Or was it something else?

“Your heroics cost us.” Cook stirs a pot of some sort of acrid tea over a cook fire. “Do you know what day it is?”

I open my mouth to respond, but Cook cuts me off.

“It’s the day of the Grain Moon,” she says. “We lost our chance to get to the Blood Shrike. By tomorrow, the city will be breached. The Martials are stretched too thin, and there’s no relief in sight.”

She takes a sniff of the tea and adds something else to it. “Girl,” she says, “you trained with your”—she takes a deep breath—“grandfather,” she spits out, “in healing?”

“For a year and a half or so.”

She nods thoughtfully. “As did I,” she said. “Before I ran away like a damned fool. When did he take you to meet Nelle, the apothecary?”

“Uh . . .” I am bewildered that she knows about Nelle, until I remember, yet again, that of course she would know Nelle. Pop trained my mother from when she turned twelve until she was sixteen, when she left home to join the Resistance.

“It was at the beginning of my training,” I say. “Maybe three months in.” Nelle showed me how to make dozens of poultices and teas from basic ingredients. Most of the remedies were things that only a woman needs—for moon cycles and to prevent the getting of child.

She nods. “That’s what I thought.” She pours the foul tea into a waiting gourd and corks it. I think she is going to give it to me, but instead she stands. “Change the dressing on your wounds,” she says. “You’ll find everything you need there. Stay inside. I’ll be back.”

While she’s gone, I change the dressings, but I can’t stop thinking about the blast, the Nightbringer throwing me out of the way, the brother and sister who died. Skies, they were so young. That little girl couldn’t have been older than ten and her little brother—Najaam—no more than seven. I promised my parents I’d keep him safe.

“I am sorry,” I whisper.

I could have saved them if I had moved faster, if I had not taken the route I did. How many other Scholar children have been ordered to stay in the city? How many others have no way out? How many are expected to die along with their Martial overlords if the Karkauns take Antium? Musa’s voice rings in my head. We need you as a voice for the Scholars. We need you as our scim and shield.

Though Cook told me not to, I leave the crumbling little shack in which we’ve taken shelter and walk outside, wincing from the way the movement pulls at the gash on my face.

The house I am in faces a large square. There are heaps of rubble on either side and more dilapidated cottages beyond them. Across the square, dozens of Scholars remove the bricks of a still-smoking shack, trying to get to those trapped inside.

Boots thud beyond the square, their rhythmic tattoo growing louder. Quick as lightning, word spreads. The Scholars disappear into their houses as the patrol marches into the square. The house I am in is set back, but still, I make my way up the stairs, dagger in hand. I crouch beside a window to watch the patrol’s progress, waiting for the screams of the Scholars.

I hear only a few, from those the Martials have found and dragged out, whipping them into a line to no doubt save Martial lives from the Karkauns’ destruction.

When the Martials are gone, the remaining Scholars emerge again, back at the rubble of the ruined house. I am wondering how they communicated so quickly when the stairwell creaks.

“Girl,” Cook rasps, “are you here?”

When I get down the stairs, she jerks her head to the north. “Come with me,” she says. “And don’t ask questions.” She no longer holds the gourd of tea, and I want to know what she has done with it. But I hold my tongue. As we head through the square, Cook does not spare a glance for the Scholars.

“Cook.” I run to catch up with her. It’s as if she knows what I am planning to ask. “These people. We could help them. Get them out of here.”

“We could.” She sounds utterly unsurprised at my suggestion. “And then you could watch as the Nightbringer takes the ring from the Shrike, sets his accursed subjects free, and destroys our world.”

“I am the one who has to get the ring,” I say. “Not you. You could rally the Scholars, show them the way out of here. You said yourself that the Karkauns will overrun the city. What do you think will happen to these people when they do?”

As I speak, we slink past a group of Scholars putting out a fire alongside Martial auxes. They are children—teenagers dragging buckets of water when they should be getting the hells out of here.

“That’s not our problem,” Cook hisses, and grabs me, pulling me away before the aux soldiers see us and press us into service. “I have other things to do while you get the ring.”

“What other things?”

“Retribution!” Cook says. “That bitch of a Commandant is here, and by the skies, I’ll—”

“You’d trade vengeance on Keris Veturia for thousands of lives?”

“Getting rid of her would save thousands more. I have waited years for this. And now, finally—”

“I don’t bleeding care,” I say to her. “Whatever your vengeance is, whether it works or not, it is not as important as the Scholar children who will die if there is no one to help them. Please—”