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I can hear her running towards me. I brace myself, aware this is most certainly not how it would play out in real life.

She’s on me. I respond the way I’m supposed to. After the manoeuvre, I twist around.

“Great,” she says, shaking out the foot I stepped on. “Now you’re in a good position to get a right hook on me. So, you’re going to⁠—”

“Riss, I asked you⁠—”

“And I ignored you.”

“But he’s so thin,” I whisper.

“So would you be if you didn’t eat properly for three years. Leave him alone.” In a thoughtful way, she says, “He actually looks pretty good, considering…” She leaves the sentence unfinished, biting her lip.

My heart beats faster.

“Considering what?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Checking the room, she adds, roughly, “And keep your voice down.”

I think over everything she’s just said. And something sticks in my head.

The room spins.

Three years, she’d said. But that would mean…

I gasp.

“He’s been starving since he came here?”

Her grey eyes skim the ceiling. “Did I not say that already?”

“No!”

“Ara. Do you want me to train you, or not?”

“Of course I do. But, why?” I pry. “Why would he do that?”

She sighs, still looking up, as if signalling to the universe itself that she’s miserable.

“Okay,” she says, eventually. “I’ll tell you. But only so that you don’t start trying to get it out of him yourself, which would make him feel really awkward.” Crushing my hope, she says, “And not in here, where people might hear us. Another time.”

I nod, and with the speed of a small whirlwind, she shifts our position to show me the next move.

By the time we’re done, I’m dripping with sweat. I’d love to get clean, but when I say that to Riss, she just looks at me apologetically.

“They only open the baths every couple of days. Too much effort to get them ready. So, since they were open yesterday⁠—”

“That’s terrible,” I say. “When it’s so hot here, too.”

“The ship is run by men,” she says simply. “What do you expect? They’re inherently vile.”

“So, what do the women do?”

Her eyes flash. “We do what we always do. We improvise.”

Riss’ improvisation turns out to be a barrel in her cabin and a couple of tanks she’d filled up herself with water while out on a mission yesterday – the same mission we’d caught her returning from when I first met her.

“I’ll wait outside and make sure no one comes in,” she says. “Oh, and you can take the hairbrush that’s inside the dresser. I bet they didn’t give you one, did they?”