Anna Stina can’t view Lisa’s departure as a betrayal; she is much too deep in her debt. It’s not only the children who wake up to gifts: carefully lined up in a row are all of those objects that Lisa can do without, and without which Anna Stina would not be able to manage. When the last ember in the hearth goes out, she breaks up the ring of stones and sweeps earth over the black mark of the fire. When no trace remains of their camp, she carries her children to the burrow.
The branches of the forest trees still sometimes offer fruit, and the fish still bite. She gathers extra when she can, to build her store, but soon finds that there are others who want the hoard she accumulates. One morning Anna Stina finds a rat in the pile of apples she has built against the wall of the burrow. It steps clumsily among the fruit and makes a mess of her order, and hisses in rage at her when she hits at it with a branch. Anna Stina realizes that she can’t keep her stores in the same place where she lets her children sleep. Maja and Karl are still ignorant of what lies ahead. They have never tasted need. Dread gnaws at her.
Amazed, she watches how their interactions increase day by day. More and more often they roll over onto their sides in order to look into each other’s faces and find joy there. She leads and he follows. When Maja moves, Karl does the same. A wave becomes a clasp of hands and they grab each other. With cooing and babbling, they pose questions and give answers. Laughter and whining are shared alike. They can no longer be separated without wails, not even when she nurses them; she finds a position where she can accommodate both. She sings to them, songs whose words and melody have bided their time, dormant in her consciousness since the cradle was hers, and that now return to her of their own accord.
Every morning she listens for the bells, and when Sunday comes, she blocks the opening of the burrow with branches and rolls a heavy rock up the hill to secure them. Behind this, her little ones are safe from the fox. She hurries down to the shores of the bay, but no red ribbon flutters on the side of the inn.
The next day, for the first time since she arrived in the Great Shade, she hears the sound of a stranger’s footfall. Heavy steps crunch over twigs and leaves on the ground, hands sweep branches aside, and curses abound when they spring back and give a slap in return. It is a man who is coming. What else? Loud and unabashed, he proceeds as if he were doing battle with the forest itself, as if it should have had the sense to see him for who he is and show him the respect that he deserves. His kind disgusts her. She wraps her hand around the handle of her pitiful little knife, the only tool she has to defend herself with, pleased that the fear she feels can so easily be converted into rage. Suddenly she knows who it is: Ehrling, Dülitz’s man, whose curses are uttered in broad dialect. When she reveals herself, he rests his hands on his knees and wipes his shiny forehead with a sigh of relief. He pays no attention to the shiny little blade she grips between white knuckles.
“Thank the devil. Master wants you. It’s urgent.”
He refreshes himself from a flask before waving with his hand in the direction he believes to be the right one.
“He’s waiting at the tollgate himself, there’s not a minute to lose.”
Dülitz is waiting for her in the hastily erected and ramshackle building that serves as a pub for those in need of a drink to fortify themselves on their way either in or out of the city. Over his fine clothing he wears a cloak, and on his head a hat that droops far down over his eyes. The room is almost empty, and when Ottoson gives the barkeeper a knowing look, he drives the remaining patrons away with the excuse that it is closing time.
“Mrs. Blix. It turns out that something in your unique possession has suddenly become a sought-after commodity.”
He invites her to sit.
“I fancy that our affairs in the city do not reach you in your country estate?”
“No.”
“Nor is there much you need to know. In a week’s time, the twenty-third of this month, there will be a flogging in front of the Hall of Nobles. A scaffold has been built. A woman will be brought in, she will be tied to the whipping post, and then she will taste the lash. You are to go there and pay careful attention to that woman’s face so you would be able to pick her out if you were to see her again. This is the conclusion of an affair that has occupied the entire realm for the past year and, with the exception of enterprising housebreakers and our most notorious drunkards, the entire city will be thronging the square. It will not be easy to get close enough to her to get a good look.”
She nods.
“After the provost has completed his task, the offender will be led to a wagon, which will rattle off to the place where she will serve the remainder of her punishment, at least until our young monarch comes of age. This is a notable prisoner, intended for a gilded cage, and they are currently furnishing an old rectory for her to serve out her time in comfort. But the refurbishment is not yet ready, and until then she is being detained in temporary quarters. The moon is a waxing crescent now and on its way into the next quarter. On the twenty-fifth it will be a new moon and the sky will be as black as the grave. Do you know what they call it in the City-between-the-Bridges?”
Of course she does.
“The Night of Thieves.”
“You will make your way to the rooms that have been prepared for her. You will give her this to read, and wait until she has composed a reply. You will take that reply with you, and present it to me.”
Dülitz pushes an envelope across the table, secured with a shiny seal. Anna Stina can’t hide her confusion.
“You said there was something that only I had and that someone needed. This assignment sounds like one that many others would be far better suited for.”
Dülitz smiles faintly and shakes his head.
“Believe it or not, you are the only one who knows a secret way into the workhouse on the Scar. That is where they will be keeping her, in a suite hastily furnished for the occasion. You crawled through the foundation, through a hole in the cellar of the old building. You have to make your way back in the same way. And back out again, if you can’t find a swifter route.”
The memory comes back to her all too quickly. The rough embrace of the stone around her chest, her lungs empty and her next breath impossible. The tunnel that became Alma Gustafsdotter’s lonely grave. The air leaves her as if the rock has already exerted its grip, greedy for another chance to catch the one who got away. Dülitz anticipates her answer.
“I understand your hesitation. If you fail, you are in the hands of the watchmen once more, and the nightmare from which you believed you had awakened starts all over again, possibly worse than before. I’ll cut your anguish short, Anna Stina Knapp, because you don’t have any choice. I’m sure you think badly of me, but let me assure you my employer in this matter is worse by far. This is a matter bigger than both you and I, and in order to pursue it they can justify the misfortune of many a young girl, in particular ones whose disappearance will prompt no query. These are people devoid of any scruple, as only those with higher purpose can be. I informed them that you might be difficult to convince, and was given the answer that if you wouldn’t make your way into the workhouse of your own accord you will be brought there on a leash and left at the mercy of the watchmen.”
She finds his words have the cruel ring of truth; it is a relief not to have to choose. She meets his gaze steadily, without betraying her feelings.
“The building is full of locked doors I can’t get through.”
The swift answer silences Dülitz for a moment, and only with a visible effort does he check himself. He takes a ring of keys from his pocket.
“This is a key ring of the kind that unscrupulous men like in order not to have to break their way in. The locks are old and of a familiar kind. Where one doesn’t fit, another will.”
He leans forward and steeples his fingers on the table as his expression changes to something more apprehensive. His earlier instructions were delivered in a harsh voice, and to her surprise, Anna Stina finds that the mood has changed and that he is now speaking to her as if they were equals.
“There is still the matter of agreeing on the price of your services.”
“Two hundred. That was my dowry from Kristofer, money I used to improve the home from which I was thrown out and called an imposter.”
He sinks back in the chair with a frown.
“You sell yourself cheaply. The employer I mentioned and for whom I speak would be willing to give you more. If you give me a tenth for my troubles, I will make sure that they pay you the highest sum possible.”
In the end she shows the only power she still has, the only one she has ever known: the power to refuse. For each coin she rejects, she buys back her self-respect.
“No. That two hundred is what is owed me by the world. More than that and I will be the one who is in debt. I need no more.”
He looks at her for a long time before he acquiesces to her decision.
“May good fortune be ever at your side.”