III

Yael crouched in the barn loft, body pressed to a hay bale. Knife in hand. Still, still as she eyed her target: felt fedora and black trench coat. There was a five-meter drop and a two-meter leap between them. Enough to put even her hardened muscles to the test. She edged as quietly as she could to the ledge, her blade curved downward.

—BE SILENT BE SWIFT BE SOARING—

She jumped.

It was a full leap, calculated to exact degrees of strength and distance. Yael landed a breath away from the coattails, knees unlocked and forgiving. The knife kept moving as the rest of her stopped, plunging deep into the fabric. One, two, three quick strokes to her target’s vitals: kidney, liver, heart.

The dummy fell face-first. Straw innards poking from the holes she’d put there. Yael gave its gut a sharp, rustling kick and looked over at Vlad. Her trainer leaned against the cow stall, arms crossed. His face was as stony as he’d taught hers to be.

“It was a good jump,” he grunted. “You hit all the right marks. Technically flawless.”

“But?” Yael could sense the word coming—in the brevity of his sentences, the clip of his stance—so she decided to preempt it.

Vlad stepped forward. “Straw is just straw. Blood is a different matter.”

Yael sheathed her blade and looked down at the dummy, trying to imagine the different matter spilling out at her feet. “You think I’ll freeze up? I’ve seen blood before.”

(Blood, too much blood. Rivers, floods, and seas of blood.)

“I know.” Her trainer’s voice went soft.

“I won’t hesitate, when it comes to it.” Yael’s eyes lingered on the swastika badge Vlad had pinned onto the dummy’s coat for effect. “You’ve trained me too well for that.”

And he had. Vlad was a master at killing—he’d done it time and time again over the course of two wars and three decades for two different governments. During her three years on his farm, the ex-operative had taught Yael everything he knew about the art. Shooting, stabbing, strangling. The last thing she expected him to say was this: “Don’t be so eager. It’s no easy thing, killing a person.”

“The National Socialists have no problem with it,” Yael said, voice harsh with blood thoughts. The ones she tried, so very hard, not to dwell on. The ones that always caught up with her anyway.

“Do you really want to be like them?”

Vlad’s question stung almost as much as the blows he’d dealt her in their first-year sparring sessions. It took all of Yael’s training not to flinch or bristle or yell at her trainer for asking something like this. For even thinking something like this.

Like them. She was not like them. She was never like them. Wasn’t that why there were numbers on her arm? Wasn’t that why she was fighting?

Yael gestured down at the dummy instead. “Then why teach me any of this?”

Late-morning sunlight slanted through the barn walls’ gaps, filled in the faults and scarps of Vlad’s features as he knelt down, propped the dummy up. “Because this land is ruled by National Socialists. And you, Yael, were never meant to be a sheep.”

She knew that. She’d known that ever since she cracked open Henryka’s encyclopedia to the entry on Valkyries. Winged shield maidens. Powerful warriors who did not die, but were bearers of death. Who stood in the smoke and ruin of men’s battles and chose the living from the damned.

Those were the women Yael wanted to be like.

“You’re one of my best students, and you are going to be an even better operative. I’m only telling you this because I wish it was something my trainer had told me. Living by the sword catches up to you. One way or another.” Vlad’s good eye tightened; his empty eye socket (the scar he never talked about) twitched alongside. “All these skills I’ve taught you—they’re burdens. Not gifts. Taking a life takes something from you. When you choose to kill, make sure it is for the right reasons. Make sure the decision is something you can live with.”

Yael didn’t know what to say, so she merely nodded. Vlad nodded back and pointed to the hayloft: “Again.”

Wisdom imparted. Death made heavy. That was that.

That should have been that. But Vlad’s words kept tumbling inside Yael. Jump after jump. Stab after stab. They stayed with her through evening chores and their supper of bread and stew. They lingered above her as she lay awake in her bunk, nursing the day’s collection of bruises and burning muscles.

Taking a life takes something from you.

Do you really want to be like them?

But Vlad’s were not the only words standing watch. There were heavier ones. Spoken by the dead, a boy who’d once slept in this very bunk.

Someone has to do it. Step up and change things. Kill the bastard.

She’d come here, to the farm, to learn of life/knives/bullets/death because of what Aaron-Klaus had said. Her friend, her martyr, was right. How else would this terrible kingdom of death fall unless someone stepped forward? Put an end to it.

But Vlad was right, too. Death was not her ally. Yael needed rules to set her apart from the National Socialists. Guidelines that would keep her akin to the Valkyrie.

It took some hours of lost sleep (Yael knew she’d pay for it during her morning run), but she finally drew up a plan.

• No innocents.
• Those who tried to stop her would be stopped.
• Those who had information she needed and refused to give it to her would be hurt.

Everyone she fought would be weighed against these rules. All except one. Because Yael already knew that when she came face-to-face with the Führer, she would kill him.

It was a choice she would live with.