The food was everything Jane had promised or threatened. It was plain and plentiful, with more meat and fish than Winter had seen in her years at Mrs. Wilmore’s or her time in the army. There was plenty of bread, too, great piles of steaming round loaves.
Winter ate her fill, and more. Her army time had taught her that the availability of food was always touch-and-go, so it was always best to stock up when one had the chance. Jane also attacked her plate with gusto, though she carried on a whispered conversation with Abby throughout the meal. Winter restrained her curiosity, though she couldn’t help noticing that Abby left in the middle of dinner, leaving behind a half-full plate.
Once she’d taken the edge off her hunger, certain questions presented themselves irresistibly to Winter. Jane was fully occupied in her role as master of the house, shouting across the room to this girl or that and occasionally roaring with laughter at the responses. Min reported on the day’s activities-her responsibilities seemed to focus on the care and feeding of the younger girls-and Jane listened and gave occasional instructions.
Where does it all come from? These girls ate better than she ever had in the army, and the food was certainly better than the gray slop produced by Mrs. Wilmore’s kitchen. How does she pay for all this? For that matter, where had the girls themselves come from? Abby said she’d been taking in orphans and strays, but that can’t be all of them.
As supper wore on, Winter started to worry. Janus sent me here for a reason, after all, and he’s Minister of Justice now. Maybe Jane’s running a gang of thieves. A gang of thieves that included a cadre of chattering, happy twelve-year-olds seemed unlikely, but Winter’s experience was limited. The feral children of Ashe-Katarion had certainly included their share of thieves, but she couldn’t picture them sitting around a table like this.
Another thought occurred to her, and Winter bit her lip. There was always one way for a group of young women to earn a living, after all. Surely not. Jane would never be involved in something like that. Her friend’s morality had always been a bit selective, but surely there were some lines she would never cross. Never.
By the end of the meal, she was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. The conversation flowed all around her, but she was no part of it, like a rock sticking out of a smoothly flowing stream. It felt all too much like being back in Davis’ company, as the “Saint,” collecting her meager ration and wolfing it down in silence while the men around her joked and boasted about their drinking and whoring. The jokes were different, of course, but the feeling of camaraderie-from which she was excluded-was the same. She poked morosely at the congealing bits of fat and vegetable left on her plate.
A hand descended on her shoulder, and she looked up to find Jane smiling down at her.
“I’m about done,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“I’ve got-” Winter began.
“Some questions.” Jane gave a little sigh, and her smile faded. “I know.”
Jane’s room was on the top floor, in one corner of the building, where windows caught the sun from two sides. They arrived to find Abby tugging the door closed with one finger, awkward because she was carrying a thick wad of clothing in her arms.
“Sorry,” she said, edging to the side of the passage to let them pass.
Winter got the feeling that Jane’s room had been enlarged from its original state in the same way the dining room had, by pulling out interior walls, but here some effort had been made to disguise the fact. A half dozen rugs of different fabrics and vintages overlapped on the floor, and a heavy oak table in one corner was strewn with papers. The walls were hung with colorful fabric to disguise the crumbling plaster. A couple of heavy trunks, lids open, comprised Jane’s wardrobe, and an enormous mattress meant for a four-poster bed simply lay on the floor, covered by a clean but threadbare sheet.
“My palace,” Jane said, spreading her hands. “Do you like it?”
“I spent two years living in a tent,” Winter said, closing the door behind her. “Just sleeping indoors feels like a luxury to me.” She hesitated. “Nobody’s going to-”
“Sit with a glass pressed against the door? Don’t worry.”
Winter relaxed a little. “How long have you been here?”
“Just over a year,” Jane said. “It seems like longer.”
“You’ve certainly made yourself comfortable.”
“I’m good at that.” Jane winked, and went to a small cupboard standing on its own beside the big table. She withdrew a corked bottle and two slightly dusty glasses and waggled them suggestively at Winter. “Drink?”
Winter nodded. While Jane poured, she went to the window and twitched the curtain aside. Summer’s late evening sun was just setting, staining the muddy, sooty streets of the Docks with a pattern of red and black. Candles and torches burned here and there, but not many. The view was to the north, and Jane’s building was taller than those around it, and so Winter could see all the way to the river and beyond. The Island was a blaze of light in the distance, like an enormous ship.
Jane stepped up behind her, quietly, and pressed a glass into her hand. Winter sipped without looking, and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, any Vordanai wine would taste good next to that Khandarai stuff. She made a face at the memory.
“No good?” Jane sipped from her own glass. “Not the best vintage, I’ll grant you, but-”
“It’s fine.” Winter turned. “I have to ask. What are you doing here? Where did all these people come from? How do you manage to feed them all?”
“It is a bit odd, when I come to think about it.” Jane turned her glass back and forth, staring at it. Winter noted, absently, that much of the swearing had dropped out of her vocabulary now that they were alone. “It’s. . like yours. A long story.”
“I think we have time,” Winter said.
“I suppose so.” Jane took a deep breath. “Most of the girls are from Mrs. Wilmore’s, like us.”
“What?”
“I went back, after I ran away from Ganhide,” Jane said. “I had to hide for a while, until they gave up looking for me, and I sort of got to thinking. I’d got away, all right, but there were all those girls still there, and the same thing was just going to happen to them-they’d be married off to the first brute of a farmer who came asking.”
“So you went back.”
“I went back.”
“And staged an. . escape?” There had to be three hundred people in the building. Winter tried to imagine them all sneaking out of Mrs. Wilmore’s, one at a time, hiding from the proctors and the mistresses. .
“In a way,” Jane said. She scratched the back of her head and reddened slightly. “More like a revolution, actually.”
“A revolution? But how did you keep from getting caught?”
“I didn’t.” Jane swallowed the rest of her drink with sudden decision. “When I first got there, I was hiding in the hedges and so forth, but the more I watched the more I thought. . why bother? I mean, you were there. It’s not as though Mrs. Wilmore had a fucking battalion of guards on the premises.”
“But. .”
“I know.” Jane shook her head. “When I first went back, I was so frightened. I spent days trying to figure out how to get in without the proctors seeing me. It all went to shit when I tried it, of course. I practically walked into one after five minutes. I was ready to run for it, and she was shouting, and suddenly I thought-she’s nothing! Just a little girl with a sash! She probably wasn’t fifteen, a little stick of a thing. I just pushed her out of the way and kept going.”