She snorted. “Girl stuff, eh? That seems unwise for one your size.”
“Wasn’t my choice.”
“Never is.” Her bulbous fingers went to my nose, fingertips touching so gently I barely felt them brush the bridge. But I still winced. “Yep, broken.”
“Can you get me fixed? I’m under orders to be on the wall tonight.”
Isa sighed. “Never can sleep with that old threat out yonder, can we? All right, do you want the quick way or the slow way? It?—”
“Quick.”
“I hadn’t finished talking.” She took hold of my hand and guided me to the armchair. “The quick way will be more painful. Your nose isn’t as likely to heal straight.”
I sat down in the chair. “I want it quick.”
She huffed and crossed her arms. “They never should have let a girl in the guard.”
“Why’s that?”
Her head tilted as she surveyed my nose, her dark eyes liquid against the ivory frizz of her hair. “Because the only ones who’d join are those with no regard for their own well-being.”
“No regard? You should see the one who attacked me.” I glanced around at the empty beds. “Where is he, anyway?”
She guided my face back toward her. “Focus on me.”
I stiffened. “Are you doing it now? What about numbing medicine? Or a drink, at least?”
“You said quick.” She held my face between both hands, her eyes on my nose with predatory focus. “You get quick. We don’t have medicine to spare for quick.”
I was having regrets. My mouth opened, and she hissed to keep me quiet. “Let me focus. Count of three. Three, two…”
“Wait—”
With speed I’d never seen, Isa’s fingers came to my nose and jerked at it so hard, the pain was a lightning strike in the center of my face.
“Done,” she said, turning away. “Hold that cotton there while I get tape.”
My hands rose to my nose, which was once again dripping all over her floor. The pain was a marvelous, burning sun at the center of my existence, which made me both pathetic and furious in my attempts to stanch the flow. “That fucking hurt.”
“What a cute vulgar thing you are with your plugged nose.” Now Isa was pulling supplies off her shelf. “Suppose that’s how you got into a fight in the first place.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t that at all.”
“What, you didn’t put out when the boys wanted it?”
“That’d get them kicked out of the guard.”
She let out a one-note laugh. “Vulgarandidealistic. I remember that. Well, you are only—how old are you?”
“I’m—”
She waved a hand. “Now listen to me, Eurydice Waters.” Isa turned back toward me with supplies in hand. She approached on her uncertain legs. “Before long you’ll become educated in this new world you’ve volunteered yourself into. It’s base and it’s cruel.”
The pain was beginning to subside, and I stared at her as shesquatted before me. This was only my second time meeting Isa, but this was the first time I’d really looked at her. She must have been in her seventies, but she had a scar at one temple in the shape of a hook.
“There’s two things I’m going to tell you,” she said, pushing my fingers away from my nose, “and you aren’t going to like the first one. But it’s the second one that really matters.”
My eyes traveled over her face, from the scar to the pockmarks of some illness from long ago. Her face told stories, lots of them. Was she a guard once herself?
