He left his mortal body behind.
When Nikolai opened his eyes, he was looking at Yuri from a different angle—close enough to see the smudge on his glasses, the wiry hairs of his scrabbly beard. Nikolai felt his wings beat the air, felt his demon heart race. He released a snarl and launched himself at the monk.
THEIR TIMING HAD TO BE PRECISE. The Wellmother and her Springmaidens would see to their charges on the factory ward and return sometime in the hours after midnight. Nina did not want to risk crossing paths with them, but she also needed to make sure they would have time to retrieve the girls, set the explosives, and get through the checkpoint on the road leading into town. If the guards at the checkpoint got a sign that something was wrong at the factory, they might well decide to investigate the vehicles passing through. And if that happened, there would be nowhere to hide.
Two hours before dawn, Hanne bound her breasts and pulled a pinafore over one of her stolen military uniforms. She kept a shawl wrapped around her head.
She and Nina slipped out through the kitchens and went to meet Leoni and Adrik at the abandoned tanning shed where they were waiting with the enclosed wagon they’d secured. They helped Adrik into his uniform and stuffed his loose sleeve with cotton batting, pinning the end into his pocket to disguise his missing hand. Hanne tucked her pinafore away and took the driver’s seat with Adrik beside her, while Nina and Leoni, both attired as Springmaidens, climbed into the back.
They were silent as they rode through the dark. Nina had laced her sleeves with bone shards, and she reached out to them now with her power, craving the peace they provided. She understood the risks she had asked the people around her to take, the danger she was putting them all in.
When they rolled to a stop, Nina knew they’d reached the checkpoint at the base of the hill. She peered through the slats and saw Hanne flash the order they’d forged to the men at the guardhouse—it bore Brum’s stolen seal. Nina held her breath, waiting. A moment later, she heard a snap of the reins and they were moving once more.
The road leading to the eastern entrance was straight but rocky, and Nina felt her heart pounding with the hoofbeats of their horses as they made slow progress up the hill. There was no turning back now. She had lied not only to Hanne but to Adrik and Leoni as well about what she intended to accomplish today. The idea had come to her during her long dinner with Jarl Brum. It might be madness. It might fail spectacularly, but Nina had started to wonder if they’d been trying to fix Fjerda with the wrong tool.
Finally the horses slowed and Nina heard the voices of the guards. The wagon halted again. They had arrived at the eastern entrance to the fort. The whispers in her mind rose, guiding her on. Nina, they chorused. She shivered. The dead knew her name.
Justice, they demanded. She thought of the graves that surrounded this place, all the women and girls and children who had been lost here.
You will be the last, she promised.
Matthias had once begged her to save some mercy for his country, and she had vowed she would. But the girls in that ward were Fjerdans. Their children were Fjerdans. They were citizens of G?fvalle and Gjela and Kejerut. The people of this country needed to be reminded of that.
The guards were looking over the order, taking their time. “Tell them to get moving,” whispered Adrik.
“Sedjet!” Hanne barked. Hurry up. She’d lowered the timbre of her voice and for a moment she sounded chillingly like her father.
“What’s the rush?” asked one of the guards. “Why do you need to move the prisoners now?”
“Not everyone knows about the work Commander Brum has authorized here,” said Hanne, following the script Nina had laid out for her. “We got word the local governors are coming to the factory to investigate complaints about poisons in the river. We don’t need more trouble.”
“Bureaucrats,” grumbled the guard. “Probably just looking for another bribe.”
Another bribe? Did that mean local officials had been paid to look the other way about the fouling of the river—or about the girls in the abandoned wing?
A moment later the gate creaked open.
“Leave it that way,” said Hanne. “Time is short.”
“Wait a minute,” said the guard. He threw open the back doors of the wagon and peered at Leoni and Nina in their pinafores. “What are these two doing here?”
“For Djel’s sake, do you think I’m going to take care of a bunch of crying women and shitting infants?” said Hanne. “Maybe you’d like to come along and wipe their asses?”
Saints, she really was a natural.
The guard looked utterly horrified. “No thank you.”
He slammed the doors shut, and in the next second, they were rolling through the gate into what had once been the eastern loading dock for the factory.
“Let’s go,” Adrik said, herding them to the big double doors. “That all took longer than it was supposed to.”
Leoni dripped acid onto the locks to the ward and they fell with a hiss and a clang.
Gently, Nina pushed the doors open. They moved into the darkness, down the hall, toward the dim glow of a lantern. She could smell bodies, the tang of sour milk, soiled diapers, the old industrial smells of grease and coal.
The ward was full of the muzzy sounds of sleep, soft snores, the moan of a woman turning in her bed. A girl in a thin shift lay awake near the lantern, eyes hollow, skinny arms cradling her belly like a giant pearl.
When she saw Nina and Leoni her face broke into a happy, hopeful smile. “You’re here early!” she cried. “Do you have my dose?”
“Where’s my dose?” said another, rising from her blankets.
“Saints,” muttered Adrik as lanterns were lit along the row of beds and the horror of the ward came into view.
Adrik looked sick. Leoni’s eyes were full of tears.
Hanne had clapped a hand over her mouth. She was shaking her head.
“Hanne?” Nina murmured.
“No.” She shook her head harder. “No. He didn’t do this. He couldn’t have. He must not have known.”
A baby began to cry. The reality of the girls’ need, of their clumsy bodies, their hopeful expressions felt overwhelming. Why had Nina believed they could get away with any of this? But she had chosen this course—for all of them.
“Sylvi,” Hanne said on a sob.
Sylvi Winther, Nina remembered, one of the people Hanne had nursed in secret.
The hollow-eyed girl looked up, but there was no recognition in her eyes. Hanne went to her side, but the girl shrank back, confused.
“It’s me,” said Hanne. “I …” And then she remembered her uniform, her altered face. “I … I’m sorry.”
“Come on,” Nina said. “We need to move.” From her pocket, she drew the sedative Leoni had mixed. It was milky white, boiled from the stalks of jurda plants instead of the leaves.
“That doesn’t look like my dose,” said the girl by the lantern, frowning.