“Didn’t she fetch the mistresses?”
“Of course. But by that time I had a little while to talk to the girls in the dorms. So on one side there were five old women with willow switches, and on the other a couple of hundred angry girls.” Jane grinned. “They took one look at us and locked themselves in their offices.”
Winter couldn’t help laughing. It was true, when you thought about it that way. Mrs. Wilmore’s moral authority had always been so overpowering she’d seemed like a deity from antiquity, living on a mountaintop somewhere and dispensing favor or thunderbolts according to her whims. But, of course, she was human like anyone else. Just a bitter old woman. Even at Winter’s distant remove, it was a tremendously liberating thought.
“And you just walked out,” Winter said.
Jane nodded. “We just walked out. I told the girls I would take care of anyone who wanted to come with me. Some of them stayed behind, some of them just bolted and disappeared, and the rest. .” She waved a hand at the building below them.
This must have been after Bobby escaped. The corporal had been closemouthed about her time in Mrs. Wilmore’s institution, but she surely would have mentioned this.
“You had all this ready for them?” Winter said.
“What? Oh no. God, it was fucking awful for a while. We spent a week sleeping in the swamps past the Bottoms, staying up half the night with torches and cudgels to keep the thieves and rapers away. I had no idea what I was doing. All this came later.”
Winter laughed again. That was Jane all over-do something bold, brilliant, beautiful, and have absolutely no idea how to handle the consequences. Dive in first and worry about how deep the water is later. She drained her own glass, looking around for the bottle, and it was a moment before she realized Jane had gone silent.
“Jane?”
She was staring at her hands, rolling the empty glass from one to the other. A single crimson droplet spiraled round and round just short of the rim, never quite escaping.
“Sorry,” Winter said. “I shouldn’t have laughed. It must have been terrible.”
“What? Oh.” Jane shook her head. “It’s all right. It is pretty fucking funny, when you think about it. I was just-running, from one thing to the next, trying to stay one step ahead of the Armsmen and the thieves and just plain starvation. With a couple of hundred people suddenly looking to me to keep them safe and figure out where their next meal was coming from.”
Winter winced in sympathy. Her thoughts went back to her first mission with the Seventh Company, d’Vries’ idiot scout, and the sudden crashing realization that everything had descended on her shoulders. Screams and powder smoke, the crash of muskets and thrashing, terrified horses. .
“I nearly left them,” Jane said, very quietly. “In the swamp. I was standing guard, and I thought, I could just leave. Then none of this would be my problem anymore.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“I wanted to. I wanted to, so badly. Or else to just wander out into the bog, get lost, step in some sinkhole, and just let it swallow me. It didn’t seem worth it.”
There was a long silence. Jane turned the glass round and round. Tentatively-it had been a long time since she’d touched another human being of her own free will-Winter extended a hand and let it rest on Jane’s shoulder.
“You did it, though. You won.” Winter patted her in a way she hoped was reassuring. “You beat Ganhide, and Mrs. Wilmore, and all the rest. I mean, look at this place!”
“You don’t understand,” Jane said. “I didn’t-I thought-”
She swallowed hard. Winter, uncertain, said nothing.
“I wasn’t looking to start a revolution at Mrs. Wilmore’s,” Jane said. “Not really. I was looking for you.”
Oh. Winter blinked.
“Every day, after I ran away from Ganhide, I thought about you stuck in that place and. . what they would do to you, eventually. I had to go back. But it took so long-I needed to hide, and then. .”
“I was gone by the time you got there,” Winter said.
Her throat clenched under a sudden, crushing wave of guilt. All this time, she’d felt like a traitor for her failure to set Jane free on that last night. She’d cursed herself as a coward. But what happened afterward is worse. I ran away to Khandar like all the demons of all the hells were after me. I never even considered going back to look for Jane, helping her get away from Ganhide, or all the other girls I left behind. I just ran until I found somewhere I thought no one would ever find me.
“It’s good that you ran away,” Jane said, still staring at her glass and oblivious of Winter’s moral crisis. “I wouldn’t have wished you another minute in that fucking place. When I got back there, though, and they told me that you were gone, and no one had any idea to where. .” Her grip tightened on the glass, as though she meant to shatter it against her palm.
“I’m sorry,” Winter said, in a whisper.
“No. I told you, I don’t blame you for anything. You did what you had to do.”
“I’m sorry.” It felt like all Winter could do was repeat it. “Jane, I’m-”
“Would you stop apologizing?”
“But-”
Jane turned, grabbed both of Winter’s shoulders, and jerked her close. Winter shut her eyes and cringed, in automatic expectation of a blow, but received a kiss instead.
It went on for a long time. She could taste the wine, smell the sweat on Jane’s skin, feel a tickle where a tear had run down Jane’s cheek and ended up hanging from the tip of Winter’s nose. Jane’s hands slid down to the small of her back, drawing them together, and Winter could sense the warmth of her through layers of leather and linen.
Jane finally pulled away, breathing hard, but she kept her arms wrapped tight. Winter’s whole body tingled, and her head swam as though she’d had considerably more than one glass of wine.
“It’s all right,” Jane said. “You’re here. That’s all that matters now.”
Winter, staring into those hypnotic green eyes, nodded.
Eventually the moment ended, as all moments do. A muscle in Winter’s leg, weary from the long day of walking around the city, chose that moment to register its complaint with a vicious cramp, and Winter stumbled and nearly fell. Jane took her weight and swung her toward the mattress, where Winter sat with a thump. Jane flopped down beside her, stretching her arms above her head and arching her back like a cat.
“God,” she said. “Just talking about it makes me feel better, you know?”
“I should. .” Winter shook her head, still dizzy. The softness of the mattress was suddenly unbelievably attractive. “Sleep, I think. It’s been a long day. I don’t suppose you could spare a bunk for me?”
Jane looked at her sidewise. “I can have them make up a room. There’s plenty of space.”
“Thank you.”
“Or,” Jane said, “you could stay here.”
“Here?” There was a long, stupid moment while Winter cast about the room to see if there was another bedroll tucked away somewhere. Then, belatedly, she understood. “Oh. Here, with you.”
Jane smiled again. “Here, as you say, with me.”
Some part of Winter wanted to. Her body fairly ached where Jane had been pressed tight against her, in ways that had nothing to do with hours of walking around town. But she couldn’t stop the panicky feeling that welled up when she thought about it, the ground-in need to flee from even the possibility of contact.