Getting temporarily kicked out of the Seedling Palace wasn’t my only punishment it turned out. My body had its own score to settle. Gritty eyed and determined to prove myself ready for this new situation, I moved to rise from my bedroll and not waste a single moment.

I ended up curled in on myself, teeth clenched against the lightning strike of pain through my torso the aborted motion caused. I breathed through it, long and as deep as I could manage though my side also protested against that exercise.

I knew I couldn’t distract myself any longer from the injury then. There wasn’t any fury to fall back on, and the desperation, pride, and worry low in my belly were all rather tired and redundant. I needed to know how badly I had injured myself even if I had to ignore the compulsion to then make the solution that would help me heal faster. Diagnosing was also typically only within the healer’s purview, but I was hardly healing myself by learning what was wrong; no one was really interested in learning how to tell what was wrong when they weren’t allowed to do anything about it.

Carefully, I pulled up my undershirt and looked at my side. Deep purple bruises covered the entirety of my right side from hip to armpit. I hissed in pain as I prodded the injury but, from what I could tell, none of the ribs were fully broken. Given the tenderness, bruising, and difficulty with taking a truly deep breath, however, I thought one of them had cracked slightly. The perfect injury for someone who wanted to be an easy target on a battlefield. A few torn knuckles, a myriad of scratches from where I tried to get the phantom ants out of my skin, and sore muscles that preferred to stay hunched in a ball than move didn’t help either.

Really, all I needed was a poultice of lattis weed, golden head, sleeper’s nest, and the stalk of the corning flower to reduce the bruising and relieve the worst of the pain. The mixture could also help the rib fracture heal faster. But I wasn’t in the healer’s tent and I didn’t have my beads, so the best I could do was gingerly sit up while trying not to pull on my right side with any sudden movements.

Sitting up was successful on the second attempt. Dressing was harder. Each movement had to be slow and precise as I worked around my cumbersome and sore body or I paid the price by a reopened cut or aching pain. By the end of the normally simple task part of me was ready to simply go back to bed.

I ignored it, as well as Juniper and Prevna’s gazes. They had woken up not long into my small, agonizing trial but stayed quiet. The one time Prevna looked like she was going to offer to help I cut her down with a glare and she subsided with a roll of her eyes.

Now they were dressed and ready, having finished their own preparations long before me, and the other three were in various stages of their own morning routine. Idra and Ento helped each other without a word of direction, though there were plenty of soft spoken comments and grins traded instead. Breck made a business of checking all of her weapons before even getting fully dressed for the day.

Prevna left to find the morning meal and I followed after her, using the same stiff steps as the night before. We found Petra and Creed at a cooking fire not far from the tent talking with another unfamiliar woman with similar features to Petra, but she was a couple inches taller and her hair was cut short, barely reaching her collarbone. A handful of other fire starters were around as well, but I didn’t pay them any mind. Instead my attention was captured by the four beads braided into her hair and the black designs on the back of her hands.

The Black Handed Healer turned as Petra raised a hand in greeting to Prevna and me. As we stepped up close Petra introduced us. “Trish, meet two of our newest recruits, Prevna and Gimley.” She gestured to the healer. “This is my younger sister. Somehow she got the growth spurt and the talent for being agreeably nosy.”

My eyebrows drew together at the contradictory description while Trish nodded at us. “The whole camp has heard about your new recruits by now.”

Prevna grinned. “Good news only, right?”

Trish huffed out a laugh. “Interesting might be a better choice of words.” She glanced over us, more critically than before, and then her attention focused on me. “While I can’t pass up an excuse to check on my sister, I also came to offer my services to the girl who fell from the Seed Landing.”

I refused to meet her gaze. “I’m fine.”

Prevna snorted.

Trish’s smile became a bit more strained. “You have nothing to fear.” She held up her hands, palms toward her chest. “These stop too much life from gathering.”

I ground my teeth together while I glowered at the large satchel resting next to her hip. No doubt it contained bags and bottles of ingredients and premade poultices and salves for the more common ailments just like the one I used to carry.

“I’m fine.”

Prevna jabbed me in the side with one finger. Hard. I staggered away from her with a strangled cry, hunched over as my hands belatedly rose to protect my bruised side. For one scary moment I was afraid the sudden pain had sapped the strength out of my knees.

Prevna turned to Trish and spoke definitively, “What she means is that she’s fine with accepting your treatment because she doesn’t want to get her head chopped off in our first fight.”

“And because her squad leader orders her to.” We all turned or shifted to see Mishtaw walking toward us with Eliss. “You’re no use to anyone like that.”

I straightened and ignored my protesting body as she basically called me useless. “Try me.”

Mishtaw shook her head, somewhat jaded. “Not now. Will you accompany Trish and me back to the tent or would you rather bare your skin to the cold air and entire camp?”

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Logic won over the rebel impulse to strip out my cloak, tunic and undershirt right then and there. That was a child’s tantrum and I wasn’t a child anymore. I started trudging across the short distance back to the tent. Mishtaw took a couple moments to confer with Eliss before the other woman joined the fire starters by the cooking fire. Trish also shared a few last words with Creed and Petra, patting the big man on the arm. Petra took that moment to stretch and I noticed the fabric of her tunic pull around a small baby bump.

Consternation swept through me as I swiftly brought my gaze forward again. I should have noticed that before. It didn’t matter how tired or injured I was, that was something I should have realized within a few moments of meeting the fire starter. My training shouldn’t have allowed for anything else.

Was I losing my touch?

It had been over half a year since I last helped treat a patient. Over half a year since I last properly prepared a healing mixture or needed to judge how injured someone was when they were trying to hide the pain and got snappy about answering questions.

My hands got a bit clammy at the realization. Trish was walking slightly in front of me now, her long legs overtaking my much shorter steps. I eyed her medicinal bag again. Perhaps I could steal a pinch of rudy grass or puff moss to help heal one of my scratches on my own? It’d be small, barely anything worth noting. Just a little something so that the longest period of my life without healing wouldn’t stretch on even longer.

But it would be healing. And I was already on tenuous ground—this wasn’t the time to risk my chance to become a whisper woman just for a scratch. My healer’s beads were gone. I had to remember that becoming a whisper woman was all I had left.

We entered the tent just after Breck, Juniper, Ento, and Idra left it. They went to join the others at the cook fire while we sat in the tent’s common area. Trish tended my injuries with surprising concentration while Mishtaw watched. Neither of them broke the tense silence that hung over us and I wasn’t inclined to offer up information either. So I sat and suffered through Trish’s attentions with clenched fists. She used a few plants I didn’t recognize and I had to comfort myself with the thought that they were likely from a different region than the plants I grew up with.

Finally, after my hands were salved and my side poulticed, she returned from gathering snow into a bag and instructed me to hold the chill thing against my bruises for the next short while.

That done, she smiled at me. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I declined to answer and her smile turned into a slight frown before she left the tent again.

Mishtaw waited for the tent flap to fall fully closed before she leaned forward. “Tell me how you ended up here.”

I briefly debated rehashing the whole of it, but there was no reason to get into every ill decision I had made since coming to the Seedling Palace. “The Lady of Calm Waters decided to give me a second chance.”

Her neutral expression betrayed nothing at the name drop. “And you needed a second chance because…”

I wanted to cross my arms but doing so would prevent me from holding the bag of packed snow against my side, and even I still knew that cold helped bruises. “I’m sure you’ve heard.”

Mishtaw let out a short put upon sigh. “This is your chance to tell your side.” A short pause and then when I didn’t immediately speak up, “I’d recommend taking it. Otherwise, I might be forced to make the decision that you’re too hurt to fight. With the chances of a seedling ending a war front in a month are already slim, I doubt you’d want to try your hand from a sick bed.”

I pressed my lips together in annoyance at her poignant point. After another long moment I worked the relevant facts together in my head and spoke, “I attacked two whisper women. The first was in retaliation because I was attacked first without warning and I was already worked up from falling off the Seedling Landing. The second was because I thought Jin, the supposed seedling mentor, would come if I hurt Yule. She was the one who really deserved it—the other two were more of wrong place, wrong time.”

She considered me. “Would you do it again?”

Given how furious I had been? Probably, but I couldn’t tell her that. I shrugged one shoulder in answer.

“Do you often let your emotions control your actions?”

“Are you often in control after nearly dying?”

Her smile was sad, but she answered my barb honestly. “Not when I was young. But”—she gestured vaguely to encapsulate the war camp we were sitting in—“it can become a commonplace occurrence after a while.”

I blinked. “But we’re not always fighting with the fish creatures, right?”

A hand brushed the sling hanging from her belt. “More than most know.”

“Why?” I asked, a little incredulous. There was the myth about the Lady Blue’s creation, but it must have been ages since that happened, if it was even true. Not to mention the fact that it was little crazy that I hadn’t heard more tales about something as big as a war until now.

She brushed my question away with a hand. “A tale for another time. For now, I need to know that you’ll obey orders and not make trouble for my squad.”

I swallowed before raising my head. “I’ll listen.”

“Why should I trust your word?”

I didn’t want to admit it, but it was the truth all the same. “Because this is my last chance.”

And I’m tired of losing, I added silently.

She didn’t look entirely convinced. “Attacking whisper women should have been your last chance, surely you knew that then and it didn’t stop you.”

I tried to hold it back but shame still colored my voice. “I wasn’t thinking then.”

She nodded. “And you’ll always be in control of yourself in the future?”

I looked away.

I felt Mishtaw watching me before something completely unexpected happened. Approval warmed her voice. “Good. I know some people who still haven’t learned that lesson and they’re well beyond their growing years.” I looked back at her as she sucked her teeth and seemed to come to a decision. “You, and those that followed you, will join us in the field. If something goes wrong I’ll deal with the circumstances then.”

I didn’t miss the implication that her final statement had more to do with me than something generally going wrong in a fight. She quizzed me about my training and what weapons I was good with, the terrain I was used to, and about fights I got into in the past. I neglected my healer’s training and leaned heavily on my training from Rawley, but I still couldn’t help but feeling lacking as she nodded along to my explanations without a word of disappointment or praise.

Mishtaw quizzed the others too, when we joined them at the cook fire to break our fast and it was mildly satisfying to witness them experiencing the same frustration. Well, except for Breck. Mishtaw was surprised, along with the rest of us, as the blond girl laid out each weird creature and monster of Haggler’s Cliffs she’d killed with obvious pride and cold, clear detail like she was giving a report. It was also a surprise to learn that Juniper and her lackeys had grown up near the shore like Loclen, but Juniper refused to be any more specific than that.

As we finished up eating Mishtaw cocked her head to the side in a manner I was learning to associate with listening to whispers on the wind. When she focused back on us, her expression was grim. “Orders are in. A Shore Eater was spotted heading toward the east line. We’re to help distract and dispatch the fish while two other squads dispatch it.”

Creed frowned. “Only two?”

“The rest can’t be spared. Another was spotted an hour ago for the west line and there’s still that crawler harassing our outposts.” Mishtaw surveyed all of us with her clear blue eyes. “Be ready in ten minutes.”