Kaylan brought me back the Mishtaw’s tent just before the evening meal, at the end of her shift. She whistled to let the squad know we were waiting outside before sauntering in at Mishtaw’s answering whistle.

The squad leader waited by herself within the main area. I quickly gathered that at some point Kaylan slipped a message past me and let her know we were coming, they knew each other, and that everyone else had been sent ahead to the cook fires. An odd mix of respect and exasperation mixed on Mishtaw’s features and her voice when she addressed the other whisper woman.

“Thank you for returning my errant squad member, Far Listener, but you could have brought her sooner.”

Kaylan dismissed the light rebuke with a smile. “You wouldn’t have let her do anything anyways, since she scampered off to explore, and I got a good nap out of the deal.”

They bantered for a few minutes while I tried to draw as little attention as possible and waited for Mishtaw’s inevitable reprimand to fall on me. Somehow under the course of those few minutes I was sentenced to be Kaylan’s nap aide for the next five days. “Sentry” was the official term they used but I severely doubted anything would be different from when she picked me up today. Kaylan was more than a little smug as she left the tent, proud to have monopolized my punishment into a secure line of laziness for the next handful of days.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand the appeal of the punishment to Mishtaw; I couldn’t very well sneak off anywhere if I was trapped up in a basket on the high wall. I would also still be nominally useful watching the coast rather than being confined to the tent or otherwise being underfoot. She could send me off and focus on her duties, secure in the knowledge I was feeling the full tedium such a post offered in exchange for the stress I caused through my morning’s wanderings.

Still, guilt and worry and frustration wound together in a sickening knot in my belly at the loss of nearly a fourth of my time at the battle front. It might have been my own fault but I still wished she had lessened the punishment’s duration.

As soon as the tent flap closed behind Kaylan, Mishtaw narrowed her eyes at me, but the disappointment in her tone was more controlled than I expected. “What was your reason?”

Something like gratitude wisped by my heart as she recalled our early morning conversation even as the guilt flared as I was faced with the fact that I had skirted the rules only a couple hours after they had been established.

I didn’t waste her time with the excuse that I had waited a handful of minutes resting and recovering like she wanted. Instead, I told her the truth. She didn’t seem to have Rawley’s patience, but she had something similar to my mentor’s presence and, between that and the knowledge that she had control over my success and failure here, I decided hedging and being defensive weren’t in my best interests. Mishtaw listened to my theories and conclusions about the Lady Blue’s intentions and tactics with a cool expression, only the tightness around her eyes and mouth hinting at her inner displeasure.

It turned out that the whisper women did realize the small Share Eater forces were likely distractions, but they also couldn’t allow them to nibble at the shore in case they gained an unexpected edge as well as simple pride. Shore Eaters apparently got stronger the more sand they consumed and the one we had faced was nowhere the size the elder monsters were rumored to be. Better to make the effort the kill the small ones now even if the Lady Blue was handing over the opportunity to do so for some unknown purpose.

Nor was she surprised when I pointed out that whisper women were being pressed between two fronts and forced to split up their fighting power. The whisper women weren’t oblivious to their situation, but nor could they abandon their hold on the tribes or the shore. Mishtaw also put as little stock into my idea that the Lady Blue was after the tribes as I had. I was told that people had been lost to the sea, but that was more from their own stupidity or an accident. The Lady Blue had no interest in things made by the goddesses’ hands other than to destroy them.

However, when I mentioned attacking elsewhere and salt water caves and rivers in passing before wrapping up with the speculation that she might be trying to take out as many whisper women as possible I saw concern flicker behind Mishtaw’s stern gaze. My squad leader must have seen the questions that bubbled up as soon as I saw her reaction though, because she bundled me off to eat by the cook fires before I could ask any of them.

While I started my supper of flat bread and salty, sweet Shore Eater meat Prevna filled me in on her scouting adventure. Apparently, they had gone to the large system of salt water caves and found activity there. The Lady Blue’s fish had been guiding other creatures into the caves, but the most they saw of the other monsters was a spiny crest here and flash of gray scales there when they accidentally broke above the waves. The scouting party hadn’t been able to get into the caves to better see what the creatures were up to. Mishtaw had deemed that they would be discovered if they tried and tipping off the enemy that we knew about their activities wasn’t in the plan. So they had returned to the camp after several hours of observation only find out I had disappeared.

Mishtaw had not been pleased, the other girls were sent to stay in the sleeping quarters until supper, and Eliss made a show of inspecting her knife and sling. Really, I was wary because I had expected Eliss to dress me down as soon as I entered her sight, given her blunt manner and speeches about respecting Mishtaw’s authority.

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Instead, she had eyed me as I approached the cook fires without intercepting me. I got the impression she was waiting for a moment when the rest of the camp wasn’t around to witness her confrontation.

That moment came just outside the squad’s tent when she gripped my shoulder in a vice-like grip after everyone else stepped inside.

“I don’t care what excuse you spun or why you thought traipsing out into a battlefield on your own was a good idea. The second you acted so foolishly you undermined Mishtaw’s authority. That causes hesitation and hesitation is deadly on a battlefield. If you were a whisper woman I would have flogged you for the insubordination. As it is, know that if I have to save you or anyone else, I will save the person I know I can trust.” Her next words hit like a slap. “That is not you.”

Then she disappeared into the tent while I stayed out in the cold air regretting that my search had proved so useless. If I had at least found something, achieved something, I would be able to point to it rather than silently take having my errors pointed out ruthlessly over and over again.

Petra stepped out of the tent awhile later and stretched her good arm before glancing to where I had sunk down onto my heels. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

I kept glowering down at the withered grass poking out from the snow near my feet.

She continued, “’Oh yes,’ the plucky little seedling says, ‘it’s quite a lovely night’. And I reply about how much I love to look at the stars on a clear cold season night. They shine the brightest then.”

Petra waited a minute and then three for me to reply but I just kept trying to wait her out. I saw her move out of the corner of my eye and my hopes rose, but she didn’t turn back toward the tent flap, instead she stepped closer before crouching down right next to me.

“What are you glowering at?” A pause and then she filled in my answer for me again. “’A bit of grass. It’s the cause of everything that’s ever gone badly for me and it holds all of my anger and despair and embarrassment. So now I’m waiting for it to die,' the seedling says. She’s really quite articulate. I think about her answer for a while before I respond, ‘why not just pull it out?’”

I whispered, “That won’t get the roots.”

A smile spread across her face and brightened her eyes before Petra frowned theatrically, “No, it wouldn’t. Stubborn grass.” She leaned a bit closer, conspiratorially. “How about I burn it? That should get them.”

Feeling a bit reckless, I nodded.

Petra reached toward the grass, “Help me brush away the snow.”

We brushed the snow aside in a six inch or so radius around the scrubby patch of withered grass. Then Petra snapped two, three, five times and set the wet, cold strands on fire in several different spots. Thin trails of surprisingly sweet smelling smoke trailed up as the thin, gray-green strands shriveled into ash.

I watched the smoke disappear into the dark sky as the fire dwindled to nothing after a long minute. Petra watched it with me.

“Looking up is better, yes?”

I pressed my lips together but one corner of my mouth reluctantly still rose as I realized her ploy.

She noticed and grinned. “Mistakes will happen, spiraling about them helps no one; learning from them does.”

I looked back down at the last embers of the grass fire. “Everything still goes wrong.”

She snorted good-naturedly. “Of course it does, that’s life, but if you learn every time you make a mistake the things that go wrong will lessen overtime.”

I didn’t reply that time, not right away. Petra stayed crouched by me for another short while, looking up at the sky, before she rose with a sigh that hitched briefly when she tried to use her hurt shoulder. A sympathetic twinge of phantom pain echoed in my own shoulder that the bane pack had clawed.

“Jasper moss, cupster’s seed, and rudy grass. If she hasn’t yet, have Trish boil those together until they reduce. The poultice will help reduce the inflammation in your shoulder and help the cuts heal quicker, cleaner.”

Petra gave me a long look from where she stood in front of the tent flap before nodding. “’Goodnight,’ the little seedling says and in return I say, ‘sleep well and thank you’.”

She stepped inside the tent and I gave her a few minutes before following after. Juniper was holding court with Idra and Ento in the main room while Breck was checking over and repairing her new protective coat a short distance away. Mishtaw and Eliss were also pouring over a sheet of parchment that looked suspiciously like a map near their quarters. A couple candles brightened the space. I ignored all of them and cut as direct of a path as I could toward our sleeping quarters.

Prevna waited inside, playing a game of catch with herself and a grass-filled cloth ball in the dark room. She caught her last throw as I stepped in, pausing to watch as I stepped past her.

“Anything you want to talk about one horror to another?”

I thumped down onto my bedroll, back to her, and started to work on taking off my shoes and new coat. “We should sleep.”

I didn’t need to see her know she had just rolled her eyes. Prevna tried again. “You certainly made things interesting quick.”

“I think you had a more interesting time than me.”

The rustle of cloth as she shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not the one who went off on my own. When there are bipedal fish around trying to kill us.”

I continued getting ready for bed. “None showed up. I thought I could scout too, but nothing happened. I didn’t find anything.”

“You don’t have to be the one to do everything.”

“I know.”

“Sure.” The disbelief was apparent in her voice. The rustle of cloth came again, longer and louder than before as she drew close. Prevna sat next to me, uncomfortably close as she tended to do. She smiled knowingly at me. “Allies, remember?”

I let her wait for a moment, two, grumbled a bit inwardly, and then filled her in on my speculations about the battle, Lady Blue, and whisper women. I finished with Mishtaw’s responses and micro reactions to my thoughts.

Prevna summarized, “So the Lady Blue has some agenda we don’t know and something you said gave Mishtaw an idea?”

I nodded.

She didn’t look impressed. “I don’t see how we’ll learn more, but if it helps us get back to the Seedling Palace I’ll keep an ear out.”

I couldn’t resist needling her a little. “I thought you wanted to be here.”

“Yeah, but not if we’re stuck here.” A sly smile crossed her lips before she teased me back. “Keep thinking about the possibilities—I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time up in that lookout.”

I scoffed, she chuckled, and then I let conversation drop. Prevna looked pleased to end the conversation there, regardless, as she moved back to her bedroll and I was too tired after another eventful day to keep up with her barbs and my side was eager for me to lay down and rest. For once, I listened.