Page 12 of Dead Drop

"Factor the loss into your next proposal."

I step back. My hands are steady. There is a bright thing in my chest that started the moment Brother Lief named Petra inthe council room. It's been burning there ever since. It doesn't come out of my hands.

The Shade makes a sound from the cage floor. Not language. Not a territorial call. Something lower and more damaged than either.

Petra is at my shoulder. I know without looking—the particular weight of her presence, the way she breathes. She isn't afraid. She's furious, which is correct.

"Petra, go inside."

"Ada—"

"Go."

She goes.

I watch the Eunuchs confer—clipped, without Brother Lief's warmth, the efficiency of people who've hit a variable their plan didn't account for. The lead Eunuch looks at the cage. Looks at me. Makes a decision.

"We'll require compensation," he says.

"You'll require nothing from New Reach. Take your cage and leave."

The Shade in the cage has gone still again—the same wrong stillness as before, the breathing audible and wet. The bars are dark where the blood has run. Whatever the Ordained are putting in its water, it isn't making it regenerate quickly.

The Eunuchs wheel the cart back toward the gate. I watch them cross the courtyard. I watch the gate close behind them. I stand in the courtyard until the sounds of the cart have faded and the settlement has come back to itself—the looms, the generator, the sounds of four hundred people choosing to keep going.

Then I go to find Dov and tell him what I know.

For eight months I've been tracking the Ordained's supply routes—coded tallies on crate lids, rotation schedules folded into grain shipments, location markers hidden in the wax seals oftheir couriers. I have supply routes for three Cages within a hundred miles. I have the names of fourteen women currently in preparation at the nearest one. I have the date of the next scheduled presentation.

I bring the strike plan to Dov on a Tuesday.

Not a war. A targeted disruption—cut the supply line, destroy the courier drop, force the nearest Cage to go dark for three weeks. In that window the women inside have a chance to walk out.

I lay the maps on the table. My handwriting is small and precise. I've been working on this in the hours between wall rotations, in the dark, by the light of a solar strip moved to my cot. The maps are drawn on the backs of supply requisitions, the paper thin enough that the printed text bleeds through from the other side. I've been carrying them against my ribs in the lining of my jacket, folded tight, pressing like a second heartbeat.

Dov studies them. I can see him weighing every angle—fighters required, exposure risk, what the Ordained do after.

"The Ordained will know it was us."

"The Ordained already know everything about us. This changes what they know we're willing to do."

He's quiet a long time. Outside, the afternoon shift is changing. Someone's voice carries up from the training yard—one of my second-years running drills, her voice holding the same rhythm I use.

"Too dangerous," he says. "The retaliation?—"

"The retaliation is already in motion. They named Petra. Every day we wait is a day closer to losing her." I keep my voice flat. "They didn't come here today for a negotiation. They came to show us they have other options."

"Ada." He says my name the way he always does—with the weight of a male who respects what I can do and is afraid of where it leads. "I can't authorize this."

I take the maps off the table. Fold them. Put them back against my ribs where they've been living for weeks. I don't argue. Arguing with Dov is like arguing with the wall—not wrong, just immovable. I have never once changed its mind by pushing harder.

"Okay," I say.

He hears what I'm not saying. His face tells me he hears it. But he doesn't call me back, and I don't turn around.

I go back to the training yard. I run my fighters through blade sequences until their arms shake. Petra finishes last, her hair plastered to her neck with sweat, her grip still clean on the seventh repetition. The others have gone loose by the fifth. Petra's form holds.

"You're angry," she says after the others have filed out.