Mama wheeled her up the little flagstone path to the front door and eased the chair over the threshold, jostling Revna into the entryway. The front hall alone dwarfed any private residence she’d seen before, but the finery couldn’t outshine the chaos. Muddy footprints crusted a wooden floor inlaid with a stark geometric pattern. A dark stain crept up the blue wallpaper, though the exact nature of the stain was something Revna didn’t dare contemplate. A tree heavy with tiny green fruits had been overturned in the corner, and no one had bothered to sweep up the dirt or even turn the pot right side up. Bottles lined the grand stair—empty bottles, if she had to guess—and the entire foyer had a sour smell to it. Upstairs, someone screamed. Revna’s hands clenched around the arms of her chair.
The Skarov with the torn coat trotted up the stairs. “Your chair, miss,” said the tired one. A slim hall next to the staircase stretched to a series of rooms beyond. Her bulky old chair wouldn’t fit.
“We’ll have to carry you, miss.”
“No,” she replied, before she thought better of it. The word came out strong and angry. She flushed. But if this was her end, she didn’t want to meet it in the arms of an enforcer. “I’ll walk.”
She gripped the banister at the bottom of the stairs and pulled herself up, taking care as she disentangled her feet from the little shelf her father had carved for them. When she had her balance, she looked back at the Skarov. The tired one stared outright at her legs, frowning at the pointed metal toes. The bruised one looked everywhere but her feet. Neither of them met her eye.
“This way,” said the tired one, shoving past her.
She’d expected to be taken into an interrogation room. She hadn’t expected it to be so… pink. The walls were a paler shade than the couch, which had a rose pattern woven into the silk and likely hadn’t been in style since before their last war with the Elda. A walnut desk had been pulled into the center of the room to act as the interrogation table. The Skarov she’d saved took an upholstered chair. The bruised one shut the door in Mama’s face.
The tired one gestured to the couch. “Take a seat.”
Revna sank into an overstuffed cushion. Papers had been dropped on the floor in an unceremonious stack, and more had been shoved over the books on a small bookshelf in the corner of the room. Through the window she could see a square of hazy blue sky. The city jail must have been bombed. Why else would she have been brought here?
“Revna Roshena,” Tired said, picking up a file on the desk and flipping it open.
He paused as if she was supposed to say something. “Yes?” He must’ve known who she was, and the file in his hand must’ve told him exactly what she was—child, traitor, amputee, factory worker.
“Age?”
Doesn’t your fancy paper tell you? “Seventeen,” she said. Her hands knotted together in front of her. It was getting hard to breathe.
He checked her face as he ticked off her physical description, and for a few moments the room was silent aside from the scratch of his pencil. His companion leaned against the door. Revna bit the inside of her cheek to hold back a hysterical laugh. After expecting the Skarov threat in every back alley, in every official building, she was about to meet her fate in an ugly pink room, sitting on a squishy rose-patterned couch.
“How long have you been experimenting with the Weave?”
“I—” Never. Six months. A year. She’d practiced each of these replies, and all of them were so obviously wrong.
“There’s no point in lying.” He looked at her for the first time since he’d come to the house. “I was there.”
“I don’t know anything,” she blurted out. Which was a ridiculous thing to say, because everyone knew that she did.
“I flew twenty feet through the air because of you.” He tapped her file on the table. “You saved my life.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t mean to save my life?”
No. “Everything was dark, and the buildings were falling, and we didn’t have shelter—and I never knew I could do it. I’ve never done it before, and I’ll never do it again.” The words tumbled out of her, and as she watched him lick the end of his pencil and press it to paper, it all became worse somehow. She wanted to be proud, to own the truth and accept her fate with grace. But she kept talking, hoping to talk until she said something that saved her. “I’m useful here. I’ve never done anything wrong and I’ve never been late for my shift. You can ask my supervisor. Mrs. Rodoya. I do factory work, for the army—”
He leaned forward. “I don’t care,” he said, setting his hand on the table. Revna stopped, mouth half-formed around a word. They sat like that for a moment. Then he drew back. “Your father taught you to use the Weave?”
“No.” They couldn’t pin another crime on Papa.
“Your mother, then.”
“No.” Panic flushed her. “I taught myself.”
“Impossible. You used a complex tactic—”
“My mother never knew—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” he snarled. His features twisted into something enraged and animal.
Revna’s spine turned to ice. This was when they broke her limbs and scored her skin until she told them all about her life. She wondered how thin the walls were. Would Mama hear her scream in this makeshift cell? Revna wanted to think she’d stay strong under torture, for her family. But she couldn’t be sure.
The latch clicked as the door opened. Revna jumped. Then she drew a shaky breath to tell Mama to get out.
But it wasn’t Mama who stepped through the door. The woman who came in was short and dressed in a sharply tailored uniform that said army. She wasn’t what Revna had expected some Skarov bruiser to look like. In fact, something about her was familiar. Revna wanted to recognize her but didn’t quite know from where.
The woman looked from Revna to the bruised one to the tired one. “I told you to let me know when she arrived.”
The bruised Skarov shifted, as if he was trying to edge out of the room without attracting attention. The tired one leaned back, clasping his hands in his lap. “We have a very particular procedure.”
The woman smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile, like Mama’s, or even a patronizing smile, like Mrs. Rodoya’s. It was a smile that begged the Skarov officer to take one more step in the wrong direction. “My procedure has precedence. Or would you like to check that with Isaak?”
His lip curled up, but he said nothing. He wasn’t the same kind of predator that he’d been with Revna. He shoved his chair back. “I was sick of listening to her, anyway.”
That was it? Some big interrogation and retrieval, all to be abandoned on an ugly rose couch?
The bruised Skarov slid out, and the woman stepped aside to let the tired one pass. “Shut the door when you leave.” She waited until it had slammed before she took a seat in the vacant chair. “Sorry about that. The Extraordinary Wartime Information Unit can be pushy. But I was the one who wanted to see you today. Not them.”
Revna’s head swung between the door and the woman. The woman stuck her hand out. “I’m Tamara Zima.”