Leoni laughed and said, “It’s the wolves who go unseen that eat the most sheep.” Adrik snorted but he looked almost pleased.
Behind them, Nina rolled her eyes. If she was going to be forced to continue a mission with two people starting this dance of cautious compliments and sudden blushes, it might well kill her. It was one thing to find happiness and lose it, quite another to have someone else’s happiness thrust at you like an unwanted second slice of cake. Then again, she’d never refused a second slice of cake. This will be good for me, she told herself. Like green vegetables and lessons in arithmetic. And I’ll probably enjoy it just as much.
Eventually they picked their way to a gap in the trees that overlooked the entrance to the factory. At the sight of it, the rustling of voices rose in her mind, louder than the wind shaking the pines. Two soldiers were posted at the huge double doors, and there were more stationed along the parapets.
“It was a fort before it was a factory,” Nina said, pointing to what looked like old niches carved into the stone walls. A large reservoir sat behind the main building, and she wondered if the water was used for cooling whatever machinery was operating inside.
“It’s a good strategic vantage, I suppose,” said Adrik in his dreary voice. “High ground. A safe place to shelter in an attack or when the river spills its banks.”
The might of Djel, thought Nina. The Wellspring, the wrath of the river.
Two smokestacks belched gray-blue smoke into the late-afternoon sky as they watched a covered wagon roll up to the gate. It was impossible to tell what passed between the guards and the driver.
“What do you think is in that wagon?” asked Adrik.
“Could be anything,” said Leoni. “Ore from the mines. Fish. Bushels of jurda.”
Nina ran her hands over her arms and glanced at the smokestacks. “Not jurda. I would smell it.” Small doses of ordinary jurda had helped her to survive her ordeal with parem but had left her with an acute sensitivity to it. “What do you think?” she asked Adrik. “Do we stay?”
“I think I want a look inside that fort, but I’ll settle for knowing what the hell they leaked into the water.”
“It could be from the mines,” said Leoni.
“If it were the mines, the fishermen would have rioted to have them shut down. Fear is keeping the townspeople quiet.”
“Let’s draw samples of the water,” Leoni said. “If I can isolate the pollutants, we might be able to figure out what they’re doing inside the fort.”
“You’re equipped for that?” Adrik said.
“Not exactly. I came prepared to forge documents, not test for poisons. But I could probably rig something up.”
“If I told you we needed magical dust to make me vomit peppermints, you’d probably say you could rig something up.”
“Probably,” Leoni replied with a grin. “I’d just have to try.”
Adrik shook his head in disbelief. “I’m getting tired even contemplating it.”
“I’ll need time,” said Leoni, and Nina saw a troubled shadow pass over her face. “Poisons are tricky work.”
“We can’t stay here too long without drawing suspicion,” said Adrik. “There’s not enough trade passing through to justify it. And I don’t want us snowbound if a bad storm hits.”
“I know,” Nina said. She had pushed them to come here, and she hoped they had more to find than a recommissioned munitions factory. “Give it a week.”
A silence followed, and Nina sensed the shared concern that passed between Leoni and Adrik.
Leoni touched Nina’s hand gently. “Nina …” she began, and Nina knew what she was going to say.
The whispering rose in her head again, but Nina ignored it. Instead, she looked out at the valley, at the dense forest, the gleaming tributary slicing through the trees like a glittering chain in a jewel box, the tidy little town bisected by the road. It did not feel like enemy territory here. It felt like a quiet place where people came to build their homes and try to make a life for themselves, where the business of soldiers and wars was nothing but an intrusion.
In another life, she and Matthias might have made their home in a place like this. They would have argued about how close they should live to a city. Nina would have longed for people and excitement; Matthias would have grumbled for quiet. They would have found a way to compromise. They would have argued and kissed to make up. But where would they have ever felt safe together? In Fjerda? In Ravka? Was there anyplace they would have truly been free and happy? Another life, another world.
It’s time, Nina. Return me to my god.
Nina drew in a long breath and said, “I’ll need two days to take him where the water is clean.”
Saying the words was like feeling her heart split, the heavy swing of the axe, the blade sinking past bark to the soft white wood.
“You shouldn’t go alone,” said Adrik without enthusiasm. He sounded like he was contemplating putting on a sodden pair of socks.
“I can go by my—”
A noise sounded from somewhere below. They stilled, bodies tense, waiting. Silence, and then a shout.
“The meadow,” whispered Nina.
Adrik started down the hill and signaled for them to follow, his glum demeanor vanishing in an instant as the hardened fighter emerged. They kept to the shadows, moving with care, creeping closer.
“Soldiers,” hissed Leoni, peering through the branches.
A group of young men in gray Fjerdan uniforms were gathered around the stream, shouting at one another. Two were on horseback; the others had dismounted and were trying to calm a horse that had somehow gotten spooked and thrown its rider. Nina could see the soldier’s boot had caught in the stirrup and he was being dragged through the stream as the horse cantered back and forth in the shallows, barely missing the soldier’s head with its hooves. All it would take was a single heavy strike and the boy’s skull would be crushed.
“We should help them,” said Leoni.
“We should get back to the safety of the town,” said Adrik. “They’ll manage.”
“And that’s one less Fjerdan soldier to plague us,” Nina said beneath her breath.
Nina.
Adrik and Leoni stared at her. Adrik looked like a mourner in search of a wake, and even Leoni’s usual sunshine was clouded with worry.
She didn’t approve. Adrik didn’t approve. Hell, in her heart, Nina didn’t approve either.
But since Matthias had left her—been taken from her—Nina had lost the part of her that cared. What was the point of it all? You saved one life only to see another taken. The good perished. And the bad? Nina looked at the young Fjerdans in their uniforms, killers in the making. What right did they have to survive when her Matthias, her beautiful barbarian, was gone?
Nina.
She wished she could clap her hands over her ears and tell him to leave her alone. But that was the last thing she wanted.
Must you insist I stay human? she complained silently.
I know how strong you are, Nina. My death will not be the thing that defeats you.
“What are we even supposed to do?” Nina said aloud.
“I know my way around horses,” Leoni offered.
Adrik rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”