stable, with open areas divided by low walls into sections that functioned as stalls for the storage of supplies. In Torla’s Neck, you had to travel for supplies, buy in bulk; or you stocked up once a year as vendors passed through. The storehouse was full of things, spices and cheeses and sacks of flour that left a cloud of white dust on everything nearby; as a child, Lovisa had pretended it was the hold of a ship, a place she’d never been. She’d escape to the storehouse sometimes, tuck herself among the supplies, find a snack with which to comfort herself, then pretend she was going somewhere far away and different.

The storehouse had a large front entrance with big barn doors. Lovisa crept through the trees to the back and entered through the small back door, which gave straight into one of the storage stalls. She knew it would be dark back there, hidden from the open front of the building.

As she’d expected, she stepped into an unlit stall. It smelled faintly of firewood. She closed the door quickly, grateful for the distant roar of the ocean that muffled the sound.

Light shone from the front of the storehouse and she could see a moving shadow there. Slowly, crouching low, Lovisa worked her way forward from stall to stall.