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They’ve come.
Mollie, her nose stinging with the scent of sharp sweat, her eyes stinging with smoke, with hurt, holds fast the knife that Amras gave her. They have come: men with animal meanness in their bellies and claws. She is theirs for the eating, for pulling flesh and revealing bone. No matter that she is hemmed in by Nora and the other women, in one stone-firm corner.
That only means she will be the last to die.
We’ll protect you, Amras said. I’ll protect you. Remember how I showed you how to use that knife, Mollie. When she could not answer him, he said, Mollie, don’t be frightened. I’ll be back in—
Mollie remembers another knife driving hard through skin and joint—a thing that took a great deal of strength, even if all it took from her was a finger. So much blood, for a finger.
She had screamed and fainted, and that had brought its own bruising punishment. The cruelty of her former mistress was untiring. Mollie woke with her skirt ruined, her head held up by a fist in her hair.
Her poor hand hurt so very much.
Little fool, said Thuringwethil, smiling.
It has been a few weeks, now, since she slept in her old stable bed. She misses it. She liked the cold almost well enough to bear the numbness it brought her limbs. It made her feel clean. To keep her from freezing, there was a ragged quilt that was soft against her hands and feet. Over this she laid the comforting weight of a horse blanket. Then she slept with nose and cheeks pleasantly chilled. The air filled her lungs as water rushes down the throat after a long thirst. Some of the men who used to pay for her would force her face into the rank pillows on her narrow bed until she could not breathe. She has never forgotten that awful terror; it is worse than the lost finger.
I’ll protect you, Amras said, but he was a boy.
Who has come? Men who take. Mollie shivers, in her crowded corner.
Nora presses her arm. “We’ve strong men with us, girl,” she says, low. “No fear.”
A kindness, from Nora. This is a surprise.
Mollie dares not smile at her—it would be a terrible smile, anyway, like the one she used to give her mistress. She ducks her head and then raises it a little, so that she can watch Amras’ red hair bobbing in the dim light.
Her other friend, here, is nowhere to be seen. Estrela has gone to mind Maedhros.
Since they shared the stables for a few nights, the woman with the ugly face has been very kind to Mollie. She does not ask questions about the past. Her questions tend towards whether Mollie would like one of the skirts that she herself was given.
“I am unused to wearing skirts,” Estrela said, holding it out. “I would be clumsy. Will you take it?”
So: Mollie has something better than her old rags. Something better to die in.
Estrela is shut up with the children and the poor ruined boy whose fate Mollie carried with her to Mithrim from her old life. Her mistress had been unable to keep from laughing when she sent Mollie as her messenger. Mollie had seen the red ribbon of hair folded up in paper—but not before she had seen it pressed to Thuringwethil’s mocking lips.
Mollie has seen Maedhros only at the Christmas feast. His hair is as bright as Amras’. The rest of him is wan and wasted.
She thought often of her mistress in the night.
Then came the shouts, the gunfire. With it, more fear. Mollie deserves to die here, though Amras and Estrela are kind to her and the rest forget her ugly heart. She does not remember how to pray well. She knows all manner of tricks and—
Remember how I showed you to use that knife, Mollie.
“We’ve routed them, we’ve routed them!” Amras cries, in a high, young voice that makes her feel…feel like Estrela looks, when she looks at the children, though she and Amras are near the same age. He seizes Mollie’s hands, not minding the odd space of one finger.
She smiles at him, a good clean smile.
She counts him and the rest of them, safe.
(The knife could be used against herself, if need be. If she is ever frightened enough to be wicked again, she will choose the knife first.)